Targeted Skill Areas
This section of the course develops from the understanding given within the “Core Journalistic Subjects” section, progressing to imparting to you a number of skills and techniques.
These will vastly improve your chances of selling your features and, even when you are writing for, perhaps, a small hobby group, increasing the possibilities that someone will actually READ and ENJOY your work.
Our starting premise is that essential to successful journalism is the ability to communicate with a selected readership. We cover how to identify that readership, understand WHO and WHAT they are: ages, social economic profile, interests etc. If you don’t understand Who you are writing for, your chances of success are virtually nil.
So how do you arrive at a suitable subject that hasn’t been covered before? How do you plan and develop a feature, how do you interlace direct and indirect quotes - and what are the differences?
We will teach you techniques to simplify this process that have been developed through years of experience in the profession and by creating effective tutorials when teaching Journalism skills.
Interviewing people is a skill in itself but, like most things it can be learnt.
We will examine the use of body language when meeting an interviewee, tell tale signs that indicate when you can progress further – or, just as importantly – when to soften the approach, how to put people at ease.
We will demonstrate how to be sure you actually DO have the REAL story, and not miss it through pre-conceptions.
There can be nothing worse than coming away from an interview, writing your feature – only to discover later that the REAL interest value lay down a mental by-road you had not explored.
We will take you out on a feature-gathering trip, discuss ideas, and assist you while you actually write your feature back at the centre.
Having written your feature – we will then show you what a Sub-Editor would do with copy written by in-house journalists and how to hone your own work in the same way, BEFORE it hits the Editorial desk.
Finally each client will have an individual review session when we will spend time answering any queries and giving any further help you may request.
Hard work? No! fascinating, totally involving, entertaining and definitely enjoyable? Yes!
And in the evenings, there is the opportunity to enjoy a relaxed dinner together when we can discuss everything or nothing.
We hope to see you at Maison Lussais in the near future
The Write Away In