The best rule in feature writing is to observe no rules aside from those of basic journalistic style and structure.

The best lead for the feature story is a natural extension of the story.

The best lead is the lead that is relevant, grabs the reader’s attention and fits the mood of the story.

Feature writing

The following feature leads are called novelty leads…

Writing feature leads

To have been ordered into battle to attack a group of windmills with horse and lance would have seemed to Joe Robinson no more a strange assignment than the one given to him Thursday by Miss Vera Newton…

Relates a person or event to some character or event in literature.

Napoleon had his Waterloo. George Custer had his Little Big Horn. Fortunately, Napoleon and Custer faced defeat only once. For Bjorn Borg, the finals of the U.S. Tennis Open have become a stumbling block of titanic proportions.

Relates a person or event to some character or event in history.

His wealth is estimated at $600 million. He controls a handful of corporations, operating in more than 20 nations. Yet he carries his lunch to work in a brown paper bag and wears the latest fashions from Sears and Roebuck’s bargain basement.

Compares extremes—the big with the little, the comedy with the tragedy, age with youth, rich with poor—if such comparison is applicable to the news event.

Western High’s trash collectors have been down in the dumps lately.

The road to Nsukka in eastern Nigeria is rutted and crumpled, the aging asphalt torn like ragged strips of tar paper. In the midday heat, diesel trucks hauling cassava and market women to the next town kick up clouds of fine orange dust that lingers in the air.

Diana Ross spends most of the day lounging around her Manhattan apartment. The windows are raised high through her Fifth Avenue apartment. She is dressed in black short shorts and a matching sleeveless blouse with fishnet stockings and burgundy suede boots. Three or four bracelets jangle on her left wrist. Her long nails are the color of pearl, nearly iridescent. She curls up in a corner of the sofa and sips juice….

The air inside the darkened gymnasium is heavy with the heat of an uncommonly prolonged North Carolina summer. Smoke from some tin containers placed around the basketball court lends a touch of mystery to the scene.

The thick smoke rolls into the intense light of floor-level arc lamps, then up against a raft of lights hovering like a Steven Spielberg spaceship. Out of the dark a white clad figure appears, bounding a basketball. Michael Jordan dives for the basket….

The Beatles are back.

Awesome.

That’s the best way to describe the Rattler girls’ basketball team, which notched its 15th consecutive win Friday night.

For sale: one elephant.

The City Park Commission is thinking about inserting that ad in the newspaper. A curtailed budget makes it impossible to care for “BoBo”, a half-grown elephant lodged in special quarters at Westdale Park.

Whisky, whisky everywhere, but ‘nary a drop to drink.

Such was the case at the City Police Station yesterday when officers poured 100 gallons of bootleg moonshine into the sewer.

Do not expect any pity from the weatherman today. He forecasts a continuation of the bitter Arctic cold wave that has gripped this city for a week.

Speaks directly to the reader on a subject of widespread interest or appeal.

Midnight on the bridge…a scream…a shot…a splash…a second shot…a third shot. This morning police recovered the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. R.E. Murphy from the Snake River. A bullet wound was found in the temple of each.

Lead consists of a series of jerky, exciting phrases, separated by dashes or dots, used if the facts of the story justify it.

It was 1965 and the Dallas Cowboys were making good use out of an end-around play to Frank Clarke, averaging 17 yards every time a young coach named Tom Landry pulled it out of his expanding bag of tricks.

One day, Clint Murchison, owner of the Cowboys, wondered aloud in Landry’s presence how successful the play might be if Bob Hayes rather than Clarke ran with the ball. Hayes, after all, was the world’s fastest human.

“Tom gave a lot of mumbo-jumbo about weak and strong side and I nodded sagely and walked away,” Murchison told the Dallas Morning News.

A few weeks later, Landry called a reverse. Bob Hayes got the ball.

“We lost yardage,” Landry recalled. “And I haven’t heard from Clint since.”

The Rio Grande once flowed through here, a wide and robust river surging between steep banks as it followed a southward course hugging the state’s curvy profile.

No more.

Four-plus years of drought in West Texas and the neighboring state of Chihuahua have turned the storied river into a trickle meandering through mud and gravel fields adorned here and there with discarded tires.

Trainer Eddie Gregson was walking 10 feet behind his Kentucky Derby horse, Gato del Sol, when they emerged from the quiet of the stable area at Churchill Downs and began that long trek around the clubhouse turn toward the saddling paddock.

There were 141,009 people packed into the Downs last Saturday afternoon-a warm, bright day in Louisville—and thousands lined the clubhouse turn, a few yelling at Gregson as the colt strode by. “What’s the name of your horse?” Less than one hour later, that nameless horse stood in the champion’s ring.

You think you’ve had it bad? Consider Ron Mullens. Once vice president of a major real estate corporation, he is today penniless. Once married to a beautiful model, he now wanders the back roads of America alone, in search of a smile and whatever odd jobs fall his way. You think Ron Mullens is upset by this turn of events? Not on your life.

“I gave it all up for the opportunity to see America as it really is,” he said.