THE FEATURE

By Jake Lankford.

I: THE FEATURE ITSELF.

The FEATURE: where literature and journalism meet and where one can enjoy much greater freedom in terms of creativity and experimentation.

What even is a feature to begin with? A feature is a style of journalistic story that is more literary than newswriting, plain and simple. Think people like David Holthouse, who wrote the article “72-Hour Party People,” an article about a group of upper-class meth users in Colorado, Buzz Bissinger, the journalist behind the now-legendary Vanity Fair article, “Shattered Glass,” an exposé of New Republic writer Stephen Glass and the man behind gonzo journalism itself, Hunter S. Thompson, who is the creative force behind scores of articles.

What do all of these journalists have in common? They all wrote in the spectrum of the feature article, each with different levels of experimentation and adherence to the traditional form. “Shattered Glass” is firmly on the more clinical end of feature writing, as it is a telling of the strange and shocking story behind one of the most infamous fraudsters in the history of journalism Stephen Glass. This feature would fit snugly into the “profile” category of feature writing.

“72-Hour-Party People” leans more into the creative side, but still has a clinical thread throughout it. This story fits more into the time-and-place category of feature writing, as the story is split into various episodes that depict the events of various hours in the 72 hours the article is set across. Sections of the article begin with “Hour 1,” “Hour 5,” “Hour 12,” et cetera. An emphasis isn’t placed on a coherent story, it is placed on time, and the place the subjects in the story visit, Las Vegas, Nevada. However, the article has a few creative flourishes here and there, such as the style Holthouse writes in and the aforementioned sectioning of the article into episodic chunks of time.

Finally, there is the wild card of journalism, Hunter S. Thompson. Though his gonzo journalism style is idiosyncratic, it is very clear that most, if not all, of his journalistic writings could be classed as features, more specifically, narrative features. Thompson only cared about telling a story, a story with him as the main character and through his voice alone. Here is feature writing at its boldest and most experimental, where it just so happens to be on the most creative end of the spectrum. A narrative feature is, at its bare roots, non-fiction storytelling. You are just telling a story, in any way you see fit, whether that is through multimedia portions or writing flourishes, you are free to present the narrative in any way you see fit.

But what exactly do all of these genres have in common with each other? What is the common thread of aspects between them that allows them to be classified as features? What differentiates them from each other? Most of all, what aspects allow a feature to be differentiated from a typical news story as a feature?

Word choice. The opening line. Length.

Profile. Time and place. Narrative.

Clinical. In-Between. Creative.

I am alive. I, the Green Fairy, La Fée Verte, the Muse of Inspiration for many authors and writers and currently, the muse for this article.

So much division here, but while features do have these defined layers to them, there is also a lot of blending and fusing as well.

Features are, at their core, where journalism and literature meet. So why split them up into these defined boxes, when in reality, all features have elements of these distinct genres and descriptors such as “clinical” and “in-between.”

II: THE PROFILE, WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD, CLINICAL GOLD.

The profile, a major and classic genre of the feature. The article is the stage unto which the subject can tell their story, with little to no intervention from the author. As a profilist, it is your job to not guide your subject as they tell their story. Your job is to sit, listen and write an article that centers your subject in a way where their words and story shine the brightest.

“ A portrait forms of someone who loves and is passionate about the art of music, a passion that can be seen in her job and her willingness to help the many members of the marching band.” So goes my ending to my profile on Susan Bingham. I formed a portrait with her words, I took second priority in that article, Bingham was the star of the show in that article. In a way, my only job was to set the stage, like a stagehand before, during and after a play.

And here is where the first aspect of a classic feature comes into play: the choice of words in a feature. This matters in all forms of feature, but in a profile, where you are telling someone’s story, word choice should be used to tell the person’s story in the most accurate and objective way as possible.

III: TIME AND PLACE, THE OPENING LINE.

“What is the power of the opening line?”

“In journalism? It is your pickup line. Your move. If you blow it here, you’ve lost your reader,” Daniel Green, podcaster.

Here is where the second aspect of the feature comes into play: the power of the opening line. This is the first impression the journalist will make on their readers. If you blow it, you will lose it all from the get-go.

For a lot of journalists, figuring out the opening line and/or lede can be the most difficult part of the article, but it is important nonetheless that you can get this right, especially in such a story-forward genre as feature writing.

“I bring the rose quartz-colored liquid to my lips for a sip and immediately let the drink wash over me with its relaxing, smooth silkiness. That is the nature of the perfect Cosmopolitan, rose-quartz pink and smooth as silk.”

