Part 1 (1/2)
How To Write Special Feature Articles
by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
PREFACE
This book is the result of twelve years' experience in teaching university students to write special feature articles for newspapers and popularpages, young men and women have been able to prepare articles that have been accepted by azine editors The success that these students have achieved leads the author to believe that others who desire to write special articles iven in this book
Although innu have been published, no attempt has hitherto beenof special feature articles In the absence of any generally accepted method of approach to the subject, it has been necessary to work out a systematic classification of the various types of articles and of the different kinds of titles, beginnings, and similar details, as well as to supply names by which to identify them
A careful analysis of current practice in the writing of special feature stories and popular azine articles is the basis of the methods presented In this analysis an effort has been made to show the application of the principles of co of articles
Exaazines are freely used to illustrate the e students to analyze typical articles, the second part of the book is devoted to a collection of newspaper and azine articles of various types, with an outline for the analysis of them
Particular ee as is not available to the general reader This has been done in the belief that it is iress that is being made in every field of human endeavor, in order that he may, if possible, apply the results to his own affairs The proble writers how to present discoveries, inventions, new e, in an accurate and attractive form
To train students to write articles for newspapers and popular e instructors in co scarcely worth their while They would doubtless prefer to encourage their students to write what is commonly called ”literature” The fact reraduate cannot write anything that approximates literature, whereas experience has shown that many students can write acceptable popular articles Moreover, since the overwhelazines, it is by no means an unimportant task for our universities to train writers to supply the steady dee, founder of the _World's Work_ and former editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, presented the whole situation effectively in an article on ”The Writer and the University,” when he wrote:
The journeymen writers write almost all that almost all Americans read This is a fact that we love to fool ourselves about We talk about ”literature” and we talk about ”hack writers,” i that we do is of literature The truth all the while is, we read little else than the writing of the hacks--living hacks, that is,the notion that our life and thought are not really affected by current literature, that we read the living writers only for utilitarian reasons, and that our real intellectual life is fed by the great dead writers
But hugging this delusion does not change the fact that the intellectual life even of most educated persons, and certainly of the mass of the population, is fed chiefly by the writers of our own tiazine, every editor of an earnest and worthy newspaper, every publisher of books, has dozens or hundreds of important tasks for which he cannot find capable e of science, or of politics, or of industry, or of literature, along with experience in writing accurately in the language of the people
Special feature stories and popularparticularly adapted to the ability of the novice, who has developed so, but who may not have sufficientor other distinctly literary work Most special articles cannot be regarded as literature Nevertheless, they afford the young writer an opportunity to develop whatever ability he possesses Such writing teaches his that are invaluable to any one who aspires to do literary work
It trains hi on about hianize material effectively, and to present it attractively If this book helps the inexperienced writer, whether he is in or out of college, to acquire these four essential qualifications for success, it will have accomplished its purpose
For permission to reprint complete articles, the author is indebted to the editors of the _Boston Herald_, the _Christian Science Monitor_, the _Boston Evening Transcript_, the _New York Evening Post_, the _Detroit News_, the _Milwaukee Journal_, the _Kansas City Star_, the _New York Sun_, the _Providence Journal_, the _Ohio State Journal_, the _New York World_, the _Saturday Evening Post_, the _Independent_, the _Country Gentleazine_, the _Delineator_, the _Pictorial Review_, _Munsey's Magazine_, the _Aazine_, _System_, _Farner_, and the Newspaper Enterprise association
The author is also under obligation to the azines from which excerpts, titles, and other e in the preparation of this book the author has had the advantage of the cooperation and assistance of his wife, Alice Haskell Bleyer
_University of Wisconsin Madison, August, 1919_
HOW TO WRITE SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLES
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE FIELD FOR SPECIAL ARTICLES
ORIGIN OF SPECIAL ARTICLES The rise of popularthe last thirty years has resulted in a type of writing known as the ”special feature article”