When I was younger, I had a dream of creating a narrative podcast. I knew I could write, I knew I could at least sort-of act, and I knew I was probably smart enough to learn the rest. After all, there can’t be that many other parts to a podcast, right?
The younger version of me was bright and wonderful in many ways. But in this way, they were a fool.
Last spring, I got the opportunity to work on a narrative podcast for one of my writing classes. The plan was to make episodes around twenty minutes each, and there were eleven people in total, not counting the professors.
By the end of the semester, we barely got two episodes out, with one still being edited.
Now, that wasn’t a slight against the people I worked with. In fact, I highly recommend listening to the episodes currently out of our podcast, Any Way You Haunt It, because the fact that we went from some vague concepts to our finished product in sixteen weeks (and having some weeks messed up due to weather) showcases the talent and dedication of the people I got to be in class with.
But, the process of the podcast did teach me some valuable things.
For one, there are a lot of moving parts in the creation of a narrative podcast. It wasn’t just about the writers, the actors, and the editors. You needed voice direction, marketing, project management, and more. Even though you may not be able to pick out every single detail while listening to a podcast, you would definitely notice when those details are missing. Which meant we had to get those details right.
Also, I learned yet another lesson about scope. I may go into that in a different blog another day, but scope is something I’ve struggled with in my own personal projects, and scope is a whole different monster when working with a group.
Bigger isn’t always better, both in terms of number of episodes (we had thrown around the possibility of having groups write two episodes instead of one) and the scope of the world of the podcast. One way we managed this was to make the episodes only loosely connected, instead of creating deep lore that would have to remain consistent over all episodes.
And, as I also learned: consistency is key. Both within an episode and between episodes, keeping things simple and consistent is necessary to ensure the listener can follow. When you read a book, you have the ability to go back and easily re-read a section that may have been confusing, but a podcast doesn’t have that luxury.
While this concept was difficult at first, it forced me to take a second look at how my narrative and sentences were structured. Dialogue had to be clear, but unique enough to each character that it allowed them to be more identifiable. Generally, everything had to be said and done completely in chronological order, with action being placed at the right time between words.
Some of the changes needed for clarity may have seemed insignificant at first, but it made the writing much more powerful and easy to understand.
Overall, while I have been humbled a bit and now understand that creating a podcast by oneself is a bit more work than the younger version of me thought, this was still an invaluable experience.
One day, I may try to go back to one of my podcast ideas, but for now, it’s probably best to first get some of my other projects finished and off my plate.
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