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Writing for newspapers

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a  selection of resources reviewed

Writing for newspapers is probably the hardest form of journalism to break into. That’s because newspapers have traditionally been run by ‘closed shop’ unions. They are now also threatened by falling sales as digital publishing grows. But that means they will be forced to rely on freelance writers as they shed staff. These guides will give you invaluable advice on how to deal with editors and newsrooms.

Writing for NewspapersThe Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book
It doesn’t matter which branch of journalism, creative writing, or media publishing you wish to pursue, before you have gone very far you will need this book. It’s a compendium of full contact details for agents, agencies, editiorial offices, and publishers in all fields. Book and magazine publishers, newspapers, theatrical agents, picture agencies, and publicists. Plus there are essays written by professional writers on everything from selling your manuscripts to dealing with tax problems when you win the Booker Prize. It’s updated every year.
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Freelance Writing for Newspapers
This deals with the importance of marketing and knowing your readers, first contact with editors, how to write regular columns and features, reviewing, interviewing and meeting deadlines – and how to acquire an inexhaustible flow of ideas. There is information on the essential business of writing including rights (and wrongs), tax, plagiarism, keeping records, rates of pay (and how to get paid), syndication, the power of the press, official organizations to help you, and more. Detailed chapters cover style, research, making the Internet work for you and the rewards of rewriting.
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The Freelance Writer’s Handbook
It’s the subtitle which makes this book so popular – How to Make Money and Enjoy your Life. Now in a fully updated third edition, this is the essential book for everyone who dreams of making money from their writing. It will appeal to all aspiring writers, whether they want to write as a full time profession, or simply to supplement their existing income through writing. This inspiring guide will also benefit professional writers and journalists who want ideas on how to find new markets for their work.
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The Elements of Journalism
This sets out the fundamental questions that all journalists face as they compile their stories. Is journalism’s first obligation the truth? How should journalists exercise their personal conscience? Must its practitioners maintain their independence from those they cover? This is looking at the basic principles of journalism, rather than ‘how to do it’ or how to get published.
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Print Journalism
This is a collection of essays by former journalists all now teaching in universities. They cover all aspects of newspapers, magazines, and journals: who owns them; how they work; and how to write for them. Would-be journalists are given a detailed breakdown of news features, and more importantly how to successfully pitch your ideas to editors, then how to write them if and when they are accepted. Also included is a detailed look at reporting, how news is gathered, the role of editors, and how to make your own writing as a freelancer more likely to be successful. This covers its subject from A to Z.
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Essential English for Journalists, Editors, and Writers
Written by former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans, this is an excellent guide to improving the efficiency of your writing by what he calls ‘a process of editorial selection, text editing, and presentation’. He describes the various responsibilities for writing in the newsroom, but then settles down to his main subject – the crafting of good prose – where he is quite clearly at home. There’s plenty of good advice on sentence construction, editing for clarity, choice of vocabulary, avoiding obscurity and abstraction, plus eliminating vagueness and cliche. It’s a book packed with practical examples, written by a very experienced professional.
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How to Write Articles for Newspapers and Magazines
This contains ten chapters dealing with getting started (generating ideas & focusing on the subject), gathering information (fact vs. opinion, observation, interview), writing the
effective article lead, and a sample query letter when suggesting an article to a publisher. This little book really is focused on how to get published.
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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles
This offers advice to aspiring journalists on how to write effective feature articles, and explains how to sell the articles to newspapers, magazines, and trade publications. Suitable for beginners, it explains how to survive as a freelance writer. Take the mystery out of selling your ideas to magazine, newspapers, and web sites by reading this book. It explains who hires writers, what editors want from freelancers, how much you can expect to be paid, how you can write effective query and pitch letters, and how the Internet can help your writing career take off.
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Writing Feature Articles: A Practical Guide to Methods and Markets
This shows you how to write articles for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, and examines the different techniques required. It analyses a variety of published articles to show what makes them succeed for their audiences. The book provides information on: formulating and developing ideas; studying the markets and shaping ideas to fit them; and researching then organizing your material.
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© Roy Johnson 2009

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Writing for Scholars

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A Practical Guide to Making Sense and Being Heard

Writing at post-graduate level these days is no joke. Most researchers and untenured lecturers know that they must publish or perish. And writing to order, especially for publication, is difficult when you know your career is at stake. Writing for Scholars offers reassuring guidance to the whole process of producing written papers, projects, and books which will be published to an academic audience. It is aimed precisely at those people who need to get into print in order to promote their careers. Lynn Nygaard has a leisurely, hand-holding style which spells out her advice in slow-moving and measured stages. These start out from a recognition of how difficult writing is at this level, where a scholarly paper might represent months or even years of research.

