Crafting an Audio Essay

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Crafting an Audio Essay

$450.00

Tara McMullin guides you step-by-step through creating an 8-12 minute audio essay. Scroll down for more details.

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You will create an 8-12 minute audio essay for your podcast over this 6-week (5 session) workshop. During the first session, you'll craft your creative vision for the podcast and identify the topic and outline the piece. You'll learn about topic selection, audio formats, narrative structure, and listen to examples of inspiring audio pieces. In the second session, you'll learn about conducting research and/or reporting, interview and research techniques, and flesh out your outline. The third session will focus on scripting the piece, discussing pre-writing and writing processes, and techniques for podcast writing. The fourth session will cover editing the piece—with an “over the shoulder” view of how Tara edits What Works and hot seats. And the fifth session will be a listening party and peer feedback session.

Each session is two hours long with time for listening, discussion, craft talk, and questions. Plan on 2-3 hours of additional work between sessions. The time you spend outside of class is largely up to you—your pace, how “done” you want to be, and the scope of your piece.

Schedule:

Wednesdays at 1pm ET | March 15-29 and April 5 & 12

Who is this for?

  • Experienced podcasters who are looking to learn new skills and open up new creative possibilities

  • Experienced content creators who are new to podcasting and interested in learning a new medium

  • Small business owners, speakers, writers, academics, leaders, etc.

  • People comfortable with trying new software and experimenting with unfamiliar technology (with plenty of guidance!)

  • People committed to creating remarkable content—even if it takes a little more time and attention

Who is this NOT for?

  • Anyone interested in learning finely tuned studio audio engineering

  • Anyone who needs to create content in the least amount of time

  • Marketers who want to learn how to promote their shows, grow their audiences, or sell their stuff

Workshop Outline

Open each toggle to learn what we’ll cover.

  • TOPIC: Craft your creative vision for the podcast

    TOPIC: Identify the topic and outline the piece

    Discussion of topic selection, audio formats, narrative structure

    Identify needed research and/or interview(s)

    Sample Listening: Civics 101, RadioLab, Maintenance Phase, Ologies

  • TOPIC: Conduct research and/or reporting

    Discussion of interview techniques

    Discussion of research techniques

    Add research & reporting to outline

    Sample Listening: Maintenance Phase, Longform, This Day, Endless Thread

  • TOPIC: Script the piece

    Discussion of pre-writing and writing process

    Techniques for podcast writing: signposting, sentence structure, read aloud, beats/chapters, clips

    Sample Listening: 99% Invisible, The Evening Rocket, Ghost Church

    TOPIC: Record the piece

    Brief discussion of recording best practices

  • TOPIC: Edit the piece

    Discussion of sound design

    Experiment with Descript

    Practical how-to’s: using YouTube clips, finding music, using sound effects

  • Listening Party! Bring your final piece to class to share and get feedback.

    Final Q&A

Recommended Software

You’re welcome to use any writing or note-taking software for outlining and script-writing. Tara uses Google Docs.

For editing, we’ll use Descript. You can sign up for a free account that will be sufficient for the workshop. Descript is audio & video editing software that lets you copy, paste, cut, and tweak just like you were editing a word document. If you can edit in Google Docs, you can edit in Descript.

Tara will provide additional recommendations throughout the workshop if you’re interested in exploring further.