Better Writing For Podcasting: Takeaways From Radio School – Episode 74

[MUSIC IN – GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS]

MARY: What do you think of when you think of podcasts? Could be a conversation, interviews, stories, all of that really distills down to speaking, using your voice. I’ve worked with many clients who have said I’m better when talking about things out loud, or I don’t like writing as much. So, podcasting seemed like the natural fit for them. And for me, too, since I’d rather talk, that makes total sense that podcasting is that natural fit. And I would admit I was pretty much the same, too, about the writing side of things that, uh, not really strong writer. So, I’d rather just say it out loud. And in school, I mean, even in high school, elementary school, radio school, I never felt like I was an academic. And even coming out of high school, I’m like, I’m not going to university. That’s not me. I don’t see myself fitting in there. And one of my good friends in high school as well, was just so intelligent with her words that I felt like that dumb rock right next to her whenever I was reading through her schoolwork assignments, I’m like, oh, my gosh, what does this mean? She is a walking dictionary. And she was very proud of that. But that was not me. And so in those awkward high school phases, which is great, and in my rear view now, I was actually still up in arms over having to write commercials in my writing classes for radio, because I was like, uhuh I went into radio not to write. I thought I was going into this so I could just talk, right? Like, all that stuff. So translate radio into podcasting now? How does writing play into podcasting? And if you’re like me, who’d prefer to talk than write, I’m going to share how I overcame that, ugh, cringeness of writing for me with a very simple trick. Writing is actually very essential to podcasting. So, I’m going to show you what I learned about writing for podcasting from radio school. This is episode 74 of The Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >>

If you fall into the I’d rather speak than write camp,

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I bet you do have a vivid memory as well, of something that someone said to you or a reaction you got from one of your early writing pieces that made you kind of go in another direction. And for me, it was that, uh, friend in high school. And so when it came down to working in my writing class for radio school, I hated writing so much at that point. The memory that I have in that commercial writing class was my instructor even pleaded with me to write at least one 30 second script. Just one 30 second commercial. She’s like, you know what? Don’t do all the other assignments. I don’t care. Just write me one commercial so that I could at least give you a passing grade for this class. Otherwise, you can’t graduate without it.
At the time, I didn’t realize how serious it was, and then I realized how compassionate my instructor was because she said she knew I could do it and that I was doing so well in my other classes, so there had to be some underlying reason of fear, probably of why I didn’t want to write for this commercial writing class. She couldn’t figure it out, and I don’t think I did either at that point. You’re in your early 20s. You don’t really know what is going on. You just want to do your thing and move on and be an adult and all of this stuff. And so it gave me an inner turmoil to put thoughts onto paper, and it really was triggering for me at the time. And so I did it. I graduated. All is well. And even after graduation, I found myself loving the behind the scenes audio side. And so the natural transition for me was to edit commercials versus actually writing them. So my job was, after the script was actually created, I got to play around in the audio side of things. And hopefully that commercial that I got to play with was written by a talented writer who wasn’t in it for the sell. Because one of the things I think I realized was that in our writing class, we were told to sell. This was something that you do in a commercial. You’re selling something. The running joke in the class was, oh, if you want to pull on people’s heartstrings, you just put in some sound effects of children playing or children laughing or kids in general, and that will pull on emotions, and emotions is what sells. And so we were just told to sell, sell, sell. And I kind of hated that it wasn’t me. I already knew that in the deepest corners of my body, something just didn’t lay right with me. But that was the gig in radio. I knew that I could at least take what was on the page and make it fulfilling for me in my own work.

So, in my day to day work, I saw all sorts of scripts fly by my desk, from really creative ones that were so fun to produce with multiple voices to the usual straight sell, which is what you normally would hear on the radio or watch on the TV stations. Hard sells, like, car commercials, PSAs, talking about, um, nonprofits or price and item, you know, grocery stores, liners, promos, concert promos. I’ve seen it all. They’ve all come by my desk. And part of my job was to edit the script where I saw fit for timing, pacing, or even adjusting some words for natural dialogue if I saw something that was like, ooh, that person wouldn’t normally say that. I’m going to, uh, switch it around so that it says this instead.

So I got trained really well in knowing what sounded good, versus what read well on paper. It was this idea that made me realize that I actually can write. After being in the biz, I knew, wait a minute, writing is not what I thought it was. I know what sounds good. And that was the kick I needed to write for my own business when I transitioned from radio into podcasting. So, I’m glad I had to go through that inner turmoil to now make it easier for you. So flash forward to today, the podcasting world. Yes, you speak behind the mic, but there’s still writing involved before and after you record, be it the show prep, writing email invitations for potential guests, laying out your episodes, script writing for your intro and outro, et cetera. There’s a lot of writing that is involved, or even after the episode is recorded, you know, coming up with your titles, compiling the show notes, writing your episode blurbs, or even social posts to promote the blog page or the episode. It all needs to be written. Or actually, does it need to all be written?

[MUSIC IN]

If you already love to speak, especially about a certain topic, speak on it. You can actually write how you speak. So as I’m saying something, or even thinking about it in my head, how I would actually say it out loud is how I would actually start typing it. So how I write is really how I speak, and how I speak is how I connect on an emotional level. So why not start from there? Because in podcasting, we’re not writing a thesis. We are not going to be grammatically correct because this isn’t really a formal space. In fact, when we speak, we never speak with proper grammar. You know, we don’t say at the end of our thoughts, period, or we don’t actually say, comma, we break all the rules when we speak. I never wanted to go to University anyway, and writing was one of those main reasons. I thought writing was very constricted on what you can or cannot do, what is right and wrong. And yes, there are very good reasons for that, but I’m the rule breaker. I’ve already established, I wasn’t great at my English classes in high school. So the trick is, speaking becomes your writing.

