No newspaper or Periodical would be all without personality-driven feature stories. They're the insight-filled articles about your favorite celeb or the inspiring tale of one woman's refusal to say no when the rest of the community gave up on trying to eliminate gangs from the community. These two types of stories seem polar opposites, but what holds them together and defines them is the strong central character that creates the reason for the story to be told. Create your own personality feature story by learning everything there is to know about the unique subject you wish to write about, then craft your piece carefully so that each word is a reflection of that person's inner light.
Instructions
7. Add pacing and excitement to your story by sprinkling it with dialog. Direct quotes--both from the central character and/or the folks you've interviewed--bring personality-driven stories to life. Insert interesting anecdotes, endearing quirks and personal philosophies into the body of the story. Perhaps you find the writer paints such a vivid portrait, you feel you know how the subject of the story thinks.
2. Draw a clear distinction between the personality-driven and the action-driven story. Action driven stories pay less attention to thoughts, actions and reflections of people and focus more on the details. For instance, an action story takes a reader to a restaurant and describes the food and wine. A personality feature explores, in detail, the story of why the pastry chef gave up a promising career as a stockbroker to become a master baker.
3. Decide what sort of approach you'll take to research your article. You may wish to build the entire feature around a single interview with the subject or you may decide to interview others to determine what they think about the subject. Many writers use voice recorders. Others prefer pen and pad. Some use questionnaires to compare viewpoints of multiple interviewees.
4. Go through all of your research and interview notes and look for one great quote or note that sums up your subject and has the ability to stand alone as a headline. For example, you take these words as a direct quote: "The woman doesn't know the meaning of the word 'no'." Your working headline might be: "Meet the woman who doesn't know the meaning of the word 'no'." It's descriptive, punchy and attention getting.
5. Understand that all feature stories follow the same structural outline: an introduction, the body of the story and an ending that reaches some conclusion. Your conclusion may be that your main character is even more remarkable than you first imagined, or you might find out that there is a hidden side to their personality that begs to be revealed. Explore either to massage the story and finish a first draft.
6. Head out into the world if you find your first story draft is too thin. You might need more research in the form of interviews or background data; alternately, you may wish to re-interview the subject of your story to fill in some blanks. This is pretty commonplace and requires diligence to get the story right.
1. Get comfortable with feature writing style by reading lots of personality pieces in magazines and newspapers. Find a few that you like better than others and figure out why. You may be attracted to the way the story starts or the pace at which it moves. At no time during this stage should you offer or acquiesce to appeals of the subject or others to see the unfinished draft.
8. Write a second draft that accommodates new material and revisions. Experienced writers know not to file the first or second draft of a story--even when they're on deadline. This is the time to be ruthless about meeting time constraints by hunkering down and focusing on making final decisions on the text.
9. Before submitting, see if your story meets the personality-driven feature test: It should be lavished with descriptions, feelings, character flaws, accomplishments, dreams and comments that showcase the subject's persona. Action-driven feature stories may be rife with bends, twists and turns, but personality pieces reveal the true nature of the subject in such a way that readers feel they've grown to like or dislike the person based only on the assumptions drawn from your writing ability.
