1st Edition

Writing Audio Drama

By Tim Crook Copyright 2023
    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    238 Pages
    by Routledge

    Writing Audio Drama is a comprehensive and intelligent guide to writing sound drama for broadcasting and online production. The book uses new and original research on the history of writing radio plays in the UK and USA to explore how this has informed and developed the art form for more than 100 years.

    Audio drama in the context of podcasting is now experiencing a global and exponential expansion. Through analysis of examples of past and present writing, the author explains how to originate and craft drama which can explore deeply psychological and intimate themes and achieve emotional, truthful, entertaining, and thought-provoking impact. Practical analysis of the key factors required to write successful audio drama is covered in chapters focusing on audio play beginnings and openings, sound story dialogue, sustaining the sound story, plotting for sound drama and the best ways of ending audio plays. Each chapter is supported by extensive companion online resources expanding and supporting the writers and subjects discussed and explored, and extensive information on how to access online many exemplar and model sound dramas referenced in the chapters.

    This textbook will be an important resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules and courses on radio drama, theatre and media drama, audio theatre, audio drama, scriptwriting, media writing.

    Chapter 1 Radio Drama is Born and In Its Cradle

    Chapter 2 The Psychology of Writing and Listening

    Chapter 3 Instrumental utilitarianism in radio playwriting- the evolving thoughts of Val Gielgud

    Chapter 4 Achieving the Long Form Audio Drama

    Chapter 5 Beginning the Sound Story

    Chapter 6 Characterising the Sound Story

    Chapter 7 Dialogue and the Sound Story

    Chapter 8 Sustaining the Sound Story

    Chapter 9 Plotting the Sound Story

    Chapter 10 Ending the Sound Story

    Chapter 11 Film, Internet and Stage dimensions to Sound Story Telling

    Biography

    Tim Crook is an author, playwright, journalist, and academic who pioneered British independent production in audio drama in the 1980s and 1990s with UK co-productions with NPR in the USA, and new writing festivals and competitions.