Must Haves of Features

In this week’s COMM 415 lecture, we talked all about features. We talked about the six must-have features.

1. Hard work

2. Preparation

3. Observation

4. Access

5. Questions

6. Strong writing

While I understand that the first two elements, hard work and preparation, are especially important, I am betting most of you have a strong grasp of these elements. In this week’s blog, I want to take a deeper look into observation, access, and questions.

Observation

Observation is an element that is so crucial for writing features but can be difficult because of the enormity of the task. You want to find new and fresh angles to a story, and you must pay attention to be able to see these. I believe a good way to improve this element is by becoming an active listener. When listening to a source, let your follow-up questions come naturally or have them pre-planned. This is important because you don’t want to be “listening” and just formulating what your response will be, rather than absorbing the information you should be taking in.

Access

Access is something that is great because it can be unique to you. As Mr. Vareberg mentioned in our lecture, “You don’t have to be at the Super Bowl to write a feature.” Many times, the best feature stories are ones that aren’t on the main path, and sometimes it isn’t with a major program. If you are writing a feature on a college football player, they don’t have to play for Alabama or Clemson. This means that you can write a feature from an angle no one would have been able to predict. Another component of access is your connections. Obviously, some people will be blessed with connections through family, or they will get lucky and have a contact that they stumble upon that can help them. These are all things that we can’t control, but what we can control is being open and willing to form connections. If you can develop these connections you will have more opportunities for access to athletes, coaches, general managers, events and much more.

Questions

As a more introverted person, I can sympathize with people who have a hard time with questions. A good way to ask good questions is to keep them relatively simple. If you get too complex you may confuse the person you are asking, or maybe even yourself. You must also be willing to keep asking these questions so you can accurately write the feature. Another great thing about questions is they can take you down a unique path that you did not even know about. This is why open-ended questions are so great and crucial for any sports writing. You can try and predict how they will answer, but each person will answer differently. This is a great way to find a new angle that could make your feature unique and appealing to your readers.

Questions for you

In this Blog, I didn’t touch on the first two elements because I am sure you all know a good deal about hard work and preparation. I went into more depth on elements three, four and five. This leaves us with one left, strong writing. I want to ask you all, what are two important components of strong writing in your opinion? I am interested in hearing what you all have to say down below. See you next week!