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.Often, the best ideas occur when writers think like three or fouryearolds, always asking "why?" and"how?" And you have to think about what you do each day—you did something unusual, even something as simple as deciding where to go for spring break or over a long weekend.You could write a story listing your own favorite places.Or compile a list from the information provided by tourism and visitors bureaus.Those might just make a good story.Identifying Feature Article MaterialWhat makes a great feature article idea? An idea that gets published? Just about everything around you is possible feature material.Use your senses.Look around.Absorb.Notice.Listen.Look.Your job is to take these undeveloped ideas and turn them into something interesting for readers.People make some of the best story ideas.Often a powerful story about a successful person's problems helps readers to see the "real" side of that individual.We learn from how he or she has experienced adversity and overcome it, or made the comeback to succeed a second time, lost a loved one, or survived a brush with death.These stories often make wonderful feature articles.One such example isPage 38Krakauer's story about the people and events that took place on Mt.Everest in 1996.His magazine article and his book both detail the individuals involved.We learn about them in depth as people, not just mountaineers.We learn about their strengths and weaknesses as people, not just about the mountain and efforts to reach the summit.The story is clearly about the people who climbed the mountain, not the mountain or mountaineering.Williamson says finding a feature story idea should be easy.Those stories seem to jump out and practically scream, "Write me!" Williamson (1975) argued, "A great advantage in being a reporter is that you have a 'license' to find out about all those things you've always been curious about" (p.70).Here's a sample of that sort of feature, Tacoma, Washington, News Tribune writer Bart Ripp's (1998) fresh look at a quirky collection of lawn sprinklers: You miss the syncopated hiss.There's no rhythmic ribbons of water, no splashing braids, no spritzing bursts when your lawn sprinklers sit silently on a shelf.The quiet is shrill when you have shelves of sprinklers.Dozens of sprinklers.Hundreds of sprinklers.More than 600 sprinklers—all different, all functional, all precious to Dick Storms.Storms' collection of sprinklers, curated to a select 60, sits on a shelf at the Seafirst Gallery in the Columbia Seafirst Center in Seattle.The sprinklers are the silent stars of "Springs Eternal," an exhibit of 41 artists' works on water.Most everybody with a house, even if you live out in the woods without a lawn, has owned a sprinkler.It's nearly as essential to housekeeping as a toothbrush.Storms' quest for one model of each of the 2,500 sprinklers patented in the past century began, like most afflictions, innocently and unexpectedly.Storms, 51, owns Records Archive—a pair of Rochester, N.Y., stores that sell vintage record albums.Storms collected chairs.He studied design.He had 12 fine chairs and no more room in his house.Water, grass and gardens were distant objects to Dick Storm when he went to an estate sale eight years ago, looking for chairs.He tumbled into a deep fountain."I bought three sprinklers for a buck apiece—an oscillator, a spinner and another one," Storms said."They went into bushel baskets in my garage."Page 39Then he bought a few more sprinklers.Then a few more bushel baskets to hold them.(Ripp, 1998, p.G1) The key is curiosity.Be curious about lawn sprinklers.Well, at least curiosity about people who collect them.Once you notice things, once you meet someone, once you discover something interesting to you, let your journalistic curiosity take over.Satisfy your inquisitiveness by finding out about the subject.How? If you always wanted to learn about sailing, go to interview a local sailor or take lessons at a nearby lake.Or go to a nearby sailing club meeting.Finding the right story idea is also dependent on the publication for which you will write the story.You need to know what sort of material the publication publishes.This is more easily done if you work for the publication, but it can be relatively easy to find out if you take time to research the publication and its market (Bowman, 1997).You also need to know the basic characteristics of feature ideas.What are they? Traditionally, good feature ideas have eight basic elements, according to Schoenfeld and Diegmueller (1982).Those elements are:1.Appeal to people.The story has to meet a need of the reader.2.Facts.A feature that works will contain certain information, or facts, about that subject that will be beneficial to readers in some way.3.Personalities.Facts are enhanced with personality.A story that can offer some unusual person or personality with facts and appeal will be much stronger.4.Angle.The right "slant" or theme makes the subject tie together better.5.Action.Can you make the story come alive? It will if you have some activity in the story.It is relatively simple—people should do something in your story.6.Uniqueness and universality.The topic should be different and should have broad appeal at the same time.7.Significance.Timeliness, proximity, prominence, and relevance create significance in a story.8.Energy increment.The story should stir your readers just as the idea stirred you to write the story.You should show your enthusiasm and sincerity.Page 40Finally, think about the necessity that all feature ideas remain fresh.Just like bread, a feature idea has a certain shelf life and it is up to you as a writer to make certain the idea is developed and published in story form while it is still fresh.The best idea won't work with editors or with readers if it is stale.Taking the Right Steps to Idea SuccessNonfiction and fiction writing have a lot of similarities, and many of them are discussed throughout this book.One is the formation of ideas.Successful mystery novelist Elizabeth Peters (1992) says ideas are quite different from the plots she uses in her books.She wrote: It [the idea] begins with a 'oneliner'—a single sentence or visual image, characterized by brevity and vividness.Since an idea is not an avocado, you can't simply go out and get one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]