ADWIT: The Audio Drama Writers' Independent Toolkit
Want there to be more good audio drama? Lindsay and Sarah do. Each episode, they'll discuss an aspect of audio drama, examples from current audio drama podcasts, and writing exercises so writers can play along. Join Sarah Golding and Lindsay Harris Friel on a voyage of discovery on the seas of audio drama podcasts.
ADWIT: The Audio Drama Writers' Independent Toolkit
Writer Tools of the Audio Drama Trade - Part Two
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Hello!
We continue our chat with...
- Brendon Connelly of Circles
- Emily Inkpen of Alternative Stories and The Dex Legacy
- Flloyd Kennedy of Am I Old Yet? and Baked Off!
- Shannon K. Perry of Oz 9 and Audiotocracy Podcast Production
.... about their writing tools of choice for audio drama scripts. Some strategies to keep in your back pocket:
• Pronunciation guides with bold words in scripts help actors with difficult or made-up words
• Voice actors need clear notation for vocalizations (grunts, sighs, gasps) or they won't exist in the audio world
• Creating banks of reaction sounds provides useful resources for editing
• The importance of actors truly listening rather than just waiting to deliver their lines
• Audio drama is arguably "the most visual medium" because it creates images in listeners' minds
• Research shows listeners have stronger physiological responses to audio than visual media
• Remote recording challenges include actors working at 2AM when it's quiet enough
• Modern audio scripts need better notation systems for sound design elements like "helmet on/off"
• Writing tool preferences vary widely: Google Docs for collaboration, index cards for structure visualization
• Color coding scenes helps track tension levels and plot arcs throughout episodes
Contact us at writersadwit@gmail.com with your preferred writing tools and experiences and to share any thoughts on these episodes or ping us a review! Thank you!
Tools discussed and listed in the show
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Sarah and Lindsay
Hello folks, welcome to AdWit with me Sarah Golding and her Lindsay Harris-Friel Woohoo. Here is part two of our chat to Emily Inkpen, floyd Kennedy, shannon Perry and Brendan Connolly on writing tools of choice. What's yours Do? Let us know. Writersadwit at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Enjoy. One of the things that I have done is pronunciation guides, so pronunciations are tricky. I write science fiction, I make up words. I think that they're they're perfectly easy to say, but everybody says them differently. That's like that's a ritual in the in the studio. But one of the things that I sometimes, or I tried doing at one point, was putting all of the words in bold. This is something I do for the remote recorders, where I'm not going to be there with them. When they record, I put all of the unusual words that I have included in. What I create is a pronunciation guide where I say the words out loud so that people can hear how they say, and I put all of those words in their speeches in bold, so sort of saying these are the words that you might have trouble with. These are the ones that are included in the guide. Go and listen. You can't guarantee that people are going to do that and even though I put this stuff in bold, you still get stuff back. That isn't. You know they haven't checked or they've've checked, but then they've forgotten and they've delivered the line differently and you know like it's it's you know, these people need to take the quirky voices of course I'm absolutely sure they need to yes, that is exactly what
Speaker 1:they should do polish this week for the same thing. I cannot recite it now, but essentially, yes, I would play the audio in my ears and I would record my attempt at that directly in, and then I would go back to the script and see how much of that I could beautifully remember. So that kind of tool is so useful. But in the moment, because you're so, as I say, your natural rhythms are going I mean, I got words from this week right with you, emily. There's some some things that just with a name and it was the stress that for some reason just wasn't hitting in my brain the right way. So, yeah, it's, it's an interesting thing. All you can do is provide the resources and tools for them to try to get it right. Right, and then what's going to happen then is that, if it's not right, it's just going to have to be a re-recorder, a frankenstein edit of something they did that was right, that you can hopefully put in.
Speaker 2:That's going to work yeah, yeah, you just think can we cut out that geographical reference? Do we need, does everyone need to know that that's the river they were on, maybe not, maybe not. We can just say river that's for later.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really great thing to highlight those difficult words Brilliant Anything else people think of that. There's definitely a need in the script for voice actors.
Speaker 3:I learned the hard way that if I don't put every single vocalization in, it's not going to be recorded and then it's not going to be available. And I learned that when I say the hard way, 400 pages of this have to be revised. You know what?
