How To Write Special Feature Articles

What if a scientific discovery could hold a reader like a melodrama? Willard Grosvenor Bleyer begins with the editors who borrowed the short story’s drama and description to make facts irresistible to “the average American.”

As popular magazines and newspaper Sunday sections spread in the early twentieth century, editors sought a livelier way to present discoveries, public affairs, notable people, and everyday experience. Bleyer’s handbook is for reporters, correspondents, and free-lance writers learning to turn such subjects into special feature articles: detailed, accurate accounts shaped with narrative, vivid description, and human interest. The challenge is to give readers more than the bare outline of the news without losing them in technical exposition—or mistaking a feature for a mere human-interest news story. What makes a subject worth writing about, and how can facts become a story readers want to follow?

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