Here we are at Week 2 of the training, and I’m finding myself conscious of what I’m writing and where to put that information. Why am I starting this blog entry with this paragraph? Why not the next? Hello? Are you still there?!
Today we learnt about the five principles of effective writing: Clear, Concise, Accurate, Relevant and Timely (I’m finding myself self-editing as I write this!). We also learnt how we go about achieving those principles, through grammar, context and style.
Cut and paste
Jess took a story out of the Guardian and showed us how the first sentence of a story is meant to engage the reader into wanting to find out more. Jeevan and I had a go at assembling the separate sentences of the story into what we thought the order was. We were pretty close but I think we were leading more with the human angle than with facts, which were actually pretty dramatic (it was about an oil tanker rescuing a couple who’d been stuck in the water for 40 days after their yacht was damaged). It was an interesting exercise. Although I’ve worked for a newspaper, I’d never really given much thought to the structure of a news story.
We then went through 10 tips for effective writing. The first was ‘Put your audience first’. I suppose it’s something I’ve done before when writing, but not consciously. I don’t really think I’m writing to anyone in particular when I’m writing in my journal, for instance. I was interested in Jeevan’s point of view as a songwriter: whether he writes with someone in mind or whether he gets swept away in expressing himself though music.
Interviews: Getting to know you...
I very much enjoyed our task for the afternoon session. Jeevan and I had to write each other’s profiles for use on the Poached website. We started out with a few basic questions to get the conversation going (I can’t seem to get ‘Getting To Know You’ from ‘The King And I’ out of my head now!). It was a great opportunity to get to know Jeevan and find out about his upbringing in Montserrat. I know we were focusing on interview techniques more in later sessions, but I felt more comfortable asking the questions than answering them. I suppose it’s for other people to decide what’s interesting about you, but that said I wouldn’t want to bore anyone with endless unnecessary detail! Taking what we had learnt about each other, we had to write the profiles in a way that would engage our blog characters. I had great fun working with the imagery and words of the volcanoes that Jeevan grew up around and I was really pleased with the end result.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever taken writing seriously, certainly not since school or university anyway. The amount of planning that has to go into an effective piece of writing is something I haven’t had to consider for a while. I remember it used to take me ages to write an essay but then I would be constantly referring back to my books and study guides.
Linkage and further reading / viewing
Jess brought along a load of reference books for us. I want to learn more about writing effectively so I ‘googled’ some phrases and found this link. Another useful source I found was this.
Jess covered similar topics last week, but the paragraph on clichés was worth noting for future reference. I also liked the paragraph on self-editing found in the link.
Finally, for a guide to writing for TV drama, comedy or soaps, Charlie Brooker from the Guardian made an excellent special episode of his show Screenwipe. Although it deals with writing for TV, some of the advice in the show could be carried into basic principles of writing.
The episode is on YouTube in five parts:
PS I moved a couple of paragraphs around. Can you tell which ones?
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