7.1: Writing for the ear

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Young man in a cafe listening to headphones and writing in a notebook. 

(Unsplash free-to-use License, Dollar Gill)

Writing for the ear

Writing for audiovisual media is often called “writing for the ear,” because the text is primarily spoken rather than displayed. If listeners/viewers do not understand what is being said, they may come away misinformed from a news report. They may literally lose the plot of a story and they will be much more likely to swipe away from your content or simply turn it off. In the media “formerly known as broadcast,” even when text can be visualized, e.g. with captions, audiences tend to watch only once. This makes audiovisual media, linear media.

Definition: linear media

Linear media refers to media formats that present audio and/or video content to consumers as though they were located on a fixed point with content flowing past them on a line. 

A metaphor for experiencing linear media is a person standing on a platform watching and listening to a train pass them by. Imagine the train moves by slowly with all the windows open but never stops. People on the platform can see and hear much of what is going on inside. Sounds emanate, and various scenes can be viewed within each passing car, but once the train has passed, the viewer is not likely to hear those sounds or see those people again.

Now imagine the people on the train are trying to communicate with people standing on the platform. Those on the train, if they were practiced, would speak clearly and directly in the simplest possible terms, and they would take turns speaking.

Consumers of linear media are like the people on the platform. If you were to write scripts for those on the train you would need to write in clear and simple terms not because the people on the platform are slow to understand but because they only get one chance to make sense of all that they see and hear.

The essential rule for writing for audiovisual media is to keep the language clear and simple. Of course, some audiovisual works will be more sophisticated than others, but even complex audiovisual stories must leave out unnecessary details. You may use vivid, evocative language to engage the audience's imagination, but choose words and sentences that would be comfortable for someone reading at a seventh-grade level. The point is not to oversimplify complex events. The point is to be understood through the spoken word at first impression.

Additionally, quick pacing is critical. You achieve quick pacing in audiovisual stories by using mostly short and medium-length sentences. Paragraphs should only be one or two sentences long. This goes against what students are taught in English composition courses, but English comp courses are meant to prepare students from a variety of backgrounds to produce academic writing for a variety of potential fields.

Mass media audiences include everyone from highly educated people to people with little formal education. In a globalized, networked information system, media consumers are often watching in a language other than their native tongue. These are additional reasons to keep the writing clear, brief and approachable. 

Even those who communicate for a living and who love intellectual radio, television, podcasts etc. still expect to be able to clearly understand what they are watching and listening to the first time through.

Say less, know more

Writing clearly to be understood by as large an audience as possible is challenging. It requires the writer to anticipate what audiences know and what they might not yet know. There is no single term for the concept of anticipating an audience’s knowledge. In practice, the most common approach to the challenge of neither saying too much nor too little is to think of a target audience member and address the work to them. If you practice writing scripts as though you are communicating with an individual whose age, background and interests are known to you, this can help you anticipate your audience's familiarity with the topics and terms.

Individual media outlets often have their own guidelines on how to address the target audience. Some urge writers to assume viewers know nothing. Other media writers, particularly those working in niche fields, including social media influencers, often use some version of this phrase: “Most of you know this, but in case you need a refresher...” This approach helps writers welcome newcomers without insulting the intelligence of those already in the know. Some viewers might be tired of this disclaimer, but the goal of media writing in the mass communication context is to reach as wide an audience as possible and to communicate as clearly as possible.

The goal is not perfection. Perfection is subjectively defined, unattainable and ultimately frustrating. Media writers should strive to be understood and to be memorable. To do this, they must connect with audiences. To connect with mass audiences, writers should consume enough media and gain enough familiarity with the culture to have a good sense of what a target audience member already knows.

General pointers for writing for the ear

Most audiovisual scripts include an attention-getting opening line. In audiovisual newswriting, this acts as something of a combination headline and teaser sentence about what is to come. This line should typically be a complete sentence. Radio news scripts, audio and video ads, engaging social media videos, etc. all tend to begin with attention-getting statements that do not attempt to tell the whole story.

Writing body paragraphs clearly and concisely addresses audience needs, and it can also help make your content easier to retain, which is particularly important when writing ads. By prioritizing clarity and conciseness, writers can hold on to the listeners they capture.

One of the core jobs of audiovisual media writers is to translate, so to speak, official language into language that regular audience members can understand. Writers accomplish this when they read corporate and official news releases, comprehend the necessary information and present it with jargon and unnecessary details removed.

Writing for the ear also means writing with rhythm. This section already mentioned the importance of pacing. When soundbites or other pieces of audio are included, they should also be incorporated into the script to match the overall pace.

The best way to accomplish this is to be careful not to stack too many lines of narration, too many soundbites, or too many sound effects, bits of music, or special effects together. 

Great audiovisual writers can predict what a script will sound like when completed. They indicate down to the fraction of a second how long bits of sound should be used, and thus can create a blueprint that accounts for the pacing not only of dialog and narration but of the entire work.

