Katie Parry
Radio Biography: Civil War Nurse Cornelia Hancock
Directions for this assignment in Writing for the Media were to record a five minute radio production on an unsung hero. Scripting a piece for radio is much different than writing an article for print media. You have to make conscious decisions of wording - you are writing for the ears, not the eyes. Sentences must be shorter and length precise. It was interesting to see the myriad of unsung heroes presented in class. Relatives were most popular, but I chose a little renowned nurse from New Jersey who came onto the scene of the bloodiest war fought on American soil at the Battle of Gettysburg. Sound effects are imperative to an interesting radio piece (think Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds"), so my complete product had popular Civil War songs playing, as well as guns and canon firing at strategic moments. Most difficult in completing this assignment was timing it to be exactly five minutes. There were many, many re-recordings before it was perfect.
