Transcript Good writing - Texas A&M University

Good writing
Media Writing I
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Telling a good story
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do it sit
down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Red Smith, newspaper sports columnist
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Telling a good story
• Most news stories are written, read and
gone quickly, but that doesn’t mean that
they should not be well written.
• Quality, wit and knowledge will serve you
well as a communications professional.
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Telling a good story
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Begin with good information
Details
Concrete verbs and nouns
Senses
– Smell
– Touch
– Taste
– Hear
– See
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Telling a good story
• Get as much of a feel for the story as
possible
• Talk to more than just the main sources
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Good writing
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Clear
Concise
Concrete
Shows rather than tells
Figures of speech
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Telling a good story
• Precision
– Use exactly the right word. Don’t guess.
– Be suspicious of the Thesaurus on the
computer
– Don’t add bias
• Not always “he”
• Use gender neutral terms
• Don’t allow your language to stereotype
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Telling a good story
• Precision
– Use exactly the right verb form
• “The bill will make it legal” vs. “The bill would make
it legal.”
– Say what you are thinking! Don’t make your
reader guess.
– Make numbers real
• Compare the unknown to the known
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Telling a good story
• Clarity
– Simplicity
• Short sentences
– Correct grammar and punctuation
• Put the modifier and the modified together
• Don’t split infinitives (watch where you put “ly”
words)
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Telling a good story
• Clarity
– Write coherent stories
• Chronology can be a trap
• Start with what is most important
• Support that point and work down the list in the same fashion
– An outline may help
– Illustrate the correct relationship between cause and
effect
– Transitions (but they can’t carry it alone)
– Parallelism
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Telling a good story
• Concrete examples
– Tell how big, how loud, how difficult
– Things you can touch, or see
– Need details
• Show, don’t tell
– Good writing appears to more than one of the five
senses
– Set the scene
– Don’t tell readers what to think, let them see it for
themselves
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Telling a good story
• Figures of speech
– Analogy
– Similes (like or as)
– Metaphor (says one thing is another)
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Telling a good story
“There are days when the result is so bad
that no fewer than five revisions are
required. In contrast, when I’m inspired,
only four revisions are needed.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist.
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Telling a good story
Ernest Hemmingway wrote at least 1,000
words per day, and then edited the
passage down to 100 words.
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Elements of Style
• Enclose parenthetic expressions between
commas.
– These commas usually come in pairs
– Never separate a noun from its restrictive
term of identification
• Billy the Kid
• The novelist Jane Austen
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Elements of Style
• Omit needless words
in order to
due to the fact that
prior to
it goes without saying
Jewish rabbi
hot water heater
widow woman
new record
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