Good Radio Writing
O better author than Freeman Wills Croft could have been chosen to write 15-minute thrillers for radio. His prose style is so matter-of-fact, so unencumbered, so concise that it needs little more condensation to make one of his stories into a short shocker. The little that was necessary was well done in "The Case of the Stolen Hand-Grenade," which I heard from 4YA. A swift process of elimination fixed the guilt; the listener might have guessed who was guilty, and with another five minutes in which to think it over might have discovered for himself the "slip of the tongue" which the murderer made to his undoing. But the denouement in a 15minute play necessarily arrives with such a rush that no time is left to wonder whether we might have solved the problem ourselves unaided. And that, of course, is the secret of good radio writing.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19460524.2.23.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 361, 24 May 1946, Page 11
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150Good Radio Writing New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 361, 24 May 1946, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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