A = Anthology or Serial?

What kind of series would you like to make? Doing a serial with ongoing story arcs and characters will give your listeners that extra reason to come back for more. But if you’re the type of person who comes up with five different story ideas a day, maybe the anthology is the route for you. For more discussion on this topic check out our episode ‘Should I make a serial or anthology series?’



B = Balancing/Blending in

Your story is going to be told entirely by a collection of different sounds. You might have an actor recording lines her a bedroom in San Diego, whilst another records his in a basement in Madrid. You might have recorded some sound effects in your kitchen, and have others from a professional stock library.

The point is that these must all be balanced and blended together in a way that they become one performance. Take time to make sure nothing jars the listener – if something sounds odd or alien to your mix, you need to sort it or replace it.



C = Characters

Write each character with a lot of thought. Who are they? What do they want? Why do they want it? And what stands in their way?

Make your characters real people, not one-dimensional caricatures who only serve the purpose of furthering a particular plot aim. Explore their lives, their feelings, their interactions. Build relationships and conflicts. And treat ‘minor’ characters with respect – they may work well enough that you want to build future stories around them and their own lives.



D = DAW

A Digital Audio Workstation is the software you’ll use to build your Audio Drama. There are several great options out there when it comes to choosing one. Audacity is free and can get you started, but if you think you’re going to stick at audio production you will eventually find it quite limiting. Reaper and Audition are two popular DAWs in the Audio Drama production space. Our advice is to pick one and stick with it, better to master one than be reasonable with three or four.



E = Editing

Contrary to popular belief, making Audio Drama isn’t all flash cars, champagne, and pool parties. Expect to find yourself hunched over a computer screen for hours on end, carefully crafting the tiniest nuances into your soundscape that literally no one is even going to notice – but at the same time you break out in a cold sweat at the thought of leaving them out.



F = Final Mix

This term is a misnomer in Audio Drama. Nothing is ever really finished. You will always listen back and hear missed opportunities. “Why did I not include the sound of a curtain blowing in the open window across the street?”. Get used to this.

When you think you are finished though, you need to listen to your show in as many different ways as possible. Yes it sounds great through your fancy headphones, but does it still work through the laptop speakers, car speakers, or cheap earbuds? I know it’s sacrilege that people will consume your masterpiece this way but that’s just the harsh reality of the world we live in.

Never do your final listen sitting at the computer staring at the multitrack, if you do this you are ‘listening with your eyes’. Take your show for a walk, literally. Go out with the earbuds in, and if you notice something missing, or a bit too low/loud, or maybe a piece of dialogue just isn’t hitting the right beat, go back home and adjust it.



G = Genre

What kind of world do you want to live in? The beauty of Audio Drama is that it is completely limitless, you can set your show anywhere. Build fantasy kingdoms, sprawling space stations, decaying post-apocalyptic cities, or set a comedy show in the living room of your own house.

We often use this quote from our interview with Dirk Maggs, but it sums up the freedom of this medium wonderfully.

“You can do so much more in audio, you can go anywhere. Use your imagination; go from the top of Everest to the depths of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. Travel to new worlds. Go inside someone’s head… go inside and live in their head…you can go microscopic…you can go cosmic.

Good radio drama, good audio drama, is ‘go and make a world’, go and paint a picture in sound, which makes the imagination create huge fascinating pictures… even huge fascinating pictures of tiny things. If it’s a man locked in a cell for twenty years, and you are just with him in that cell, you can still explore everything about the human condition, and you can do it with colour, and texture, and light.

And you’re just working in sound.”



H = Hosting

Unless you’re reading this in 2004 you’re probably going to want to release your Audio Dramas free as a podcast series. Incidentally, if you’re thinking of charging for your shows, have a read of this post.

But back to podcasting; a good podcast series needs a good media host behind it. We recommend hosting your shows on Libsyn (use coupon code ADPP for a months free hosting with them). For more information on this, have a listen to ‘Where to host your show’ with Dave Jackson.