Speaker 4:I used to be the same way and now it's a big trust thing. It's like even if the line doesn't sound the way I imagined it, that doesn't mean it's not good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, I didn't mean vocal inflection. I meant vocalizations in the sense of grunts or groans or gasps, or oohs or ahs I didn't mean in the sense of putting riley's in there. I meant, I mean honestly I think. I think you're absolutely right, lindy, about trust and the more little what, what?
Speaker 3:what are jokingly called riley's? The little things in in in brackets. The more notes you put in there, the more of an enemy you make at your access. To be honest, and you, you want, you want to hand them that freedom. But, um, you know, the whole bends over. Deep breath at the end of a run grunts as they try and open the, the, the safe door, whatever it is. If you don't, if you don't have it, it doesn't exist. And and then, if you can't, and if it doesn't exist in audio terms, it doesn't exist in the universe of your thing.
Speaker 4:So uh, yeah, I learned the hard way. Yeah, that I agree with yeah, yeah, yeah so feed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's why you gotta have like physicality at the beginning, like walking or running or out of breath, at the beginning of the lines. I always try to do that um, which I think is is quite important sometimes. Sometimes I've given my actors a shopping list of reactions that we can. Then we just say, okay, remotely, I've just gone like three versions of gasp, three versions of you know shout, three versions of this, and then we've got, oh, I like that of reactions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that places and that's really useful. Yeah, because then it's like, if they don't have that, then we, we've got a little bank for that and that's really useful. Yeah, because then it's like, if they don't have that, then we've got a little bank for them. And sometimes we're like, oh, do you remember the bank from episode two? Yeah, let's just get one of those, and it's like episode six or something, but we know we got a good scream in that one. So yeah, let's just, you know, slot it in.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that can be a handy resource. I those fros nine with with burps and coughs and ahums and sounds of hooray and sounds of sadness and I think I can't remember what else is in there.
Speaker 4:But definitely useful to get any kind of record it's really good if you have especially if you have a character who's being, let's say, a character who's being victimized, like somebody who's being brutalized in some way that lets them make all of the pain, noises and all, or crying or whatever, in their own way, without being brutalized by you, the director, or you, the writer. You get that bank and then you just have the extra sounds that you could sort of put in as you need them, so they're not being punched in the face repeatedly by another actor or something.
Speaker 2:So it can be tough. I had um, I had one, okay. So the first time we started doing this, my actor did it voluntarily and, uh, we, we were doing this all recording, so we had um. It was an asynchronous recording, so I was going through listening to all of the versions of the line, making a note of which one's my favorite, uh, on the script. And then it got to a moment and he said and he was in a torture scene, okay, so this was exactly this, right. And he got to this moment. And then he just said I'm going to do a few different versions of breathing for you. And I was like, okay, this is going to be weird. And I'm sitting there with my headphones on and he's just doing heavy breathing. And I remember the first time I heard it I thought this is really weird. And then I was like no, yeah, no, good breathing. Yeah, yeah, good breathing. Yeah, we're going to need that breathing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I had to edit Robert Cubmore sleeping and it was sort of like that slow breathing that you have and everything. But yeah, it's good to have that bank. I'm really glad you brought that up, Emily Super.
Speaker 5:Can I just throw in something, please do? You can't necessarily write it into the script, although you can, but that is, you know. What you were referring to earlier is remind the actors to listen, and I mean this is, you know, theatre work as well. A lot of actors, they don't listen. They stand there waiting to say their line. Not the good ones, that's how you can tell, but yeah, actually listening to what's happening in the scene. I'll tell you in the scene. That's obvious, but they do need to be reminded.
Speaker 3:I know, I think, I think it, I think it's so brilliantly obvious that it's. It's so interesting that you brought it up, because if we were, if we were people making television and we were making this podcast, we would not be having this conversation. And I would like to think we can come back and we can do this again in six years and have this conversation. We won't have to say things like that anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you say that. But I mean I've seen TV shows where the background acting like really big TV shows with quite decent, like good actors in it? Yeah, certainly the background acting is appalling.
Speaker 3:Certainly some background actors are on another planet, aren't they? Yeah? Or it's just not their scene and they're just sitting on the sofa, but they're just not in the room.