Writing for ScholarsShe also explains the peer review process for both books and journal articles – but doesn’t take on board the alternative methods of self-archiving and collaborative publishing which Steven Harnad proposed for digital publishing more than a decade ago. Although her focus is quite rightly on the writing process I was surprised that she was so uncritical of academic research and publication practices. She takes it for granted that scholars are somehow entitled to expect research funding from governments, no matter the quality or relevance of what they produce in the way of results. And she seems to me to be completely out of touch with the sort of vainglorious subjectivism which passes for argument in many branches of the humanities. She claims that –

scholars in the humanities must meticulously lay out and justify their logic, in addition to linking their study to the work of others. If they don’t, their work will come across as weak, overly speculative, and not founded on anything substantial. Even if the topic is fascinating or exceptionally timely, journals will not risk publishing an article that lacks sound reasoning.

This is simply not true, as a glance at just about any journal featuring modern literary criticism or cultural theory will show in an instant.

She is well aware that writing is a process, not something that happens in one ‘creative’ burst. There is such a thing as ‘pre-writing’ where we might sort out our preliminary ideas in rough note form. And for regular spells of productive writing, time-management skills are required. She covers all this, and seems to know all the excuses we present to ourselves as an alternative to facing the hard work of generating words on the page.

She’s discussing mainly scientific writing and its need for objectivity, checkable facts and data, and the need for a transparent method. When I think of how flabby much writing is in the humanities, it’s no wonder that subjects such as literary criticism and cultural theory are held in such low regard.

There are plenty of good tips, such as limbering up by free writing or switching off your monitor – and how to get round the problem of the first person pronoun (‘I’) in academic writing.

She spends quite a lot of time on writing for more than one type of audience – though I wonder if any of the scholarly writing she’s talking about is ever really read by anyone outside its specialist audience. We know from hard evidence that most academic articles are read by no more than a handful of people. When was the last time you read a scholarly paper in a discipline other than your own, for instance?

Later chapters deal with some of the most difficult issues in creating a substantial piece of advanced level work – clarifying your own basic argument; giving its exposition structure and persuasive logic; and integrating the presentation of your evidence coherently. There’s even a chapter on making oral presentations of your work, which is a traditional feature of academic life at this level.

But two things about a book pertaining to offer guidance on an academic discipline really amazed me. One – that it quotes no practical examples of scholarly writing which are held up for examination, analysis, or criticism. And two, that it makes no reference at all to any other studies of academic writing, has no bibliography, and makes absolutely no recommendations for further reading. Those are serious shortcomings in a work of this kind.

This will be a reassuring text for aspiring researchers who want to maximise their chances of publication in the long struggle for promotion in the academic world, but for practical writing skills or an insight into the latest developments in academic publishing you will have to go elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Lynn Nygaard, Writing for Scholars: A Practical Guide to Making Sense and Being Heard, Norway: Universitetsforlaget, 2008, pp.195, ISBN: 1599946572

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Writing for Television

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interviews with successful writers for television

Writing for television and writing for the cinema are no longer the same thing. New systems of network and cable scheduling have produced what are called ‘long-form television narratives’. These are programmes that run for thirteen (or more) episodes. Each programme is a single whole story – but it is split into separate self-contained units, each one of which will have its own story ‘arc’. That is, each episode is a drama in itself, with a beginning, middle, and end. As one successful screenwriter observes:

The best of television is like a novel. You have episodes like chapters, you can grow the characters, and there is scope to the stories

Writing for Television

The interviews in this fascinating collection are with professional American television writers, but the practices they describe spill into British and even pan-European enterprises – all driven by very similar commercial imperatives. The majority of programmes (‘shows’ in US parlance) produced in these new formats are written by teams working in what’s called a ‘writers’ room’ – a group of scriptwriters working under the direction of a ‘showrunner’ – someone who decides on the look and feel of the finished programme.

