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Guidelines

THE JOY OF

RADIO WRITING

A radio producer...

does everything apart from presenting the show. Depending on the show, that can include writing briefs, cues and scripts, as well as booking guests and coming up with ideas. You also chat to guests, suggest questions to ask and the structure of the interview. On top of that you have to actually produce the show, which is everything from timing items to giving feedback to presenters and letting them know anything that comes up during a show, such as a breaking news story. I also produce features and have presented pieces before now. When I worked on Big Toe, a children’s radio show on BBC 7, I wrote sketches, scripts and cues. On Woman’s Hour, where I work now, Jenni Murray and Martha Kearney write their own scripts. Instead a good part of my time is spent writing briefs. These are four or five sides of A4 about guests taken from my interviews with them. Each item is like a mini research project.

I got started...

when I did an MSc in science communication at Imperial College. I had been a science teacher and wanted to reach a much bigger audience. On the course we covered all media. I did a work placement in the BBC Radio Science Unit and really liked it.

Writing for radio is…

completely different to other types of journalism. It is very informal. You uses short sentences. You must always read what you write aloud in order to know what works and what doesn’t. There is an amazing amount of writing involved for radio – even the continuity announcers are scripted – and you do have to get something of presenters’ speech patterns, though you will find that they always modify your script if something doesn’t work for them. One thing that you have to avoid are clichés. I did a series of sketches for Big Toe that featured me as a spoof radio reporter and the piece always ended with me saying, ‘Back to the studio.’ You couldn’t use that in a real piece, especially after The Day Today, it is such a cliché.

The people I work with...

are really varied. At Big Toe I produced an outside broadcast from a school in North Wembley where they have a radio station – the kids were great fun – and produced some really good features for us. I have also interviewed female astronauts, A-list star Michelle Yeoh, Lynda Carter (aka Wonder Woman), Nichola McAuliffe, and Diana Quick I even went to the Eastenders set and interviewed Jane Slaughter who plays Tracy the barmaid. The most interesting perhaps was Jess Walters, a playwright, who managed to spend a term undercover as a pupil at a school as research for a play. She was great.

The worst part of the job is...

trying to find a guest when time is running out. I remember trying to find a sex therapist for the next day’s Woman’s Hour . By 4.30 I still hadn’t found anyone because they were all off at a conference. It is also frustrating when someone who was great on the phone gets really nervous on air and clams up or starts talking jargon that listeners will not understand. Sitting in a debrief after the show it sounds so lame saying, ‘But they were great on the phone...’

by Ros Smith

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