1. Unit 19 Writing For
Creative Media
In this unit you will
demonstrate that you :
Know about different types of
writing produced in the
creative media sector
Be able to generate ideas for
written material
Be able to produce written
material
Be able to review own writing
work.
2. PR1 Know about different
types of writing produced
in the creative media
sector
Your task: Using Google, find
out about the different types
of writing in creative media.
Give examples of the types
of writing found in:
4. Film, Television and video
Screenwriters are the most numerous group of
scriptwriters. They write scripts for movies and
television, and when the movies or TV series
make a hit the writers responsible can make
tidy earnings as well. Getting a script accepted
is as hard as getting a book manuscript
published; only one in a hundred submitted
scripts are accepted for production. Not to
mention that many productions never make it
to a screen. For getting movie scripts
accepted, it is usually considered crucial to live
in the vicinity of the studios in order to be able
to do changes during the production; this
explains why the majority of US screenwriters
seem to be living in Los Angeles. Networking is
very important.
5. Radio
Radio is not like film, where a hit will
spawn a host of imitators. A successful
sitcom series on Radio 4 guarantees the
network won't want anything similar for
some time after.
Avoid trying to be too topical, especially
given that the length of the
commissioning process will make a flash-
in-the-pan topic date quickly. Stories and
situations that seem to resurface
frequently include history, space, the
media, parallel universes, school
reunions, and the afterlife.
6. Magazines and newspaper
How To Structure an Article
With magazine articles, you can move beyond the facts of
news. Instead, you can include opinions and featured
articles.
Tell A Story
The key thing to remember is that you’re telling a story to
your readers. That means you need a beginning, a middle
and an end. It also means you need to think about where
you’re taking your reader and create a logical path to that
end point.
Beginning Your article
The first thing you need to do is get people to read your
article, so you need to find a way to grab them. Start the
resulting article with a quote or an anecdote from their
life. However, you can also set the scene or use anything
that will get attention.
The Middle
With most articles, you talk to a person or people. People
like reading about other people, so if your interviewee says
something good, use a quote rather than reported speech.
This makes your article more interesting.
Ending Your Article
Finally, end with a bang. This could be an important point,
a revelation, or another anecdote or quote. The idea is to
satisfy your reader and to get that reader interested in
your other writing.
7. Comics
Comic Book Structure
Writing independent comics can give you a lot of leeway, but if you're a writer for hire
with a publishing company, you're basically limited to around five panels per page,
twenty-two pages per issue, and four to five issues per overall story, which can then be
compiled into a trade paperback. So not only do you have to worry about the overall
story arc and character arcs across all five issues, you have to create smaller arcs at
intervals of twenty-two pages each.
Writing Tips
The first thing writers need to understand is that "there is really no motion. There's the
suggestion of motion...the mind is filling in the blanks." The goal, then, is to find the
appropriate points to freeze the action--which is often settled upon in the collaboration
process between the writer and artist. But it also allows for some leeway in the sense
that you have the utmost control over the pace: you can decide whether one page
stretches over two days or two seconds.
With such a space limit, you have to keep things extremely tight and moving. During
scenes with little action, you have to give your characters something to do so that you
don't just end up with a bunch of images of the characters standing in place. And while
there's plenty of dialogue, it has to be split up so the speech bubbles don't become too
unwieldy, because speech bubbles are fundamentally a part of the art you also have to
keep in mind that you're writing for both an audience and an artist, and they both need
different things. Your audience needs a great plot told through dialogue and action,
while your artist needs the right amount of instructions to accurately draw what you
need without feeling totally hamstrung.
Styles of Scripts
Comic book writers will soon discover their own favourite ways of formatting scripts.
But two major standards exist in the industry: the Marvel Comics style and the DC
Comics style. When writing for Marvel, a writer must write out what happens on each of
the twenty-two pages and then turn his work over to the artist--and only then does the
writer start writing dialogue. The DC style is a slower process, but one in which the
writer has more control: scripts lay out how many panels are on each page, how big the
panels are, and provide descriptions as well as dialogue for each panel.
8. Computer games
Writing a video game script is very different to writing a
movie script or a novel. Firstly you have to contend with
different choices taking you through different
routes, and secondly you have to deal with the
limitations of game programming. And finally, the writer
is often pulled on board long after the basic premise and
setting has been decided. S/He will probably have to
work as part of a much larger group, and have their
ideas ruthlessly shot down by the investors. A daunting
prospect.
However, games are one of the few places where what
you get is limited only by your imagination but with
incredible ideas and explorations at the centre. As they
become more sophisticated - and more expensive - the
writer becomes the source of these innovative ideas.
9. Video game story board
Any film game or TV show will
have a story board to plan out
what will happen in the story of
the movie game or show.