The writers discuss all the major recent successful programmes – Sex and the City, Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Boardwalk Empire, and if some of the shows are not so well known you can watch them on YouTube, as I did Tina Fey’s hit 30Rock.

The strength of these new TV formats is that they are exploring new methods of delivery for fiction via visual presentation. They also provide scope for the development of character in considerable depth, in the same way as is common in good novels. The weakness is that some of these ‘shows’ are not much more than soap operas or vehicles for quick-fire quips (see Two Broke Girls).

One other feature worth observing is that many of these programs present the lives of young people who are preoccupied with ‘dating’, flat-sharing, friendships, and lifestyle choices that are the concerns of normal people in their early twenties. But they are acted on screen by people in their 40s and 50s. This presents a credibility challenge to any critical viewer – and strangely enough the phenomenon is so widespread it is almost undetectable, having become the norm.

This studio and writers’ room format has some bizarre and counter-intuitive ‘unwritten rules’. One is that ‘wives don’t cheat’, another is ‘no crime in the ghetto’. In other words, any leading married female character must not be depicted committing adultery – though it is perfectly acceptable for her husband to do so. And even though statistics show that the majority of crimes committed by ethnic minorities (for which, read African-Americans) are against people from the same ethnic group, the studios think that ratings will be lost if such scenes are written into episodes.

The interviews reveal differences in practice between studios in New York and in Los Angeles. Almost all the original writing goes on in California – but an increasing number of shows are actually filmed in New York, because the state offers tax breaks for works shot within its boundaries.

The writers have several things in common – the most notable being that none of them want to work in the cinema. A writer can invest time and creative effort in generating a script, but feature-length films are so colossally expensive to produce, many of them end up not being made at all. One of the interviewees bemoans the fact that a feature film script she has written and had accepted was still being sent back for re-writing after four years. These television writers prefer the faster-paced world and more immediate results of Network and cable television.

The rewards can be enormous – with salaries rising to (Writers Guild minimum) $3,500 per week. But be prepared to work long hours. These people are working under immense pressure to write, edit, produce, and film for thirteen episodes per season, working with co-writers, showrunners, actors, and technicians. Eighty hour weeks are considered normal. And if this all seems very USA-centric, take heart. These well-paid writers have enormous respect for English productions such as The Office, Downton Abbey, and Broadchurch.

And if all this seems way beyond the reach of some aspiring script-writer trapped in a suburban box room without even the fare to travel to Los Angeles, there is a very encouraging chapter on writing for Web TV. Susan Miller outlines the whole process of creating short films using hand-held video cameras and editing the results into a series that runs on the Internet. Have a look at Anyone But Me and The L Word to see examples.

© Roy Johnson 2016

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Christina Kallas, Inside the Writers’ Room: Conversations with American TV Writers, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014, pp.184, ISBN: 1137338105

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Writing for the Internet

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beginner’s guide to electronic writing skills

Oxford University Press have just brought out a series of short beginners’ manuals on communication skills. Their emphasis is on compact, no-nonsense advice directly related to issues of everyday life. Jane Dorner’s guide Writing for the Internet is for people who want to write effective text on web sites. There’s also an element of good design principles – because these considerations are inseparable if you are writing for the screen.

Writing for the Internet The topics she covers include the need for clarity, directness, and chunking; how to make text legible on a computer monitor; keeping in touch with the audience; good web page design; and – most importantly – how writing for the web differs from writing for print media. She is particularly good on what’s new about writing web pages, and she tells you what is required without drowning you in IT jargon or the technical details of HTML coding.

There’s a lot of good advice on editing, and how to use your word processor to better effect. She also has some interesting things to say about punctuation – particularly the influence of email conventions on writing for the screen.

There are also lots of excellent tips along the way – such as printing out your work with double line spacing in an unusual font. This makes it easier to spot mistakes. She also quite rightly advises against editing web pages in Microsoft Word, because it will add lots of unnecessary code.

Writers new to the Internet may be surprised to learn that one of the main skills required is that of summarising, and the guidance notes are right to draw attention to this. This means writing condensed, accurate, and descriptive titles for pages; succinct paragraphs; one or two-word section titles; and hyperlinks which say more than just “Click here”.

For academic and professional writers there are some interesting notes on how to show quotations and references, plus why you need to need to manually check sorted lists and indexes.

