WRITING FOR NEW AUDIENCES Max Kinnings

William Burroughs “The word is now a virus.” “Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.” The Ticket That Exploded (1962)

Audiences  Students  Collaborators  Sources of funding/funding bodies  Academic peer group  Practical research audiences/end users  Media: academic; popular press; television; radio; “new media”  Others?

Audience Accessibility #1 What can we learn from advertising?  The Unique Selling Proposition (USP)  Branding: a dirty word?  What is your personal brand?  What makes you and/or your research unique?  Quotes  The pack shot

Audience Accessibility #2 What can we learn from screenwriting?  “Show don’t tell”: visual storytelling  Focus on the story: character and plot  Script development: outlines and treatments  Kill your babies...  The log-line  The pitch

Pitching Workshop 100 words maximum  Story beats  Priorities  First or third person  Audience  Delivery

Video A new currency in communication  A personal message  The importance of tone  Funding bodies  The Kickstarter model  A trailer: Baptism

Writing for Digital Audiences The word virus spreads...  E-publishing  Content on demand  Digital drama  Soapopolis: a valuable experiment  Collective interactivity: the way forward or a curse?  A Tower of Babel?