Last month we talked about writing basic press releases.  Now that you've mastered that, let's look at writing feature releases.  Forget the structure you learned last month.  We don't want to begin with the who, what, where, when, why.  The beginning of this press release can be more creative and less "functional."   Its goal is to draw the reader into a story and subtly promote "the client." 

Feature stories are about topics of special interest.  They are considered "soft" news stories.  The problem created by a feature story is many newspapers want exclusives on the features they accept.  So, you wouldn't send the same release to competing newspapers in the same city.  To get around that, you develop separate features for different newspapers or at least different slants or angles of the same story for each newspaper in the area.

You still need a news angle.  For instance, if you're a writer of inspirational romances, you could write a feature for the book section of the local newspapers about the increase of inspirational romances and then go into how you have found your niche in this growing market.  The news angle is the increase of inspirational romance market and the feature part of the release is you. 

Think of a feature release as one that takes a subtler approach to promoting "the client" (which is you). 
Feature stories are written with a delayed lead -- you may take several paragraphs to get to the focus of the story.  The lead may set the tone and the background.  The lead should set the stage with trends in the first few paragraphs and then narrow down to the exact topic by the fourth paragraph.

The recent article in the Denver Post about the Colorado Romance Writers conference is an example of a feature story.  The article's point is to promote the conference, but it takes a subtle approach by discussing the changes in the romance market and using two of the conference speakers as examples of those changes. 

So, your homework is to make a list of the angles in your life that could be turned into a feature story.  Were you born and raised on a ranch and so all your stories have a ranch setting?  Did you serve in the armed services and your stories have that angle?   A feature story about you as a writer could tie into one the armed services holidays.  Are you a social worker who has worked with dysfunctional families and all of your books incorporate that theme?  Make a list of the angles in your life that you incorporate in your books and keep that list handy to use for a future feature about you, the writer.

Su Wright is a freelance writer who has worked for public relations agencies as well as in-house PR departments.  In addition she has worked as a newspaper editor/reporter and magazine editor.  She has a B.S. in journalism and teaches press release writing and press kit preparation at Colorado Free University. Someday she will be a multi-published novelist in mysteries and romantic suspense.