{"id":13500,"date":"2016-01-26T14:22:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T18:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=13500"},"modified":"2022-05-06T08:59:11","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T12:59:11","slug":"how-to-write-a-human-interest-feature-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/how-to-write-creative-content\/human-interest-stories\/how-to-write-a-human-interest-feature-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on how to write a human-interest feature story"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers and others say<\/h2>\n

\"How

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“Some adjectives \u2014 such as ‘ashen,’ ‘blond,’ or ‘winged’<\/em> \u2014 help us see. But adjectives such as ‘enthusiastic’<\/em> are really abstract nouns in disguise.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar, The Poynter Institute, in Writing Tools<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The least successful profiles merely rehash the subject’s resume chronologically, and that resume squeezes out the interesting stuff, even if the reporter has it in the notebook. The writer starts typing the resume paragraphs; runs out of time, energy and space; and the juicy bits die spiral-bound. The best profiles include two or three interesting aspects of the person, which sometimes contradict and always transcend the resume.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Don Fry, faculty member at The Poynter Institute<\/h6>\n
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“You can’t write human-interest stories from your sofa.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 David Fryxell, editor, Writer’s Digest<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn\u2019t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don\u2019t get carried away with the rest. Long life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stephen King, prolific novelist, in On Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“It is very difficult to make people out of words.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Larry Leonard, Oregon writer, quoted by Jack Hart in A Writer’s Coach<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Story begins best with character. We read because we become involved with characters, we remember stories because of characters. As writers we need to develop characters that are believable as well as physically and psychologically complex; characters that writer and readers feel strongly about, in a compassionate way. We report what characters do and how they do it so that the characters reveal them selves to us and to our readers. We need to see the characters physically, in action.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, in Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cEveryday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture, clothing, decoration, styles of traveling, eating, keeping house, modes of behaving toward children, servants, superiors, inferiors, peers, plus the various looks, glances, poses, styles of walking and other symbolic details that might exist within a scene.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Tom Wolfe, author of the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,<\/em> listing character details<\/h6>\n
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