If you had to choose seven to 10 minutes from your own life or experiences to illustrate a moment of significance, what would you pick? Can you think of any moments in your life where change occurred, but didn’t end in violence or chaos?
Tell the story of a moment of change. That change should come from the interaction among the characters and not from an external forces (car crash, avalanche, asteroid).
The change can be small. Your listener wants to discover that in the telling of the story, something is slightly different at the end.
Keep it simple. Do not try to cover too much ground. You don’t have time.
Know what your characters want. Make it concrete.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Do not try to trick the listener but surprising us with a new piece of information at the end. Stick with the characters first, and the story second. Character determines fate.
Empathize with all of your characters, even the mean ones.
Go slow. Five minutes of authentic, interesting conversation is way more engaging than five minutes of chaotic and confusing shouts and screams.
Use silences and awkward pauses to your advantage.
Write the way that people speak in real life. They interrupt, they mispronounce words, they say the wrong thing, and they almost never say exactly what they mean.
Trust your listener. You don’t have to spell out everything for your audience. Show, don’t tell. Allow us to “listen” between the lines.
At the same time, keep your listeners in mind. If we don’t understand what is happening, it’s not because we’re dumb, it’s because the writers weren’t thinking about what we need to know to understand the story.
Read the podcast out loud before you bring it in to class. Sentences that looked good on page might sound unnatural when spoken out loud. Better to find that out before the workshop, so you can revise.
Try to enjoy the process.
Write about something that matters to you.
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