Writing for Audio Theatre:
The Basics
An Introductory Essay By Roger GreggBased on a paper delivered to the ‘Introduction To Writing Audio Theatre’ Panel at the National Audio Theatre Festivals 2003. Copyright: Roger Gregg.Invariably when stalking an ineffable subject like ‘Writing for Audio Theatre’, one frequently must resort to what are at best equivocal over-simplified ‘How To’ constructs and dodgy reductionist schematics. Sometimes, for some individuals these figurative abstractions prove helpful in refining their approach to the craft, at others these constructs merely confuse. What follows is not meant to be a comprehensive discourse in logical sequence. I certainly make no claims to having a monopoly on ‘the answer’, ‘the formula’, ‘the secret’, ‘the key’ or ‘the font’. Fact is there isn’t any answer, formula, secret, key or font. Writing For Audio: The Tiger Hunt. |
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When setting out on the tiger hunt one rightly asks: ‘What do I need ? What is useful to catch a tiger ? A dart gun ? A telescope ? GPS unit ? Air-support ? - All the gadgets integrated with SWAT team efficiency as outlined in the U.S. Ranger tactical hostage retrieval handbook? There’s a kind of knee jerk instinct to toss everything at the tiger [whatever a tiger is.] But the question remains: will an overkill attack plan – automatically catch the tiger ? Not necessarily and in fact, probably not. All tactical elements do not ensure success. Why ? Because strategically, you first have to know what a tiger is. So the first thing, the most important premise, before you step off into the jungle is knowing what a tiger looks like, what it sounds like, how it acts, how it thinks, how it lives. Otherwise one easily falls into the tactical-technical trap of ‘more and better’. |
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| In writing for audio’s case this means blindly relying on more better music, more better special effects, more better words, more better technology, more better post production, D.S.P., Layers. Etc. But these production elements cannot save you or guarantee success. For as Douglas Adams, author of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy once warned: ‘an over indulgence in sound effects easily creates an irritating mish-mash which detracts from a strong script and fails to disguise a weak one’. They say if you intimately know the ways of a tiger, you can snare one with a hand spade. So what is the Tiger ? |
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As Adams says the tiger for us is a ‘strong script’. Firstly and most fundamentally, whether it is a play, a sketch, variety performance, a serial, comedy or straight, Audio theatre is pre-eminently theatre. Tim Crook, the former Head of Radio at Goldsmiths College, and author of RADIO DRAMA: THEORY & PRACTICE, expresses it succinctly when he notes: |
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‘All good theatre has the same ingredients for success. The principles are the same as those that apply to stage drama, television or film drama. The special characteristics and principles of radio drama writing do not dominate and override the need to communicate a good story, create substantial and engaging characters and sustain the interest of an audience’ The Good Strong Script.An audio drama or theatre production that works stems essentially
from a good, strong script – which, if produced and performed competently
with the right actors, judiciously employing the aural production elements
of sound, music, words, silences - catches and sustains the listener’s
interest. A good script entertains your audience, gets them caught
up in your characters and happenings and uses the elements of sound
to create a fully formed 3 dimensional world in their minds. Countless literary figures have debated this ‘good writing’ question since writing began. But whatever aesthetic theoretical or philosophical framework they have couched their answer in, there is an implicit pragmatic bottom line: However you define its minutiae, ‘good writing’ maintains interest.
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Whatever it does, and however it does it, even if it seems to disregard or flaunt the most commonly accepted rules and violates every proven formula, a script or production is a success if it maintains the audience’s interest and keeps them favourably engaged throughout. In any form of drama or performance there are errors, faults, weaknesses, gaffs, glitches, fluffs, mistakes, hiccups, but there is only one ultimate crime. The ultimate crime ? Inflicting boredom. As Tim Crook notes: ‘Boredom is not listed as one of the seven deadly sins, but for most people it is something to avoid. When this happens you do not exist as a dramatist.’
