How to Audio Drama: Editing Your First Script

October 21, 2020 8:40 am

So you’ve finished writing your first audio drama’s first script. Now comes the hard part: ripping that script to absolute shreds. Not every script needs the most critical approach, but your first script should help you practice the most critical approach. Let’s dive into the editing process on the level of an individual episode.

Set your goals

Before you edit, you should always set goals on what you want this round of edits to focus on. Yes, you should edit your draft many times, and for many different reasons–and, importantly, you should take a break between each round of edits. Editing a draft several times over without breaks can make everything turn into brain mush, like smelling every scent at Yankee Candle without a whiff of coffee in between. What we want to avoid is the sort of edit spiraling that can happen–at least, it’s certainly something that happens to me–without setting intentions.

How long do you want this editing session to take? “Until it’s done” is not an answer here–set an actual time on the clock. If you go past that amount of time and still feel up to editing, continue on, but keep setting timers. This will help remind you to check in on yourself, how much you’ve accomplished, and how much more editing energy you have.

How many rounds of editing do you want to do? I usually do five short rounds, each with its on purpose–we’ll talk about this in the next section–and then squish all those steps down into one final editing round with other people involved. My method isn’t for everyone, especially since others who haven’t been through several creative writing workshops might not have my same thick skin in editing. Be honest with yourself: how many edits can you handle?

And, finally, set an intention on quality that doesn’t focus on perfection. What emotional responses do you want to elicit? Do you want this script to make someone laugh? To make someone cry? To leave someone with some specific questions? To make your co-writer message you, “WIL GO TO JAIL!”? That one would be weird of you. That’s my name, unless you’re a fellow one-L Wil, in which case, hello my brethren I love you. Don’t focus on the draft being perfect–focus on the draft making someone feel something specific. Perfection is your enemy. Perfection is impossible. Instead, set an intention for what draft completion means in terms of emotional response.

Make a Kill Your Darlings doc

In the last edition of How to Audio Drama, we talked about Natalie Goldberg’s concept of “composting,” and that idea is even more important when you start to edit proper. Do not delete passages of your writing. Do not delete lines from characters. Instead, rehome them. Move them to a “Kill Your Darlings” document, a repository of all of the things that won’t make it to the final cut. You never know when you can pull on these moments again, when you can work them into future scenes, or even just when you want to reminisce about the writing left behind. A “Kill Your Darlings” doc can even provide some fun for your audience later on, potential Patreon or other crowdfunding incentives–but mostly, it should be a document for you and your team.

Writing is too exhausting an endeavor to murder your words with no remorse. Every asset is integral. Use this document to save excerpts like acorns for the winter. You never know when you’ll be starved down the line, happy for what you set aside before.

Edit alone

Before you pass off your draft to anyone else–which, yes, you must do–you need to do the work alone. Many writers seem to think that editors are fine to work on the roughest of rough drafts, but that really, really isn’t the case. Editors should be given your best, cleanest work; not only does this show your editors that you value their time, it also decreases the number of drafts you’ll have in the long run. Minimize your back-and-forth by doing as much of the work alone as you can.

When editing my scripts, I have a five-step process I run through before passing my draft on to others for edits:

Step 1: Content

Before you worry about the nitty gritty, start with the broad strokes of your script. The inclination, at least for me, is usually to do the opposite. Typos and formatting mistakes are so quick and easy to correct, why not start there? Why not chase those lovely little endorphin rushes of I Accomplished Something before digging into the scariest, most intensive part of editing? First, starting with the content editing means you won’t be editing typos on full passages that don’t even remain in the next draft. Second, I’m a fan of saving those little brain chemical treats as a reward to finish a round of editing on a high note.

So, trust me: start with content editing. In this first step, read through your entire script again in full before going back to make edits. When reading, I first keep one of Kurt Vonnegut’s rules on writing in mind:

Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
Kurt Vonnegut

If a sentence strikes me as too superfluous, I’ll mark it with a highlight, but I won’t even move the sentence until I’ve finished reading the draft in full. More than once, I’ve edited a line out because it seemed unnecessary only to realize it was vital foreshadowing I then have to edit back in. Don’t get in your own way. Trust yourself, and stick through the end of the script before removing anything.