I = Interaction

When you’ve been putting out shows for a while you will start to build a fanbase. In that fanbase will be listeners who will actually take the time to get in touch with you, to say hello, and to thank you for entertaining them.

Make sure you take time to interact with these listeners. Ask them if they make a show themselves, and if you can have a listen to it. Find out more about each listener and become friends with them. You will start small, so take the opportunity to build these relationships while you can. This will create a loyal band of listeners who will share and promote your content for years to come.



J = Jargon

Audio production and writing are the two towers of Audio Drama. Both are absolutely bursting with jargon, terms you’ve probably never heard before, terms that sound extremely complex. You won’t learn everything overnight. In fact, you won’t learn everything in five, or even ten years. Don’t try to master everything at once. Pick and choose your battles, work at them, and absorb information in a slow and patient manner.

The internet is full of great tutorials and resources, and there are many excellent books on writing and audio production. Be wary of information overload. Don’t read three books in a row when you’ve yet to take action on a single thing mentioned in the first one. You’ll just be filling up your short term memory with information that will soon be discarded or forgotten. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.



K = Kbps, Hz, & File Types

So anyway, here’s some jargon. Whilst you should record as, or request all your audio material in WAV form, you will want to mix down the final version and release it as an Mp3. This makes it a smaller, more practical size to be downloaded by people all over the world.

When you mix down your finished show as an Mp3 you’ll be asked to set the ‘kilobits per second’ (Kbps) of your file. To put this simply, the higher the rate, the higher the sound quality, but also the bigger the size of the file (remember, people need to download these).

128kbps is considered ‘CD quality’ – you can go higher than that if you like, but we’d advise against going any lower. This is a good level to shoot for if you’re releasing content through a podcast feed. You can always sell or give away copies with higher rates (256 or 320kbps) as premium content too.

On top of that, you’ll also hear sampling frequencies like 44100Hz and 48000Hz being bandied about. Again, higher means better with these numbers, but shoot for 44100Hz with your final mix, for the same size/download reasons we’ve already covered.



L = Loudness/Levels

There’s a long running debate in the audio/podcasting community about how loud things should be. The most important thing to keep in mind initially though is how loud your loudest sound is in relation to your quietest. Your levels and loudness should all be in proportion to each other, and work together as a finished piece.

Nobody should ever have to touch the volume button when listening to your show, so if you have a huge explosion, and a scene with two characters whispering, bring them as close together as you can in the mixing stage.

For more information on this, Kbps, and more, check out ‘Loudness, bit rates, and audio production’



M = Music

Alongside dialogue and sound effects, music is an integral part of your soundscape, and a powerful storytelling tool. There are some great Creative Commons licensed resources out there that you can use without permission (always check the terms of each license when selecting a track, and remember to credit the composer) but one disadvantage of this is that you’ll hear the same music tracks again and again in different Audio Dramas.

If you want to add that extra dimension of individuality to your story, try hooking up with or hiring a composer who would have the ability to custom score your production. For more on this, check out ‘Composing music for Audio Drama’ and ‘Working with composers’



N = Narration

Yes you can use a narrator in your show, many great Audio Dramas do. But try to resist relying too heavily on this ‘crutch’ of allowing a disembodied voice to tell the listener things you can create for them using your sound effects, music, and dialogue.

Use the vibrant story world to fill gaps with vital story detail, those snippets of background conversation. The TV or radio playing a news broadcast under the conversation of two characters. The trainee or apprentice being told the ins and outs of the company he or she has just joined. There are infinite possibilities here, you just need to get a little creative.

For more on this, check out ‘Should I use narration in my Audio Drama?’ and ‘How do I convey thought in Audio Drama?’



O = Opening Scene

If someone is listening to your show, there are hundreds of thousands of other shows that they aren’t listening to. If they get bored, you lose them, and they’re not coming back. You