Scriptwriting for radio is considered to be harder than scriptwriting for film and TV as the writers cannot use sight and must portray the story through sound and dialogue.

Sean atkins how to rule the airways

How to rule the airways

Scriptwriting for radio is considered to be harder than scriptwriting for film and TV as the writers cannot use sight and must portray the story through sound and dialogue. In this short discussion I will be talking about the linguistic conventions and syntax and vocabulary also I will be discussing style and structure purpose and genre.

The first thing is linguistic conventions this is basically the different types of ways they structure their sentences to make them sound good to the audience.

1.0Linguistic conventions:

There are a lot of linguistic conventions in radio scripts and I will identify some of these now:

1.1Alliteration: Alliteration is using words with the same starting letters in a row to slow down or speed up the speech of the words spoken an example of this is peter piper picked a peck of pickled pepper although there is some words in the middle of the sentence that do not start with the same letter, it does not matter as they are short and are joining words which are spoken so fast it does not matter that they are there. The example I have just written is the example of using alliteration to slow down speech if you can also use it to point out particular words and to make a point.

1.2Onomatopoeia: Onomatopoeia is used to replace sounds with words, where words are used instead of sounds like instead of a bee buzzing they would say buzz instead of a buzzing sound they use this in radio to either make a joke or to make you understand the sound that they are hearing.

1.3Oxymorons: Oxymoron’s are used in radio scripts sometimes to confuse or to amplify the meaning of words. Oxymorons are a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or conjoining contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.

1.4Rhyme/Rhythm/Pace: These 3 things are all to do ...

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1.4Rhyme/Rhythm/Pace: These 3 things are all to do with the speed of the radio script. Rhyme can help also to set the mood by rhyming it keeps it up beat and happy and can set it as a jumpy jolly medium pace. The rhythm is how the words flow together to keep it as a constant smooth rhythm the words have to join perfectly and you can’t have any anomalous points otherwise it will corrupt the rhythm. The pace is just the flow and speed and how the script sounds and spoken at the right speed instead of speaking slowly when you should be speaking fast.

1.5Metaphor/simile’s: A metaphor is describing something as it is but as its not like the tree whistled or the window squeaked and a simile is describing something as what it is like the pig jumped like a horse and they use this in radio scripts so you get more detail into what is going on.

2.0 Syntax and vocabulary: There are certain rules that a radio scrip must abide by to be a radio script otherwise it can not be a radio script it must meet certain criteria and also the vocabulary must be correct but not always perfect. Some radio scripts are written as how they are spoken so instead of using the full words they will have them

how they are said for example ‘sup darlin’ but they also use very large words that sound smart but mean simple things like agriculture which basically means farming.

Syntax is the kind of order that the script or show is presented in so they order how things are going to be done and so they know who’s parts are coming when and which shows and when the breaks are.

4.0 Purpose: The Purpose of a radio script depends on the type of show but most are to entertain like a comedy show is to entertain and a music show is to entertain but there are also some entertaining shows that also inform you of their political views.

Radio scripts have certain purposes to conform to their target audience so like a news broadcast would appeal to old people or middle aged people its purpose is to entertain their audience and they do this many different ways using many types of linguistic conventions mentioned above.

5.0 Genre: There are many different genres for radio scripts two of these are comedy and drama you do get others.

These two types of genre are commonly used as that is what most people like to listen to on the radio another one is music as that is what the audience is attracted to.

The Genres are different as there are different types of people who like different sorts of things so they can change the genre during the show from a comedy then to a drama to keep a wide range of listeners.

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