My feature article on misinformation provides this example of an opening line, and it also serves as a segue into where the opening line can be at its strongest: the time and place feature.

With a time and place-style feature, you are telling a story that happened at a specific time and place, and arguably, the most important aspect of that is your establishing line, like an establishing shot in a movie or TV series.

If the profile feature was like a stage play, then the time and place feature is like a movie: set across a specific time and place and relies on the ability to pull the reader/viewer into this world, a world that the writer establishes with their opening line.

Ok, I get the whole idea of an establishing shot, but why, out of any other feature, does the opening line matter most in the time and place genre?

Well, in addition to establishing the “place” part of “time and place,” there also needs to be an established time as well, and that weight also lies on the opening line.

“Nothing in Charles Lane’s 15 years of journalism, not the bitter blood of Latin America, nor war in Bosnia, nor the difficult early days of his editorship of the fractious New Republic, could compare with this surreal episode. On the second Friday in May in the lobby of the Hyatt hotel in the Maryland suburb of Bethesda, near Washington, nothing less than the most sustained fraud in the history of modern journalism was unraveling.”

So begins the opening line of “Shattered Glass.” Time (second Friday in May) and place (Hyatt Hotel, Maryland suburb of Bethesda, near Washingtom) established for all to see.

And here I acknowledge, “Shattered Glass” is an example of a feature that has elements of all three genres of feature: profile, time and place, and narrative. Thus, while time and place shows how important it is to have a solid opening line in a feature, it is an aspect that plays in all of these genres.

Correct. Though time and place can show how important it is to have a solid opening line, at the end of the day, a solid opening line is an aspect that is present in all classic features. If a writer botches the opening line, it will completely turn the reader off from the article.

So far, it has been established that word choice and opening line are important elements of a feature and that depending on what genre of feature that is being written, whether it will be more in a more clinical or creative style.

It has also been established that the divisions between features aren’t black and white at all. They all have elements that bleed into each other at varying amounts.

Indeed. Though these divisions are there, they mainly serve to indicate what kind of feature you will be reading, but are not hard-line differences. “Shattered Glass,” for example, begins with a opening sentence like one would see in a time-and-place feature and the article itself walks a tightrope of profile and narrative.

And speaking of narratives, the time-and-place feature is deeply entwined with that genre of feature as well. The narrative feature, the meat of this style of journalistic writing, is where the feature is at its most literary.

IV: THE NARRATIVE, LENGTH AND PROSE.

“With a book, it is often the prose that pulls me in, after all, if the prose isn’t interesting, it’s hard to get into the text proper,” Warren Lester.

The narrative feature, where the feature is at its most literary. The narrative is where the final aspect of a classic feature comes into play: the very prose itself.

In the typical news story, AP style is required. Brevity is the most fundamental part of a typical story one would read in a newspaper. With a feature, however, the writer is not required to write in the terse, brief AP style. There is greater freedom to tell the story, and with that freedom does come another requirement for a feature:

A feature has to be long, longer than a news story. It has to be the length of a short story and at minimum, be more than a page long. The trade-off being that a feature writer doesn’t have to write exclusively about news, they can write about pretty much whatever they want.

The narrative feature comes in here. Telling a story in the most literary form, in the writer’s own style, their own way. And again, thanks to the fluid nature of the feature, the narrative feature has a lor of crossover with the time-and-place story and the profile feature.

And there it is, through writing this meta-feature, you realize that a feature, is a feature, is a feature.

V: THE FEATURE.

Features do have divisions between them, that is true. However, those divisions, I have come to find out as a journalist, are mainly there for labelling. A reader wants to know what kind of feature they will be reading. However, these divisions aren’t hard-line divisions. A profile can have elements of a time-and-place feature and a narrative, and the other two genres also have a lot of carryover. The three styles mentioned, clinical, in-between and creative, also serve as indicators for what type of feature that one can read. However, as like the genre divisions, these styles aren’t hard-line, they are not inherent to one genre of feature or another.

The three things in common across the board, no matter what indicator there is, for a classic feature are an objectively great word choice, a memorable opening line and an objectively great prose style.

A feature must be approached like a short story, not like a typical news story. It is where the journalist blossoms at their fullest potential as a writer, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, or a rose growing bright and red. The feature, like the opinion column, serves as the culmination of talent for a journalist, where like absinthe louching and opening up on a hot summer day, the journalist opens up and lets the feature run free and wild.