“Your job, as the feature writer, is to make editor’s job easier.”

These are the words of Henry Garfield, a novelist and contributing editor for Bangor Metro and Maine Ahead magazines. He said these words while speaking to a class of 20 University of Maine students on one of the topics he is most familiar with‒ feature stories and how to write them.

Garfield talked for forty minutes; he spoke about his early days in journalism and the basic structure of magazines, but he spent the majority of his time talking about tips for writing a good feature story. There are four significant elements of writing a feature story: choosing a topic, focusing and narrowing it, and paying special attention to the lead.

When choosing a topic for a feature story, one must consider only topics of general interest that have a long shelf-life. The first question the writer has to ask before even beginning to write the story is: How do you want to approach the feature story? In order to respond to this question, Garfield said that a writer must organize their topic and see the ways in which he or she can make the story most appealing to a potential reader. Also, the writer must consider the audience they are writing for.

The writer of the feature story needs to be specific; “Narrow it down. By limiting the story, I also focused the story”, said Garfield. He added that he never really liked outlines, but every feature story needs to have some kind of information skeleton.

One of the most important parts of the feature story is the lead. “I spend as much time on my lead as I spend on the rest of the article. Once I have the lead that I like, it is much easier to write the rest of the story, “Garfield said.

He also added that when you are done with your story, it is best not to send it to the editor right away. He advised the students to leave it for the night, then wake up, read it over, correct it and then send it in.

What Garfield likes best about writing feature stories is the fact that every story is like a mini-education. A writer needs to do a lot of research to be familiar with the subject they are writing about; in Garfield's opinion, this is the best way of broadening writer's knowledge.

Garfield finished his speech with an advice for all the future journalists sitting in the room: “Never be afraid of asking a stupid question. When it's still during the interview, it's OK. What you don't want is to misunderstand what the person you are interviewing meant and print it wrong. So, I repeat, never ever be afraid of asking a stupid question.”