Listening to the Past Makes for a Better Drama
A Guest Editorial by Michael Sheridan

When I began work on my audio drama project, The Logan Chronicles, I was a little unsure how to proceed. I understood the concept of an audio drama, but after I wrote the script I just wasn’t happy with what was being developed. I found that the biggest challenge to writing an audio drama was to virtually throw out everything else I’d learned about storytelling.

Both in prose and in film, there is one basic rule: show, don’t tell.

It’s a standard practice and one of the most important rules you can learn. But, I had to throw this rule out the window. Cast it aside. If I was going to pull off telling this audio drama in an effective manner, I would simply have to break the one rule I learned never to violate.

So, I did. I sat, and I reworked the dialogue and found ways of telling the story that I would not normally use.

One way I did this was by studying old radio shows. They’re pretty easy to find via Bearshare or Kazaa or any other file swapping software. This is, of course, for researching and sampling only. Many of these old radio shows are available through Amazon or at your local music store. Either approach you take is up to you.

The first thing I listened to was the original recording of the War of the Worlds drama by Orson Welles in 1938. It’s not a traditional story, per say, but it does illustrate how a story can be told in an interesting manner via audio.

I followed this up by several episodes of The Shadow, a terrific series that really works to demonstrate how it’s done. I also caught one great bit of radio that featured Cary Grant. I don’t recall the name, and already deleted the file, but basically it was a spooky story about a couple who run out of gas one night on a deserted road. The radio broadcasts tell of a woman who has escaped from a mental institution and is on a murderous rampage in the area.

While stranded, the couple encounter a strange woman who claims to have seen the woman and is terrified. But, tempers quickly flair, as they fear she may actually be the killer.

This was a fantastic tale. But, what I noted most was the way they used sound. For the most part, the story takes place completely in the couple’s car. And the way they designed the sound, you feel as if you’re sitting in the car with them. Voice levels dropped and raised, moved left to right and right to left. It was a 3D environment of sound.

This really helped me, especially in one specific scene from my upcoming audio drama -- the idea of creating a sense of movement and distance. Plus, as I incorporated this into my work, it made my little drama sound so much better than I could have thought.

So, I implore all of you, if you’re looking to get into the audio drama world, take a few minutes and listen to the old timers do it right. You never know what you might learn.