Writing for Communication 9/24/15

Happy Friday!

Last night, we were lucky enough to have Michele Kayal as our guest professor. As an accomplished freelance writer, she was the perfect person to give us a lesson on feature writing.

After some introductions, Michele taught us about the anatomy of a feature story. Here were some of the main points:

News and feature writing have a common foundation (Lead, nutgraf, kicker)        

Both are like houses; The news is a small house that provides a roof over your head, whereas feature writing is a mansion that has a lot more going on

News is short, to the point, and efficient

Features take an angle/point of view, can entertain, and are detailed. They include more background and anecdotes

Because the two have different jobs, they have a different constructions

As we already know, news stories are constructed like inverted pyramids 

Features do not have a single structure, but many look like hourglasses 

Once we got through that, we went over the bank robbery assignment. Michele had each of us read our lead. Here were some common problems:

• Making the lead too "new-sy" and not creative enough for a feature story
• Not using the name, which was important because of status
•  Not taking a point of view/angle
• Making the lead less than 25 words, which isn't necessary for feature writing

After reviewing all of our leads, we went to the computers and tried to re-write them to make them more feature-like. Once again, we went around the room and reviewed each other's work. Overall, we seemed to get a better understanding of how to create an interesting lead for a feature.

Lastly, we began the "Student Sit-In" assignment with Michele's guidance. We worked on them until class ended.

To do for October 1:

• Do radio story (Page 243), "Historic Document"
• Read chapters 11 and 12
• Read Writing to be Heard (Pages 214-216)
• Read Characteristics of Writing (Pages 233-235)
• Finish "Student Sit-In" (Page 208) that was started in class

Have a great week!

-Leigh