Speaker 2:It's like. It's like what is going on.
Speaker 4:I think that the people who you really you, you trust and you cast again and again are the people who, when they're at your rehearsal or your table read or your recording session, or whatever nothing else is happening, they they're here to do the job. Right now they're present. I had the experience of sitting next to an actress during a table read who was getting out her phone and her laptop when she wasn't needed in the scene and looking up other acting jobs sitting right next to me, and I really just wanted to turn around and say to her like you do know, I'm the writer and producer, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like we're paying you to be here or like you are doing a job right now.
Speaker 4:She was so surprised. Yeah, it was just like you know. Really, you're not even the more that you're aware. I don't know.
Speaker 1:You don't disrespect the Lindsay. Lindsay is not to be disrespected.
Speaker 4:Lindsay is not to be disrespected, but I mean it's one of those things I mean. We also know that those are the people that you say thank you very much, here's your pay, good luck with the rest of your career, and you simply do not cast them again. And the people who do great. You're sitting here going what can I write for you? You're sitting here pulling them aside saying what do you want to do? Because I want to write something for you. Please do write lots of things for lovely voice actors.
Speaker 1:Can I just rewind a second things for lovely voice actors? Um, can I just rewind a second um regards to what um you were saying, floyd, listening right in audio to show that you're listening, we make little breath sounds, don't we? And that's what I feel is still missing from a lot of um things, and I know this is really a voice actor thing but I'm gonna say it anyway.
Speaker 1:Anyway, but yeah, if you're listening to something, you're going to be disagreeing, agreeing or reacting, having a little laugh or a gasp alongside something. So when you're going through that script, I do think that you've got more work to do than just the things it says on the script. Like Brendan was saying that he writes in a lot of the time, but if those reactions are happening under someone else's you know, one page monologue, you still can try and do those little reaction sounds, I do feel, and they won't all be used, because some of them will be over overzealous, but because, uh, I've had to edit a lot of those myself.
Speaker 3:But, um, yeah, with regards to that, it's like just putting in those subtle reactions of like little laughs, gasps, sighs, frustration, all of those, and there's so many that you could pop in I mean, like if we took our actors onto a stage and we set them on the stage and we recorded them together or perfectly much, yes, you would get those things, they would be there and and um, there's so much of this asynchronous recording in our sector and there's so much of uh recording separately, whether it's synchronous or not, so that you're missing a lot of cues, you haven't got eye contact, so it's a lot of things that are stopping that from happening. I, I, I do worry that there'll be a lot of forced simulation of it, right, but um, uh, you're absolutely right, sarah, because it's the thing that makes it sound like there's life you know what I don't, I don't, I don't agree with you, but I don't disagree with you.
Speaker 4:I totally understand that. I mean, look at, um, look at one of these things. Where, say, the national theater does make a video of a theater production, you might, might have a scene where the two main characters are talking in front of a crowd and the crowd are all going oh, do you believe this? Oh, my God, I can't believe he's going to marry her or whatever. They're doing their own thing. But when you see the final edit, those things aren't there. And, yes, they are things that make the world feel whole and true and visceral, but they can also be a bit distracting sure, as I said I was, zealous is being subtle.
Speaker 1:It depends on the moment, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:I mean some shots are supposed to be close-ups and some shots are supposed to be long shots. Some shots are on one character, some are two and and if we, if we think of an analogy of shot sizes in audio, it is, in a sense, how far does the tone of listening?
Speaker 1:go. I want to say something contentious that audio is the most visual medium we got right, Do you agree?
Speaker 6:It's in your brain, it's in your brains.
Speaker 2:It's certainly the cheapest, it definitely is the cheapest cgi.
Speaker 4:I actually just um recently read audible commissioned uh, this is something that's just one of my favorite pieces of data right now. Um, the audible commissioned a study with the university of college london where they basically said to people we want you to sit down and either listen to a chunk of game of thrones and then watch a a chunk of Game of Thrones, and we're going to put wrist sensors on you. And then they said to them, which do you think was more impactful? And they all said definitely watching it on TV. But their bodies were their heart rate.
