Creating a Successful News Feature

The News on deviantART has suddenly become a place for users to submit their own news. This is not a bad thing in any sense of the word. In fact, this is a very good thing as it gives the user freedom to display news that may be effecting people whether it is deviantART related or not. The news has also become a place for users to submit what articles that display features in which they include thumbs in a news article in the hopes of spreading the knowledge of said thumbs. This can sometimes be a problem when the articles are not set up correctly to introduce the featured thumbs/artists. This can often quickly become spam.

In hopes of enlightening other users that wish to create a News Feature to spread the knowledge of a certain gallery or themed article I have compiled a list of things you should consider when creating this feature. Shall we begin?

Theme

The first thing that you should consider when creating a feature is what theme you want your article based on. The first thing you want to consider is: do you want to keep your article(s) to one centralized theme including one genre/gallery, or do you want to have a general theme that would include many genres? If you go with the first of these choices you would need to have a proficient understanding of the gallery that you want to feature. For instance, if Photography is your gallery of choice, it would help if you have had experience in taking photographs and understand what it takes to create a quality photograph. This would apply to most every gallery/genre found on this site.

If you're wanting to go with the latter there are some things you would need to consider. The most important would be what galleries do you want to include in your feature? Are you sure that these will be the best choices for your theme? Also, will you be able to expand on this theme with each new article? These questions you don't have to consider all at once, so let's take a look at them one at a time.

What galleries do you want to include in your feature?

Knowing the galleries you want to feature is just as important as if you were only featuring one gallery. If you were featuring deviations from the Digital Art and Traditional galleries ask yourself this: Do you submit or browse these galleries often? If you don't then you most likely won't be able to consider what it takes to have a good submission in either of the galleries. Familiarize yourself with the galleries you want to feature and then we can move on. Familiarized? Good.

Will you be able to expand on this theme with each new article?

If you want to only do a one time feature you can skip this question, but if you're looking to do a line of, let's say, weekly features, please consider this! If you're thinking of doing the theme of "Love" (a very cliché, yet popular topic) then you could do a good many articles. But, if your topic was "Squirrels", you would be better off only doing a one time feature.

After you have considered your Theme and the galleries you would like to include, we can move on to the next topic of discussion..

Content

Content, content, content! This is where it can get tricky. The reason is that when you're writing your article you have to be sure you don't bore the reader with paragraph after paragraph, but still maintain the important topics you need to include. There are a few ways that you can go about your feature. The first is to write a first paragraph that tells about your featured thumbs and why you have featured them. Explain to your reader why you have chosen the them that you have and give them a little insight as to what they can expect in the features that will follow.

If you're lazy, though, you can go straight to the features! This is a very direct way and will capture the attention of the reader quickly. You have to keep a few things in mind when skipping straight to the features, though. You will still need to include a bit about your features. You can do this by having a write-up under each deviation you have featured explaining why it is special or why you have chose to feature it. Doing this will help the reader understand your view-point on the deviation as well as give them a little bit to think about before they choose to click on it and take in all its beauty.

Basically, when writing your article you have to keep two things in mind. 1) Can your reader understand the reason behind your feature, and 2) Does your content get the point of the feature across? Keep these things in mind and you will be well off.

Title

You have your whole article written up with the theme kept in mind and now you need a title. Creating a title for your feature can be easiest part of the job because it's where you can get very creative. The title should be creative enough to draw the reader in as well as tell about your theme. To keep it simple, if your theme is 'love' and included photography features you could title your article "Love for Photography". Keep it simple, creative and original!

Tips and Hints

A good way to understand what a feature should look like you can do yourself a favour and simply browse news that has already been submitted. Some prime examples of good features can be found from users such as `Doubtful-Della or ^Aeires. Browsing previous news can also help you in coming up with a unique title & theme.

Notify the artists that you have featured in your article by commenting on the deviation you have featured. It lets them know about their feature as well as spreading the word of your feature.

Helpful FAQs and Articles

dA News System by $dionyziz

What is News? by $lolly

FAQ #687: What is news and what is not news?

FAQ #209: How do I submit a news article?

FAQ #686: What HTML formatting is allowed in news articles?

FAQ #685: Can items be embedded into news articles?