Writing a Feature Part I

So I've been 'challenged' by my news desk editor to write an entry for next year's journalism award, which I don't really think I stand a good chance of winning but I thought that it may be a worth a shot to brush up on my writing skills.

I've been giving some thoughts on how to write a feature after working for more than seven months. It's funny for me to think that the one and only feature that I've written was when I first started.

Now to be honest, looking back at how nervous and lost I was at the time, I think I was writing it more out of desperation than it actually being a properly planned and researched piece. The subject matter was easy to access and I was quite surprised that my editors decided to accept it as a feature. So I guess that was a fluke shot for me.

Since then, I've spent most of my time just learning the ropes of how to do proper reporting, getting thrown into the wild sometimes makes you learn fast when you are forced to adapt, though other times you just sink to the bottom and learn from your mistakes.

As I chased more and more stories day by day, the very idea of writing a feature just took a very far back-seat of my mind, that it wasn't important than filling up my quota.

Now, I'm starting to feel that my writing has improved somewhat and my interviewing and information gathering is a bit more focused than it was before, so maybe attempting to write a feature could be a test of how far I've come.

My plan for now is not to take this feature writing business too hard for myself and just going with something simple but can show some effort.

I'm just going to do a feature that introduces something new that I, and hopefully, everyone else has never seen, understood or knew about before. My job is to introduce hidden things in our society or just to shed some light on things that people have never even heard of before. It could be something that we see in our everyday lives but never truly understand it in depth.

My plan of action is to bring along the 'six faithful serving men' of Rudyard Kipling for the next subject matter that interest me. I think just by being able to answer each of them, it should be material enough for a feature. I don't think it's going to be something ground-breaking but I think I will be able to learn the ropes while doing it.