How to Become an Audio Drama Pro in Just 60 Easy Steps!
Or, how to keep making art when everything keeps falling apart
By Regan Adler
January: The Concept
- Step one: Decide you want to make an audio drama. Wait, no. Step one: Listen to audio dramas for close to three decades, then decide you want to make one.
- Google learning how to do it for three and a half weeks. Congratulations! With all your listening and Googling experience, you’re totally an expert now!
- Brainstorm story ideas. (Remember, one mundane idea + weird niche idea = perfect!)
● Veterinarians in space? No.
● Sex educators in the apocalypse? No.
● Blind secret agents preventing the apocalypse? Wait just a minute…
4. Write your first script. But wait — before you can do that, take a screenwriting class, drop out of the screenwriting class, research BBC radio play formatting, try a dozen different softwares, pay $60 for Scrivener, and end up using Celtx for free.
5. Start a Discord server. Those are cool and trendy, right?
6. Learn how to use Discord.
7. Recruit your friends and family as actors. Invite them to your Discord server.
8. Recruit a stranger on Twitter. In the process, accidentally recruit her best friend, who’s the head of a production company, and subsequently recruit a dozen cast and crew members. Try not to cry when you get a sponsorship offer.
9. Accept everything! It’s your big break! Call your mom to tell her the good news!
10. Hang up and then immediately panic because you’ve been doing this for roughly ten minutes, and you’re probably going to really suck, and now if you do you’re bringing down a dozen people and a production company! What the hell were you thinking? So many people are counting on you! How are you supposed to direct actors when you don’t even know how to act?!
11. Table your first idea. Spring 2017 can mean June instead of March. Assure everyone you’re still totally on track. Make a different podcast.
February: The Gear
12. Buy a Blue Snowball. Send it back.
13. Buy a Blue Yeti. Send it back.
14. Buy a CAD GXL 2400-USB Large Diaphragm Condenser Mic. Forget to send it back. (Eventually, find it a happy new home with an even newer podcaster.)
15. Trip over your cat and spill an entire glass of wine directly into the touchpad of your four-month-old MacBook Air. Get too drunk to stand up and sob to the cat that your show is over. It’s ruined! Everything is ruined!
16. Wake up the next morning and buy a beat-up and overheating MacBook Pro with a dented corner and a messed up screen and grungy ports. The show must go on.
17. Somehow end up in a server with all of your radio drama idols. Try (and fail) not to fangirl too hard. Find a supportive community and buy every piece of gear they recommend — new, used, pre-owned, refurbished, broken. Buy from eBay , Amazon, and the sketchy house of some guy you found on Craigslist. (Actually, don’t do that last one. That could have gone very badly.)
18. Spend an entire night researching headphones that don’t click. Buy a pair. Wait impatiently. Return them. Buy another pair. Wait impatiently. Return them.
19. Find Guitar Center and wail in despair because their used gear is so much cheaper than even Craigslist. Order a new audio interface, a field recorder, and a dynamic mic. Spend your Friday night driving across the city to try on headphones until you find a pair that doesn’t click. Recommend Guitar Center to everyone.
20. Record your lines. Cry because this mic sounds even worse than the USB ones. Why does it sound even worse than the USB ones?
21. Realize you had the switch flipped to “construction site in a war zone.” Unflip the switch. Record your lines all over again.
22. Cry because now everyone can properly hear that you’re the worst actress the world has ever known.
23. Keep recording anyway. The show must go on.
March: The Publishing (and More Gear)
24. Make an author blog. Make a podcast blog. Make another podcast blog.
25. Find a Creative Commons photo site. Make the dumbest, simplest graphics the world has ever known. Post them anyway. The show must go on.
26. Spend sixty hours writing, editing, recording, and re-editing your first 10-minute episode. Stress for weeks about it. Quit. Record your lines again. Edit out every headphone click and mouth noise. Record again. Record again. Record again. Record again. Quit again.
27. Upload your episode anyway, early one Monday morning, just a few hours before trudging to your day job on two hours of sleep. The show must go on.
28. Come home to Patreon supporters, PayPal donations, and a half-dozen variations of, “WOW, your voice work is excellent!” and “Beautiful audio quality!”
