KEY POINTS:
Writing is something most people have to do in some way, shape or form in their daily jobs, even if it's just sending the odd email.
But even for people who choose to write for a living, finding the right words is often a struggle.
Paul Sonne, script producer for Shortland Street says new writers on his show don't realise how demanding it is.
"I think people think that it is relatively easy and then they quickly learn that it is actually quite difficult."
Different types of writing demand different abilities and a background in acting or the theatre certainly helps when it comes to writing drama.
"To be a good dialogue writer, you do need to have that ear that you can hear different voices when you're thinking about the characters. You know how they speak and you can hear it in your head - the rhythm of their delivery and their attitudes."
Drama writers have to be able to see things from many angles and stay true to the storyline. That's not easy.
"Our success rate with new writers is pretty poor. The difficulty with new writers is that people struggle to 'zone into' what is required. But the biggest challenge is to make it your own, emotionally invest in it and commit yourself to what is actually somebody else's story."
Sonne was a theatre actor and worked as a script editor in TVNZ's old drama department before starting work on Shortland Street.
Writing for the show is broken down into dialogue writers and story liners. Story liners write 15 to 17 pages describing the details of what happens in each scene. This is given to the dialogue writers who then turn the prose into drama.
"There's about six story liners and between them they produce the document for five storylines or five episodes. The story liners peal off and each one of them probably writes an episode. That may take them a day and a half or two days."
Story liners spend a lot of time discussing how the story should be structured. Then it's up to the dialogue writers to bring the scenes alive using the actors' voices.
"The dialogue writers are given two weeks to write their scripts for one episode. Experienced writers probably would spend three or sometimes four working days on it."
Dialogue writers are contractors and are paid $1200 - $2500 per script. Many have other jobs.
"Some writers might write one episode every month. Others may write two episodes every three weeks."
It's a lot of hard work and most people can't just watch the programme on TV and walk in and write an episode. Many writers start as junior story liners.
"Most of our successful writers have come via the story table. They've come here and been part of creating the story first, and then they've graduated to writing scripts."
With new episodes constantly on air, the production process is fast and Sonne admits mistakes happen.
"Everybody in the building works real hard, the writers included. It's full on. There are continuity glitches sometimes because it is produced at such speed really."
Sonne and his team are now working on episodes that won't air till September. Drama writing can be a bit hit-and-miss because most all of the work is by contract. The industry took a big hit in March when TVNZ cancelled The Point which was to air at 5:30pm on TV One.
"A lot of people who were working on Shortland Street were working on that in both the story and the dialogue areas. Of course all those people lost the job and the work."
On the other side of the writing world, plenty of jobs have also been lost.
Jim Tucker, executive director of the New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation, says journalists need certain characteristics.
"One is curiosity about society. One is a slight sense of grievance about the way the world is run and a desire to speak up for the defenceless and the powerless. And the other is that you want to write. You do want to express yourself."
Tucker says journalists also must be well read. But those who want to do long form feature writing should steer clear.
"News journalism is the worst thing they can do because it's formulaic, it's pressured and it's superficial. You can't really get to the guts of the story in 12 paragraphs."
Over 18 years of teaching, Tucker says he has run across fewer than a dozen accomplished writers and they weren't interested in news journalism. One reason might be that the salaries for journalists are also notoriously pitiful with the starting salary as low as $25,000.
"The average would be $30,000 probably, which is a hell of a lot less than teachers, policeman and nurses."
For those who are in a zombie trance still marching towards journalism, Tucker recommends first taking a course.
"Most people don't know how to write. They think they do. They've mostly written journals for themselves or a diary. They don't know how to write for an audience. But most people can be taught."
Journalism school costs around $10,000 to $14,000 per year for three to four years. But a simple course does not make someone into a journalist.
"Even though throughout the average journalism course people are writing stories all the time and getting them subbed by the tutors, they are barely competent by the time they leave. It takes two more years for the average person coming out of a journalism school to actually start to show competence in writing."
Philippa Stevenson has made a highly successful career of writing despite not having a journalism diploma.
"I probably could always express myself reasonably well in writing."
She wrote her own column and was the Hamilton bureau chief and agricultural editor for The New Zealand Herald.
She is now a freelance writer specialising in rural news. Stevenson started writing for the Hamilton community paper and learned from experienced journalists on staff.
"As I hoped, I learned on the job. It was in really traditional newspaper style and that's what I loved."
Stevenson says the first thing a writer needs is to have a way with words and an interest in reading.
"I read a book not just for the story, it tells me but for the way it's written."
It also doesn't hurt to have a knack for story telling.
"I'm one of these terrible people who's wildly enthusiastic about the last thing they've just read and want to tell everybody about it."
Stevenson now works freelance and says you'll never survive as a freelance writer if you just want to sell stories.
"They have to be a stand alone business person who writes. You can't just want to be a writer."
That includes doing some marketing, accounting and debt collecting. Incomes for full-time freelance writers in New Zealand range from $20,000 to around $80,000.
But your survival as a freelance writer might depend less on how well you construct sentences than on how savvy you are in selling your stories.
"It comes down to how much of a clever business person you can be."
