(An exception that proves a rule already stated is found in the second paragraph, which tells how a child turned in the fire alarm. An effective touch of local color is added in the last paragraph. The story is a good example of restraint in writing. No undue effort is made to impress the reader with the underlying pathos, but the facts, simply and concisely told, are allowed to speak for themselves. The headlines on the published story were: “Sisters, 102 and 95, Put in Peril by Cat—Children in Street Give Alarm After Animal Knocks Over Lamp and Starts Fire.”)
III. Write a story of 300 to 350 words from the following notes. Do not manufacture any details, but put those here given into the form of a readable news story:
Fire in brick tenement, 193 Adams street, 10 o’clock last night. Damage $2,000, estimated by Assistant Fire Chief Dunn. Cause was the explosion of lamp on second floor. All the tenants got out safely except Charles Lawrence, 35, a painter, who lived with his wife and three children on the top, fifth, floor. He was asleep in bed when his wife called out that the house was on fire and told him to get out quick. He got out of bed and told her to go along with the kids; said he would come as soon as he got his clothes on. She went with the children and on the stairway met Patrolmen Quinn and Brown. Told them her husband had delayed to dress. The building was filling with smoke and they turned their attention to rescuing those on the lower floors. When the firemen heard that Lawrence was still in the house, they went to his room and found him lying face downward on the floor, unconscious. He had inhaled smoke. He died in an ambulance on the way to the City Hospital. The fire was extinguished in forty-five minutes.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FEATURE STORY
Richard Whiteing, the English novelist, is a strong believer that the art of literature has no greater aid than daily journalism. Speaking once he said:
“Some foolish people have said that daily journalism is killing literature in its highest forms. I say, to the contrary, that the daily paper provides a sort of first course in literature, and I am an immense admirer of the clear, incisive style adopted by the halfpenny press.
“It stimulates curiosity, and when once you have done that in any human being you have started him on the right road. The one deadly thing is apathy. The cow in the field has no note of interrogation. The savage might see an aëroplane and not wonder.
“You can lead a man from the curbstone to the stars when you have once made him curious. A newspaper forces a man to be curious.
“The dear old truth—that’s all we want. The truth is so beautiful, so amazingly interesting, so much more wonderful than fiction. Therefore I say that, quite apart from morality, it is policy for a paper to tell the truth.”—The Fourth Estate.
The feature story, as the name indicates, has more to do with the development of some interesting feature suggested by the day’s news than with the strict presentation of news for its own sake. It is therefore not subject to the same rules that govern the writing of the news story. Indeed it can hardly be said that the feature story is subject to any rules, except those that apply to composition in general. Individuality in style counts for more in the feature story than in the news story that has no other purpose than to inform. Greater freedom is allowed the writer; he is not required, for one thing, to summarize his story in the lead. On the contrary, he may employ the fictional method of working up to a climax. The main end of all feature writing is to make the story interesting. If the writer succeeds in this, it does not much matter on what plan his story is constructed.
WHAT THE FEATURE STORY IS NOT
What the feature story is can be indicated by showing what it is not. In the first place, it is not a skeletonized recital of bare facts. This was amusingly brought out by the New York Sun in reply to the statement of a college professor that the journalism of the future would be “wholly without decorative effects.” The Sun gave half a dozen examples of what might be expected from a journalism of that type. Here is the Sun’s “Report of a Suicide”:
The body of a young woman was removed from the river at the foot of 309th street by the harbor police yesterday afternoon.
Pinned to her dress was a note stating that she purposed committing suicide, signed Edith G. Wannaquit.
The young woman was about twenty-six years of age. She was not at all beautiful. She was, in fact, noticeably plain of feature.
Her fingers were not covered with magnificent diamonds. She wore no rings at all. Her clothing was of the most inexpensive material.
There is no mystery whatever connected with the case, nor have the police authorities the slightest idea that she was the victim of foul play.
It is deemed positive from her appearance that she did not belong to some distinguished family of this community. The young woman simply had become tired of living and she jumped into the river—that is all. The case is wholly lacking in any element or feature of a sensational character. The names of the Wannaquit family appear in the city directory but no inquiries were made of any members of the family, the case not being deemed of sufficient importance.