Writing Truth v. Fiction

When you're in elementary school, you learn to write a book report: read and spit the facts back out.

When you're in middle school, you write research papers: find the facts and organize them.

High school brings essays where you learn the facts, organize and analyze them.

Those essays just get longer and more in-depth when you get to college....

Unless you become a broadcast journalism major. When that's your emphasis of study, you learn to rely on video to show the scene while using your words to add additional information to the pictures. It's stressed to "write to the video." You only tell the truth and don't exaggerate. This is how I've been writing for the last two years.

To finish my English minor, I needed one more English class. I wanted something different from the typical read-and-analyze-the-deeper-meaning English class. I decided to take Introduction to Creative Writing. The only creative writing I've done is to pretend to be my boyfriend's dog and blog from her perspective about the puppies she had in November (link). It's much more difficult to switch between truth-telling and concise broadcast writing and fiction writing than I imagined. But I couldn't quite put my finger on why it was difficult until I ran into this quote in my Creative Writing textbook:

In fiction writing, the author gives details to show how people feel. I've learned that to get the point across you have to let the reader interpret for themselves, so you show them what's happening instead of telling them. It's the details that make the story good. In broadcast writing, the details are shown in the video so the reporter or producer only has to tell what happened. The audience isn't supposed to use their imagination. Since I've figured this out, it's been easier to switch between the two forms, but still a challenge. I'm enjoying the fiction writing so I'm looking forward to seeing what else I learn this semester. Maybe by then I'll be better able to define a difference between writing for fiction and writing for television.



This is another quote from my Creative Writing book. I believe it applies to both fiction and broadcast writing. The choice of words can be the difference in bringing a story to life or leaving it on the page.