I was watching a video about the Chowchilla kidnapping of 1976. I wanted to give the channel another chance, since another video of theirs seemed a bit too biased to my liking--there was also a bit too much speculation being thrown about.
Now, I don't have a problem with YouTube channel hosts or presenters. Frankly, they're a bit of fresh air compared to some of the same sterile, cookie-cutter documentaries as found on YouTube. From the perspective of people overseas on my country, to their perceptions of their own. I get to hear authentic accents, and that is fantastic for me. If I have to hear another American doing a Irish or Scottish accent, I'll just rip on them online.
Some of my favorite YouTube channels are by complete amateurs, and sometimes their narration irks my inner grammarian. But, then, it's part of the experience.
On this particular video (the Chowchilla one), the problem was that the person who wrote the script went for melodrama for a documentary. Melodrama! As if the scriptwriter is an aspiring author. Which wouldn't be all that bad, but a lot of the narrative seemed needless.
Now, to be fair, good writing doesn't always mean that the narrative has to be dry, stilted, and awkward. (Hell, that's why I deleted a lot of my old posts, here. Maybe I can't fault the writer of that video too much.) But good writing should also naturally grab the attention of the audience without forcing it.
For instance, a simplistic passage:
ex. 1) She was sad. She was crying. She said, "What did I do?" The room was empty.
Four sentences, written in the style of a school child. Now, to overdo the rewrite:
ex. 2) "What did I do?' she said shakily; her mind running through a future barren life, as she wondered what she had done. The sadness hit her like a cannonball to her stomach and her heart felt as if it had shattered into a million pieces, never to be assembled again. Her sobbing echoed in the room that had only outlines of her lover's furniture on the floor and too clean rectangles where his picture frames used to be. The grief was overwhelming, and she didn't know how to deal with life without him.
Again, four sentences! Even complex ones. Whoo-hoo! Except, of course, there is so much redundancy there, about her sadness. Boy, is that a lot of phrasing for one emotion. Every sentence is there to reiterate her sadness, but does so in a way that is just saying to the audience, "This is what you're supposed to feel, let me show you why you should be feeling this. Please be sad with her."
That was the problem with the Chowchilla kidnapping video: the script was telling people what to feel in a way to engage them, to reel them in. The reason why this stuck out to me in a documentary is that it gets in the way of the story of the people involved in the incident. Yes, maybe the bus driver had a sinking feeling just before the bus was hijacked, but that sentiment should come from the words of the bus driver himself, even if it's just paraphrasing him.
There! That was the problem. The narrator interjected their own voice over that of the participants in the incident. Never do that! It makes one sound as if they're writing out a melodrama, to fill time, instead of relaying to the audience the experiences of those involved.
Some YouTube documentary channels do a much better job of this. There'll be quotes from people, excerpts of police reports, clips of news media, and maybe a synthesis of the entire story in a succinct, even barebones narrative. For instance, example 1 is a good alternative to example 2. The first one tells you the basics of what you need to know, even if it sounds like a 13-year-old wrote it. The second example, however, buries the needed information in flowery and over-explanatory prose.
Let's tackle Example 1, again:
ex. 3) She sat in the room, guiding a finger on the outline of the wall where his picture once was. "What did I do?" she said, the hot tears flowing again. She then lay herself down in a fetal position on the outline on the carpet where his recliner once sat.
Down to three sentences, but now there is a balance between giving you the information and showing her emotions. You know all you need to know in that paragraph, and I don't have to tell you what you're supposed to feel: you can see how she feels, and that's the important part.
Maybe that's why I don't have too much of a problem with YouTube documentaries by people who aren't trying to be profound. Those people are conveying important information (as it pertains to the topics they're discussing) as best they can; often, they only know the basics of writing & communication.
Something like:
ex 4) "What did I do," she said, crying in an empty room.
And isn't that all you needed to know?
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