Speaker 4:When they were listening to just the audiobook book, their heart rate would go up, their you know their, their body temperature would change their skin, you know they're. You know you get goosebumps, that kind of thing. And you get more like that because there's the process of co-creation and audio drama or in in fiction. In audio fiction that doesn't exist in, you know, with with tv, you can just sort of sack out, they tell you where to look but sadly there's also very often a process of doing the washing up while you're listening to audio drama.
Speaker 3:That's what we're working against a lot of the time, isn't it? Do you know what I mean? We we've got to. We've got to know that we're a co-pilot some of the time with yeah with the ironing, yeah, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
Speaker 6:They discovered that kids who doodle while listening to lectures absorb more information. To me, washing dishes or folding laundry is my version of doodling while I'm listening to the lecture. I think we retain more because we are doing something physical. It's like doodling in the margins, so I don't have a problem with people doodling while they're listening.
Speaker 2:I had a friend who listens to stuff in the bath Okay, so that's their thing. They go in the bath and then they listen to that while they're doing their bath time things. And they had to take a break from the Dex Legacy because they got to the episode four, I think it was, of season one, where there's torture happening. And I was like I he said, you know, oh yeah, I've been listening, it's really really good. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, how did you get on? He said, well, there was this moment where I was in the bath listening to kids being tortured and I really had to just reassess my life choices.
Speaker 4:I gotta go home and rethink my life yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I can see why that wouldn't be something you'd want to be listening to in that environment, you know like maybe we should Groovy.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, there's a lot to be said for that, and thank you, listeners, for listening to this show. If you've got any feedback for us, if you want to review us, if you want to contact these folks, check out our show notes and write to us at writersadvent at gmailcom. So, yes, what are your biggest problems, then? People that you've had to overcome in execution of a script, from the voice actors and the sound design? What are the things that we haven't already touched on?
Speaker 6:One thing that I find difficult and this is for sound design, so maybe this is a separate topic. But, for example, I'll have characters putting helmets on and off. So how do I tell my sound designer? The helmet is on, the helmet is still on, helmet's still on, helmet's off, helmet's still off, helmet's back on again, helmet's back on again. And I mean, after a while it just gets to the point of tedium in the script where I'm driving myself crazy and I just can't do that anymore. Or they sound like they're underwater, or there's just things that continue on for a certain length of time and I need to be able to signal to the sound designer turn it on, turn it off, and the same to actors. I wish there were more ways to signify things in the script other than just italics and bold. It'd be nice if I could. Everything in red is shouted, everything in purple is breathless, everything in green is outdoors. I don't know whatever the difference is, but it would be nice to have that I have used color before I've used color to.
Speaker 4:We had a thing with a character who was let's just say she was of two minds about something. This was in Yarn Socks. So we had a character who sometimes would speak with sort of the front of her mind and sometimes with the back of her mind, and when it was the front of her mind we used red, and when it was the back of her mind we used blue. Now, if you're working with someone who's colorblind, you may have a problem, but a lot of times you can say to them what is the best way for me to note this for you.
Speaker 6:I think what we need is to talk to somebody who's a developer and just say if you want to create specific scripting software for podcasters? This is the kind of stuff that we're missing, and that would be the ability to tell someone you know this script. This part of the scripting is done differently, maybe a different font, so you know to use your spooky voice or a different you know yeah, or your you know font can actually do it, yeah something where you could show them, yeah, exactly functionally, that this, this part of the script is different, without always having to rely on just the basics that we've got.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 3:Well, guess what? You can change the font or the color in Fade In if you really want to Are you doing something for Fade. In.
Speaker 6:Do you get?
Speaker 4:a kickback, a kickback or something, right? No, he's here because we wanted him to talk about.
Speaker 1:Fade In.
Speaker 6:It's sounding more and more awesome all the time, but's like man, do I have to get another thing like? I think there's a point at which we get on burnout all of us too because there's just there's so many things you can do as the creator of a show, and it's not just the writing, it's the marketing, and like right now I'm, half of my attention is on this stupid canva project I'm trying to do because, because, 100 episodes, right right.
Speaker 6:Celebration. What I would also like if you're a podcast person out there who's designing for podcasters is to make it just super freaking simple.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's so much going on in our heads already.
