The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on The Wall Street Journal Guide

Feature articles are often my favorite pieces in any given day's newspapers. I have a master's degree in journalism, and as a writer, I enjoy the "riches" a feature article can provide that a standard, inverted-pyramid, bleeds-so-it-leads article typically cannot. I thought this book might offer fresh insights, strategies, practicalities, and more.

I was wrong.

I wasn't out of my league. This is not an undergraduate- or even a graduate-student textbook. A very brief preface makes clear that the book is meant for working journalists. That was fine by me.

I had a bit of cognitive dissonance trying to focus on the art of writing feature articles, which can touch a reader's soul, with the author's reprimanding, if not impatient or disgusted, tone.

The text seems very dated too. The earliest copyright date listed is 1986, which means the book might have been released in the latter part of 1985. That was 30 years ago. Anyone remember 1985? It was a good year for me, but (for those alive at the time), think back to what we - and journalism - never had to consider. I know, in hindsight, that technology was thriving, but if the majority of Americans were asked at the time about email, the Internet, the World Wide Web, smart phones with apps and 4G, online subscriptions, banner ads for revenue, a Kindle, or even a PDF, there would have been blank stares all around. Mr. Blundell's book continues onward, oblivious to all of these advances. That's forgivable and, nonetheless, this book still could have provided guidance on writing feature articles for a 2015 audience. The attributes of a great feature article really haven't changed much during the past three decades. (The media admittedly have shifted, but online platforms, even podcasts, just offer many more opportunities for journalists and other writers and commentators to craft top-notch feature articles.)

This book's downfall isn't just that the mass media have changed dramatically. Education has too. In 1985, a dull, didactic presentation, in a classroom or a book intended for professionals, was not questioned. Sure, there had been buzz for a long time that students didn't learn uniformly, but that didn't do much to shift a professor's/author's approach, which standardly was to lecture. And that's what this book does. But since this book was published, education experts predominantly have concluded that traditional lecturing is among the worst ways to teach.

Here's an example of the author's approach to sharing the art of writing superb feature articles: "In generating ideas a vivid imagination is a big help, and if our unfortunate reporter doesn't have one, we can't supply it. But most of the time something else is wrong ... ."

(I don't know why Blundell uses the "royal we" either. If Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II were to iterate, "We are not amused," sure, that would be appropriate. But a book to improve journalists' feature-writing skills?)

And the text I quoted was a brief sample compared to the author's "one sentence=one paragraph" writing style. He has an affinity for double- or triple-compound sentences. If you finish the sentence and can't remember what you just read, take heart. You just read an entire paragraph and can't remember what you just read.

The Big Hike didn't produce the Big Epiphany I was hoping for, but I did come to realize
that I wanted writing to play a larger role in my life than it had previously. To explore
some of these possibilities, I found this excellent book in the library. Blundell is a long-time
feature writer and editor for the Wall Street Journal, and he is from the E.B. White school of
prose writing. I found the information in this book both useful and exciting. This is an old book (you
can buy it used for about a dollar), but it's one I want for sure in my library.