CDJN 118 - Advanced Feature Writing

Course Description

This project-intensive advanced course is designed for serious students of magazine feature writing to further develop their reporting and narrative skills. Students must have a familiarity with the basics of conceiving and focusing story ideas for specific markets as well as the fundamentals of researching, reporting, interviewing and writing, as covered in CDJN 117. The course emphasizes what is called literary journalism, which combines journalism's concern for solid reporting and factual accuracy with many of the dramatic techniques of fiction. At its best, this kind of feature writing holds readers' interest, entertaining them while simultaneously providing the depth and context necessary to understand complex issues and events or capture the essence of a profile subject. There will be short writing assignments as well as one longer feature, which must contain some or all of the elements of the course: evidence of on-the-scene reporting, a narrative arc consisting of a well-crafted beginning-middle-end, character development, the use of dialogue instead of (or in addition to) traditional quotation, the use of symbol to support theme, etc. Students are expected to come to the first class prepared to discuss story ideas and move on quickly to writing a query letter. CDJN 117 combined with CDJN 118 is equivalent to JRN 124.