Experiments in style: TV Reporter

...as experienced on YouTube

One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into completely different styles. A full exposition and explanation are given here:

Experimenting with styles

In today’s experiment I’d like to write the story as it might be reported on a TV news channel on YouTube.

The original (template) text

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.

The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.

The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.

An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

TV Reporter

We’re told that living in London is as safe as houses, but how safe are houses? I’m Fred Terryman, and I’m here to tell you some disturbing news. If you like this report don’t forget to hit the ‘Like’ button, subscribe, switch on notifications, leave a comment and spread the word.

Here’s something that the government and social media are keeping very quiet about. If you get up to use the loo in the middle of the night, you could accidentally walk into a wall. Impossible? I spoke to Terry Freedman, who was the victim of such a calamity. This is what he said:

Yeah, I woke up in the middle of the night, as you do, and I was bursting, which is probably why I woke up in the first place, know what I mean? Anyway, I didn’t wanna turn the light on cos I’d have woke up the whole household, know what I mean? Next thing I knew, I’d turned left instead of right, I suppose because I was tired, know what I mean? Well I was bound to be wasn’t I, cos it was in the middle of the night, know what I mean?

Because of this lack of light, Mr Freedman suffered from nausea and headaches for several days before he went to Accident and Emergency to get himself checked out in case he’d done any serious damage to himself. I asked him why he’d waited so long.

Well, if you go to A & E you could be there all day and night, know what I mean? But I went there in the end cos I’m a writer, but the headaches were stopping me from writing, know what I mean? But when I got there nobody was keeping their distance and half them weren’t even wearing masks, know what I mean? And the ones that were had them tied around their chin for some reason. I mean, what on earth is the point, know what I mean?

Fortunately, Mr Freedman was seen fairly quickly and diagnosed with only mild concussion. He’d also managed to read quite a bit of his book. But that’s not the point. Surely, in this day and age, people shouldn’t have to rely on their sense of direction when their reasoning power is compromised because they’re half-asleep? Should this be happening in modern Britain? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe and hit the ‘like’ button.

I’m Fred Terryman, reporting from the heart of London.

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I hope you have enjoyed this version of the story. Comments are welcomed, as always. If you’d like to dig deeper, I often write an ‘Experiments in style extra’ post to explain how a version came about, or how I did it. That’s for paid subscribers.

If you’re new to the series, you can see the index of my experiments here: Index.

Thank you for reading!¹

1. The preposterous number of calls to action (buttons) that follows is me being a bit tongue in cheek, having a dig at the YouTubers who constantly bombard us with such things. But if you could leave a comment, that would be nice!