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Engaging The Listener.The audience must be engaged and held. For Audio Theatre, engagement means: The listener has listened, is listening and will keep listening. Without the good script, no amount of sound fx., music, celebrity performers or free coupons, can save it. A writer cannot let indifference set in. The listener can be horrified, terrified, shocked, offended, insulted, enraged, flabberghasted, stunned, amused, cursed, dumbfounded, perturbed, annoyed, exhilarated, but they can not be let slip away. You cannot be ignored. If the listener’s response is to ignore then they are not listening and the writer has lost. So what are the key elements in maintaining interest ? Again I present some of the basic notions in no particular order. I am not responsible for them and many critics have outlined them succinctly in the past. Clarity & Focus. |
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Perhaps the paramount concept that one hears bandied about by writers, producers, editors and directors is the supreme need for constant ‘Clarity’. Clarity and it’s cousin ‘Focus’. As the legendary Norman Corwin has adamantly stressed: ‘…clarity and being able to convey meaning, emotion, attitude, through understandable language is a sine qua non of radio. …Comprehensibility is a must. Listening to a programme should not be working on a crossword puzzle!’ So for America’s Poet Laureate of Radio, clarity is a ‘sine qua non’ , literally ‘without which not’. In other words this thing we call clarity is such an essential condition that without it, you simply cannot proceed to create valid audio theatre. |
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| We might define Clarity as assuring that the consciousness of the audience or listener is fixed on what you as the writer want them to fix on. A writer through their story premise, characters, plot and dialogue and also in the script directions regarding acting, line delivery, explanation and manipulation of sound cues and music notes, etc., is aware that the listener must be led along to clock certain cues at certain points in order to ‘be clear’. Achieving such clarity places special demands on someone writing for the Audio-aural medium. Visual ClarityIn film, the camera is an absolute dictator in terms of focus and clarity. The viewer sees only what the director intends and nothing else. Every shot is framed and focused with precision. Actors have their positions literally marked on the floor to ensure that they occupy the frame exactly as intended. In the visual mediums of the stage performing arts, directors and writers have long known that the eye instinctively follows motion. Suddenly having some one on stage reach inside their pocket results in the eyes of everyone in the audience darting to that movement. Actors know this as well - If you wish to upstage your fellow actor, jerk about, flinch or cock your head suddenly. Actors in the background are directed to make their movements ‘small’ or unobtrusive so as not to pull the focus from what the director wishes. Similarly the eye is attracted to the cessation of repeated activity. Have everyone in a scene dancing on a dance floor and then have one actor suddenly freeze, everyone in the audience will gaze at that actor standing still. In stage theatre, this natural instinct is further exploited by prudent direction and precision lighting to ensure that your audience clocks or takes note of what is important. These are just some of the visual methods of clarity and focus in Stage, T.V., Dance, and film. But we do not have ocular input in Audio, so we cannot use the visual sense, yet clarity demands that we create clear and focused visual images in the mind of the listener. Wait – did I just say ‘visual’ images ? Yes ‘visual’. A writer working in audio theatre seeks to create crisp vivid visuals in the mind of the listener. I should also add a good writer seeks to tap into all the other senses as well whenever the drama demands it. They all should be there. Not creating a comprehensive clear and focused ‘mind picture’ in the listener signals the failure to fully exploit this medium. Sadly it is all too common. A Complete World. |
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As Vincent McInerney notes in his book WRITING FOR AUDIO: ‘a good radio script should provide information for a complete world’. Douglas Adams explained this comprehensive sense goal thus: ‘I wanted the voices and the effects and the music to be seamlessly orchestrated as to create a coherent picture of the world’ Not surprisingly it’s the visual element that so often comes to the fore in Audio Theatre when constructing what Adams called this ‘picture of the world’. So many of the great Audio Producers think and express themselves through their audio work primarily in visual or cinematic terms and use cinematic language when describing their craft. Here’s just a couple examples: Tom Lopez of ZBS has described his approach as: ‘sort of like a filmmaker setting a scene in a visually interesting setting’. |
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| Dirk Maggs argues that: ‘Radio is much closer to film as a medium than television. It is much more a visual medium than television. Because it is as big as your imagination. The only thing that comes close to radio is film because the screen is that big and you sit there and it dwarfs you.’ Spike Mulligan, creator of the legendary GOON SHOW commenting on the evocative visual power of Radio, once noted that: ‘the pictures are better because they happen on the other side of your eyes’. So more specifically, what is clarity in audio ? One way to define it is keeping the listener aware of who, what, where, when, why and how. They cannot and will not be engaged for more than a matter of seconds if they don’t have enough grasp or handle on these basics. This is a fact. Without meaning or narrative, the sound becomes ‘clutter’ and noise – and there are precious few individuals who can tolerate listening attentively to noise for very long. The special challenges in writing and creating Audio Theatre are bound up with practical ways of ensuring that your audience sees the vivid pictures in their minds that you intend them to see, how much to see and when to see it. In Audio Theatre this must be done solely through aural means. Some factors to consider.Dialogue.Arguably Audio Theatre is dramatised pre-eminently by the characters. Character’s speak to each other in dialogue. In dialogue for audio, writers have to plant visual and sense cues in ways that simultaneously establish and develop their characters. |
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Here’s a short example from THE GOON SHOW: FX: EBB TIDE ON A GRAVEL BEACH CRUN: Ohhh – it’s quite windy on these cliffs. MINNIE: What a nice summer evening – typical English. CRUN: Mnk yes – the rain’s lovely and warm – I think I’ll take one of my sou’ westers off – here, hold my elephant gun. [GOON SHOW SCRIPT EXCERPT. Spike Mulligan. Show No. 102 5th. series.] |