She describes how to approach the design of a site by using three examples – a set of personal home pages, a commercial site (brochureware) and a community site. She also provides tips on how to get the basic navigation right, then finishes with a series of checklists, notes on style, web resources, and a glossary of terms.

The chapters of this book are short, but almost every page is rich in hints, tips, and quotes in call-out boxes; and there are suggestions for further reading. The strength of this approach is that it avoids the encyclopedic volume of advice which in some manuals can be quite frightening.

Jane Dorner scored a big success with her previous book The Internet: A Writer’s Guide. Her latest is strongly recommended for anyone who wants to start writing Web pages and communicating effectively on the Internet.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Jane Dorner, Writing for the Internet, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.128, ISBN: 0198662858

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Writing for the Screen

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guidance manual for authors in cinema and television

Writing for the Screen is a guidance manual that combines practical and theoretical advice for would-be writers aiming for success in the cinema or television – though such aspirants would do well to add Youtube and laptop productions to their list of potential delivery platforms.

Although both writing for the screen and writing for print publications largely involve sitting in front of a keyboard generating text, there are huge differences between the two activities. A print writer (journalist or novelist) works alone, has virtually no costs other than time, and generally expects to be the sole proprietor of the finished product. A screenwriter on the other hand is forced to work as part of a team, is likely to incur lavish costs, and will more than likely be replaced as ‘author’ by the director when the credits roll on opening night.

Writing for the Screen

That is probably the single most important lesson that runs through all the chapters of this very successful book. The aspiring screenwriter must be prepared to recognise that soap operas, docudramas, comedy shows, feature films, and even TV shorts are productions, in which the writer is only one member of the creative whole.

The successful screenwriter is somebody who realises that a screenplay is only the rough blueprint for a work that other people will eventually create. The producer, the director, and maybe even the script editor all have higher status and can change the writer’s work to suit the ultimate purpose of the project.

The writer should also bear in mind that having chosen a large or small screen as the medium by which a story is to be transmitted – the visual element takes precedence over all else. It does not matter how subtle or witty the dialogue or commentary is, it will be the pictures which have greatest impact on the viewer. (That’s why directors get higher rating.)

This guide goes through the whole creative process step by step. It begins with writing a pitch, an outline, and a treatment. These are condensed accounts of what you have in mind, but each one has a different purpose. They include a selling document, a summary of the plot, and a step outline giving the bare bones of each scene.

All of these documents (including the script itself) need to be presented according to the conventions of the medium in professional format. Fortunately for beginners, software is now available at Celtx (free), and Final Draft (paid) which will arrange the formatting. You simply add the words.

There’s a very enthusiastic defence of genre which the authors argue is a strengthening factor to any screen production – because it offers structure, plot, tone, character, and even objects that are recognisable to viewers. Whilst this might seem to produce cinematic clichés, there is also an exploration of alternative forms of narrative – such as reverse chronology (Memento and Groundhog Day) multiple protagonists, and parallel narratives (Stephen Daldry’s magnificent film The Hours).

The underlying argument of the guide is that the finished product must offer visual pleasure – which is not to be confused with special effects and CGI manipulations – although there is a spirited analysis of the Jason Bourne trilogy. The authors argue that its car chases and explosions are more than cheap sensationalism a la James Bond, because they are closely tied to the psychological complexity and terror
endured by the protagonist as he is being threatened by the CIA.

The main emphasis of the advice offered in this manual is on the over-riding importance of structure:

The main writing currency in fiction is prose style, whereas the main currency in screenplays is structure. This means teaching is approached differently: for fiction, free-standing writing exercises are offered, focusing on language, metaphor, voice and description; screenwriting deals with acts, step outlines, cards and character arcs

There are practical exercises for generating these skills, and solid advice from the world of professional cinema and television explaining the separate roles in production teams, the opportunities open for beginners, and the differences between commercial practices in American and British film making .

© Roy Johnson 2016

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Craig Batty and Zara Waldeback, Writing for the Screen, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp.201, ISBN: 0230550754

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Writing for the Web

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a selection of resources reviewed

The first thing you need to know about writing for the Web is that it’s not the same as writing for print publication. This is because reading on screen and on the page are different. Text is not as sharp on a monitor as it is when printed with ink on paper.

Most people find reading on screen quite tiring. For this reason, you need to break up what you have to say into short chunks. And your sentences should be shorter than normal too. This might affect your normal writing style.

