Writing tips
Rod Chester is a journalist and feature writer with The Courier-Mail. Here are his tips for writing news, travel and feature articles.
Children who love creative writing sometimes grow up dreaming of being a journalist. But the thing with journalism is that the writing is not always that creative.
Hard news reporting
Hard news reporting is a form of tightly worded writing where every word needs to be there. It’s all about the 6 Ws – who, what, when, where and why (one thing you learn about journalists is that we are good with words but we can’t count). Oh, how is the sixth W although how ‘H’ becomes a ‘W’ takes a great deal of explanation that’s akin to a famous Abbott and Costello routine about Who’s on first.
Hard news writing is subjective, not objective.
News reporting is about the facts, starting with the most important. The trick is that if you stop reading a news story after the first paragraph (the intro) you should know all you need to know. Try doing that with a Dan Brown novel or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Feature writing
Feature writing, on the other hand, is far more creative. As feature writers, we like to joke we can make fewer facts go a longer way. Some of the features you could write yourself would be an interview with someone. Everyone has an interesting story to tell – you just have to ask the right questions. And the secret to writing a good profile is to listen to what someone tells you.
Try asking your grandparent about the day they will never forget, or a friend about their favourite day out.
Travel Writing
Travel writing is another popular form of journalism because (A) journalists love to travel and (B) journalists love to travel as “work”. You could try writing what you did on your summer holiday as a travel story. The trick to a good travel story is that it should give the reader a taste of what the place was like to visit, and information in case they want to visit. I like to call it the facts and the feelings.
The other thing about journalism is that journalists can make great writers. Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming and Mark Twain all began as journalists.
Richard Jordan has studied playwriting at QUT and the Royal Court Theatre in London. He was recently named the winner of the 2008-2009 Queensland Premiers Drama Award and his play 25 Down will be produced by Queensland Theatre Company in June 2009.
Four Tips For Writing Better Plays
There are no hard and fast rules for writing plays, but the following four tips are a good place to start!
1. Know Your Characters
Knowing your characters inside and out is the first step towards writing a better play – because once you know where they’ve come from, you’ll know where you want them to go. Dig a bit deeper when creating your characters – you may know their name and how old they are, but what are they afraid of? What is their first memory? Do they have a secret they don’t want anyone else to know? Try to be as detailed as you can.
2. Drama is Conflict
Once you’ve worked out who your characters are, you need to bring them into conflict with each other. Conflict is the one vital ingredient of any drama or comedy – without it you’d just have two people getting on well with each other, and an audience going to sleep fast! Of course this conflict doesn’t have to be major – it can be as simple as one character wanting to go into a room, and the other character blocking the doorway. So long as you always keep your characters in conflict with each other in some small way, you’ll be pushing your story forward.
3. Explore, Don’t Preach
Some people write a play because they want to send a message out to an audience – for example, that bullying is bad, or that the environment needs protecting. While these messages can be very noble, no audience wants to be preached at (even if they agree with what you say), so it’s important to remember that the best plays explore issues from all points of view.
4. Finally
Write for yourself! The worst thing a playwright can ever do is second-guess what an audience wants from them. If you’re enjoying spending time with your characters, then chances are your audience will enjoy spending time with them too.
