[.ca] Art And Craft Feature (ISBN 0452261589)

Writing as critical thinking:
One of the biggest mistakes young reporters make is viewing reporting and writing as separate exercises, one following the other. Bill Blundell rightly sees them as one process. Good reporting begets good writing. It begins with critical thinking about your subject, which if done properly brings strong focus and organization to your story. In 20 years as a newspaper reporter and editor I've not run across a more practical, common sense approach to writing than that offered by the Art & Craft of Feature Writing.

The best book I've ever read on the writing process:
The reviewer from Laguna Niguel who says this book is boring apparently has been reading too many textbooks and therefore is only used to reading textbooks. Yes, the examples in this book are out of date, but so what? The full-text examples are still excellent articles after 15 years or so; great writing is always great writing even after it goes from being current events to being history. In 1984, I saw the transcript of Blundell's lectures on feature writing that became the basis for this book, and I still use this book in teaching my feature writing course and my magazine writing course, because nothing else comes close. Among many other accomplishments, this book gives students a SYSTEM for coming up with original story ideas and original story angles that most of them couldn't come up with on their own--in direct contrast to other books that use poetry or other gimmicks to try to make students "feel creative" and then be creative. Rather than being read once or not at all and/or being used only for reference, this is a book that should be read over and over again.

Yaaaaaaaawn:
This book is not very good.The author keeps on repeating that you should make your articles catchy, interesting, and not boring, yet when you read the book, you can barely stay focused. It's not the examples of articles that are boring, but the style he uses to write the book itself. When I was reading it, my mind kept on wandering about any other thought that popped in my head, and I always had to re-read the last paragraph because I could'nt pay attention, and by the way, this has never happened to any other book I've read. Actually, after I read a few chapters of the book I started reading another one called, How to Write Articles for Magazines and Newspapers, and I did not have the same problem. All in all, if you can relax, read it very slowly, and have a lot of time on your hand, I guess it is not too terrible.

Unique, Refreshing approach!:
There is a voice in this book, and you can just HEAR this guy as he admonishes writers and drills into their heads the step-by step guide to reporting and writing. The tone is firm with a direct approach to feature writing as the author is adamant that, "reporting and writing can NOT be divorced." I like the sharp conversational tone; it's like sitting in the classroom. He is very clever with the similes and metaphors to clearly drive his point. Although this book has made the rounds for years, Blundell offers refreshing ideas and unique insight to writing. He speaks of experience as a Wall Street Journal writer. This is HIS voice, and not a slew of other professional writers churning out a how to book. I like a quote of his when he tells us that the READER requires specific information and our first priority is to meet that requirement and also that the reader has a deeper and more universal need that has to be met or, he flees. The author said, "nothing is easier than to stop reading." You won't find the usual writing book addressing topics like these. A sample chapter is Raw Materials - generating ideas; Extrapolation (beyond the event lies a broader, more significant story); Synthesis (assembling promising story ideas from what looks like a junkpile of spare parts); Localization (thinking big); Projection (declining to follow the media sheep to a pasture already overgrazed) and Viewpoint Switching (thinking of a story as a piece of terrain with varying topography). Also topics titled Shaping Ideas; Story Dimensions, Planning and Execution, Organization, and you get great insight into Handling Key Story Elements that delves into the dreaded leads and endings. What is interesting in a unique approach to his section titled Wordcraft. He assumes that you the reader already know grammar, syntax and usage. So his goal is to show us how to achieve certain effects at certain places in the story. You will read some full texts on sample stories that are sprinkled throughout the chapters. Blundell also provides reading material for the writer. He says, "whole forests have died to fill the marketplace with other writing books." One suggestion is Zissner's "On Writing Well." This is a unique writing book and is meant to read completely. ....MzRizz

Sound advice:
I use this as a textbook for one of my Reporting and Writing courses. It is an excellent tool for teaching students about structure and the various elements that make up a feature. It also gives student a practical blueprint they can follow for writing a feature. If you take any Pulitzer Prize winning feature and study it according to Blundell's principles, you will find the various elements that he writes about. I do find some of the writing samples a little dry, but that doesn't diminish the soundness of his advice or the cogency of his insights into the art and craft of feature writing.