Writers new to the Internet may be surprised to learn that one of the main skills required is that of summarising. This means writing condensed, accurate, and descriptive titles for pages; succinct paragraphs; one or two-word section titles; and hyperlinks which say more than just “Click here”.

Writing for the WebWriting for the Internet
Jane Dorner’s book is probably one of the best places to start. This is for people who want to write effective text on web sites. There’s also an element of good design principles – because these considerations are inseparable if you are writing for the screen. The topics she covers include the need for clarity, directness, and chunking; how to make text legible on a computer monitor; keeping in touch with the audience; good web page design; and – most importantly – how writing for the web differs from writing for print media.
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Hot Text - Click for details at AmazonHot Text: Web Writing that Works
If you want to look into the issues of chunking, summarising, and labelling in more detail, Jonathan and Lisa Price’s book is the most thorough approach to Web writing I have come across. It’s aimed principally at technical authors, but the book is so good anyone can profit from the principles they are offering.

It’s packed with good examples of how to produce efficient writing – leading with punch lines; reducing ambiguity; how to write menus; creating the right tone; how to arrange bulleted lists; and where to place links grammatically for best effect. They cover a wide range of digital genres – web marketing copy, news releases, email newsletters, webzine articles, personal resumes, Weblogs – and they even provide tips for would-be job seekers.
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Creative Web Writing - book jacketCreative Web Writing
If you are mainly interested in traditional creative writing Jane Dorner has another book which shows you the skills you need if you want to put your writing onto the Internet. She is speaking to those people who have been creating poems and stories in their back rooms and getting nowhere. This guide covers collaborative story-telling, research online, interactivity and flexible text, as well as the nuts and bolts of styling for screen reading. Most importantly, she explains the range of new markets, new technologies, and how to apply them. Creative genres are covered, including autobiography, poetry, broadcasting, screen-writing and writing for children.

She also describes how to look carefully at contracts, how to submit your writing to an electronic publisher, and how to deal with Print on demand (POD) outlets.There’s a very useful survey of the various delivery methods and payments for eBooks. This is one of the most popular methods for aspiring authors to reach new readers. This section will be required reading if you are thinking of venturing into this world.

The central part of the book deals with new forms of writing using Web technologies. This is one field in which she has clearly done her homework. She shows examples of writing in the form of Blogs (Web-logs) email (epistolary) narratives, fictions illuminated by graphics, the weird world of MUDs and MOOs, Flash-animated writing, and phonetic poetry.
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© Roy Johnson 2009

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Writing Guides

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best-selling writing style guides

Writing Guides Doing your Research Project - book jacketDoing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education and Social Science is a best-selling UK guide which covers planning and record-keeping, interviewing, reviewing ‘the literature’, questionnaires, and writing the final report. Even if you are studying a subject other than education or social science, this is a wonderfully helpful guide on organising your ideas and your writing at research level. It’s a model of clarity and good sense. Now in its third edition – and deservedly so. Highly recommended.

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Writing GuidesWriting your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success is a US guide to writing at post-graduate level which uses practical examples, is strong on planning, and offers advice on negotiating the process of research – from making an application to submitting a dissertation. It’s also good on the issue of selecting a research topic and developing it into a feasible project. One of the features which has made this a popular choice is that it offers tips from former students on the problems they have faced in doing research – and how they have overcome them.

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Writing GuidesIf you have any serious intention of preparing text for publication, then Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers is your encyclopedia on typography, style, and presentation. It has become the classic UK guide and major source of reference for all aspects of editing and text-presentation, covering every possible bibliographic detail. It also covers a wide range of subjects – from languages to mathematics and music – as well as offering tips on copyright and preparing text for electronic publication.

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Writing GuidesWriting at University: a guide for students is a popular UK guide to understanding questions, planning assignments, reading and note-taking, and developing arguments. It puts a lot of emphasis on the process which leads up to the act of writing, and tries to show you how to develop more confidence. Different types of writing are discussed, as well as the important skill of matching your writing to the conventions of the discipline you are studying. The approach is like that of a sympathetic counsellor.

