Writing Descriptively

A key to feature writing is painting a vivid picture for your audience to capture the moment or scene that you as a writer are trying to recreate. Chapter 6 discussed what I found to be one of the most helpful explanations of why and how to add color to feature stories.

Feature stories should have recreated scenes. As a writer you want to engage the audiences senses rather than just summarizing a specific event. By bringing in their senses they become more involved with the story. So, as a writer the need to be very specific and descriptive is important. The motto that should be adopted is, "show don't tell."

Furthermore, you are your audience's eyes and ears. Therefore, if you don't portray the sights and sounds of the scene your audience will be left deaf and blind and the feature won't be nearly as effective at grabbing the reader. A writer must also remember that when gathering scene information from a source, the source is your eyes and ears so the writer must make sure to get enough details and information to once again recreate the scene for his audience just as the source did for the writer.