Tips for Your Podcast

First, ask yourself what you can reasonably accomplish in seven to 10 minutes. You can capture maybe one long scene or three or four scenes of about two or three minutes in length each. 

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.

Podcast script example

There are three things a listener hears in a radio drama: 

• Dialogue
• Music
• Sound effects

Each of these audio components is called a "cue"—because they come at a specific time in the script and the director may have to physically point to someone ("cue them") to produce it. An instance of dialogue, no matter how many lines, is considered one cue. All cues are numbered and music/sound effects are additionally underlined.  

1.  MACBETH:          That will never be. Who can impress the forest?

                      Yet my heart throbs to know one thing. Tell me,

                      if your art can tell so much, - shall Banquo’s issue

                                               ever reign in this kingdom?

2.  SOUND:            THUNDER (2X).

3.  MUSIC:            WEIRD MUSIC-UP. DUCK FOR VOICES.

4.  ALL WITCHES:      Seek to know no more.

5.  MACBETH:          I will be satisfied. Deny me this, and an eternal

                                    curse fall on you! Let me know!

6.  SOUND:            INTENSE BUBBLING-SLOWS-STOPS. THUNDER (1X).

7.  MACBETH:              Why sinks that cauldron? And what noise is this?

8.  FIRST WITCH:          Show!

9.  SECOND WITCH:     Show!

10. THIRD WITCH:        Show!

11. SOUND:           THUNDER (3X).


Podcast Plotting Device: The focus sentence

• Start with the idea that you have a character in motion toward her goal. 
• S/he has a motivation for doing that thing (a desire). 
• But somehow, that thing is not going to be easy to overcome (danger/challenge). 

DRAMA = Desire + Danger

Focus sentence: Heidi goes back to where she used to work because she wants to know what happened to her, but the government (and her own memory) are against her.

Annie Wilkes on Writing

I've been looking at clips from King books that were made into movies, and one of my favorites is Misery, in part because Cathy Bates is so amazing (she's excellent in the another SK remake, Dolores Claiborne. Here is a clip from Misery where she is explaining to the writer/captive that he can't cheat in his writing; he can't make it all a dream, or give the main character an emergency blood transfusion--he has to figure out a way to get her out of the grave, because that's where the last book ended. I like this advice. You write yourself into a corner, you have to write yourself out. You can't use trickery or fake it, because your reader/audience will call you out.

Writing Assignment: Showing vs. Telling

Choose three of these paragraphs and rewrite to add specificity of detail, names, descriptions, setting and sensory details. Stay in scene and in the moment. Be as creative as you want.

The little boy woke up from a bad dream and went to the bathroom. When he got there, he saw a terrible scary monster. The monster was some kind of dog and it looked horrible. He screamed.

I was driving with my friend and he saw a car that he liked. We argued about ti. He made me stop and take a look at it. The car was totally in disrepair. It looked bad, really bad. But he seemed to think it was cool.

He found himself in bed, and his brain felt foggy. The lady came in and gave him a pill. She looked unsteady. At one point, he couldn’t breath. He wondered if he was in danger. Then, he knew he was—she was crazy.

The girls were in gym class. One of them was awkward. Nobody liked her and they treated her badly because she was a weirdo. 

He wasn't sure if he should go into the hotel room because it was scary in there. Should he go in or shouldn't he? He felt frightened and unsure. He thought maybe it was haunted because he had heard things in there and he didn't like them. He decided to open the door.

Analysis of the Louis CK joke we heard on the first night of class

An intelligent analysis of each sentence in the joke about playing Monopoly with his six year old and nine year old.

Words and Objects Video Project

I wanted to illustrate that even when you're writing quickly, in class, with no preparation, you might find that what you come up with has a shining sentence or two or three. I chose the sentences from each in class free-write that had the most potential for opening lines or for an intriguing beginning as well as sentences that included emotional resonance.

Process:

1. First, I took photos of each piece of paper and then emailed them to myself.
2. Next, I downloaded the pictures and saved them to a folder on my computer.
3. Then, I opened Windows Movie Maker and pulled in the photos in no particular order.
4. I then choose an animation style that would make the photos look more interesting and applied that style to all.
5. Next, I searched through the transition styles to see what I liked best and also applied to all of the photos.
6. I selected the caption option and found a sentence that worked to include with each picture.
7. It took a while to then adjust the length of the caption to fit the timing.
8. I watched the video a few times to correct spelling mistakes and check for timing.
9. Next, I added a beginning title and end credits.
10.  I saved the project and then published it.
11.  Finally, I uploaded the project to YouTube and published it.

Duration of project time from beginning to end: About 3 hours.

Challenges: I had trouble placing the text properly because the words behind some of the photos got in the way. If I were going to do this again, I would zoom in on the pictures themselves, and email them to myself as a bigger file. That would have made it easier to have the words going over just the images instead of fighting with the text on the page. I also still have not figured out the easiest way to match the caption time and photos so that they flow properly.

Ideas: Music or voice-over narration would have enhanced the quality of the video, though I still like the idea of text over photos for dramatic purposes.

Anne Lamott discussing writing

Anne Lamott wrote one of the best books I know about the writing life and process. It's called Bird by Bird. This week, we're discussing one of her chapters, "Shitty First Drafts." I usually assign this piece because it's good to remind writers that no one gets it right the first time, the second time, the third time. Writing is difficult, and anyone who says differently is full of it (or a bad writer). The main challenge of writing is sitting down every day and giving the time to the page, the screen, the whatever you use to get your thoughts down. The second hardest part of writing is revision, but we'll get to that later.

Here's a short video excerpt of her discussing process. I just love her weirdness and honesty.

http://bigthink.com/videos/a-writing-teachers-favorite-writing-exercises

The mystery of the wet socks

First class today and we did the usual--going over the syllabus, talking about expectations, trying to get students to speak up so they get comfortable using their voices. We went over telling details--why it's more interesting to write that someone loves Yorkshire Terriers than to say she likes dogs, to describe her hair as braided and falling over her shoulder rather than simply brown. They had to then talk to each other and write a paragraph about their partner. We also did the object exercise, where each person chooses a slightly weird object and draws it, describes it, and begins to write a story about the object's meaning. Somewhere along the way, I mentioned this abandoned pair of socks I've been seeing as I walk to and from the train. I promised to take a photo of them if they were still there. I decided to do a video instead. In part, it's to convey the idea that if you're thinking like a writer or an artist, you should always be curious, always questions your own assumptions, always keep your eyes wide and ears open. Why are the socks there? Who left them? Where do you have to be in your own head to say, "I'd rather go barefoot then walk another step in these wet socks?" Who does that? What does it mean? How can we find empathy and understanding in the person who left these things behind? And also, why are they still there? If you're the guy/woman who took them off, do you not want them back? Are you not passing them every day and feeling something--embarrassed, amused, annoyed? There's a story in there somewhere. Luckily, they were still there. Perhaps it's a clue to a mystery we'll solve as the class unfolds. Note: I added subtitles to the video in YouTube, which makes it pretty easy to include words and songs if you want them. Click the "CC" button if you want to read the words that accompany the video. I didn't add music because I liked the sound of just the air moving as I was walking forward.

From The Moth

Many, many excellent examples of nonfiction storytelling from The Moth.

Here is Timothy Bell on revisiting his mother's space after aging out of foster care.

The birth of writing

I like the video below because it's two things: a short history of writing, and a clear example of how to visually marry words and pictures in a video form.