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Writing GuidesThe Classic Guide to Better Writing is more-or-less what its title suggests. It’s a best-selling US guide with emphasis on how to generate, plan, and structure your ideas. It also covers basic grammar, good style, and common mistakes. The approach is step-by-step explanations on each topic, plenty of good advice on how to avoid common mistakes, and tips on how to gain a reader’s attention. Suitable for all types of writing, it well deserves its good reputation.

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fowlerIf you need just one book which will answer all your questions on writing – from punctuation to publication – then this is it. The Little, Brown Handbook is an encyclopaedic US guide to all aspects of writing. It includes vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, style, document design, MLA conventions, editing, bibliography, and the Internet. All topics are profusely illustrated and cross-indexed, and some of the longer entries are virtually short essays. It also has self-assessment exercises so that you can check that you have understood the contents of each chapter. The Swiss army penknife of writing guides. Highly recommended.

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New Hart's Rules - Click for details at AmazonHart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press Oxford This is a UK classic guide to the finer points of editing and print preparation, spelling and typography. It was first written as the style guide for OUP, but quickly established a reputation well beyond. There’s no hand-holding here. Everything is pared to the bone. the centre of the book deals with ‘difficult’ and irregular spellings. A masterpiece of compression, it is now in its thirty-ninth edition. This is one for professionals rather than student writers.

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Oxford Writers Dictionary - book jacketThe Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors . This is a specialist dictionary for writers, journalists, and text-editors. Unlike most dictionaries, it does not offer explanations of the words meanings. It deals with problematic English and foreign words, offering correct spellings and consistent usage in the OUP house style. By concentrating on difficult cases, it saves you a lot of time. The latest edition also includes American spellings. Strongly recommended.

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The Elements of Style - Click for details at AmazonThe Elements of Style. This is an old favourite – a ‘bare bones’ guidance manual which cuts out everything except the essential answers to the most common writing problems. It covers the elements of good usage, how to write clearly, commonly misued words and expressions, and advice on good style. The emergency first-aid kit of writing guides. It’s very popular, not least because it’s amazingly cheap. Suitable for beginners. There’s an online version available if you do a search – but the cost of a printed version will pay dividends.

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A Manual for Term Papers, Dissertations, and ThesesA Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. This is a modern American classic guidance manual for academic writing. It covers everything from abbreviations and numbers to referencing and page layout. It also includes sections showing how to lay out tables and statistics; lots on bibliographic referencing; and how to deal with public and government documents. The latest edition also includes advice on word-processing.

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Style: Ten LessonsStyle: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. This is a popular guide – particularly amongst creative writing enthusiasts. It offers advice for improving your writing – by putting its emphasis on editing for clarity, creating structure, and keeping the audience in mind. These lessons are useful for all types of writing however. It has plenty of illustrative examples and exercises, an appendix with advice on punctuation, and a good glossary. Recommended.

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Successful Writing for Qualitative ResearchersSuccessful Writing for Qualitative Researchers. This is one for specialist academic writing at post-graduate level. It covers all the stages of creating a scholarly piece of work – from the preparation of a project through to the completion and possible publication of the finished article. Includes sections on style, editing, and collaborative writing. It takes a positive and encouraging tone – which will be welcome to those embarking on such tasks for the first time.

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On Writing WellOn Writing Well. This is a best-selling title, now in its sixth edition. It offers reassuring guidance from an experienced journalist on writing more effectively in a number of genres. He covers interviews, travel writing, memoirs, sport, humour, science and technology, and business writing. The approach is to take a passage and analyse it, showing how and why it works, or where it might be improved. It is particularly good on editing and re-writing.

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© Roy Johnson 2009

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Writing in Action

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Tutorial for creative writing

This is a practical writing guide aimed at students of creative writing. It covers poetry, the short story, theatre, and ‘persuasive writing’ of the kind which appears in essays and reports. Paul Mills starts with the practicalities of sentence construction – which lead immediately into grammatical issues of subjects, verbs, objects, punctuation, and then cliches. The next section of Writing in Action is a stroll through autobiographical writing, where he analyses a number of extracts quoted at length – some from professional writers, others by people learning to master the genre. On poetry he covers form, rhyme pattern and stress, as well as free verse.

Writing in ActionA chapter on prose discusses the subtle differences between anecdote and the short story. This leads to a consideration of point of view and the big differences between first and third person narratives. He also deals with character, suspense, and atmosphere.

