Mind Your Media
By Daniel Stallings, East Sierra Branch
So I’m a fan of MTV’s Daria, and while I was re-watching it recently, the Lawndale High English teacher, Mr. O’Neill, unintentionally inspired this President’s Message when he said as he introduced an assignment on multimedia, “The message a piece of writing delivers is influenced by the medium in which it is conveyed.” My brain, being the weird sponge that it is, started wondering about the message that piece of writing was telling me.
I’ve always encouraged writers to be a little like mad scientists. I want them to experiment in new media, new genres, and new ways of thinking about storytelling. A story is never confined to one medium. That’s why movie, radio, and TV adaptations exist, for one thing. But also, there’s never really one right way to tell any story. It depends on what message you want to share with your audience. And there’s really no wrong answer. Experiment with different style and find the one you like best. Not only that, I like to challenge all of you to try a different medium at least once to broaden your own skills and understanding of writing. Write poetry? Try a play. Write articles? Try prose fiction. Are you a screenwriter? Try blogging.
But there’s another side to this discussion on media I want to touch, the message Mr. O’Neill in Daria was discussing. Hybrid multimedia. What about combining different forms of writing and different types of media to create something new? For instance, I’ve wanted to work on a radio show that actors and I can work on at home. But instead of doing a traditional radio format, I combined it with the idea of tape recordings of ghost hunters looking for EVPs to create a kind of “found footage radio show,” something I haven’t heard of before and has been fun writing. It reinvigorates the creative process for me. So if you write a travel blog, why not structure like “Wish You Were Here” postcards from the places you visit? What about an epistolary memoir composed of letters you write to others and documents about this slice of your life? These combinations and challenges can push you as a writer to new worlds of creativity and help you develop a style and, most importantly, a voice that is distinctly yours. Play with your media. Because that is how we grow as creative people and how we help our craft grow and evolve.
“Mind Your Media”
Initially appeared in October 2020’s
Writers of the Purple Sage,
newsletter of the East Sierra Branch.