17 January 2025
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Novelist and copywriter Roger Morris describes how writing podcast scripts works, and how it gave him a new professional outlet for his words
It’s December 2020. The country is in lockdown. Part time advertising copywriter and novelist Roger Morris is working remotely from the home in North London which he shares with his wife Rachel.
SD*: A COFFEE POT BEING PLONKED DOWN AND THE PLUNGER OF THE CAFETIERE BEING DEPRESSED
In his box-room study, Roger breathes in the aroma of coffee. It’s the first pot of the day, and an essential part of his writing ritual.
SD: CAT PURRING
Moomin, a white cat with black patches on her head, jumps onto his desk and pesters him for tickles. After a few desultory strokes, he gently pushes her head out of the way of his computer screen.
SD: EMAIL ALERT, FOLLOWED BY MOUSE CLICK
At that moment an email lands in his inbox. Subject line: Opportunities, news and festive good wishes from the CWA. That’s the Crime Writers Association. Roger’s a member. He’s written a slew of historical crime novels under the name R.N. Morris.
He opens up the newsletter. Straightaway, an announcement jumps out at him:
'Paid full-time positions for writers
Noiser podcasts tells us they’re looking for full-time writers of podcasts, some fiction and some dramatized non-fiction for 2021. They say they have had 300 podcasts commissioned for 2021 and will need more writers on the team who enjoy writing both crime fiction and non-fiction.'
SD: MAN DRINKING COFFEE
Roger takes a swig of coffee. He feels his pulse begin to race. Is that the caffeine kicking in? Or is it a premonition that his life is about to change?
*SD = SOUND DESIGN
The paragraphs above are what’s known in the podcast world (borrowing a phrase from TV) as the cold open. It’s a hooky scene that goes before the titles to draw the listener in. It’s not necessarily the chronological beginning of the story. But it’s certainly a significant moment in it.
You’ll notice that the scene was written in the present tense. If you’re one of those people who can’t stand the historic present, then podcast writing probably isn’t for you.
If this really were a podcast script, what would happen now is I would go back and fill you on the background that had led to that moment. I was sixty years old at the time. My wife and I had put our house on the market and were all set to move out of London in January 2021. The plan was I would give up my advertising job and work on my own writing full-time.
The problem was money.
I was well paid as a copywriter but I wasn’t happy. Whether it was a result of lockdown, or whether I was just burnt out, I’d had enough. Stress-induced asthma was something I could do without.
On the other hand, I loved writing my books. Unfortunately, the income from them was never very reliable. By December 2020, it fluctuated between derisory and non-existent.
So when I saw that CWA email, I was naturally intrigued. I replied to the ad and was given a test script to write on a freelance basis. They liked what I’d done and asked me to write another. They liked that too, so I was taken on as a staff writer.
When I left university in 1981, there was no such thing as the internet. So the job of Podcast Scriptwriter didn’t come up in any of my rather frustrating chats with the Careers Advisor. I had to wait nearly 40 years for my dream job to come along.
The first shows I worked on were True Crime. Deathbed Confessions was followed by Scotland Yard Confidential, and then Detectives Don’t Sleep. To begin with I was working two and a half days a week for Noiser, which left me the other half of the week for my own writing.
Spotify, the streaming service we were supplying, was a hungry beast. Episodes went out once a week. Fortunately, there was a team of writers working on each show. Even so, it was a fast turnaround. We were given five days to research and five days to write a 6,000 to 7,000 word episode.
I was working on scripted shows that were narrated end-to-end by a professional actor. There were no interviews with experts or the people involved. It was all on the writer to deliver the words part of the story. I use that slightly odd phrase deliberately. Because in the best audio storytelling, words aren’t the only ingredient.
As a production company, Noiser is proud of the highly immersive quality of their podcasts. Words, voice, original music and dynamic sound design come together to create a world that the listener is, well, immersed in. But fully immersive scenes are relatively expensive to produce, so you have to spread them out judiciously over an episode. We usually have 3-4 per episode, linked together by more expositional narrative sections.
More recently, I’ve moved away from True Crime to History, working on The Curious History of Your Home presented by Ruth Goodman.
At times my fictional instincts and the requirements of writing a history podcast come into conflict.
As a novelist, I try to put the reader inside the heads of my characters. I give myself free range to imagine their thoughts and feelings. It’s as if I’m there taking down their internal monologues.
Writing an immersive scene for a podcast is subtly but significantly different. The scene will still have a protagonist and will be written from their point of view. But it’s as if we’re looking over their shoulder, rather than being inside their head. The idea is to convey the drama and tension by describing what they see. I can’t speculate on their emotional or mental responses.
If there is something in the historical record that tells us what was going through their heads, then OK, I’m allowed to use that. The point is, I can’t just make stuff up.
In some ways, podcast writing is more filmic – it’s almost as you are watching an imaginary film and describing it to a blind person. There is obviously an overlap with novel writing. Descriptive or action passages in fiction can be constructed in the same way.
One of the things I love about writing podcasts is being part of a team. As many of you reading this will know, being a writer can at times be a very solitary occupation. You can work on a novel for a year, then you send it off and wait for feedback, which may just be a binary yes or no. Or even, silence.
But as a scriptwriter, you work with a producer, a script editor, not to mention the sound editors, sound designers and even musicians. The process is much more collaborative. You discuss ideas, plan beat sheets and agree timings. There are weekly Zoom meetings and prompt feedback on what you’ve written. Perhaps that’s not for everyone. I’m sure some writers enjoy the solitary aspect of writing.
I can only say that since I started writing podcasts, my asthma has cleared up.
R.N. Morris’s latest novel is Death of a Princess, published by Sharpe Books.
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