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Now in real life, if you were standing on a windy cliff you would most likely simply say: ‘Oh it’s windy here’ or simply: ‘It’s windy’. The sound effect: ‘TIDE ON GRAVEL BEACH’ tells us we’re near the sea. Crun’s line tells us it’s windy and that we’re standing on cliffs overlooking the sea. This brief indicator establishes our setting. Also note the line: ‘Here, hold my elephant gun’. In real life we’d more likely say: ‘Here, hold this’ or simply ‘Here’. But we need to know they have an elephant gun and since a gun is silent unless firing, Mulligan puts in ‘elephant gun’, in the dialogue. Now we clearly see everything we need to clearly in our minds, two characters with wacky voices standing on a cliff with an elephant gun – already we sense there’s probably a surreal Goon-ish misadventure just around the corner. IndicatorsSo the language and dialogue, even so-called naturalistic language, has to be crafted to include verbal indicators which establish the pertinent factors. Good writing makes these un-natural indicators unobtrusive or stylistically integrated. Bad writing is content to leave such indicators strained and obvious. An example of bad writing might be:
The above we might describe as strained, awkward and unnatural dialogue replete with blatant indicators. It’s just plain bad. A better presentation of the same scene might be:
The cry ‘Taxi’ identifies the car. The sound effects do the rest. One line indicates a character’s apprehension about taking the trip. Script Notes on Delivery.Dialogue is embodied by words, not the written word but the word-as-spoken-and-heard. Without getting bogged down in the hermeneutics of verstehen, suffice to say that in vocal human intercourse more meaning can be carried in how words are spoken and heard than in the actual denotations of words themselves. Here again the dramatist is present in supplying the notes for particular lines which guide the director and actors into how the lines are intended. This can take the form of simple one-word notes such as ‘quietly’ or in ‘hushed menacing tone’. A writer here gives important clues regarding the subtext. For example: BOB: [IN A TERRIFIED MANNER] I am not frightened! You don’t scare me! Here the spoken words run counter to what is actually happening. It is the writer who makes this clear. |
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David Mamet argues against writing any stage directions for radio noting that; ‘If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, telling us how the character said it…isn’t going to aid the case’. While Mamet presents a strong case for clarity and precision in writing, there are in fact plenty of situations in practice where most writers find that simple line directions efficaciously quicken the production process. The writer also provides a general description of the voices of their
characters. For stage theatre, the playwright writes the visual qualities
of the setting and characters. But for audio theatre, the author gives
guidelines on the tonal qualities and vocal mannerisms of the characters
which help establish them in the mind’s eye of the listener. |
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An example might be: ‘BILL HICKEY: 60 year old truck driver, speaks with western gnarly cowboy twang, very bassy and gruff with a tendency to grunt and bark’. The Cast of Voices: Varied Sonic Palette.The writer creates a cast of characters that together form a sonic palette of varied and distinct voices. Generally no two characters should sound alike – unless for good reason. Having characters sound very alike creates unclarity. A simple ruse to achieve sonic clarity in the voices in many American OTR productions was to simply have characters played with diverse accents. Such as in the OTR ‘Tarzan’ adventures where American, English, Irish, French, German, ‘African Native’ and downright weird accents were regularly heard. In this way too it made it easy for actors to play several distinct parts in the same production. Throwing A Line. |
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| Audio writers are also sensitive of the need to ‘throw character’s a line’ to maintain clarity of the mental picture. For example, 3 people are in the room, but only two of them are talking. The two are arguing about intimate issues and have embarrassed the other character into silence. |
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The tendency after a minute or so, is to forget the presence of the non-speaking character. If several minutes elapse before the quiet character suddenly pipes up, the listener will be confused. The reaction will be: ‘Who is this guy again ?’ or ‘Where’d she come from ?’ Therefore to maintain a clear mental picture in the mind of the listener, a radio writer will ‘throw a line’ or ‘toss a line’ at these quiet characters to maintain the mental picture of the scene. A writer can also throw a line at the silent character again this informs the listener that there’s someone present who is silent. In film, stage, or television our eyes would do all this for us automatically. Pulling the Audience AlongThe audio writer never looses sight of creating that mental picture in the mind. Too much to-and-fro-ing and the listener can be easily lost.. The audience is held and pulled along by a tiny filament of spider’s web, crafted and spun out by the writer. Spin out things; characters, events, too slow, the filament sags, too fast, too much too soon, the fine strand snaps. Either way your listener disconnects and disengages. Paradoxically streaming out the filament at a sure and steady rate also causes disengagement since the result is monotony and boredom. Variation & DynamicsTherefore there must be dynamics and variation in pacing. Variation and dynamics relate to how much tension there is, or is not, boiling up in a scene and also by the pacing of the delivery and the intensity of the music and other production elements in the sound. The writer is the force crafting and orchestrating this. Simple short sentences automatically quicken the pace, longer lines for actors slow the pace – usually. Also elements of the soundscape, the particular sound effects, and the music all interact as characters in this regard. One Thing At a Time in the Spotlight. |
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| A dramatist never wants all their characters speaking at once – not
for long anyway. A character or element such as music might enter, subtly
let itself be known, and then be directed in the script to ‘recede to
background’ for most of the sequence of the scene, then directed to ‘surge
in intensity’ at a particular moment in the action. In this way the music performs along with the human characters in establishing and moving the scene. Once again, everything cannot be happening full tilt at once stage centre in the narrow follow spot of the listener’s mind. The skilled writer crafts the focus of the listener to zero in on one element at a time, in the order you wish them to take in your information. We might describe ‘One thing at a time in the spot light’ as an over-generalised rule, but generally it holds true.
