We’re lastly dwelling within the period of fiction podcasting. After years of fiction reveals struggling to be taken critically, we now have diversifications of Limetown and Archive 81, the multimedia success of audio drama stars like Lauren Shippen, and star-studded networks like QCode and Realm targeted particularly on fiction. To be clear: there have at all times been unbelievable, groundbreaking artworks in fiction podcasting. Now, we’re simply seeing the huge medium hit the mainstream.
However whereas fiction is lastly getting its due, nonfiction continues to be thought of the first mode of storytelling in podcasting. This will trigger some comprehensible contempt from fiction creators, however there’s artistic gold to be present in nonfiction. If you would like your tales to have sensible objectives, sensible sounds, and sensible characters, listening to actual tales about actual individuals may also help you discover these roots.
In 2019, my colleague (and mind twin) Elena Fernández Collins and I constructed and ran an Audio Drama monitor at Podcast Motion. Our monitor went alongside the opposite occasions on the convention — periods on monetization, periods on interview ways, and so forth. — and we extremely inspired fiction podcasters to attend these periods as properly. In 2022, we appear properly previous the outdated divisiveness. It’s time to revisit the takeaways from that panel once more.
Establishing the story’s circulate
With most nonfiction podcasts that characteristic a point of scripting, what typically makes a narrative hook and linger with a listener isn’t simply the story itself. It’s the construction of how the story is unfurled for the viewers. When the story begins, what’s the listener anticipated to know? When are they given extra data, and the way do they be taught it?
Nicely-told artistic nonfiction is a take a look at story construction from a top-down method as an alternative of the freely artistic bottom-up method of fiction writing. Primarily, fiction creators have particular tales they wish to inform — a basis — that they will then fill within the blanks to construct up round. Nonfiction creators, in the meantime, have the entire data in entrance of them — a roof — and have to look, write, and edit to inform the story they wish to inform. Nonfiction creators have to seek out the story to their story. They’ll’t retroactively add larger stakes to construct momentum. As an alternative, they take a look at all the fabric they’ve to seek out essentially the most important elements of pressure in addition to an important information.
In my thoughts, studying story construction in fiction by learning nonfiction isn’t dissimilar from studying extra about how grammar in English works, not by learning English however by studying one other language. Determining what the hell the subjunctive is will be simpler when approaching it with a brand new lens, studying from a unique perspective. The identical is true with analyzing story construction in nonfiction versus fiction.
Some suggestions for episodes that do nice work with story construction:
Studying story construction from nonfiction may also help you see the gaps in your planning. In the event you really feel your self pushing the plot too firmly to suit the narrative, strive listening to how occasions unfold in nonfiction. Listening to nonfiction may also help your plot really feel natural and trustworthy as an alternative of caught on a handy railroad.
Conveying a narrative’s goal
Likewise, determining why a narrative is being instructed will be clearer in nonfiction. This may be apparent, relying on the aim of the present. Upkeep Part, talked about above, is a critique of the well being and wellness trade. A information podcast will give a narrative as a result of it’s, you recognize, the information. However with nonfiction podcasts within the Tales on a Theme format, a narrative’s goal will get much less apparent and extra fascinating. Individuals are messy and sophisticated, and so are real-life occasions. Having completely different messes in battle means you get additional away from a transparent fable and nearer to a sophisticated, nuanced rumination on theme.
In the event you’re fearful about becoming your story’s level with the bottom-up technique in fiction, nonfiction accomplishes this objective by means of a top-down method once more. Nonfiction offers in how we inform tales that matter with messy, difficult individuals, who can’t — or, on the very least, shouldn’t — be manipulated to serve that objective. In nonfiction, all you have got is a set of individuals with their very own motivations and views, appearing and reacting for their very own objectives as an alternative of the objectives of the story.
Studying from nonfiction may also help you elegantly combine your story’s themes each by means of their thematically difficult narratives and in how the individuals concerned discuss these themes. How do characters work together with the primary takeaway of your story? How do you convey that story with out being too direct or on-the-nose? Nonfiction may also help you navigate saying what you need your story to say with out counting on simple characterizations or being clumsily didactic.
Some suggestions for episodes that do nice work with a narrative’s goal:
While you analyze nonfiction, you get a greater sense of pure dialogue and the way it may be used to hammer in what you’re attempting to say. Nonfiction offers you the way actual individuals talk, why actual individuals talk the way in which they do, and the way these two issues mix for actual individuals to speak what they actually imply.
Sound design
Like many sound designers, as soon as I began working within the subject, I misplaced my capability to take nature documentaries critically. All of the footsteps and growls and flutters you hear? These are all added in submit and often designed by a foley artist. Tigers look rather less intimidating stalking round when all you’ll be able to see is somebody in a foley pit making every sound. Sound design doesn’t appear intertwined with nonfiction, however that’s as a result of when it’s achieved proper, you don’t realize it’s taking place. Sound design may also help show ideas not simply communicable over audio, too. It may give a way of place and character to a setting, it might add suspense, or it might gesture to a sigh of aid.
When creating your fiction podcast, you wish to keep away from these two frequent traps of sound design: under-designing or over-designing. Beneath-designed podcasts can really feel monotonous and hole. Lacking essential feels like footsteps, cutlery on dishes, or the breeze on the grass can emphasize that the viewers is listening to a fictional manufacturing as an alternative of immersing them within the scene and the setting. Having no music could make the stakes really feel decrease and the strain really feel boring. The identical is true for nonfiction, which often gained’t have stage instructions or characters in the midst of thrilling motion. When nonfiction has nice sound design, it’s as a result of the creators have gone to lengths to make it nice. Decisions made so as to add sounds to an interview, or document on location, or add music to emphasise a temper all come from what retains the listener enraptured.
However you additionally wish to be sure your sound design isn’t distracting. It needs to be refined. It needs to be pure. And it has so as to add one thing to the story. Fiction can typically go overboard, including sounds nearly as punctuation or being scared of vital silence. The hum of a spaceship or the loud atmosphere of a forest can detract from what’s really occurring with the characters and plot, particularly for viewers members who’ve auditory processing points. As a result of nonfiction often focuses on readability and ease, analyzing nonfiction sound design may also help you edit down a cluttered soundscape in your fiction. Nonfiction may also help you be taught the place to attract the road between immersive and intrusive.
Some suggestions for episodes with nice sound design:
Making nice artwork means consuming nice artwork and paying shut consideration to it. Studying from different genres can spotlight methods you wish to develop, seen by means of a unique lens. Whereas I don’t want podcasts to go full Greta Gerwig mumblecore (although I might see an argument for Kaitlin Prest’s The Shadows getting shut), I’d like to see extra fiction podcasters studying extra naturalistic ways from our nonfiction colleagues. There’s a lot room for fiction podcasting that pulls from realism, even in high-concept style works like sci-fi and fantasy, and I really feel like we’re on the precipice of this pattern rising. Realism isn’t vital to inform an incredible story, however it may be a refreshing method to join with a story, and when listeners are related, they’re there to remain.
