Host Your Own Old Time Radio Drama
Drama for the dinner table
Writing the Middle There are a variety of ways to think about the middle of a story. They are not a prescription; no-one should feel obligated to use these techniques. At most they should be understood as suggestions based on some common ways that writers have approached the story’s middle and the problem of maintaining […]
Over the years, I’ve found a couple of writing micro-structures very helpful in building immersion in my worlds and a sense of authenticity in my characters. They are the MRU and the KAV cycle. There’s nothing particularly clever about them, they just provide me with a conceptual label for something that many writers do without […]
Theme defines Meaning Theme is the deeper meaning of the story, usually a topic with universal appeal. You don’t need to preach or prove a point in stories, but they can be made more impactful and affecting by including and exploring a theme. One of the easiest ways to think about theme, is to view […]
Finally, I present the rather anti-climactic end to my look at Aristotle’s Poetics. Here Aristotle explores a few ancillary topics before giving some final advice on what constitutes a good drama. By finishing this final summary, though its value to writers is, I think, limited, it does give this project some sense of closure.. Chapter […]
Believable Dialog Dialog concentrates meaning. While speech in real life sprawls and weaves and contradicts itself and follows tangents and gets lost and sometimes finds its way to the point via a circuitous route, dialog (with appropriate allowances for characterisation) homes in on the essential meaning in what is being said. This is, in my […]
Universal Style for Audio Writers Strunk and White’s little pamphlet on style has been in use for decades and provides helpful principles for writers. Their guide is a classic and is full of useful advice. The advice should be followed judiciously, however. Sometimes characterisation requires us to break these rules (some characters are meant to […]
This week we turn our attention to the practical use of punctuation and how understanding it can help improve our writing. Punctuation isn’t grammar. But it does govern how we express grammar and, if we are audio dramatists, how a line and its meaning is communicated to an actor. It is the writer’s responsibility to […]
This week we turn our attention to the practical use of grammar and how understanding it can help improve our writing. Sentence Types Declarative – Makes a statement about something. Interrogatory – Asks a question. Imperative – Provides an instruction. Exclamatory – Makes an exclamation. The following exchange contains each of these. But in any […]
This continues my series on the basics of grammar for audio writers. We looked, in the last essay, at the traditional parts of speech and some ways that understanding them helps us to diagnose problems in our scripts. This week we are looking at some other ways to think about and classify words. Simple, compound […]
A while back I was looking at Aristotle’s poetics and thinking about how they applied to audio drama writing. I worked my way through the first 19 chapters and then came to a grinding halt. The 20th chapter was about grammar – specifically ancient Greek grammar. Besides being irrelevant (since its discussion concerned a language […]
Welcome Back. This week, Aristotle continues to give advice about the writing process, wading, briefly, into the subjects of outlining, gesture, structure, and unity. Book XVII Writing Process a. See the Action In this section of The Poetics, Aristotle turns his attention to the process of writing. He begins by talking about the importance of […]
Hi, and welcome back to this ongoing dive into Aristotle’s analysis of dramaturgy. This week we are getting, at last, into the practical advice Aristotle provides to help us write our plays. Book XIII Dramatic Plots Aristotle thinks about art in primarily moral terms. Part of his purpose was to defend the arts against his […]