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The Height of Folly. |
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For an Audio Dramatist to write with the presumption that the listener will need to listen several times over to the production in order to ‘get it’, is the height of folly. It is an arrogant dereliction of axiomatic dramatic principles, patently wrong, self-defeating and simply stupid. |
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Here is the most salient fact: If the listener is not engaged on the very first listen, then there will never be subsequent listenings. I’m afraid to say that some misguided audio theatre dramatists need to cut these words out and staple them to their foreheads. There’s a balance here between the clarity and engagement of the first riveting listening experience and crafting a depth of layers which might be tapped into on subsequent listens. Character Profile.Most dramatists believe that it usually starts with Character: Building Character Profiles is often a helpful exercise in starting out. It is highly recommended that a dramatist write out a description of their central characters. Make a probing analysis of them. Answer the questions: What makes them tick? What are their dark secrets, foibles, flaws, hang ups etc. Describe their outward life and behaviour, and scrutinise their inner lives. Again writing with particular actors in mind has immense advantages in this regard. Knowing that particular actor can really bring to life certain types of character and tune in to your wavelength, sometimes can almost make a character write itself. As you write you hear just how a particular actor will embody and bring to life your character. This also means you’re playing to the actor’s strengths which is nearly always desirable. The right actors performing in such custom-tailored roles can make the writer appear better than perhaps they actually are. The wrong actors can destroy ANY script – no matter how good. Shakespeare for example is considered by many to be fairly handy at this drama racket, yet have you ever suffered through a bad Shakespeare production? Burrrr, Horrendous. |
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Tom Lopez of ZBS is just one example of someone writing with particular actors in mind. Lopez sums it up when he says: ‘You cast the right actors and they do the work for you.’ In fact when a writer has the right actors in mind for the parts, they are already helping to do the work for you, the moment writing begins since already the characters have very specific voices and mannerisms in the writer’s mind.
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Things Begin To Happen...If you’re clear about the character’s you’ve created, just put them in a situation and already things begin to happen. If a writer is unclear about their central characters, not having a definite insight on what makes them tick, then dithering occurs and it makes the writing process far more problematic. In his book WRITING FOR RADIO, Vincent McInherney argues that learning to write radio properly means: ‘…developing the facility to produce solid, well-constructed, mindvisible scripts which rely solely on words.’ Here I take issue with McInherney when he says ‘solely on words’. I’d be inclined to say ‘solely on meaningful sounds’. Words are what the actors speak, but there are also other ‘characters’ present acting in their own way adding to the audio theatrical experience. These are of course sound effects, the general soundscape, silence and music. |
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The elements of meaningful sound besides the ‘words’ are not always present nor do they need to be. Consider Dylan Thomas’s famous ‘Under Milk Wood’, consistently a world wide best seller in the BBC radio catalogue since its first broadcast nearly 50 years ago. |
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Described by Thomas as ‘a play for voices’, Under Milkwood has little music and relatively few sound effects – few are stipulated in the script and few are required. Thomas’s achieves most of his intent through his wonderfully stylised use of finely honed poetic language. For a large audience it works - end of story. Fact is: sometimes the word alone is enough – adding anything else just detracts. Simple works best – 99% of the time. To this day the standard BBC ‘Play In The Afternoon’, and RTE Radio Drama scene transition is most commonly indicated by a simple fade to silence. This technique is simple, quick to produce, clear and it works. Admittedly it’s not particularly imaginative or adventurous nor does it exploit the potential of the medium, but again it works. It is a feature of a particularly sparse, quick turn-around production style and suited to productions under time pressure. This is just one of many perfectly legitimate styles of production. Voice Effects.Another production element that the Audio writer is aware of and may stipulate in the writing, are the various voice treatments and DSP effects which can be applied to the voice. Location for example can be established by the ‘over the phone’,walkie-talkie, intercoms, filter fx. Here’s a snippet from a 1945 Superman radio script:
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In the above we see that it is the writer who identifies and manipulates not only the actor’s lines and how they are delivered, but also the sound effects, how long they last, and any special treatments necessary on certain voices. Treatments can also be used to sonically convey the psychological, or magical states of characters and locations. For example a writer might specify a floating dreaming reverse reverb applied to the voice of an actor playing a ghost at a séance. |
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MusicMusic when used properly will heighten emotion, establish mood and amplify the action. Music can subliminally indicate or hint at the significance of a character or setting. Music [and Sound fx.] can even be an actual character like the tweaking bird flute in Beethoven’s sixth symphony or the rhythmic pulse of a non-speaking robot or panting monster. Music can foreshadow the implications of events and characters. It can be used as a costume to bring across the symbolic significance of a character, event or setting. Music: Underscore & Transitions.Music can happen under the dialogue and action fx of a scene or sequence of a scene. Music can also stand separately as signposts to demarcate the scene transitions. In this sense music can act as the stage curtain, the proscenium arch and the lighting, the ‘fade outs’, acting aurally to introduce and frame each scene. Wrongly used, Music creates confusion which undermines your focus. Music can all too easily muddle and clutter a scene and compete with the central thrust of your intent. Music can destroy clarity. And this is not due solely to the mix, there are occasion where the presence of any music detracts from the focus. Bad or the wrong music, like a poor actor can deflate a production that otherwise might have worked. In Audio Theatre music as well as all sound elements, should be seen as servants to the overall dramatic intent of the production. Sound effects. |
