Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama
Drama for the dinner table
This is a rambling exploration of Aristotle’s guide to understanding and writing drama (as applied to audio drama) that began as a set of personal notes on Artistotle’s little book “The Poetics”, but, as I wrote, turned into a one-sided imaginary address to other writers, who like myself, are interested in figuring out why script-writing […]
Cliché and curiosity-quenching prose are the twin enemies of the writer of good dialog. And first drafts are often filled with both. Cliché is the Enemy Because we are saturated with story, conversation, prose, poetry, and music lyrics, etc., our attempts at writing (at least in the first draft) are prone to include dull, conventional, […]
EXPOSITION I’ve been thinking about exposition in audio drama lately and thought I’d take a moment to sum up some of the conclusions I’ve reached regarding how to deliver it. ON THE NOSE EXPOSITION Exposition is incredibly easy to get wrong – something I have proved in my own writing more than I’d like to […]
I recently attended a fantastic online class where I was challenged to think about techniques that can convey exposition in audio drama. My lack of answers at the time got me thinking specifically about how (and whether) to communicate a character’s appearance. The Power of Visual Storytelling Unfair, though it may be, the way someone […]
Once again, I am, in my overlong and wordy way, wading into an area of Audio drama that, as a person who has significant hearing loss, I probably don’t belong. As with my last article on the topic of sound and silence, these aren’t hills I’m particularly committed to dying on – merely thoughts and […]
IDEAS Where do ideas come from? Everyone wants to know the answer to this. Many writers resent the question and answer with a joke and a knowing wink. They might respond with something like, “Ideas may be found growing on the eastern slope of the world’s tallest ice shelf, but… they can only be plucked […]
Have you ever been in “the zone”? You know, that experience where everything just flows and you write with uninterrupted joy and it all just comes together naturally and pours out onto the page? That’s what writing is supposed to be like, right? Well, maybe. But more often than not, the stuff I produce in […]
As a person who has a hearing loss (deaf in one ear) I always feel a little awkward sharing thoughts on sound. After all, there are whole bands of sound-frequencies that I can’t detect that are available to everyone else, so who am I to express an opinion? However, my inability to detect certain pitches, […]
In previous essays, I’ve mentioned that I’ve had to learn that unnecessary backstory should be dispensed with in the interests of getting to the story-proper as quickly as possible. I’ve also talked about the need to judiciously seed the backstory throughout my plays (at the moments when they become most relevant). Flashbacks This week I’ve […]
I seem to be getting rather confessional lately. In part, it’s because I realize, as a school-teacher, that my screw-ups are often more helpful to students than my successes. In my early days of writing (and as I hit a patch later on where I started to get a little over wordy) I was inclined […]
One of the weaknesses in my writing that has been brought to my attention recently has been a tendency to blow the hook. The hook is the opening of the script that aims to capture and keep the attention of the audience. Attention spans are getting shorter. Whatever the reason (and everything from television to […]
Some thoughts on what comes before the story I am, as I have noted elsewhere, a fan of structure. Not because I feel I must slavishly follow every convention of structure, but because, frankly, I write better when I keep the elements of Structure in mind. Structures Three Act Structure, for all the hate it […]
