For me, the hardest part of writing my feature story was writing the lead. I must have written ten different ones! Some of them were variations on the specific wording of the sentence, while others had entirely different approaches. The lead really does shape the direction for a story. I've discovered that once you get a lead right, everything else seems to flow pretty quickly.
Well, quicker than the lead.
Another area where I had more difficulty was transitions. Transitioning from one paragraph subject to the next can take a good deal of effort. I wanted to make sure that my paragraphs weren't choppy, but at the same time, I didn't want to have a ton of extra words that would bog down my article.
My feature is a profile piece, so I've been reading some profile pieces from different papers to get a good idea of how it's done. I liked the one about Cybill Shepherd in our book for the most part, but its tone isn't really what I am aiming for. There was something about the angle from which the author was writing that bothered me a little.
I did really like how as a reader I was able to get a sense of Shepherd's personality, which is what I am aiming to do with my feature article.
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Camara,
ReplyDeleteyou made some good points! Yes, the lead takes the most effort but makes the rest of the story easier to organize.
I am so happy that you spent some quality time thinking about good transitions. I'm sure you've noticed how they help make your story a smoother read.
And finally, I commend you for reading outside of what I assigned for the class. The more feature stories you read, the more you learn about style, description, tone, etc.
I really am looking forward to reading this feature!!