chapter 19

Working on newswatch 16 has really helped me with all of the aspects discussed in chapter 19. One of the most difficult things about writing for television i have found is writing the lead. With print, you write the most important facts first, using the inverted pyramid. But with tv news, the audience's attention must be grabbed, so you need to make the lead interesting to grab the viewers attention.

Another thing that i have struggled with while writing for television, is writing for videotape. I'll go out get my story, know what quotes from what people i want to use.. but it takes me quite a while to actually figure out how to put the story together with what voice-overs i am going to use. Writing is probably what takes the longest... but once i have that down, i'm fine :)
i definetly suggest working on writing for videotape in class. i've been working on it for the past semester, and i still have difficulty doing it. i hope that eventually writing for videotape comes so naturally that i will not have to struggle with it anymore.

i can't say much about writing for radio, because i'm not interested in writing for radio... but i can imagine it being very difficult because there is no use of pictures, or no visual cues at all.