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Generally sound effects occur can in two ways: specific and general. They can be very specific sounds or spot effects directly relevant to the action such as a drink being poured. They can also be more general location sounds and ambiences of locations such as large cave reverb, space ship bridge hum, hushed library, or train station. |
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A writer notes the use of sound effects in the Audio script also indicating when they enter, whether they go under certain lines and if they are long, at which point they cease or fade. Some writers keep sound cues very simple and sparse. An example might be Tom Stoppard’s radio play ‘The Dog It Was That Died’. In one long major scene the only sound effect or direction that occurs is: ‘INTERIOR. HOSPITAL’. That’s it, 4 pages of a long scene and that’s the only sound cue Stoppard employs. |
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In the context of Stoppard’s play, this makes perfect sense since the intended focus is exclusively the dialogue exchange between his 2 characters. Stoppard knows and intends that intimacy and indeed, claustrophobic intensity can be achieved in this way. Once we know they’re speaking inside a hospital that’s all we need to know. Any other sounds would be intrusive and pull away from Stoppard’s focus. By the way there is no music indicated either. In fact in his entire published volume of radio plays, I don’t recall Stoppard indicating the use of music once – except when a character is fiddling with a tape machine. Music is not necessary to achieve his intent, so it is not there. A different writer, or a director willing to argue with Stoppard’s stylistic intent, and music might very well be used. |
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At the opposite end, other writers have a virtual field day stipulating and describing in great detail their desired sound effects. Sometimes the imagination runs rampant and Producer’s have to create sounds that live up to things like:
From Episode ‘Fit the Tenth’. THE HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. Note that Adams specifies the sound of ‘thick smoke’, a ‘few vague lights’ and ‘ill defined shapes’. A sympathetic Producer will take these indications and convey them expressionistically in sound. Moreover since Adams is writing with specific actor’s in mind he already hears in his head how it will be carried off by his cast. Here’s another equally creative sound effects cue from a Spike Mulligan GOON SHOW script. In this scene a character is offered a cocktail to drink. Mulligan writes: ‘Make with the effects of eight jet planes, a police sire, the victim of a maniacal strangler, the San Francisco earthquake and the hydrogen bomb. It dies away in a strangled sob and hiss. The verdict on the cocktail follows – ‘Quite nice’. Silence.In considering the sounds possible on our sonic palette we must of course recognise the important role of silence. Silence is the ‘hole’ which on it’s own is meaningless. In theatre, silence is framed and given meaning by the dramatic context. Without a carefully crafted dramatic context, silence may still at best be equivocal. The goal is to make silence more poignant and louder than any word, sound effect or piece of music. |
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It is arguable that the most profound, poignant and striking statements are made in silences. A good dramatist knows this and is careful to intentionally construct eloquent silences. As Dylan Thomas notes in his directions from time to time in Under Milk Wood: ‘Long Pause’ The pause is there to emphasis what has just occurred and to provide a moment to let the significance sink in. Without it the dramatic intent is trampled. Norman Corwin has described some of the silences in Radio Drama, noting that: ‘There are all kinds of silences. Dread silences and spooky silences and heavy silences and restful silences. There’s a whole vocabulary of silences alone.’ |
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The Through-Line.It is important to remember when writing, where you are placing the main focus in every moment of the production. Where a writer moves their focus from moment to moment is informed and guided by the big picture. In this light, all the separate production elements, however one may demarcate them, underscore music, transition music, sound scape, spot fx., silences, are all servants of the ‘through line’ of the dramatic thrust. They are subject to the same rules which govern the editing of the dialogue. With any intended sound effect or music, the question should be asked: Why is this here ? Is this necessary ? How do we justify it’s presence ? Stylisation.Here stylistic considerations have much bearing. For example the decision might be made by the writer that their work should be produced to sound like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. This means finding documentary music. It also means recording scenes with realistic room sounds, less than optimal microphone placements, ill-timed intrusive background noise etc, which in other productions might be considered ‘too roomy’ or just plain wrong. But these decisions are justified by the stylistic intent. The Engaging CharacterMost dramatists concur that it is the human characters [or human-like] which are most important in engaging listeners and creating captivating work. This human-relevance factor also includes anthropomorphic portrayals of animals, elements, and personifications of abstract principles. This is why it is crucial to create a main character or central character’s that listener’s will be interested in. What is commonly known as a character that you either love or love to hate. Without this charisma which fascinates, listeners are asked to engage with a character they just don’t care about. If they don’t care? Then there’s no drama, no tension, no interest, and no listeners. |