Once I’ve finished reading and reevaluated the marked lines, un-highlighting where needed, I take this Vonnegut rule to a more macro level. Here’s a screenshot of the, um, unwise but honest method I have for my checklist:

A screenshot of a Microsoft Sticky Note app note that reads: -Does EVERY SCENE advance the plot -OR- advance Liam's arc? [yes]
-Does this episode have its own arc? [yes]
-Does this episode feel cohesive? [yes]
-Does this episode feature at least one scene with a POC main? — Please don’t be like me. Please don’t use sticky notes for this.

Please appreciate the remnant “[yes]” notes from when we finished editing the season 2 drafts of VALENCE.

These are the questions that help me evaluate each scene. If the script doesn’t meet all of these criteria, it means it’s time to go back to the scenes and make some big changes. Your checklist will look different (though I do highly recommend continually auditing your scripts for inclusion, as with our last question there), but you should take this step to make sure all of your scenes accomplish something.

Step 2: Character

Next, I do a pass over the scripts for characterization. When reading each line, I try to keep the character speaking as a fully-formed person in my mind. Ready for another checklist of questions?

What does this character want in this scene?
What does this character know? What are they unaware of?
What are they focusing on?
What do they think of the other characters in the scene?
How do they speak? What is their dialect? How did they come into that dialect?
What information would they not want to reveal?
What information are they seeking?

Yes, this seems like a lot of work for each individual line, but it’s integral–and eventually, it all compresses down to one question, the individual levels automated by way of practice: “Would this character say this?”

When running through each line for character, I cannot stress the importance of saying the lines out loud. This is common writing advice often given, seldom taken–but it’s even more important when writing for audio. Your characters should sound like people, and that means that if a sentence reads unnaturally–without that being intentional–it’ll feel even worse in the finalized production.

Step 3: Clarity

For this step, read your draft with as much separation from your own vision as possible. Deaden your inner imagery for what each scene looks like. Focus only on what will be conveyed through audio. Remember that your audience will not have your mental image in their own minds. What actions necessitate a sound? When someone enters a room, how quickly do they announce themself? If a character’s clothing or other physical characteristics are important, how and when are they explained? You want every aspect of the scene to be clear to your audience with as little direct explanation possible.

Step 4: Cohesion

Unless your audio drama is an anthology, use this next step to place your episode in context. First, consider what this episode establishes. How does it connect to the next episode? How much time will there be, canonically speaking, between this episode and the next? Does it foreshadow any events past the next episode, and if not, could it? What character arcs does it set up? What changes will the audience hear the character make between this episode and the next?

And then, of course, apply this same mindset to each scene in the episode. How do the scenes scaffold each other? How do characters get from one location to another? How much time is there between each scene, and how is that conveyed? How do different tones flow into each other? Your episode shouldn’t just feel like one part of the full story; it should also feel complete within itself.

Step 5: Copy

Now you can do a copy edit, looking for things like typos and formatting. Easy fixes! You’ve earned them! Enjoy that serotonin!

Edit together

Now that your draft is the best possible version of itself, it’s time to relinquish some control and send your draft to others for the explicit purpose of feedback and criticism. It’s handy to give your editors some parameters for the kind of feedback you’re looking for. I always recommend asking your editors to give you feedback on the content itself, and not on the work’s premise, medium, etc.–the things you can’t change without rethinking the work entirely. If there are moments that feel shaky to you even after editing, ask your editors for help ironing those moments out. If you’re not sure a character’s motivation reads clearly, ask your editors to focus on that character. Know what you want, know what you need, and encourage feedback on the things you might not have noticed.

Decompress

You’ve done so much work, and now it’s time to step away from your draft. Once you have finished these steps, do not let yourself edit the draft again. Walk away. Listen to some music. Watch a TV show. Engage in media that is purposefully not related to your script at all. You may want to write a new draft based on the feedback you’ve received, and you should write one–later. Decompression after editing is vital, both for your emotional wellbeing and to make sure you have the necessary distance from the script to edit it well again.

But while you relax, keep something important in mind: you’ll be repeating this process for each episode, and then a modified version for your season, and then a modified version for your full series. It’s a lot of work, and it’s hard work–but it will get easier, and you will get better at it. For now, honor the work you’ve done, and take some time to kick back. You’ve earned it.

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.