Media Writing

A Practical Introduction

Craig Batty, Sandra Cain

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781350306554
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Now updated in a second edition, this highly accessible and practical guide to media writing brings together a range of different professional contexts, enabling students to develop a solid understanding of the practices that will enable them to excel in any media writing field today. In chapters spanning print, online and broadcast news, magazines, public relations, advertising and screenwriting, Batty and Cain outline the key theories, concepts and tools for writing in each context, exploring their distinctive styles and practices and also identifying their shared ideas and principles. Packed with exercises, case studies and career guidance, this lively resource encourages students to engage with each form and hone transferable skills. This insightful text is essential reading for students of journalism, creative writing, media studies and communication studies.

1

Approaches to Writing for the Media

We begin this book by introducing a range of ideas that conceptualize media writing – as both a phenomenon and a practice. It would be easy to jump straight into the ‘how’ of media writing, but before we do this we want to ponder what media writing actually is and how it functions in the wider world – with culture, industry and indeed education. Whether you are studying media writing at university or college, or are a media writer ‘in the real world’, there are reasons for this. Why do you want to write, and write for media platforms in particular? What does writing mean to you, personally, and why have you chosen it as a career path? How and why do you think your ideas, views and experiences should be presented to the world, via the media and in the guise of a series of stories? Are you a writer – or a storyteller?

To begin with this premise, let us offer some initial ideas towards a conceptual understanding of media writing:

• Media writing is about the role of communication in the world, and how communicators – media writers – exchange messages.

• Central to media writing is the role of story and purpose – the need to ‘say something’ and/or have an argument that will influence and/or affect an audience in some way.

• Media writing needs shape and plot, telling stories in ways that are accessible to audiences and can communicate messages (i.e. purpose) successfully.

• Persuasion and conviction are central to media writing – the means by which the writer successfully exchanges messages to relevant stakeholders.

• Media writing should address its audience appropriately, either as expected (familiarity, kinship) or as a surprise (discomfort, intrigue).

Though introductory in nature, this book explores and interrogates as much as it proposes and provides. As such, it is our intention to promote a sense of critical and creative thinking throughout the book, whereby the media writer considers and reflects as much as they put into practice the principles, models and tips offered.

Task 1.1

Choose the form of media writing that appeals to you most. Using the above list, consider how it embodies the ideas presented. Does your chosen form have some or all of the above? Were these things easy to see, or did you have to think more deeply?

Media writing as communication

To give a broader context to the phenomenon and practice of media writing, let us look at some ideas from the discipline of communication studies. From news stories to advice columns, and from film scripts to radio advertisements, messages are exchanged via persuasive techniques to capture audiences willing to receive them. A media writer’s job, therefore, is to find ways of creating and sending messages that ‘attract and have an effect on large audiences’ (Marsen, 2006: 9). No matter which form of media writing you are working in, you need to know its intended outcome. Without it, you are feeling in the dark or whistling in the wind – you are doing stuff (writing), but with nothing to guide you or hold it all in place (structure, address).

The purpose of writing can vary widely, from persuading an audience to buy a new product to uncovering a dark criminal truth, and from making an audience laugh at a character to outlining how increased petrol prices might affect people’s everyday lives. Whatever the form and however it is constructed, the key thing to remember is that it must have a purpose. Only when you know this can you really begin to create and communicate messages to your audience.

In her really useful and accessible book, Communication Studies, Sky Marsen (2006) provides some useful definitions of communication. By listing these here, we want to understand how they can be useful in both theory and practice. As we can see, the definitions she highlights share common ideas and themes that – we feel – easily relate to the work of the media writer. These definitions of communication are:

• ‘Social interaction through messages’ (Fiske, 1990: 2).

• ‘A process in which participants share information with one another in order to reach a mutual understanding’ (Rogers, 1995: 35).

• ‘An activity in which symbolic content is not merely transmitted from one source to another, but exchanged between human agents, who interact within a shared situational and/or discursive context’ (Price, 1997: 5).

• ‘A process whereby people in groups, using tools provided by their culture, create collective representations of reality’ (Trenholm, 1993: 31).

