Writing Feature Stories: How to Research and Write Newspaper and Magazine Articles

301 Pages·2004·3.31 MB·English

by  Matthew Ricketson

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WRITING FEATURE
STORIES
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WRITING FEATURE
STORIES
How to research and write
newspaper and magazine articles
Matthew Ricketson
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Every effort has been made by the author and publisher to contact copyright
holders of materials quoted extensively. Unacknowledged copyright holders
should contact the publisher with any queries.
First published in 2004
Copyright © Matthew Ricketson 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher. TheAustralianCopyright Act 1968(the Act) allows a
maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for
its educational purposes provided that the educational institution
(or body that administers it) has given remuneration notice to
Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-publication entry:
Ricketson, Matthew, 1958–
Writing feature stories: how to research and write
newspaper and magazine articles.
Includes index.
ISBN 1 86508 732 7.
1. Authorship 2. Feature writing. I. Title.
808.066
Typeset in 11/14 pt RotisSerif by Midland Typesetters
Printed and bound in Singapore by CMO Image Printing Enterprise
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
INTRODUCTION ix
1. WHAT EXACTLY IS A FEATURE STORY? 1
2. THE VARIETY OF FEATURE STORIES 13
3. CROSSING THE BRIDGE FROM MEDIA CONSUMER TO MEDIA
PRACTITIONER 33
4. GENERATING FRESH STORY IDEAS 55
5. SPEND HALF AN HOUR PLANNING NOW, SAVE HALF A DAY LATER 71
‘This man raped two little girls...’ 84
The story behind the story: Pamela Bone 91
6. GATHERING THE RAW MATERIAL 95
7. THE SUBTLE AND SLIPPERY ART OF INTERVIEWING 111
8. SEEING THINGS FOR YOURSELF 125
‘The passion of John Marsden’ 134
The story behind the story: David Brearley 142
9. FINDING THE RIGHT STRUCTURE FOR THE STORY 145
10. LEADS, CLOSES AND THAT BIG LUMP IN THE MIDDLE 165
11. WORDCRAFT 185
‘Pol Pot Park’ 204
The story behind the story: Kimina Lyall 209
12. EDITING YOUR STORY AND WORKING WITH EDITORS 213
13. LOOKING AHEAD...TO LITERARY JOURNALISM 227
‘Hope lives here’ 238
The story behind the story: Garry Linnell 251
APPENDIX 254
GLOSSARY 263
NOTES 265
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING 275
INDEX 281
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has been a long time coming. I remember solemnly promis-
ing to write it during the interview for my current job—in 1995. Other
things got in the way—another book, a masters degree—but with the
gentle prodding of colleagues in other journalism schools and Elizabeth
Weiss at Allen & Unwin, it is finally finished. It is a truism that books
are collaborative projects in disguise, but for a book about writing this
is especially true. To begin with, I’d like to acknowledge Geoff Slattery
whose sports journalism (particularly a profile of Lou Richards) first
showed me what was possible in journalistic writing. Peter Ellingsen
introduced me to Murray Smith who had been his first editor, and
became mine, at the then Standard Newspapers in Cheltenham. Murray
is a superb suburban editor and one of the nicest blokes you could hope
to meet in a newsroom. Three other editors who helped me a lot were
Neil Mitchell at The Age, Steve Foley at The Australian and Jeff
Penberthy at Time Australia. I have been fortunate to work with and
learn from many fine journalists, beginning with fellow cadets at The
Age in 1982, and later including: Paul Austin; Paul Chadwick; Philip
Chubb; Debi Enker; Gideon Haigh; Phillipa Hawker; Damien Murphy;
Andrew Rule; John Schauble; Cameron Stewart; Ros Smallwood and
Jane Sullivan.
At RMIT University, the considerable support granted to me by the
School of Applied Communication provided time to write the book.
Iappreciate the university’s commitment to encouraging staff to reflect
on their craft and their profession and to pass on findings in books
such as this, which, it is hoped, will help strengthen links between
industry and the academy. Many students in many feature writing
classes have influenced this book through their questions, their ideas
and their candidly expressed views about my stories. Colleagues in the
Journalism program team have taken a keen interest, especially fellow
feature writing lecturers, John Hurst, who generously lent me his own
extensive work on the area, and Sybil Nolan and Muriel Porter, who
both read the manuscript and made valuable comments. I would like to
Acknowledgements vii
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thank the six journalists (Pamela Bone, David Brearley, Jon Casimir,
Fiona Hudson, Garry Linnell and Kimina Lyall) who gave permission
for their features to be reproduced in this book and who contributed the
excellent stories behind their stories. Sarah Hudson and Chris Tatman
also provided stories about their stories, but in the end, for space
reasons, I was unable to include them. Thanks nevertheless.
At Allen & Unwin, thanks go to in-house editor, Catherine Taylor,
and to the educational publisher, Elizabeth Weiss, for her support and
her coolly incisive intelligence. At home, thanks as always go to my
children Gemma, Hayley and Josh and my darling wife Gill.
viii Writing Feature Stories
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INTRODUCTION
A writer says: read what I have written
An historian says: listen to my lecture
A critic says: listen to what I think
A journalist says: let me tell you a story.
Gideon Haigh
Novelists know the terror of the blank page; journalists know the terror
of deadlines. Novelists have to create something out of nothing;
without their imagination the page remains blank. Journalists have to
find the news and test its accuracy; miss the deadline and they may as
well have stayed in bed. And feature writers—what about feature
writers? Wherever they turn they see paradox. They’re not novelists but
they are asked to do something more than simply report the news of
the day. They are given licence to be creative but they are still jour-
nalists and are still writing about the real world. They have to meet
deadlines but not necessarily daily deadlines. Is it any wonder people
get confused about feature writing?
As a young journalist I vividly remember feeling confused when I
was first asked to write features. I had grasped the essentials of the
news story (‘The Prime Minister yesterday called an election, after
weeks of intense speculation...’) but that was only after it was drilled
into me by dint of repeated practice in a newsroom. Now editors were
asking for pieces much longer than the customary 600-word (or ‘twelve
snappy pars’ as they were called) news stories. They told me they
wanted background, they wanted colour, they wanted to run ‘long
reads’. So I started gathering more information, reading reports, visiting
places, interviewing people, and much of what I gathered was good
stuff. I enjoyed interviewing and most people seemed happy enough to
talk. I loved words and I had this idea I could write. The problem was,
I had no idea how to put together a feature, no idea how to start it and
no idea how to order the mass of raw material that sprawled across my
desk and onto the floor.
Nowhere was this more painfully evident than in writing a profile
of Frank Vitkovic, the 22-year-old man who in 1987 walked into the
Introduction ix