Writing for Radio

Writing for radio brings together theoretical and practical aspects of radio writing. It deals with writing for all principal radio genres – short stories, plays, documentaries/drama documentaries, talks and features, adaptations/dramatisations, poems, and advertisements. It contains historical overviews of the genesis and development of each of these categories and attempts an analysis of the nature of radio itself. For the first time there is an attempt to isolate a 'radio language', a syntax and vocabulary guaranteed to produce pictures in the mind of the listener. This means radio can be taught as an academic subject as all writing – prose, drama and verse, can be tested as radio and examples for analysis are used from both broadcast and non-broadcast work.