Podcaster Insider

For the last few weeks, as some of you will know, I've been producing a podcast over on Anchor. What you might not know (or perhaps don't really care about), is that portions of the podcast are actually scripted and others are just spoken.

There are many scripted podcasts out there (and most are of far better quality than mine), along with many that aren't scripts, in which case, the podcast is simply a recorded conversation. Both are great at their best of course. In the weeks I've been doing this though, I've come to notice one trick that I find works really well, when writing stuff for a podcast.

The basic breakdown of "The Saturday Show," as it currently stands is this:

1) The Opener and Greeting

2) In Other News (First Major Segment)

3) Weird Character Segue 

4) Brief monologue 

5) Feature Monologue (The Title Piece)

6) "Hey Bob" Skit

7) Fake Commercial

8) Closing Monologue

9) Closer and Send Off

Out of these nine parts of the show, about a third of it is purely ad-libbed. 

The opener and closer are both scripted, as is everything from the feature down. From the In Other News Segment to the mini-monologue, it's all off the top of my head. I like this mix of improv and scripted material just because it's a challenge for me. With the ad-libbed stuff, all I basically aim for is that, whatever I say, I try to make it funny. If I can't make it funny, I'll at least try for interesting and engaging. 

For the scripted stuff, however, where I'm literally just reading what I'm going to say off of either my kindle or my computer screen, I do try to keep one thing in mind: whatever I say, I have to make it interesting, but I also have to make it (and I'm sort of embarrassed to say this), easy for me to read.

Reading and speaking simultaneously has never been easy for me. For whatever reason--maybe simply lack of practice, maybe my dyslexia--I've never been good at it. Or, at least, good enough to make it sound smooth and natural. To make it easy on myself, I do one thing that I don't do for any other form of writing: I do my best to replicate my speaking voice on paper.

Not literally, of course. If I wrote exactly the way I speak, there would be a lot more ums, uhs, and likes in the pieces I do. But I aim to get as close to the spoken word as I can make the piece sound, if not extemporaneous, then at least conversational. It's really quite easy to do after that, because when you write closely to match the way you talk, thing roll of the tongue quite a bit easier. 

This whole podcasting thing has been a new, fun experience for me, especially since I had no idea what I was doing when I started. The people I initially started doing this for seem to enjoy it, which is always good to know. The question of how long I'll keep doing it is still up in the air, but being a full ten episodes in seems like a good start. It's been one long, on-going experiment, with things constantly changing. Adding new bits. Expanding old bits. Finding fresh things to explore to keep it interesting. 

Even when you're in the middle of a pandemic, one can always find new things to try. Who knows? You might end up uncovering something you actually enjoy.