How to Audio Drama: Your Characters

March 30, 2020 7:54 am

Last updated on April 6th, 2020

Even with a plot-focused audio drama, your characters are the most important key in making your story resonate with listeners. You can’t count on character design or facial expressions to make your characters memorable. So how do you construct characters that leave a lasting impression when all you have is audio?

And what does any of this have to do with Mean Girls?

Be practical

In any other medium, you can build a cast of characters based on more or less whatever is in your mind. In audio, this is true, but it helps a great deal to have some pointed variety in demographics. If all your characters are similar, they’re more likely to sound similar. If your audience can’t tell your voices apart, they’re going to have a hard time telling the characters apart even if those characters have nothing else in common.

Achieving different timbre (the tone color) of voices can be done within a single demographic, but it’s also a good reason to add plenty of variety to your cast. Having differences in race, age, gender, nationality, etc. is a way to not just make sure each character sounds distinct, but also add some inclusion to your cast–as long as you make sure the people from those demographics are playing the characters from those demographics, of course.

And, of course, when making your characters, you also need to be aware of your budget. Along with your sound design budget, your acting budget is going to take up the most of your allocated finances. Having a bigger cast means more actors you’ll need to pay. Even if you pay actors a small stipend, those stack up quickly if you let your cast of characters get out of hand.

Character building tools

I am, perhaps, character-obsessive. When I know a character well enough, I could answer virtually any question about them off the cuff. These questions will probably never come up in any audio, and they shouldn’t–instead, what matters is that I think of my characters as fully-developed people. Getting to that stage isn’t always easy, especially if you have little in common with a character–but luckily, there’s a whole wide world of character-building tools you can use.

Character questionnaires

Character questionnaires are probably the quickest and easiest way to get to know a character well. When you answer, I recommend going with your gut versus thinking too closely about how you answer, at least initially. Use your first reactions. People are weird and multi-layered. If something doesn’t seem to fit in with a character’s archetype when you answer, that’s good. That’s realistic. People aren’t archetypes.

Because I treat my characters like real people, I also enjoy doing personality quizzes for real people on their behalf–quizzes like the Meyers-Briggs, Enneagram, and yes, the occasional Buzzfeed quiz.

Make Pinterest boards

When talking settings, I explained my love for Pinterest boards–but I love them even more for character development. Knowing the visuals around a character help me understand them better–everything from the clothes they wear and where they live to just a general aesthetic vibe. Having a Pinterest board for each character helps me stay grounded in how that character feels.

Take, for instance, the differences between my boards for Liam, the protagonist of VALENCE:

To the Pinterest board for his best friend, Flynn:

Just by looking at each image, I know who these characters are. By putting them next to each other and declaring that these two are best friends, though–that’s when stories start to emerge.

Make playlists

Like Pinterest boards, playlists are a fun way to get to know the feel of a character. Is your character drawn to certain genres, tones, or even instruments? Is there a difference between songs that make you think of your character and songs they’d actually like? Do they have different playlists for different moods, occasions, seasons? What do they listen to when working out, throwing a party, or full-on sobbing?

Having these playlists on hand is also great for mood music while writing. If you’re writing a scene that focuses heavily on one character, playing their playlists as you chug through dialogue will keep the focus on that character.

Types of characters

Your protagonist

The first thing you should keep in mind when building your protagonist is your premise. Your protagonist is going to be how listeners engage most with the point of the story you’re trying to tell. Build a protagonist that is, in some way, in line with the point of the story–even if they don’t agree with that point initially.

Take, for instance, protagonist Cady from classic teen movie Mean Girls. When Cady arrives at her new school, she feels like an outcast. Her new friends, also outcasts, explains what seems to be the point of the story: there is a power imbalance in school as lead by the pretty and popular “Plastics,” girls who are, you know, mean. When the Plastics show interest in Cady, Cady decides to take them down from the inside with plays on manipulation and sabotage.

Cady seems to be in line with the story’s point, but she isn’t–because the point of the story isn’t that justice must be brought, no matter how mercilessly, to those who abuse power. The point of the story is that power itself sows the seeds of cruelty if not kept in check. The point is that girls shouldn’t be, you know, mean. Eventually, Cady realizes this and sets her path straight.

This is why Cady is an interesting protagonist. She is the vehicle for driving the purpose of the story. We are introduced to the conflict via Cady, and we respond to Cady’s frustration with the Plastics. We see how the conflict affects Cady when she’s new to the school. Cady is, ultimately, the one who causes change–both for better and for worse. Cady is not a mouthpiece for the point of the story, nor for the writers; she’s not saying things like, “These girls are mean!” or, “I have learned that girls should not be mean.” She’s a complicated character with nuance who experiences the story so the audience can learn through her.

No matter who your protagonist is, they will be your main point of attachment for your audience. They should be complex, flawed, and somehow at least a little relatable. They will drive the premise of the story and help impart its purpose to your audience.

Your secondary characters

Your secondary characters should complement and contrast with your protagonist. Each secondary character should have a purpose in the story. No character, no matter how minor, should be wasted.

When making secondary characters, ask yourself how they feel about the central conflict. Take Janis Ian, Cady’s edgy outcast friend who convinces Cady to take down the Plastics. Janis Ian initially aligns with Cady’s read on the conflict: these girls are mean, and therefore should get a taste of their own medicine. It is only when Cady starts to become like the Plastics that Janis no longer aligns with Cady’s goals. Alternatively, you could look at Karen Smith, a Plastic who is an innocent by virtue of . . . we’ll call it naivete. She likes the status quo because she benefits from it, and she doesn’t feel a need to worry about whether or not there is a power imbalance.

Janis and Karen both have their own individual personality quirks that make them interesting. Janis is funny, weird, impulsive, and captivating. Karen delivers some absurd jokes throughout the runtime. But they both serve to further complicate Cady’s interaction with the central conflict.

Your secondary characters should help guide and challenge your protagonist. When making your secondary characters, ask yourself what they mean to the protagonist, how their lives impact the story, and in which ways their philosophies align and clash with the protagonist’s.

Your antagonists

Antagonists are one of the points at which many stories go wrong. In order to make their protagonist seem as likeable as possible, antagonists are often written with thin development–think a typical “I must destroy the world to acquire more power” situation. There’s a standard credo in writing pedagogy that your antagonist should think they’re the protagonist, and I don’t necessarily buy into this idea. I believe antagonists can be believable and compelling even if they know what they’re doing is wrong, and even if they don’t care.

Your antagonist should be how the point of the story is depicted and conveyed. In Mean Girls, the head of the Plastics, Regina George, is initially the antagonist because the is causing the power imbalance. She has the most power in the school, and she wields it against not only the regular students, but even her other Plastics to make sure that she remains at the very top of the hierarchy. Eventually, the audience realizes that Regina George is only part of the system, though: she is a mean girl, because society has made it easier for her to acquire power by being mean than kind. She is usurped, but by the end of the movie, she is somewhat changed.

Your antagonist does not have to be changed by the end of the story, but the reasons they are the antagonist should be closely evaluated. Why is this character the one to represent the moral conflict in your story? What is it about their personality that puts them at odds with the protagonist? This is also a vital time to check your character building to make sure it isn’t playing on any outdated, harmful tropes for shorthand to signal that this character is the “bad guy.”

Once you have your characters planned out, make a quick reference document for the basics on who they are that you can reference when writing your scripts, but also writing your casting call down the line. It’s almost time to get to your scripts–but next, we have to tackle the big one: your plot.

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.