Speaker 6:And have your support staff there and knowledgeable, because, after having talked to my cable provider three times this week, I I need people who know what they're talking about, so good support is also a thing that would be very nice to have. Yeah, um, and that is something that I've struggled with a little bit, but, um, there, I'll just throw that out there um, thinking about shannon's example of helmet on, helmet off.
Speaker 3:Um, I wrote a character in something and it's a spoiler to say precisely what it was but I wrote a character in something who had to do half of the lines, or 8% of the lines like this, 20% of the lines like this. And do you know what? My solution was? Get Beth Eyre to do it, because she will understand and she will do it.
Speaker 4:What if you did something like? You had your character instead of like. I could put down like sarah one, sarah two, and sarah one would be sarah with the helmet on and sarah two could be sarah with the helmet off but then I've got to provide the actor with like a chart and that just feels like that feels like it's putting a lot of honest responsibility on the actor sarah helmet on Sarah Helmut off.
Speaker 6:Well, but it's not the actor, it's the sound effects person, that's Helmut M and Helmut off. It's not up to the actor to make that sound.
Speaker 2:I think it's a really tricky one.
Speaker 3:Maybe do them as the Riley, then Maybe do them as in the brackets Underneath the. Helmut on brackets Because the convention would be for off screen and off camera In a screenplay convention. Is it's built into this formatting software? It's either the OC or the OS or VO right.
Speaker 4:Those conventions are built into the formatting for these things.
Speaker 3:So maybe H on, h off, maybe is the equivalent we're looking for here.
Speaker 5:I've got an idea. What's that? A feature in the software that your sound design instruction does an auto-complete. The same way the character names do, yes. So all you have to do is put HO and it'll go. Helmet on.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it is a nice thing that I mean usually when line numbers come in handy, I can say after I've written it and tweaked it, say at the top, helmet on for Jesse from line 60 to line 80, you know, and I've done that before for the sound director, so that is one thing you can do. But yeah, it's just, it's one of those things. It's every script, every single script. I have my sound designers coming back. Whoever of the four sound designers I've had are like now, is the helmet on or off? Are they underwater here? Are they talking?
Speaker 4:You know what I mean. Think about it, though. It's like if we were in theater. Think about what making a story like this would have been like in the 1980s or the 1950s, when we had typewriters and pencils.
Speaker 6:Yeah, but I want it better now.
Speaker 4:I want it better. Now Where's my?
Speaker 6:I mean that's great, but I wasn't doing it then. Also, a lot of it happened in the studio. Live with people in person.
Speaker 2:I mean, like doing stuff asynchronized asynchronously wasn't even an option back then, so it would have been people in a room so literally they would have been taking the helmet off and putting it on again if they did that, and if not, then yeah, it's amazing how much you know like in terms of like or bbc. I mean like um, with alternative stories. We sometimes do workshops, um, about sort of audio drama and all of the stuff. And one of the things the stories that chris says is about how the, the um, direction grams, which means, like you know, background noise, whatever it is, it comes from gramophone.
Speaker 2:Because back in that time if they wanted music to come oh, nice scene they'd have someone drop a needle onto the record at the right place for the music to then come in in the live recording. So it's amazing what happened live in situ back then. And yeah, I mean yeah, stuff like that then becomes incredibly organic, but then at the same time, helmet on, helmet off, helmet on helmet off. Even that then can get messed up because somebody's in the midst of the scene, in the middle of it as a director, unless you're standing in the middle of the microphones pointing out to put the helmet on, pointing at them to take it off. You know, like you, you there's a certain amount of like. I guess there's not as much control as you would want to have really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, if I'm reading a, the screenplay for I don't know, bar boys 19 or something, will Smith doesn't go hang on. Do I get out of the car after this line? Do I get out of the car after this line? Do I get out?
Speaker 2:of the car after this line?
Speaker 3:no, because he gets out of the car when it says he gets out of the car yeah, because he's got like you've set up the entire scene.
Speaker 2:He says three lines and then he gets out of the car. If you're doing a you know page of like several pages of audio drama on the trot and you're saying to somebody we're going to do the lines from page six to page 12. And then you say, oh, and by the way, halfway down page four there's a thing, and then by the time they get to halfway down page four, there's several lines into it. Maybe they're in the middle of an argument, maybe they're doing something, and they've got to then remember to do a thing that is going to be easily missed. Will Smith can get out of the car because he says three lines and gets out of the car. That's literally all he has to do.
