Children's books, Television plays and Journalism writing tips

‘For the spare-time writer, who combines authorship with some other occupation, radio and television have provided a vast new outlet. Radio alone uses around a thousand plays a year, most of them specially written for broadcasting and many by part-time authors. The BBC provides, too, one of the few remaining outlets, and a very large one, for the writer of short stories, a literary form popular with the non-professional writer who is trying to establish himself in his craft.’ 

            Television, then, is obviously flourishing, and radio-at least in Britain-is not quite the dying art that some would have us believe. The BBC publishes a very useful booklet entitled Writing for the BBC-A guide for writers on possible markets for their work. It deals with every aspect of their requirements, including talks, drama and poetry, where to send particular work, fees, specimen pages, etc. It can be obtained direct from BBC Publications, 35 Marylebone High Street, London W 1M 4AA. It costs 43P, including postage, at the time of writing.

Many playwrights who have become well known in the cinema or theatre have first made their name as the authors of television plays and instead of broadcasting being regarded as a rival to other creative media, as tended to happen in its early days, an increasing amount of interchange has taken place between those writing for the stage or screen on the one hand and for the radio loudspeaker and television screen on the other. The serialisation of published books has helped the novelist and the non-fiction writer to make their work known to many who might never buy a book or visit a library, while talks and discussion programmes have given writers the chance to put forward their ideas in public, and to develop an additional source of income to help support them in their hazardous profession.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, to quote its own words, ‘has become by far the largest single patron of the writer, both professional and amateur, in Great Britain’, and American writers can, of course, submit their scripts to the BBC with all the enchantment distance lends. For the professional writer, the BBC ‘has provided entirely new opportunities and a new audience, of a size previously undreamed of. Radio and television adaptations of published work have enabled the writer to gain wider recognition, and the specially written radio and television play have now emerged as art forms in their own right, offering new outlets for his talent.

At its most literary level, feature writing produces the essay, a form not to be treated lightly. British and American literature is sprinkled with the names of those who have practised it brilliantly-again, usually writers who did not excel at other techniques. A typical living example is J. B. Priestley, better as an essayist; it seems to me, than as a novelist or dramatist. An essayist is, in effect, a writer who can take up an idea-any idea kick it around, forget it, pick up its scent again, lose it, concluding by at the most a farewell gesture to the original idea. Or he may, of course, confine himself more strictly to one subject. The progress is like desultory conversation, improvised music with variations on a theme, our attention being held by sheer delight in the sound, the virtuosity of the performer, his capacity to hold us with his brilliant use of words or ideas, the profundity of his wisdom. Note, again, the need for appropriate mood, wit and insight-in its widest sense.

There is no reason why you should not start with some item of local and perhaps, eventually, wider interest. Study the requirements of the local press, see how long the contributions are. Often the editor is on the look-out for articles of local topical, social and historic interest. Much, in this genre, depends on mood. If you can be witty, buoyant and engaging, whatever the subject, readers anywhere are going to like it. The technique of the feature or ‘article’ writer varies considerably from that of the reporter. While your first line is as important as ever, you do not have to stun your reader with it. This kind of writing also gives scope to those whose capacity to plot, create character, dramatise, narrate is limited. Again, study the leading exponents.

The main thing is to grab your reader’s attention from the first line, not an unreasonable aim in any creative writing. But a newspaper does this quite dramatically, though possibly not undramatically. In a drama your climax comes at the end; in a newspaper report it comes at the beginning. You begin at the end, go back to the beginning, then work your way through again, usually with a fizzling-out kind of effect. There is not much more one can say about written reportage here; in any case, much of what a reporter writes has its final shape determined by subeditors, who hack, cut, rephrase. Occasionally, however, a reporter of genius takes over and makes his own rules. A good example of this kind of brilliantly extended reportage is Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night.