Awakening the Right Brain in Feature Writing

Sometimes journalism educators forget that students can use both of their brains. As products of the Cartesian tradition of education, most instructors were taught by methods that privilege logical, linear, and empirical thinking--functions of the left brain (Bruner, 1962; Ferguson, 1973; Samples, 1975, 1978; Herrmann, 1989). Indeed, the dominance of left-brain approaches in the educational system may effectively repress creativity. Tests such as the SAT, the ACT, and the GRE are designed to measure primarily left-brain analytical skills, often leaving the predominantly right-brain person with disappointing scores. Educators are beginning to appreciate the need for a variety of techniques to accommodate cognitive preferences, or what Herrmann (1989, p. 17) terms, "preferred modes of knowing." Consistently neglecting to address students' cognitive preferences creates a negative learning environment that leads to nonproductive results for many. Moreover, regardless of cognitive preference, research has shown that emotions and enriched experiential learning environments can literally increase the production of myelin, the fatty substance that coats the brains' connectors (Sagan, 1977; Clark, 1979 in Hatcher, 1983). Neurological findings have confirmed that the human brain contains two minds (Ornstein, 1972; Wittrock, 1980; Gazzaniga, 1984; Ornstein and Thompson, 1984; Springer and Deutch, 1989; Bradshaw, 1989). Herrmann (1989) suggests that the two halves can be subdivided into quadrants. But basically, our two minds are housed in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The left brain appears to allow us to recognize, organize and assimilate new information into already existing frameworks of knowledge, but it cannot create meaning or generate new ideas. For this, we need the right brain where many researchers say images, senses, symbols and metaphors are stored. Of course, we need both brains because the right brain makes meaning intuitively and symbolically while the left brain articulates the meaning through word processing. As Gaylean (1981) put it, "Without the right brain, there would be no idea; without the left brain, the idea would not be encoded, understood or communicated." But usually, left-brain strategies kick in when we're given a writing task or a problem to solve. We analyze the challenge, consider rational solutions and then apply a linear, logical pathway to accomplish the objective. Traditional news reporting and writing courses are well-suited to left-brain functions: the rational, analytical and sequential. Students learn to fill the inverted pyramid formula with solid facts that are properly attributed and verified. Cooper and Holzman (1989) have warned against a cognitive process in writing that would leave out the cultural meanings of writing. Writing, they remind us, is not fundamentally a cognitive process, but is structured by the shape of the environment, located as it is in the social world (p. x). This is not meant to minimize the role of cognition. Indeed, both the cognitive and the affective domains will be engaged in good writing, but we must not allow one to snuff out the other. Still, after two rigorous semesters in news reporting and writing, our novice reporters abruptly shift gears to a semester of feature writing where the rules lighten up. We still expect them to write fact-based stories, but this time with more imagination, color and tone, tapping into the cultural repertoire of the world around them. Instructors, however, will find little help out there in bridging this divide. Textbooks on feature writing, from Patterson's 1939 Writing and Selling Feature Articles to Ramsey's Feature and Magazine Article Writing (1994) are long on the what of feature writing, but short on the how. Pages abound of Pulitzer-prize winning examples as if the writers are saying, "I know it when I see it." Certainly, story categories are elaborated, interviewing techniques are reviewed, the use of figurative language is discussed and advice on how to sell your stories is given, but none get at how to bridge from good news writing to good feature writing. …