TIPS FOR WRITING THE

BROADCAST COPY
Scriptwriting Guidelines

•ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND THAT no

contractor is likely to ever build
an office building successfully
without being able to understand
the architect's blueprints?
•In somewhat the same way, key
production personnel must be able
to understand scripts, especially the
nuances in good dramatic scripts,
before they can translate them into
productions.
• It might be hard for me to give you a
comprehensive guide to scriptwriting.
• It is beyond the scope of this course. However,
when this semester is done, you should understand
the basic elements of scripts and even have a good
start on writing one.
• (Remember: the most traveled route to producing
is through writing.)
David Brinkley, won more awards in news than
any radio or TV newscaster in history
•Many years ago, Brinkley was dining
in a Miami restaurant.
•A TV production student saw him,
and took a chance at conversing with
this most experienced and respected
network anchorpersons of all time
He asked
•"Mr. Brinkley, what advice could you
give me to be successful in broadcast
journalism?"

David Brinkley, put down his fork,

thought for a moment, and said,
"Three things: Learn to write. Learn
to write. And learn to write."
•Although you can learn the basics of
writing here in this course or in a good
book, you can become a good writer
only by writing.
•Doing lots of writing.
•Good writing comes with writing at all.
•All successful writers spend years writing
before they start "getting it right" -- at
least right enough to start making money
consistently.
•Meaning that all your initial failures aren't
failures at all; they're simply stepping
stones for success.
Take some time to reflect before writing
•It takes a genius to write.
•Geniuses are not gods, they are simply
you and I
•Thomas Edison said, "Genius is one
percent inspiration and ninety-nine
percent perspiration."
•By another definition, a genius is a
talented person who has done all
his or her homework.
•These course constitute the
prerequisite homework involved in
success.
•Never forget, that writing for the
electronic media is not the same as
writing for print.
•Those who write for print enjoy
some advantages their broadcast
counterparts don't have.
•For example, a reader can go back
and reread a sentence.
•If a sentence isn't understood
in a TV production, for
example, the meaning is lost -
- or worse, the listener is
distracted while figuring out
what was said.
•With the written word, such things
as chapter divisions, paragraphs,
subheadings, italics, and boldface
type guides the reader.
•And the spelling of sound-alike
words can indicate their meaning.
Things are different when you write for the ear.
•In order to deliver narration in a conversational
style, you don't always follow standard rules of
punctuation.
•Ellipses...three dots...are commonly used to
designate pauses.
•Often, complete sentences aren't used...just as
they aren't used in normal conversation.
•In broadcast writing an extra helping of commas
provides clues to phrasing.
•Although such usage is sometimes
inconsistent with proper written form
like you were taught in your English
class, you must remember that, the
overriding consideration in writing a
narration is clarity.
•This is about making it easy for an
announcer to read, and making it easy
for an audience to understand.
•Basically keep in mind that the way
people perceive verbal information also
complicates things.
•When we read for example, we see
words in groups or thought patterns.
This helps us grasp the meaning.
•But, when we listen, information is
delivered one word at a time.
•For your listener to make sense out of
a sentence, s/he must retain the first
words in memory while adding all
subsequent words, until the sentence
or thought is complete.
•If the sentence is too complex or takes too long to
unfold, your listener will be lost or confused.

•However, through proper phrasing and word

emphasis, as a narrator you can go a long way
toward ensuring understanding. (How do you
achieve word emphasis for example?)

•This gives the spoken word a major advantage

over the written word.
Broadcast Style Writing

•Broadcast Script writers usually write

video scripts in broadcast style.
•It comes most times with allowance for
sentence variety. Usually video scripts
use short, concise, direct sentences.
•You should also be aware of some
common mistakes, such as the
difference between further and
farther and less than and fewer
than.
•The reason being that words can be
misunderstood if wrongly
pronounced and pictures and videos
can also be easily misread depending
on the viewer’s perception.