Speaker 3:And he's got a whole team of people saying get out of the car behind the cameras. I think I've got an expectation that everyone's actually not. I say it's the nicest way. I've got an expectation that everyone's understood the script.
Speaker 1:I think you hit a nail on the head there, brendan. There's a lot of times where people are just, you know, accidentally or for whatever reason, have just misread something very key, and then that affects the process, production process, as you know down the line, so, which means that people are then chasing for lost lines or mispronunciations and so on.
Speaker 4:Let's say I'm producing a show with a SAG agreement and I'm able to get Pedro Pascal for two hours to be in my show, and that means no longer because I can't afford him if I have a SAG agreement. So that means from the minute he walks in the door to the minute he walks out. So you're darn right, I'm going to be standing there in the control room doing every single cheerleader move to make sure that not one second of that time is wasted. So if that means I have to like stand here and like with like a toy bow and arrow and like shoot toy arrows at him so he could go, or whatever, I'm going to use that time as productively as possible.
Speaker 1:This is Lindsay's fantasy being played out.
Speaker 2:Well, ideally you want to finish five minutes before he has to leave, so you can get a selfie as well.
Speaker 5:That's extra.
Speaker 4:That's a bit of extra time, so I'm going to you know, he seems nice about the selfies because everybody's got one Shut up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I just want to defend remote voice actors for a moment, because I know how bloody hard they work and I think a majority of people who might listen to this podcast are also working with remote crews and you can't guarantee what else that voice actor has got going on at that time. They might have small kids that are running around that they've had to stop recording and go back and forth. They might have animals barking they might have had. They've got to go and what are you saying, Sarah?
Speaker 1:How many of the blooper reels are talking about Shannon's lovely dog, zoe, walking across the floor?
Speaker 6:It's really funny, it's become a part of my staple. I get her toenails clipped just for this.
Speaker 3:It's symptomatic not of carelessness, but of bootstrapping, isn't it? It's not that people are careless or they're incapable, it's just that the entire industry is bootstrapped.
Speaker 2:But I mean like it's also. I mean, when we started out with season one of the Dex Legacy, everyone was in lockdown. So we had a lot of young actors who had just got out of drama school and they were screwed that year because, you know, they would usually be going and doing their theatre showcases and all of the theatres were shut. So we were giving them employment by getting them involved in the Dex Legacy, employment by getting them involved in the Dex Legacy. Now these people were living sometimes in central London, especially later lockdowns, when things weren't quite as quiet outside, so they were having to get up at like two o'clock in the morning to record because it was the only time that they could get quiet in their flats to record. So not only are they recording on their own, without live direction, with zero rehearsals and no one to act off, but they're also doing it at two o'clock in the morning. And you know these.
Speaker 2:These are situations that it's people trying their best, but in situations where you don't have a crew around them to support them, you don't have rehearsal time, you don't have a director there to help them out, and they're doing their best and obviously sometimes things don't go according to plan. Sometimes that happens. You can't get it your way all of the time. When you've got a situation like that unfolding, you just can't and all you can do is be understanding. Try and communicate as much as possible. Try and make the scripts as clear as possible. Do like we do little um five minute videos of character descriptions ahead of time so people can watch the videos oh, I like that.
Speaker 2:Get an idea of character and everything beforehand and like say you know this is who they are, and it really helps the actor to sort of get, um, you know, grounded, and it's something I doing, knowing that people were going to be recording isolated, knowing nothing about the character and having no one to talk to, and that horrified me. But you know, even so, like you can give the actor everything, but they're still going to be on their own sometimes and they're still going to be doing their best and they're still going to be potentially recording at two o'clock in the morning, because that's the only time it's quiet.
Speaker 6:And that's that balance. I think that's so hard to do is like I want them to be able to go through the script and and be caught in the moment and having the emotions that the character is supposed to be having, and all that without having to read. Am I supposed to be sighing here like I want? It's a. It's a real balance, a balancing act for us to not over direct, because it's going to interrupt the flow of the moment, but also to make sure that what they need to to get through the scene the way we hope they will is is in there. And, yeah, but and people may not go through the script more than once Like you said, people have lives and kids and dogs and you know lawns that need mowed. As I'm sitting here watching my grass growing out the window, I swear.