Establishing different rhythms for pieces of different lengths can be a helpful approach to writing for audiovisual media. A 60-second commercial will likely need multiple music or sound effects breaks to split up bits of narration. A 6-second social media script must make its point quickly and might have space for only a bit of background music.

Writing for the ear means selecting the right words and thinking about pacing. The next section gets into more specific "Do's and Dont's."

Heard around the newsroom

Imagine walking into a television newsroom for the first day of an internship. The pace of work is incredibly quick. Everyone seems to be moving at all times, and they sometimes speak in a language you have never heard. Some of the most common terms used in newsrooms and in news scripts are defined and broken down here to help students begin to develop an understanding. Some terms may be replaced depending on regional culture, newsroom culture, and technology, but the concepts are essential.

TV Terms

Story meeting - A story meeting is a story pitch meeting where news producers, managers, reporters, photographers, those who promote newscasts, social media managers, etc. come together, usually near the start of a shift, to discuss the potential news stories of the day and make assignments regarding who will cover which story, what approach they will take, who they are likely to interview, and what video they expect to get

Story slug - The label given to a news story internally so that news professionals can discuss them as works in progress. These are usually specific enough to avoid confusion but only 2-3 words. For example, a house fire in a nearby town might get the story slug, "SHELBYVILLE HOUSE FIRE." This would avoid confusion if any other fires were covered around the same time.

VO (Vee-oh) - VO stands for Voice Over, which refers to a type of video news presentation where the anchor reads a story live as related video plays under. Where this term might get confusing for someone new to the industry is when a video photographer is sent to "go get some VO." In this case, VO is more or less synonymous with "video," as in video needed for a VO. Another somewhat generic term for video is "B-roll."

B-roll - This term dates back to the days of shooting video news on actual film reels. Typically, the A-roll was for interviews, and the B-roll was for accompanying video. By the way, video does not mean "videotape." The term predates the invention of videotape and was used since the early days of television to refer to the visual counterpart to audio.

Soundbite, bite, or SOT - Most, whether they work in the industry or not, know what a soundbite is. It is a video clip from an interview where viewers can hear often emotional information firsthand from a knowledgeable source. What most viewers might not notice is that soundbites on average are only about 9-10 seconds long. Consider 15 seconds to be the upper bound-for-soundbite length in television news. In documentaries and other long-form productions, they may run longer. In radio, the classic equivalent term for soundbite is "actuality," although this term is in declining use. SOT is short for "Sound on Tape" and is synonymous with soundbite.

VO/SOT (VOH-saht) - This term refers literally to Voice Over/Sound on Tape. In practice this is a type of video news presentation that includes both a VO portion and a soundbite.

Package - In broadcast news, a package is a prepackaged story that has been edited to fit a pre-determined amount of time that typically includes voice over from a reporter, soundbites, natural sound, and b-roll. Packaging a story before a live show leaves less room for error. A standard television news package usually runs between 1-minute and 15-seconds and 1-minute and 30-seconds.

Read rate (RR in scripts) - Read rate indicates how fast an anchor typically reads. In some news production systems, i.e. the software news producers use to plan the order of news stories and list how much time is allotted for each, the read rate must be entered in order to calculate the expected running time for a story. To calculate your own read rate, take the number of words you read aloud in a minute (usually between 140 and 190) and divide by 10.

Total run time (TRT in scripts) - This indicates the total time a story is expected to take to be read when presented live. In the case of pre-produced elements, such as news packages, the TRT can be reported precisely. When editing video to accompany a VO, it should run at least 5-10 seconds longer than the TRT in case the anchor takes longer to read than expected. 

Natural sound, natsound, or nats - Sound recorded in the field. When audiences hear a natural sound, they should see the action creating it. Some examples of natsound are shoes crunching on gravel, cars whizzing by, a door slamming shut, or food sizzling in a pan.

Time code - Time code tells an editor the range where a piece of video or a soundbite appeared in the original recording. For example, a soundbite found at 5:05 in a video file that ran until 5:15 is a 10-second soundbite. Editors need this information to quickly find the specific bite that is called for.

On-cam - As one might expect, on-cam is a direction that refers to an anchor being shown live on camera.

Anchor intro - Most broadcast news stories start with an anchor intro. It should be a complete sentence that is one part headline, one part story lead and one part story tease, i.e. it draws people into the rest of the story.

Broadcast lead - In most cases, the broadcast lead is the first sentence in a pre-produced news package or the first line in the script after the VO begins to role. It may be similar to a hard news lead from print and digital news, but it must also reference the video being seen.

Outcue - The last few words said at the end of a soundbite or the end of a news package. This is essential information because it affects the audio mix in a live show.

Take VO and Take SOT - These cues indicate transitions to a technical director in charge of mixing the sound and video in a live broadcast.

Pronouncer - This is a parenthetical notation to tell an anchor or reporter how a term should be pronounced. This is used most often for place names and people's names. For example, the main editor and author of this text is Mark Poepsel (PEP-sill).