29. Cry in happiness, but only for a few minutes. This is only the very first step.
30. Start working on episode two.
31. Make yourself sick working on episode two. Call out of volunteer positions. Record your second episode late Sunday night when you should be resting before the work week. Curse out the train that needs to blow its whistle a full hour for some stupid reason.
32. Switch closets. Pin soundproofing foam all over your new closet and re-record your second episode. Cry because the acoustics are somehow worse now. Plug everything into your car and re-re-record your second episode in your backseat. And at your desk. And back in your new closet. And in a blanket fort by the bed. And in your front seat. And then finally back in the old closet.
33. Take your brand new Tascam DR-40 to McDonald’s to record the ambient sound clip you need — the very last thing you need to finish episode two. Trip in the parking lot and mess up your defective back for weeks. Watch helplessly as the DR-40 bricks itself 30 seconds into your field recording.
34. Order a Blue Spark Limited Edition Red large condenser mic to match your Focusrite Scarlett 6i6, and also because a Youtuber with a similar voice swears it gets rid of excessive sibilance. Make sure to buy the Blue Spark new! It’s the only way to be sure you won’t receive a broken mic, right?
35. Also buy a Shure SM58 as a backup. Just in case.
36. Return $500 worth of dead-on-arrival gear to Guitar Center an hour away.
37. The next morning, receive your shiny “new” Blue Spark mic in pieces, used, the wrong color and edition, and missing pieces. Buy a used one in “mint condition” off eBay for half the price of the broken used one Guitar Center sent you. Make the hour drive back to Guitar Center to return it.
38. Stop recommending Guitar Center to people.
39. Receive the second Blue Spark broken. Give up and buy the Shure Super 55 dynamic mic. Wonder how you got stuck with the worst superpower ever, and if evil eye removal is still a thing.
40. Edit episode two as best you can during all this. Despair over the volume issues. Give up. Post it anyway. The show must go on.
41. Hit 100 downloads on your first episode, then again on your second episode. No one mentions the volume issues in episode two. Hit the top 50% of all podcasters.
42. Start writing episode three.
April: The Grind
43. Buy a fanless computer to record on. Buy a new MacBook and try to return the fanless computer. Get the same damn package re-delivered to your door every day for a week.
44. Buy a Cathedral Pipes Durham gain booster because your Shure Super 55 Deluxe dynamic mic is too quiet and buzzy.
45. Overdraw your bank account because Guitar Center apparently can’t process your returns within two weeks like everyone else? Also, why can’t UPS deliver your eBay returns in a reasonable timeframe? Why can’t UPS deliver your eBay returns at all?
46. Ignore the check engine light in your car.
47. Ignore the neverending fever and vomiting and chills and aches and exhaustion.
48. Ignore dishes and homework and freelance work and volunteer work and part-time work.
49. When you’re too sick and broke to do anything else, write. When you’re too sick to write, do it anyway. Even if it’s just in your head.
50. (But also, make sure to get some rest. The show can’t go on without you.)
51. Celebrate your first $30 Patreon check with $50 worth of Patreon rewards. Celebrate your first appearance on a “50 Fiction Podcasts You Should Be Listening To” list by telling everyone you’ve ever met.
52. Learn how to get into character fast with gemstones and dogtags and utility knives.
53. Post episode three. Immediately land on Podcake’s April Pallet. Rejoice! Then get back to work.
May: The Light at the End of the Tunnel
54. Return your defective Cathedral Pipes Durham gain booster. Argue with the company for weeks about everything — that the part is “lost in the mail,” that the part is actually broken.
55. Buy a Shure SM 87A small condenser mic because you don’t need this kind of negativity in your life. Sell the Super 55 Deluxe.
56. Call the evil eye removal specialist.
57. Double your Patreon funding. Triple it. Order your Patreon rewards andtype up the creative elements that will accompany them. Finish the rest of your season one scripts. Record with your actors for the first time.
58. Start working on that original podcast idea, the one you tabled before.
59. Start thinking of your idols as your peers — and try not to pass out when they consider you a peer, too.
60. And above all, no matter how self-conscious you get, never forget that the show must go on. (Also, get back to work.)
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
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