Speaker 6:It's just, it's just, it's very difficult to do all those things, and so there's, you know, the more we can provide for them quickly, and that's why things like color coding and and font coding and things like that can be a quick reference that they don't have to like read every time. And consistency is one of my major challenges too.
Speaker 4:But another thing that I think we have that is a blessing is that our work doesn't have to go through a million committees Like it's not, like we have to. It's basically I can write it, I can show it, I can write it. I can have a table read with my friends and they can give me feedback. I can produce it and I can write it. I can have a table read with my friends and they can give me feedback. I can produce it and I can put it out into the world. And that's how you get shows like, say, for example, small Victories. Imagine that show being on Disney+. That's a tough show, it's a great show, but I mean that's a show that would have died in. I mean, think about all the shows that you know. We hear stories about people like you know, girl in Space that was supposed to be. You know Girl in Space was being optioned and then it wasn't because of studio weird stuff, and you know somebody got fired or somebody got transferred or somebody bought something and we can make these things happen.
Speaker 1:We don't have to have a million people having input on our scripts, so yeah, well, I mean, knowing the team we've got here, most of you aren't the sole writer. You're doing many other jobs too editing, producing, publicizing, casting you know directing and I think that yeah yeah, there's, there's the whole whole super.
Speaker 1:So I think that perspective of your script is brilliant and I think think, as you go, it's like learning those things that really work for the teams that you're working with. So if you've got any solutions to any of the things we've posed today, then why not start a chat on the Audio Drama Hub or on any of our social media sites and tag us in? We'd love to join in with you to hear what you think. Yeah, definitely so, yeah, brilliant. You to see what hear what you think? Yeah, definitely, so, yeah, brilliant. Well, to summarize, for our finale, we'd love you to just give your last pitch for your own writing tool, your favorite right. Why do you think it's better than others and why people should use it to make their audio drama amazing? So, emily, go for it. It's me.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, no, that's not the only one. So this is Google Docs. It's free. It's free, you can edit offline, you can share with people super easily. It's, you know, it's fine and it's great. With iPad, you can scroll, it's really easy. It's super easy and, yeah, it's free. Everyone has it pretty much, and you can share the documents with everyone via email and it's live and you can be updating them live in the studio. So if somebody, you know, if you suddenly want to tweak a line because you've realized that you know something needs to change, you can literally change the document and there it is, live on everybody's screen. This is the line that it now is. It's free's flexible. I don't know if there's anything like that. Yeah, it's live, it's great.
Speaker 1:Super pitch. Thank you very much, brilliant.
Speaker 6:Shannon, I don't know that I would particularly advocate for Celtics over anything else. It's a perfectly good program. It's very functional. It does not have a lot of things Emily just mentioned, and one of the things I think would be really nice is if it exported in something besides a PDF, because then I could throw it into Google Docs and actually be able to do that live updating. But it's either a text, a TXT file, which is useless for me, or a PDF, and that makes it very hard to edit. So that function would be very nice to have. So yeah, celtics is fine, it works fine for me. I think there are probably options out there that are just as good. I think there's a lot of Celtics I haven't discovered which might have made me more of an advocate for it, but there you go.
Speaker 1:Thank you, shannon, super and Floyd.
Speaker 5:Yes, I think, listening to you guys and all these other fabulous programs and what they can do, I think Scrivener is probably good the way I came into it as a starter, because it sets out all the elements that you're going to need to be expressing, to be articulating in an audio script. And then, if you want to move on to the big guys, I just want to say to Shannon if you export to a PDF, you can export your PDF to Word.
Speaker 6:Yeah, but man, I'll tell you the formatting function. It just turns it into a garbledy-gook at that point, unfortunately. Oh right, yeah, no, because I was doing it. I tried that.
Speaker 5:It's not worth it but thanks, I didn't realize for ages that I could be exporting. Compiling that was the word I was using, compiling the script into word.
