Journalistic and literary style
Recognise and appreciate journalistic and literary styles: news vs feature vs opinion, and literary techniques like free indirect speech, imagery and unreliable narration.
In this lesson you will
- Distinguish news, features and opinion writing
- Recognise key literary techniques
- Comment on style and its effect
Learn
Journalism: hard news — inverted pyramid (most important first), neutral, attributed (police said). Features — narrative openings, scene-setting, human interest. Opinion/columns — first person, argument, voice, humour.
Headlinese: omitted articles and auxiliaries, present simple for past, infinitives for future: PM to quit; Floods hit north.
Literary techniques: imagery (sensory description), free indirect speech (a character’s thoughts in the narrator’s voice: She would not cry. Not here.), unreliable narrator, symbolism, foreshadowing.
Commenting on style: The writer uses… to create… ; The effect of… is to… ; This mirrors…
Examples
- Hard news: Three people were injured when a bus left the road near Leeds yesterday, police said.
- Feature: At 5 a.m., the market is already loud with gulls and gossip.
- Free indirect speech: He looked at the letter again. Surely there had been a mistake.
Vocabulary
inverted pyramid
news structure: most important information first
feature
a longer, more narrative article
free indirect speech
a character’s thoughts blended into narration
unreliable narrator
a narrator whose account can’t be trusted
imagery
descriptive language appealing to the senses
In real life
Read three extracts.
A. “Council to shut two libraries. Two branch libraries will close next month under budget plans approved last night, the council said. The closures will save £400,000 a year.”
B. “The last borrower at Hilltop Library on Saturday was eight-year-old Maya, who returned a book about volcanoes and asked, quite reasonably, where she was supposed to go now.”
C. “Mrs Hale locked the door for the final time and stood a moment on the step. Forty years. Well, the council knew best, apparently. She put the key in her pocket rather than the envelope marked RETURN.”
Practice
Extract A is…
Speaking
Compare how the three extracts present the same event and the effect of each style (90 seconds).
Writing
Write about one event (a shop closing, a storm, a festival) in three styles: hard news (60 words), feature opening (80 words), literary (80 words).
Lesson quiz
The inverted pyramid puts…
Review
Key points
- News, features, opinion.
- Headlinese.
- Imagery, free indirect speech, unreliable narration, symbolism.
- Comment on effect.
What you learned
- ✓ I recognise journalistic styles.
- ✓ I identify literary techniques.
- ✓ I comment on style.