• ‘A process in which there is some predictable relation between the message transmitted and the message received’ (Garber, 2003: 2).

From this list, which has clear concerns with story, purpose and audience, we can extract the core elements and offer the following premise that underlies the role of the media writer:

People use specific tools to relay one or more messages to a given audience, with the intended result that the message or messages are not only understood, but also acted on.

This premise reinforces notions of story, purpose, shape, plot, address, persuasion and conviction highlighted above. Communication is about telling a story with a purpose, and by using the writerly tools of shape, plot and address, the aim is to persuade the audience that the story is true or has value (conviction).

Telling stories

Above all, we want to argue that the primary function of all writing is to tell a story with a purpose. In media writing, the meaning of ‘story’ is broad – it can be any kind of story and in any medium. For example, there is a clear sense of story in a personal documentary (my story – I am the documentary maker), in print, online or broadcast news (their story – these things happened to them), and even in public relations (the organization’s story – this is who they are) and advertising (the product’s story – this is what it is). Watson writes, ‘by our stories, as it were, shall we be known; and sometimes such stories have the power of myths to leave all facts – and often reality – behind’ (1998: 130). In whatever form we are writing, we are telling a story – mine, ours, yours, theirs, its. If we look at Watson’s quotation again, he is suggesting that it is the underlying meaning that connects with us – the audience. The facts may exist (news event, product feature, script plot), but it is the way we interpret them into and onto ourselves that resonates (news story, product benefit, script theme). ‘Story is both the oldest and the most universal form of interactive expression’ (1998: 131), therefore it is through story that a connection between the writing and its audience is enabled – between intention and interpretation.

When telling a story, media writers need to make a series of decisions about what lies at the heart of the work. This might be something they need to figure out themselves, as might be the case when writing a screenplay, or it could be dictated to them, as might be the case when developing an advertising campaign. It becomes important to consider not just what an audience wants to know, but also what an audience needs to know. In advertising, for example, the audience might want to know that a car can reach its top speed in eight seconds, but the advertiser might feel it more important to tell them that this is one second faster than the previous model. In a magazine feature, readers might want to know what happened to a mother once her son was taken into care, but the publisher might think it better to tell them how this drastically affected her emotional state.

Whatever the story, the writer must know what it is so they can then start telling the story in the most suitable way, using the tools available in that specific form. As Watson argues, ‘story-within-discourse is essentially a conveyor of value, articulating meaning symbolically’ (1998: 133). Therefore, story is the value in media writing, and the audience is expected to connect with and interpret it as intended.

To highlight the importance of story value, here are some examples of media writing where the central purpose is to tell an audience a story they will understand, believe in and perhaps even act upon.

Undercover documentary

Stories in undercover documentaries are often used to make an audience angry, showing them the injustices of someone’s actions. For example, the narrative could follow a ‘cowboy builder’ swindling elderly people out of their money, or a crooked bank manager selling worthless investment policies to customers. The key idea here is that the audience is being told of other people’s misfortunes through a story, wherein the intention is to reveal these ‘criminal’ people, make sure they are punished for their ‘crimes’ and warn against potential dirty deeds the audience may come across.

Radio advertisement

Let us imagine an advertisement for a new soft drink. The story, probably told in the form of a voiceover with some fictional characters, is one that is intended to make the drink sound appealing and thus worth spending money on. The advertisement may allude to the value of buying the drink (what will it give to its consumers?), and may even hint at how it is better than other drinks on the market. The story here is of a product (the soft drink), selling its features and benefits with the intention that listeners will go out and buy it.

Magazine travel feature

The writer here is telling readers a story about a place. The article will undoubtedly give a range of positives about the place, covering topics such as weather, hotels, facilities and places of interest to visit. Sometimes the writer might give the sense of being on a journey through the place, making readers feel they are there, experiencing the same pleasures. The intention here is that readers will feel the urge to go to the same place, signalling that the story should probably be one of escapism, appealing to the reader’s imagination and other senses.

