Lisa Napoli, a senior reporter on public radio's Marketplace, has led a busy 20-year career as a journalist, covering diverse stories like the first Clinton campaign, the culture of the Internet and NASCAR racing; producing for CNN and Fox; writing for the New York Times; appearing on MSNBC; and, of course, telling stories on the radio. With Lisa's broad experience, we here at the Visual Thesaurus wondered how she writes differently for the ear -- and what we can learn from it. So we called up Lisa and asked her.
VT: What's unique about writing for radio?
Lisa: You have to get a lot of information across with very few words -- and you have to write it like you'd speak it. That sounds really simple but you're usually not taught to write conversationally. You have to make sure you read your stuff out loud. If it doesn't make sense when you say it, it's not conveying any information.
VT: What's the biggest challenge?
Lisa: Confusion. Your listener usually can't go back and hear your story again. And you don't want them to. You have to be linear and direct; you can't expect listeners to remember what you said four sentences ago. In radio you have to spell out your story step by step and make it unfold that way -- as opposed to announcing something up top, then going back and explaining it.
VT: How do you make it creative?
Lisa: The great thing about Marketplace is that they value pithy and funny. When we're out in the field interviewing, we can let our subjects liven things up. But we have to liven things up, too, by writing succinctly. It's an interesting challenge to write clearly -- and amusingly -- in as few words as possible.
[VT: We asked Lisa to send us one of her scripts to give us an example of what she's discussing. Check out this script.]
VT: How do the techniques for writing for radio translate to other kinds of writing?
Lisa: I think it's good to be direct and conversational -- in any medium. There's a legendary coach in the radio business named David Candow. He teaches a great technique which I think is valuable for any kind of creative process, or for that matter, even solving a personal problem. It's called radial thinking. It's a smart way to step back from a mess of information to sort it out, find a beginning point or even just make a path for yourself through the information. He suggests you take the nugget of the idea you've got to work with, write it down and draw a circle around it. From there, draw rays shooting out of the circle. Free associate, and write those words along the rays. If you look at the circle, you'll find some great themes--usually the most important ones, and certainly usually the most interesting ones. And that can get you started on crafting your story.
Of course, journalism is a wacky beast compared to more obviously creative types of writing. But when I think about some of my favorite writers, like John Irving, and even the mystery novelist Carl Hiaasen, I realize just how brilliant they are at being direct and simple, with their own genius twists.
[VT: To read a recent print story of Lisa's, click here. How does it compare with her radio piece?]
