Maintenance
Part of Feature writing: a practical guide from reporting to ending
Feature reporting and drafting checklist for magazine teams
Feature reporting and drafting checklist for focus, source range, timelines, scenes, claims, structure, transitions, voice, fairness, fact-checking, and endings.
What to take away
- Define the story's focus and reader promise before drafting.
- Build timelines and claim lists while reporting, not after problems appear.
- Separate observed detail, source memory, documentary fact, and inference.
- Test structure before polishing sentences.
- Check display copy and visuals against the same evidence as the article.
Use this checklist at assignment, reporting, draft, structural edit, and release. Not every feature needs every kind of source or scene. Every feature does need a defensible basis for what it states and a form that lets readers follow the evidence.
Focus and reporting plan
- State the feature's focus in one sentence.
- Define the reader's main question and promised answer or experience.
- List the central claims and what could confirm or challenge each one.
- Include people with direct knowledge, affected perspectives, records, data, and suitable specialists.
- Identify conflicts, gaps, access limits, safety issues, and response duties.
- Set two or three reporting checkpoints. Place the first at the midpoint of reporting, the second five working days before the final deadline, and the third 48 hours before release.
Sample focus sentence: A factory closure ended local jobs, and the story answers how the town absorbed the loss.
A claim list turns that sentence into testable rows:
| Claim | What would confirm it | What could challenge it | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Claim as drafted] | [Records, data, named sources] | [Counter-evidence or dispute] | [Open or closed] |
For a narrative, build a dated event table alongside interviews. The Journalist's Resource's account of a journalistic method advises stating a working hypothesis, asking what would prove it false, and designing reporting so a flawed hypothesis becomes visible before the story is finished.
Focus and reporting plan
- State feature focus in one sentence
- Define reader's main question
- List central claims and evidence
- Include people, records, data, specialists
- Identify conflicts, gaps, access limits
- Set reporting checkpoints before deadline
A dated table makes that advice checkable. It shows at a glance which events rest on documents and which rest on a single recollection.
A short worked example:
| Date | Event | Basis | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Decision announced | Press release and minutes | Documented |
| Day 3 | Staff informed | Two staff accounts | Single recollection |
Note whether the recollections were independent. Shared sourcing weakens a date.
Scene and detail check
Scene and detail check
- Each scene has time, place, participants
- Exact quotes supported by recordings or notes
- Physical and sensory details verified
- Interior thoughts attributed to defensible source
- No composite people or invented dialogue
- Disputed accounts represented fairly
- Each scene names a time, a place, and a viewpoint.
- Every sensory detail traces to observation, a record, or a source's stated memory.
- Reconstructed moments are marked as reconstruction.
- Quotations match the recording or the written record.
- Composite scenes and composite people are disclosed.
- Details that only decorate are cut.
Structure and movement
- The opening raises an honest question or establishes useful information.
- Context arrives before confusion, but does not reveal every later turn.
- Each section performs one identifiable job.
- Time, place, speaker, and viewpoint shifts are signaled.
- Examples support the larger point without pretending to prove prevalence alone.
- The ending completes the story's movement rather than restating the introduction.
Evidence, explanation, and language
Explanation is evidence, not a finish added afterward. Digital.gov's guidance on writing for understanding recommends active voice, present tense, and direct verbs, not nouns made from verbs. Each extra layer makes readers work harder to recover meaning.
Apply that test to translated technical material. If the plain sentence changes what the evidence supports, narrow the claim, not restyle it.
- Every factual claim has a traceable source.
- Numbers include units, periods, populations, and meaningful context.
- Causation is not inferred from sequence or correlation alone.
- Technical language is translated without changing its meaning.
- Voice fits the evidence and does not ridicule or romanticize subjects.
- The writer distinguishes fact, analysis, quotation, and uncertainty.
Final package
- Names, dates, places, titles, figures, quotations, and links are checked.
- Headline, deck, captions, pull quotes, alt text, and social copy stay within the article's evidence.
- Photo subjects, credits, permissions, and alterations are recorded.
- Relevant subjects received a fair opportunity to respond.
- Corrections and update contacts are known.
- The accepted text and source record are preserved.
Common questions
Should the checklist be completed by one editor?
No. Assign ownership across writer, assigning editor, copy editor, fact-checker, designer, and producer.
Does a timeline belong in the published piece?
Only when it helps readers.
Must every claim have two sources?
No fixed number guarantees truth. Match corroboration to the claim's risk, dispute, and available evidence.
When is a feature ready to draft?
When its focus, evidence path, key scenes or explanatory blocks, gaps, and response needs are understood.