Writing for the theatre is divided into what he calls ‘personal’, ‘issues’, and ‘experimental’ theatre. He describes plays by Harold Pinter and Peter Brook, and discusses the issue of physical movement on stage – but this section offers very little in the way of practical advice.

The last section deals with ‘persuasive’ writing. The academic essay is given very short shrift, but he does slightly better with journalistic articles on issues of current relevance.

This is a largely descriptive guide. It outlines the issues and characteristics of different forms of writing, and makes suggestions for further exercises. I can imagine it being a useful set text for a creative writing class.

© Roy Johnson 2001

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Paul Mills, Writing in Action, London: Routledge, 1996, pp.224, ISBN: 0415119898

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Writing Reports

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beginner’s guide to report-writing skills

Oxford University Press have just brought out a series of short beginners’ manuals on communication skills. Their emphasis is on compact, no-nonsense advice directly related to issues of everyday life. John Seely’s book on writing reports covers all aspects of the process – from gathering information to presenting it in the most effective way. He starts by describing different types of report and then focuses quite rightly on the importance of pitching the content of a report at its intended audience. He explains the differences between recommendations, proposals, and reports, and shows how to research a topic, how to interview people, and how to record the results.

Writing ReportsThe central portion of the book – which will probably be of most use to beginners – is how to plan a report and give it structure. He also covers often-neglected issues such as the importance of an executive summary and the need to organise details in various appendices. I was glad to see that he emphasises the need to be prepared to make several drafts of any report which is supposed to be important, and he has good advice on the presentation of visual data via graphs, diagrams, tables, and charts.

This is not just aimed at those who write reports for business, but also those who participate in local societies and voluntary groups. They will be glad of the easy look-up advice and sample reports with analytical and critical commentary which is also supplied.

The chapters of this book are short, but almost every page is rich in hints, tips, and quotes in call-out boxes. The strength of this approach is that it avoids the encyclopaedic volume of advice which in some manuals can be quite frightening.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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John Seely, Writing Reports, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.120, ISBN 0198662831

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Writing Short Stories

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creative theory and practical writing techniques

Can creative writing actually be taught? There is some debate about this question, but the number of university departments devoted to the subject is expanding so rapidly, many people must believe it’s possible. And why not? After all, we believe that the skills of painting, music, and architecture can be taught, don’t we. Ailsa Cox teaches creative writing, and this book is her version of an academic seminar – analysing the details of stories, then suggesting exercises which students (or readers) might complete to develop their own ability in writing short stories

writing short stories She kicks off with a good shot at defining the short story. How short is short? How long can a story be before it becomes a novella or a short novel? There are no simple answers to these questions. As soon as you think of an answer, you’ll realise there are exceptions. But she explains what most stories have in common. She sets out a series of chapters which explore various types of short story: the suspenseful narrative, the fantasy, the comic yarn, and so on. Her approach is to explain the genre, outline its rules so far as they might exist, then look in detail at examples from masters of the short story, from Edgar Allen Poe to contemporary writers such as Stephen King and even her own work.

She deals with the plotless story – the ‘epiphany’ as deployed by James Joyce in ‘The Dead’ and Katherine Mansfield in ‘Bliss’. Actually, she skids around quite a bit from one genre to another – from the tall tale, to the horror story, and back again via the anecdote – but there are lots of examples enthusiastically presented in such a way that I imagine they will appeal to the aspirant writers at whom the book is aimed.

She’s very keen on fantasy and science fiction, so Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ and Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Tlon Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ are given close scrutiny, alongside stories by H.G.Wells and William Gibson. Each chapter ends with a series of practical exercises. These are designed to provide ideas and prompts for the would-be writer – to start the imaginative pump working.

She makes a reasonable case for considering the higher journalism as a form of creative writing, and rightly points out that some of the best reportage can be considered as short stories if seen in a different light (or published somewhere other than in newspapers). She’s not so convincing on her claims for erotic fiction, but fortunately she redeems herself by a sensitive reading of Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’.

The book ends with several useful lists of resources for writers: magazines in print and online which accept short stories; prizes for short story writers; and organisations and databases – though for the ultimate list of resources readers will still need to consult The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook or The Writer’s Handbook.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Writing Short Stories   Buy the book at Amazon US

Ailsa Cox, Writing Short Stories, London: Routledge, 2005, pp.197, ISBN: 0415303877

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