How to Audio Drama: Your Team

This edition of How to Audio Drama comes with a thesis: auteur theory is not what it seems. In creative works, there is a concept that one person is the sole creative vision. Take the work of Stanley Kubrik: Kubrik is discussed as an auteur, someone whose creative vision is steeped in every choice of every film he made.

But here’s the truth: Kubrik didn’t make every single choice in every single film he made. He may have approved each edit, but he wasn’t editing in his studio. He may have approved every lighting choice, but he wasn’t holding onto each light.

Making a creative work, especially something as intricate as an audio drama, requires a solid team. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to not make your first audio drama alone. Let’s talk about how to go about choosing your collaborative partners. This edition won’t talk actors quite yet, but instead, choosing your co-writers (just trust me!), editor, and other creative partners who will help you form your work while you’re writing scripts.

Please have co-writers

Please have co-writers. I know. I know. You are very tied to your story. You have been told your whole life that stories are written by one person. You are too protective of your story to trust anyone else with it. I know. I know.

This is exactly why you need co-writers.

All too often, writers become married to each part of their story without seeing the forest for the trees. We might love a certain scene that fits strangely into the pacing, doesn’t hit quite the right plot beat, or doesn’t come across well in audio. It can be painstaking to take a step back from our own writing and truly kill our darlings, get rid of the things we love but just don’t work. It can sometimes be impossible to even notice if something doesn’t work until it’s too late. This is a reason you need a co-writer, or at least an editor.

All too often, writers also take on massive amounts of work that they do not need to do alone. Instead of having to do massive amounts of research for a topic you’re not familiar with, a co-writer can help with their knowledge, or at least with 50% of the research work. A co-writer can help you remember the word that’s on the tip of your tongue, rework a line that feels awkward, make suggestions when you feel stuck, and most importantly, help you actually write. They can write scenes or whole scripts. That is work that they can do that you don’t have to do. Your brain will have that time to think about all of the other moving parts when making an audio drama.

You don’t just have to take it from me. There’s a reason Welcome to Night Vale has two creators, and they talk about collaboration on this episode of their creative advice podcast, Start With This:

This goes for most films and TV shows. Plenty of films are written by a team of people, and TV shows often have writers rooms, with different writers taking on different episodes. What you might not realize about the “solitary” act of writing a novel, though, is that many novels are not an individual effort. When the publishing industry says “editor,” they do not mean someone who checks a book for typos. An editor in publishing is someone who hones each scene, each plot line, and each character arc closely with the writer. A good editor should be one step–maybe even a half-step–less involved than a co-writer. Everyone collaborates with their art. Nobody creates alone. You do not have to, and should not, hold yourself to that standard.

Remember that you are not the only one capable of fully understanding your world, your plot, and your characters. If that were true, you’d have no audience; nobody would be able to understand it. Opening yourself up to the vulnerability of trusting someone with your creative work is terrifying, but it’s so fulfilling. I can say without a doubt that if I had written VALENCE alone, it wouldn’t just be worse than it is now–it wouldn’t even be good.

Consider an antagonist writer

A concept I don’t see discussed often in writing circles is having someone “in charge” of your antagonist. Having a writer who specifically makes choices for your antagonist can complete so many goals so efficiently:

• Your antagonist will feel like a three-dimensional person, because the writer in charge of them should treat them like the protagonist of their own story
• The stakes will always feel high, because you cannot write solutions for your characters before you write difficult obstacles from your antagonist
• You will certainly be kept on your feet, which can be a fun writing practice
• Any twists or surprises from the antagonist will feel much more exciting and organic

Plenty of struggles between protagonists and antagonists are described as games of cat and mouse, games of chess, etc.–why not just bake that directly into your writing process?

I was inspired to have one of my collaborators be our “Bad Guy GM” after listening to the fantastic actual play podcast Fun City, which uses this mechanic in their game:

Make lists of collaborator “needs” and “wants”

Before you think about how to approach potential collaborators, think about what goals you need to accomplish with them, and what goals you want to accomplish with them.

List 1: Who do you need?

First, let’s start with a list of needs and wants for what roles you’re looking to fill. As a note, the word “producer” when it comes to a podcast means . . . essentially whatever a team needs it to mean. Some people use the term to mean “editor,” some people use the term to mean “organizer,” and some teams use the term to mean something else entirely. Because of this, I’m avoiding the term altogether here. You can’t make me define it. I shan’t.

Here’s a list of potential roles you may need or want to fill on your team:

• Head writer: This is probably you, right? This is the head of the writing team, the person who makes the final decisions when it comes to the scripts, the plot, etc.
• Showrunner: Also probably you. The showrunner is the person who makes all of the final decisions when it comes to everything regarding the podcast: the final casting decisions, the final say on episodes before they’re released, the final say on how internal conflicts are handled, etc.
• Co-writer: This is someone who writes with you, but is not the final say in writing decisions. They may write for specific characters, scenes, or episodes. They might write an equal amount as you–they just have less final sway.
• Script editor: Someone who looks over scripts and edits not just for typos, but also for things like sfx (sound effects) being labeled clearly, plot and character consistency, continuity, etc.
• Creative consultant: A creative consultant is someone who helps you write, but usually in a limited capacity. You might bring on a creative consultant to help be an antagonist writer, to help with a specific episode, etc. Usually, creative consultants do not write any part of the script–they help with the concepts, structure, and plot beats.
• Researcher: Someone who conducts research into niche fields, facts, or ideas you need to cover in your writing. They might find when a certain word started being used to avoid anachronisms, or they might look up how to pick a specific kind of lock.
• Graphic designer: Someone who creates the visual aspects of your podcast, like your cover art, images for marketing, and images to be used on your website.
• Visual artist: Someone who creates additional art for your podcast, like depictions of individual characters or scenes.
• Dialogue editor: Someone who edits together the audio dialogue from the individual takes from each actor.
• Sound designer: Someone who does the sound design sfx around the dialogue compiled by the dialogue editor. Often, these two roles are combined into one sound editor role, who also mixes and masters the finalized episodes.
• Composer: Someone who composes original music for your podcast. These are uncommon, so don’t feel embarrassed if you didn’t think about having a composer!
• Social media manager: Someone who runs your podcast’s social media accounts on a regular basis.
• Marketing manager: Someone who handles the marketing aspects of your podcast, like running ads, buying ads, etc. This role often includes the social media manager role.
• Website manager: Someone who manages the website for your podcast, like setting up your cast and crew page, updating when episodes are released, etc.
• Operations manager: Someone who takes care of scheduling, communications, deadlines, checking emails, etc.
• Accountant: Someone who looks over the finances and bookkeeping of your podcast.
• Entertainment attorney: An entertainment attorney is someone who can help you set up contracts and advocate for you if any legal problems arise with your podcast. Like a composer, this is certainly not someone most podcasters have on hand.
• Sensitivity readers: Sensitivity readers fulfill the role of looking over your content for accuracy and ethics when writing for marginalized voices in groups you usually don’t occupy. For instance, if you are writing a trans woman character and you are not a trans woman, you would benefit from hiring a sensitivity reader who is a trans woman.
• Transcriber: A transcriber is someone who transcribes your podcast so d/Deaf/HoH people can consume your podcast. Your podcast should have transcripts.

Your lists might looks like this:

Needs	Wants
Head writer and showrunner	Co-writer (2)
Co-writer (1)	Script editor
Sound editor	Composer
Operations manager	Social media manager
Accountant	Marketing manager
Transcriber	Entertainment attorney
Graphic designer	Sensitivity readers
Website manager	Story consultants
	Researcher
	Visual artist

Those lists might look scary. All of these roles are roles that should be compensated in some way, and that looks like a lot of money–but here’s where the beauty of double dipping comes into play. When you bring on collaborators, you can see what roles they can and want to fill.

For an example, here’s how my co-founders and I operate for VALENCE:

• Wil Williams:
  • Head writer
  • Showrunner
  • Graphic designer
  • Researcher
• Katie Youmans:
  • Co-writer
  • Researcher
  • Transcriber
• Anne Baird:
  • Creative consultant: Bad Guy GM
  • Accountant
  • Marketing and social media manager
  • Researcher
  • Website manager
  • Graphic designer
  • Operations manager
  • Script editor

And this leads us to list two:

List 2: The realistic “needs” and “wants” list

Different people on your team can fill different roles. Before thinking about your budget, think about how people might like to contribute in diferent ways. Once you know exactly which roles will be filled by whom, consult your budget, then make a second list based on who you think you’ll be able to afford.

List 3: Attribute “needs” and “wants”

Now that you knows which roles you need and want to fill, start thinking about what you want your creative team to feel like. My team has a heavy emphasis on collaboration, warmth, and communication, for instance: we want everyone on the team to feel like a part of the finished product, and we want everyone to be able to speak up comfortably if there’s an issue. Other productions might have more of a hierarchy or feeling of control; other productions might be relatively hands-off for everyone but the showrunner.

How involved do you want your team to be? How casual do you want them to be with each other? How much does prior audio drama experience mean to you? Do you want a team that has a good feel for comedy, a good feel for drama, a mix of both? Do you want your team to feel like a little family, or do you want your team to send you their work and be on their way?

Think about your working style wants and needs, and put those in a list too. Even if someone does great work, there will be friction if your working styles and expectations don’t mesh. Think about what you need from collaborators, not just in what they create, but in how they work.

Finding your team

Now that you know who and what you need, it’s time to start searching. How you find your team will completely depend on what you want your process to look like. If you want to have an open call for collaborators, you could build a form people can submit with previous work experience, etc., and post it on social media. Discord groups for podcasters, Facebook groups for podcasters, and hashtags like #PodernFamily and #AudioDramaSunday on Twitter can be helpful getting your word out.

But you might already have people in mind, and that’s great too. Reach out to them. Pitch your show to them, ask their rates, and see if they’re both interested and able to be worked into your budget.

Something you should consider is that not everyone on your team needs to have previous audio drama experiment. In my core team, I am the only person who had worked on podcasts before we began, and none of us had worked on audio dramas. This is because the people I brought on fulfilled every one of my wants and needs for working styles, and that has mattered so much more than experience. We’ve learned together, and because we all work well together, that’s worked as smoothly as it can.

How to Audio Drama is our weekly column documenting every piece of information you’d need to start your own audio drama (aka fiction podcast). The series can be read in full, or read volume by volume. You can use our table of contents to find each How to Audio Drama installment, and you can submit questions to our monthly How to Audio Drama advice column.