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Despite the importance of creepy sound effects and terrifying atmospherics and scary music, the great radio horror dramatist Arch Oboler once famously quipped: ‘I don’t write about sound effects, I write about people’. Oboler understood that it was the people, the characters in their dilemmas which made any drama or theatrical performance appealing. Having stressed so much the importance of clarity and focus, we must also say that there is a balance to clarity. It is possible to be overly concerned with clarity ? To direct listeners with too much focus ? Yes, it’s possible in the sense that once something is sufficiently established, the drama must move on and not needlessly linger. |
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Lingering, repetition or harping on leads to boredom. It also adds fat to the dramatic structure. Lingering can be unnecessary repetitive exposition or whimsical tangents, overly long passages of music, excessively layered sound effects and pauses carried for too many beats. Closure: Drawing the audience in.Part of having enough clarity but not too much, involves engaging the audience or listeners in what some educational psychologists call ‘Closure’. This is not the ‘happy ending’ resolution closure most commonly discussed, but rather the closure which relates to that innate capacity of the human mind to fill in the gaps between snippets of information. For example if you draw four dots near the four corners of a black board and ask ‘What shape have I drawn ?’ People will naturally reply ‘A rectangle’. Yet all you’ve drawn are four dots indicating the corner points of a rectangle. In their minds they have detected a pattern, filled in the gaps, connected the dots and put a name to the resulting shape. Presenting them with just the four dots, you’ve made them work. You’ve engaged their minds. Dramatists and poets are aware of this ‘closure’ phenomenon and utilize it to draw their audience in, and get them to collaborate. It also happens in Zen inspired painting. It’s the secret of why murder mysteries, and tantalizing puzzles attract such large followings. This type of closure underlies the strength of using symbols and metaphors in drama. But the good dramatist, lyricist or poet, never or very seldom fills in the gaps by elucidating them. The symbol intrigues the listener and they become engaged in the process of deciphering the symbol’s meanings and implications. A good dramatist will always say to the audience: ‘2 plus 2 equals…’ and leave it at that. Bad drama says: ‘2 plus 2 equals 4!’. Spelling it out spoon feeds your audience and hits them over the head with your ‘intended meaning’ and results in boredom, disaffection and disengagement. Tediously filling in all the blanks easily becomes preaching, self-congratulatory pedantry or message laden propaganda, it does not make for engaging or provoking drama. The ‘trick’ is to give the listener just enough but no more. As David Mamet says in his essay ‘Radio Drama’: |
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| ‘To be effective, the drama must induce us to suspend our rational judgement, and to follow the internal logic of the piece, so that our pleasure (our cure) is the release at the end of the story. We enjoy the happiness of being a participant in the process of solution, rather than the intellectual achievement of having observed the process of construction. ’ |
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Clay vs. Marble: How writer’s work.So many persons aspiring to write view the undertaking as akin to sculpting ‘Great Art’ in hallowed Marble. If you strike too hard with your hammer and chisel in marble, you can have your figure’s head fall off and the whole block of marble irreparably damaged. For indeed making a mistake in marble is irredeemable. Besides a wastebasket filled with crumpled rejected first pages, this hallowed marble approach results in impotent writing blocks. Writing isn’t at all like hammering at precious marble where every strike must be dealt with precision. Writing is actually far more like moulding a figure in soft malleable clay. With soft clay you slap some on, pull some off, slap a bit here. Adjust here. Lengthen here. Shorten there. Try something on a whim just to see if it works, if it does, leave it, if it doesn’t, remove it. Head fall off ? No big deal, just remould another one. Too much clay? Then scrape some away. No problem. This fashioning and refashioning is the way writing works. Editing. |
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Editing and refashioning is not a sign of weakness or failure, but an integral part of the process. Writing is like panning for gold in a murky river. Without pulling up a lot of mud and river rock, you’ll never get the gold. If you expect nothing but gold nuggets every time you pull your pan up, you’re only setting yourself up for heartache and failure. Pulling up the mud should be welcomed – especially in that first draft. Every bit of mud sifted through gets you closer to the gold. A sign of a bad writer is to believe that everything they spew onto the page is priceless gold. There is almost always a tendency to overwrite – experienced writers recognise this and recognise there’s always some muck that needs sifting. |
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The muck is often the writer thinking out loud on the page, circling around the adversary, letting ideas rush out and pour onto the page without getting stuck into finer details. If there’s heavy thematic issues involved writers will often release thematic statements in the mouths of characters in staid declamations rather than in genuine dialogue. This is more mud. It is necessary to sift through to finally arrive at a natural flowing, stylistically consistent dialogue and action that dramatically embodies your thematics rather than declaims them. ‘Showing is much more important than saying’ as Wittgenstein rightly noted. Talking about abstractions rather than demonstrating them leads to the dereliction of dramatic engagement straight into boredom. So in the early drafts let the mud flow, muck and all, then pair and strip away till you get to the nuggets. Here’s how Geoffrey Perkins the BBC Producer of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To the Galaxy described Douglas Adams’s intensive rewriting and editing process: ‘Four days before one of the Hitch-Hiker’s recordings he had written only eight pages of script. He assured me he could finish it on time. On the day of the recording after four days of furious writing, the eight pages had shrunk to six’. Ruthless Editing.Rewriting & Editing is necessary to fashion any kind of good writing. Line by line answer these questions: Is this necessary ? Is this repeating what’s already been said ? Is it establishing what’s already established ? Is this adding a necessary element to move the play forward ? Can I say this more sharply in fewer words? If it’s just a funny gag that’s an entertaining embellishment, can you afford to keep it in ? An Outline.Here we must also stress the importance of writing with an outline – along with the Character descriptions noted earlier. Crafting a detailed treatment is most often helpful to make a start and guide you to where you go next. An outline also informs you of the overall thrust of your story, it lays out the journey your characters make in terms of development, how the plot arcs, and how it all satisfactorily resolves with a pay off. An outline can fit on a page, or it can be quite detailed and run many pages with snippets of dialogue, notes about sound effects and music. Whatever works. Many writers spend more time crafting their central character descriptions and drafting a detailed outline, than in writing their scripts. If ironing out the bugs and glitches in the design, works for them, then fine. Remember Shakespeare had his story outlines before he crafted his plays. And sometimes the outline is useful if only to provide something to deviate or detour away from. A solid bridge cannot be built without a design – strong scripts are written with some kind of outline [even if it only vaguely swirls round in the author’s inebriated mind]. Impose A Time SlotIt’s also helpful to set a time limit or a time slot, and stick to it. Such as 28 minutes or 44 minutes. Do not settle for something that simply came out as long as it came out. Impose a discipline on the text. Cut the fat off.This is also especially true for short comedy sketches where pacing and timing are crucial. As David Mamet notes: ‘Writing for radio forces you and teaches you to stick to the channel, which is to say the story. The story is all there is to the theatre – the rest is just packaging, and that is the lesson of radio.’ Don’t be deceived: good writing does not rely on spontaneity or inspired accident. Despite his sandals, there is truth in Aristotle’s Golden Rule of unity of action: Every word, every line, every element, every scene must serve a dramatic purpose in terms of the play’s characterisations and plot development. Audiences and listeners often assume that if something sounds joyously irreverent, surrealistically absurd or candidly off-the-cuff, that it is indeed so. This is not the case. Eric Sykes a contributor to the furiously surrealist GOON SHOW, once reflected their audiences often wrongly assumed that: ‘..The Goon Show sounded like it was all just cobbled together and they were saying the first thing that came into their heads, but that’s the secret of good writing. The script was all written down and they were actually standing there reading it. When Spike finished his script, or I handed in a script when I was involved, in was nearly all there – every word. There was nothing haphazard about it and there was very little room for any unscripted improvisation or ad-libs.’ |
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While working together on the Tertiary Phase of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, I had to the chance to question writer/performer Chris Langham about the scripts of his award winning mock-u-mentary series PEOPLE LIKE US. I asked Langham if to achieve the convincing off-the—cuff naturalism he allowed a certain amount of improvisation. He answer was emphatic: ‘No! Everything was scripted in minute detail, right down to every coma!’ |
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Drama: An event in time.One of the main characteristics that separate Drama from other fiction writing is that Drama or Performance, is an event that happens in time. This is important to bear in mind, as it underlines the important difference between the script and the play. A script is printed on paper. It is the blueprint of something concrete, but not the concrete thing itself. The fruition of the script is the play or performance. The play or sketch is performed. It happens in time. A 'play' is something a person – your listener - experiences. Without an audience, it’s not a play, it’s a rehearsal or a printed script on a page. A 'script' is something a person reads. The element of pacing and the elements of performance is however implanted or encoded in the writing. Time and its effects on an audience is a supremely important factor. This isn’t just because of having to fit a limited time slot or having to break for commercial. It also has to do with the attention span of a listener, the relation between the incline of dramatic action and the climax and resolution. You can only tease them for so long without giving them the payoff. The play vs. the script.Since a dramatist’s goal is a play and not a script, it follows that the real product is not the printed text, - it is what is absorbed by the audience. Therefore the real test of the dramatist’s work comes not in reading the script but in experiencing the play. This is why for example in radio advertising, major accounts most often pay to have demos made of their proposed ads for their market research. The radio ad script is never shown to their target audience or market sample, but the demo of the actual ad is played to them. Because again, the real test of the writing of a radio ad is not on the page, it’s in the production, the delivery, the performance. The same is true for audio theatre. Since audio theatre is about plays and not scripts, it is therefore not ideal for young writer’s to rest content with an abstract critique of their script. Critiquing the script when heard performed/rehearsed by actors is far better. For very inexperienced writers, workshoping their draft script is best of all. This is an ideal learning environment for a dramatic writer. This is why so many of the best dramatists are, or started out as actors.- Shakespeare included. Being actors, they were able to tap directly into the natural workshop environment of their fellow performers, present their colleagues with their scripts, work on them, and even eventually staging them. Collective Writing. |
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Some performers take this collective approach a step further and write collectively. The legendary American audio comedy troupe, The Firesign Theatre is a good example of this. As David Ossman notes writing collectively with Firesign imposes a rigorous discipline in a no holds barred critical atmosphere: |
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‘We have to make us laugh as a group. And it has to be clear to everyone. I have sat hours at a time while one or another person in the group is saying ‘I don’t understand that’. ‘I don’t understand that’ and it might have been something I’d written and I’d say; ‘I understand it completely and here’s what it means!’ But still ‘I don’t understand that’. ‘Well let’s rewrite it so you understand it.’ And this process of each one of us understanding it, being as we are different people and think differently, often comes up with things that are beyond understanding. … It’s quite exhausting to group write and always has been. It takes everything out of you. … all of us write and are perfectly happy with our writing. And I don’t think anybody likes to be rewritten. But you hand over your work to the group and step back from it. |
