Week 2

Common mistakes in feature writing among students

Main Issues among
Students (Beginners)
1) Lack of flow
2) Don’t know what to write
3) Old vs new, interesting vs
bored story
4) Uninteresting introduction and
conclusion
5) Lazy article
6) Plagiarism
7) Lack of journalistic writing style
1) Lack of flow, affects
coherency (style)

How to solve: Write in

narrative style and tools
suggested.
 2) Don’t know
what to write that
Howwill be published.
to solve: 2 major ways: 1)
Get ideas/resources from media,
2) your own interest, experience
How to solve: Read the latest discussion about the topic
3) Old vs new;
you have in mind, decide what is lacking (angle),
research, and write.
interesting vs
boring articles
-Did not research, lack of “content”.

How to solve: Read, research and insert various “facts”

in the FS.
 4) Lack of
interesting
introduction and
How to solve:
conclusion. Read other
authors’ published
articles, may “copy style”
 5)
Producing How to solve: Interview is one of the
“short cuts” for students to produce
“lazy” good articles.

articles.
 6) • How to solve: Write with your
“feelings”, write what you like and
Plagiarism know rather than “I need to write
and publish to get marks!”.
Writing sounds like an
academic writing.
7) Lack of
journalistic
style of writing
Journalistic writingmust be
interesting, short, concise
and easy to understand.
 2) among
important
tools:
• use discourse
markers (penanda
wacana)
• Use sensory details
to demonstrate
For this week, we focus on
the 1st issue – Lack of flow
How to solve these issues?

specific and
Flow/coherency/narrative

concrete details
experience.
on your
1) Write based
• Discourse Markers
How to achieve
specific &
concrete
details?
 • The mountains are beautiful.
What, exactly, does “beautiful” look like?
=The mountains are stacked like dominos, their
By specific, white caps crisscrossing the western sky.
• In another example, the writer is describing her
we mean the grandmother:
“exact” • She was very pretty.
What does “pretty” look like? Is “very pretty”
thing. prettier than just “pretty”?
=Grandmother’s painted crimson lips were always
smiling, her high cheekbones and deep, topaz eyes
reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor.
My grandmother is
pretty.
Sample of a • I was riding my bike down the hill. My friends
bad para, were with me. We came to this hill all the time. I
went off the jump. My arm broke. It hurt a lot.
without My friends took me home. My parents took me
to the hospital. The doctor put my arm in a cast.
discourse
markers and • Exercise:
• Rewrite this para (using 2 main tools) to make it
sensory into a story rather than patches of sentences
combined.
language:
Apply some writing tools if we are not
good writers.

It is not a sin not to be born as a writer,

Conclusion
we can write better if we learn the tools.

Identify what is/are your problems in

writing and solve it/them.

Keep writing – practice makes perfect!

Committee Formation for Showcase
• 1) committee formation
• 2) group formation (8-10 students for each group)
Exercise to be answered and posted on Goals
• Summarize chapter 7 (Major mistakes to avoid in writing a feature
story) in the book

• Feature Writing Basic Guide for Non-Journalists.

Post your summary on Goals. The deadline is given on Goals. Fastest

and best summary will be chosen to get a book as a gift from me :)
• THANK YOU