Basic rules of writing for radio
1. Write as if you are talking to a friend- use contractions like don’t can’t and shouldn’t.
2. Who- is involved? What- has happened/is happening? Where- did it happen/ is happening. Where- is it happening. Why- has it happened (How) has it happened/ happening?
3. KISS Keep It Simple Stupid! Simple sentences- one idea. Avoid commas! keep it simple for the audience.
4. Two or three sentences for a cue. Four for a copy story.
5. Write numbers as words. This helps for reading news live. E.g. 2010 as two thousand at ten.
6. Joe Bloggs, 17 from Newport. This doesn’t make sense when read aloud so it is changed to Joe Bloggs- who’s seventeen from Newport.
7. When writing a cue, make sure you don’t repeat what is said in the clip! Paraphrase the first line of audio or sum up what is going to be said.
8. Write names of people or places phonetically (if they aren’t said how they are spelt)
9. Round up statistics and put them in context. E.g. 260,00 hectares= the size of three football fields. It’s easier for the audience to understand.
10. Don’t use ‘today’ in the top line of the story! The audience should assume events are taking place ‘today’ - otherwise why are you telling them about it today. You can use ‘this morning’ or ‘this afternoon’ though to be more specific if necessary.
11. Don’t use quotations from people in the news reader’s script. The only quotes we should hear are from the person themselves. An exception to this might be using one or two words in the top line of a cue- if we’re then going to hear from that person themselves as a clip.
12. Avoid abbreviations unless they’re very commonly known amongst the public. E.g. NATO would be acceptable but CTKC wouldn’t be.
13. READ IT ALOUD to ensure it reads correctly! Sometimes words look fine written down but read aloud, they don’t make sense or might be an awkward tongue twister or an unintentional rhyme!
Good set of notes here, but what you need to do is to demonstrate your UNDERSTANDING of how to write for radio news. You could best do this by including the tasks that you carried out in lesson, e.g. your annotated copies of the Isle of Wight Radio bulletin scripts, as well as the newspaper article that you were given to rewrite, using the rules above.
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