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You can’t hold on to it and its hard not to hold onto something that you yourself have written’.. So Firesign enjoys the luxury of an ever-present critical sounding board that brings script drafts to life and at the same time critiques them. Not all of us are in, or want to write in, such a collective situation. |
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Testing the script.But whatever the circumstance, at the very least always read the script out loud. The timings and rhythms of the repartee imagined in a writer’s head are not the actual timings and rhythms in sound. This is the fault of almost every young copywriter. Over and over young copywriter’s in advertising come up with 35 or 40 seconds worth of words trying to fit comfortably into a 30 second ad. What the writer imagines will prove fast paced dialogue
may seem so on the page but when subsequently performed with all the
colour and depth of a full blown delivery, the pacing may not be fast
at all. If the writer wants ‘fast’ and needs fast, then it’s only
the rehearsal performance that will tell them a re-write or editing
is necessary. |
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The opposite can also occur. Things can race ahead too quickly in a fast forward manner with the characters pouring forth their emotive climatic denouement while the listener is still wondering ‘Wait, where are we again? How did we get here ?’ Again reading aloud helps identify this fast-forwarding. It may have been clear to the writer how the drama moved ahead, but not to the listener. Unlike the novel or short story, there are special challenges in writing
‘theatre’ or ‘drama’ because the real proof only comes in the art’s
true fruition in performance. It’s the realised concrete bridge that
carries people across not the paper blueprint of the bridge. |
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The Bicycle.In this sense dramatic writing is like learning to ride a bicycle. We can draw pictures
of bicycles on the blackboard. Read histories of bicycles.
Get a job with the New York Times as the Bicycle Critic. We might
even be a N.Y.U. Professor of ‘Bicycle Theory’. But the incontrovertible
truth is one only learns to ride a bicycle by getting up on one and
riding it. You fall over a few times and keep trying IN
PRACTISE till you get the knack of riding a bicycle-.or in some cases
don't! So too, many ride the bicycle quite well without knowing any
bicycle theory or history. The reality of course is that we are not all in the same place, from the same place or even heading in the same direction. We each have different resources at our disposal and do not all have the luxury of having a pool of actors available to workshop our script ideas. But again at the very least a script should be read aloud. ‘The Beginning is Everything.’Another aspect of the performance-happening-in- time, is that the beginning is everything. This is vital and cannot be over stressed. In a sense those first 60 seconds count more than the rest of the drama. If the arrowhead doesn’t strike neither will the shaft which follows. |
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A writer must take steps to hook the listener with the first few steps out of the starting blocks. Miss your chance here by inflicting boredom, and your listener is gone. They simply won’t be around to hear and experience the ‘really good bits’ which happen at the end of minute 13. Whether on CD, tape, or off the radio, for audio theatre, there is no captive audience. As Mc Inherney rightly says: ‘oblivion is no further away that the ‘off’ button…’ Since the ‘beginning is everything’, it is important to somehow begin an audio theatre work with significance. Start with something of some kind of intensity that immediately arrests and intrigues the listener. There’s no magic formula, - though James Bond always opens with a high action sequence. It could be action, it could also be the whisper of a curiously cryptic spoken line, a mysterious sound, 4 bars of a funny musical tune. Whatever it is it should be stimulating and hook the listener. |
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Phil Proctor, of THE FIRESIGN THEATRE hammers home this need for
realistic criticism arguing emphatically that: ‘…those who write, create,
produce and direct Audio Theatre, have to be very critical.
It’s true in all art forms. You have to put yourself in the position
of being the audience. What would I feel like if I heard this
person doing this part? Would I believe this person? Does it work?
Are they bringing enough colour and inventiveness and insight to the
part? … If they can’t, they shouldn’t do it.’ |
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Limitless Opportunity.Audio theatre undoubtedly presents special challenges but also affords limitless opportunity. It presents the writer with an infinite range of possibilities from focusing on the minutiae of intimate character interplay to fast moving wide-screen epic action adventure, to dart about the outer reaches of the universe to crafting a confessional portrait of an individual’s inner soul, to write stylistically crafting heightened ornate prose, witty sharp dialogue, to concretise and humanize abstractions… I’ll stop now because the possibilities are endless .. |
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Noted award winning audio dramatist Yuri Rasovsky notes that: ‘…not even with all the digital special effects now available to cinema, can you do in a film or visually, what you can do just by suggesting it with sound and dialogue. In addition to which it’s a great medium for a writer because it’s a way to combine story telling and literary values normally found in print fiction, with drama. It becomes very difficult in any other dramatic medium, but it’s natural to radio.’ |
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| David Mamet notes that radio drama; ‘needs inventive actors, an inventive sound-effects person and a good script. You can produce it for next to nothing. The writer and the actor can both practice and perfect their trade away from the countervailing influence of producers, critics, and money; and if it doesn’t work they can do another one just as simply and cheaply without ruining either their career or a large hunk of risk capital…’ Dirk Maggs sums it up: ‘radio can do anything, go anywhere for nothing.’ Roger GreggDublin, Ireland.
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