Speaker 1:So I was going to pdf and then I was, uh, changing it over to word every time you say the word word, my body flinches because I I have this weird phenomenon where the word document, the words, disappear for a paragraph. They just go and I can see the rest of it and I don't know why it's doing it. So I hate Word. I can't understand what's happening. Maybe I've got lots of windows open or something in the memories going. You're not going to see this, but it's secret. But I just hate using Word for that format reason and I do transpose a lot of the different scripts I get from wireless into a Word document so I can then edit and then transpose it back to the format that we can utilise for recording. But yeah, I'm finding Word very frustrating. So that was my Word rant.
Speaker 3:I'm quite proud to buy Sarah a computer made in the 2013. Really interesting, seriously.
Speaker 1:Yes, Brendan, fire away with your pitch for yours. Why do you love it so?
Speaker 3:Well, do you know what? I'm going to pitch for index cards because I could write without anything else. I couldn't write without index cards. If I can't stand back and look at the shape of the thing, know the flow of the thing is working where the arcs start, where they peak, where the reversals come, pinch points are, or whatever terminology you want to use. If I can't stand back and look at the skeleton, basically I've got a bag of bones.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I use Sheets for that.
Speaker 2:I've realised when you were talking about that I use Google Sheets to map out all of my story structure by scenes, according to character groups, and then I can also heat map with those. So I fill in the cells with, um, green, amber, red, depending on how high tension the scene is, and then I can see down on the spreadsheet. I can just scroll and say, okay, well, this episode has like 15 scenes and you know it, it has it's you know, very high tension episode or whatever, and I can see the. I can see all of that and I just realized I do all of that, but it's just in a, it's in a google sheet and, yeah, like now, I, I know that. I do that. I always, I always hear the stuff that writers do and I'm like, oh yeah, that sounds really, you know, professional and I should definitely be doing that.
Speaker 2:You know, like, you know what, when I'm a grown-up writer and I actually do this, and then I'm like, oh my God, I do that, but with a sheet I can't win it.
Speaker 3:There's literally a production company. I probably shouldn't name them, but I did a bit of work on a film for them last year and they wanted a Google spreadsheet with colored cells. Oh right, yes, tracking the A plot, the B plot and the C plot.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there we go. I think you can do similar things in Final Draft. Who was it? Now I can't remember her name, but I believe we have Space Junk. Is that Beth Crane? We?
Speaker 1:fix Space Junk, we fix Space Junk.
Speaker 4:Beth Crane she writes everything in an Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's in Word, in tabular form. So basically, she created like um a table basically, and she writes into the table format.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's another format.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's great, I've, I've seen that um in action and it works really well yeah I've told myself to at least try it.
Speaker 5:I've told myself I think with a lot of these you have to
Speaker 2:just try them and see if they fit suck it and see I've seen it done and I've seen it done badly and okay, it's because they didn't look up how you do it and it would have been so, definitely, look up how you do it and it's not so. It's like, um, there's a specific thing, it's like one column for name, one column for directions, one column for the speech, and they had just done name everything else and it was an absolute nightmare. I it was so sorry. So, yeah, if you're going to try the tabular format, look it up, make sure you, you it can be clear.
Speaker 1:But Well, team, what a super wealth of information you've shared today. Really, really appreciate you coming on and sharing.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your knowledge and your experience. I really, really appreciate it Truly. This has been fantastic, and getting to talk with other writers also always gives you that wind in your sails.
Speaker 5:I'm inspired, woo-hoo. Yeah, we'll get them. Tiger, I'm going to try more stuff.
Speaker 6:I went right from inspired to exhausted.
Speaker 1:You're both my friend, but yeah, seriously we really hope that you have the best of writing experiences from today forth and that everything just works like clockwork your actors behave themselves and you get some groovy accolades for the brilliance that you put out into this beautiful, crazy world. So thank you very much for joining us. Emily Inkpen, shannon Gayberry, floyd Kennedy and Brendan Connolly we really appreciate you coming on the show today. If you want to say ta-ta, you will hear us next time on AdWit, and thank you very much from me and Lindsay. Happy writing people. Thank you Bye-bye, bye, have a wonderful day.
Speaker 4:Keep writing, happy writing. I'm on TV. Hooray 6630 Productions.
