FS - Features and Sports Module Overview

Features and Sports Module Overview

Introduction

A feature article is a creative article that deals with real events, issues, and trends. However, unlike straight news articles, it places emphasis on the people involved rather than on the facts of the news. Here are a few types of features articles:

 

Glasses on newspaper

  1. The Human-Interest Feature reports on someone's success in spite of great odds.
  2. The Personality Feature focuses on how a person has gained recognition.
  3. The News Feature brings human-interest to breaking news.
  4. The How-to Feature explains how to do something—usually a complex process.
  5. The Past Event Feature examines a historical event or historical celebration.
  6. The Informational Feature provides detailed information on one aspect of a given topic.

 

 

Readers who watch sporting events often know the who, what, where and when of a story; however, the how and why is up to the sports writer to explain. For example, why did the team win or lose? What decisions did the coach or players make? Sports writers must have knowledge not only about the events and the sport, but also about the business of sports. Sports stories are about more than just wins and losses.

Sports stories are constructed by writers who make decisions about words to use and how to organize information in the story. They must re-create the sports experience for readers in a way that both informs and entertains them. Sports writing also has its own unique writing style elements:

  1. short, expressive sentences
  2. colorful, descriptive words and language
  3. powerful, strong verbs
  4. play-by-play commentary  

Essential Questions

  1. Why is it important to have an angle to your story?
  2. How can an angle help you to better connect to your audience?
  3. What makes an effective feature story?
  4. What are the most important aspects of writing sports stories?
  5. How can descriptive language work within a sports story?
  6. What is the difference between hard news stories and features stories?

Key Terms

  1. Angle - The way you choose to focus this particular story to get your point across.
  2. Formal Language - Is using standard English (not slang) and appropriate grammar when speaking or writing.
  3. Informal Language - The use of language we use when we feel very comfortable and casual around people. For example, talking with or writing to our peers, close friends, and family may be appropriate times to use informal speech.
  4. Descriptive Language - Language intended to create a mood, person, place, thing, event, emotion, or experience. Descriptive language uses images that appeal to the reader's senses, helping the reader to imagine how a subject looks, sounds, smells, tastes, or feels.
  5. Figurative Language - Language that involves the use of words and/or phrases that describe one thing in terms of another and that is not meant to be understood on a literal level. Figurative language always involves some sort of imaginative comparison between seemingly unlike things.
  6. Colorful Language - The use of words that have the capacity to entertain the reader's senses.
  7. Powerful Verbs - Verbs that are meant to be more descriptive. Using them can make a sentence more interesting.
  8. Descriptive Writing - Writing that vividly describes a person, place, or thing in such a way that the reader can visualize the topic and feel like they are part of the experience.

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