Charity campaign website

Websites can be quick, relatively cheap and effective ways to tell a story with a strong intention. Devised by someone or an organization with a particular belief or viewpoint, the story here is of the cause being campaigned for by the charity. It might include background information on the ‘problem’, case studies to highlight how it has affected people and – crucially – ways of resolving the problem. The intention with this story is that readers/surfers will feel something about the suggested problem, and as a result will want to act upon it by joining the campaign (e.g. donating money).

Task 1.2

Choose a form of media writing you are not familiar with, or not passionate about. Read, view or listen to the material presented, and ask yourself the following: What is the story being told? Why is the story being told? Who is telling the story? What are the intended outcomes?

Devising narratives

Stories do not tell themselves. They need shape and structure by which the story’s messages can be explored. For the media writer, the use of narrative – meaning the shape, structure and components by which the writing is constructed – is central to how ‘successful’ the writing will be. What we have to remember in all forms of media writing is that although the narrative may have different nuances, it still embodies the core need to tell a story with a purpose. Narrative thus acts as a way of framing or ‘dressing up’ the story in a form that suits its audience, using recognizable techniques to convince and persuade them to ‘accept’ the story. As Fulton et al. assert:

In a world dominated by print and electronic media, our sense of reality is increasingly structured by a narrative. Feature films and documentaries tell us stories about ourselves and the world we live in. Television speaks back to us and offers us ‘reality’ in the form of hyperbole parody. Print journalism turns daily life into a story. Advertisements narrativise our fantasies and desires. (2005: 1)

Narrative is central to everything we do and how we exist. We ‘perform’ narratives on a daily basis, from dressing to working to cooking, structuring our habits and customs according to how we want to be understood. Watson and Hill argue that questions of ‘how [narratives] are put together, what their functions are and what uses are made of them by those who read, listen to or watch stories’ (2007: 184) must be considered. In this sense, narrative in media writing is concerned with how the writing is structured, what purpose it possesses and how an audience will thus experience it.

The study of media writing narratives has two fundamental elements. First, which narrative techniques are being used? These ultimately link to the form of media writing in question, each form having its own set of identifiable tools and techniques. Second, what is the narrative seeking to do? This relates back to purpose. Once more we are brought back to the notion of story, and the idea of narrative as a mode of storytelling. Whether using characters and visual symbolism in a film to tell the protagonist’s story, or spoken facts and a jingle in a television advertisement to tell the product’s story, narratives are devised to achieve their desired response from the audience.

As an example, Watson discusses the use of narrative in news production. He writes: ‘the more we examine news production the more it resembles the process which produces fiction; that is, the creative process’ (1998: 131). Here, Watson is positing that news is not a form of writing that merely presents facts; rather, it organizes the facts – of issues, events, people – creatively, offering the audiences an interpretation of them. In other words, a narrative is created from the ‘real’ and the audience is told a ‘story’. This brings to the fore questions of objectivity and subjectivity, such as, can news ever be objective if it is always someone’s telling of a story? Is storytelling dictated by subjectivity? Although we do not intend to explore ideological concerns here, the fact remains that in news, as in any form of media writing, a narrative is always constructed by the practitioner to tell the story effectively.

Fulton et al. take a pretty dim view of media’s use of narrative. They argue that narrative is nothing more than a form of representation that can be seen as a way of manipulating audiences into believing stories, usually for commercial reasons: ‘the economic function of the media, to generate profit, undermines the idea of narrative as some kind of innate or universal structure common to all humanity. Narrative in the media becomes simply a way of selling something’ (2005: 3). We would argue that this is not so cut and dried. For example, audiences experience media personally, and in fulfilling and rewarding ways, and are always at liberty to reject or at least negotiate the messages being given. Nevertheless, the idea of media narratives always ‘selling something’ is useful for writers to conside...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Approaches to Writing for the Media
• 2. Writing News: Print and Online
• 3. Writing News: Broadcast
• 4. Writing for Magazines
• 5. Writing for Public Relations
• 6. Writing Copy for Advertising
• 7. Screenwriting: Fictional Formats
• 8. Screenwriting: Factual Formats
• Bibliography
• Index