1. Good writing
Media Writing I

2. Telling a good story
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do it sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Red Smith, newspaper sports columnist

3. Telling a good story
Most news stories are written, read and gone quickly, but that doesn’t mean that they should not be well written.
Quality, wit and knowledge will serve you well as a communications professional.

4. Telling a good story Begin with good information Details
Concrete verbs and nouns
Senses
Smell
Touch
Taste
Hear
See

5. Telling a good story Get as much of a feel for the story as possible
Talk to more than just the main sources

6. Good writing Clear Concise Concrete Shows rather than tells
Figures of speech

7. Telling a good story Precision
Use exactly the right word. Don’t guess.
Be suspicious of the Thesaurus on the computer
Don’t add bias
Not always “he”
Use gender neutral terms
Don’t allow your language to stereotype

8. Telling a good story Precision Use exactly the right verb form
“The bill will make it legal” vs. “The bill would make it legal.”
Say what you are thinking! Don’t make your reader guess.
Make numbers real
Compare the unknown to the known

9. Telling a good story Clarity Simplicity
Short sentences
Correct grammar and punctuation
Put the modifier and the modified together
Don’t split infinitives (watch where you put “ly” words)

10. Telling a good story Clarity Write coherent stories
Chronology can be a trap
Start with what is most important
Support that point and work down the list in the same fashion
An outline may help
Illustrate the correct relationship between cause and effect
Transitions (but they can’t carry it alone)
Parallelism

11. Telling a good story Concrete examples Show, don’t tell
Tell how big, how loud, how difficult
Things you can touch, or see
Need details
Show, don’t tell
Good writing appears to more than one of the five senses
Set the scene
Don’t tell readers what to think, let them see it for themselves

12. Telling a good story Figures of speech Analogy Similes (like or as)
Metaphor (says one thing is another)

13. Telling a good story
“There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I’m inspired, only four revisions are needed.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist.

14. Telling a good story
Ernest Hemmingway wrote at least 1,000 words per day, and then edited the passage down to 100 words.

15. Elements of Style Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.
These commas usually come in pairs
Never separate a noun from its restrictive term of identification
Billy the Kid
The novelist Jane Austen

16. Elements of Style Omit needless words in order to due to the fact that
prior to
it goes without saying
Jewish rabbi
hot water heater
widow woman
new record