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When we’re speaking, we spill our thoughts out. Sometimes we make quick decisions. Sure. And we might, mmm, like, edit quickly in our heads before we say something. But for the most part, as someone in my radio world once told me, speaking can also be verbal diarrhea. Things are just coming out of you sometimes. You spill everything out in the moment, while, by contrast, when writing, we have space and time for editing, reorganizing thoughts, making things more concise, and, yeah, some of that grammar stuff. So my tip here, actually, is to do both in your writing. Write first as if you were speaking. That first tip I gave you. So it’s almost like a brain dump of ideas. You get it all down, whether it works or not. So you will have everything there. And then from there, you put the writing hat on. You can then decide the points that work, the ones that don’t, or where you need to add or subtract ideas. Essentially, you’re going to be using both sides of your brain here. The right side is the creative brain dump, and then the left side is the organization and the order of things. And if you’re thinking, well, I’m usually, like, right brained. That’s why I like podcasting. I like to just talk. Or you’re thinking, uh, I’m left sided. I need to write everything down before I actually make a recording. This technique I just shared is actually a great way to hone the skill of using both sides of your brain, because, yes, it is a skill that you can learn with this technique. You can train the other side of your brain so that your writing, in the end, still sounds like you, and it’s well thought out.

[MUSIC IN]

To add to this idea of the brain dump and then organization. It’s actually how I come up with ideas for each and every one of my episodes. For example, if it’s a solo episode like this one, I’ve actually thought of this idea last year at some point to talk about what I learned about writing from radio school. It was a card on my Trello board. Trello is where I organize all of my podcast episodes. And as I run across different ideas over the course of my day, I either add to this card that I’ve created for this episode, or if it’s like, ooh, a new idea sparks. I make a new card and add it to my Trello board.

Perhaps someone asked me a question during a client call or a networking meeting, and it sparks that new idea. This is all the brain dump stage. I’m brain dumping everything onto my Trello board. I have columns to keep things organized for myself. So it’s not just like this whole vast cavern of ideas, but they’re there. And that’s the idea, is that they are out of your brain and somewhere, so that you can use as a reference. Then when I’m ready to record an episode, I know where I can pull my ideas from. I can organize my episodes how I see them, lay it all out, and that’s organization.

So I kind of flip flop between the two, because now I’ll go back to the brain dumping stage of actually recording the episode. You want to brain dump all the episode specific ideas, the points you want to make, and then from there, you get back to the organizing step and reviewing all of those notes that you just brain dumped. And since I have this card on the Trello board, when the episode idea was created, I just brain dump on there. I just type away. And it creates less stress when it comes down to recording your episodes, because I have at least a working outline of what I want to talk about. It’s all there. The same goes for interview episodes. I may already have questions I want to ask a potential guest, whether it be topic based or I don’t have a guest yet, so I’ll find a guest to fill that topic, or I already have the guest scheduled and I know what the topic will be, but I haven’t outlined my main questions yet. I may want to do more research about the guest. If they have a book, you might have time to read it. Or if they’ve done some videos or other podcast episodes, you’ll have to listen and watch those. Or just have a good think about what my ideal listener would like to know about the topic and how the guest would handle certain situations. This is the brain dump stage again.

So after all of that, when you get to the organizing stage, you can start grouping questions and seeing where you might want to move a group of questions. So it can be questions at the beginning of the conversation, the middle, or at the end of the conversation. Of course, not all the questions will be laid out as follow ups. As I’ve said in the past, follow up questions are where the best answers come from. So, at least with this organizational stage, you’ve got some things written out, and you kind of know where the story is going to go. Whether you ask all those questions or not, it’s very helpful to just get the brain freed up of space for that interview.

[MUSIC ENDS]

All right, let’s move on to the tone of your writing. I’m going to talk about the power of using the word, you. I do this on my show all the time. And in fact, if you go back through this episode, or any episode of mine for that matter, I do have transcripts for my episodes on my website. So you just have to go to visiblevoicepodcast.com and then you can search and you will never hear me address you, my listener, as everyone. As in hey, everyone. Doesn’t happen. The only time I’ll ever say listeners is if I’m chatting with a guest and referring to the listeners, you, who is listening to the guest speak.

So let’s go back to how you write as how you speak that I mentioned early on the episode. We’re going to go back to your ideal listener. You’re always speaking to them, or in this case, writing to them. You want to use the word you. You is a word that captivates the listener because for a typical podcast listener, they are listening with their earbuds by themselves. I could probably guess you’re listening to me right now in that same way, or maybe it’s on your phone, but you’re not listening with a group of friends or anything like that. So there’s really no reason for you to say hey, everybody listening, or hey, everyone. Because if you’re talking to your ideal listener, it’s just going to be the one person. It’s a one on one conversation. That is the tone you’re creating on your show, a one to one conversation. Because remember, on a podcast, the best way to engage is to share a story, to either educate, entertain, or to connect with your listener. Because that’s what your listener is here for, that’s what they want. One of those three things or a slight mix of all three things.

So when I’m taking this back to my radio world, you always had to write a script or commercial based on that ideal listener. And each time that listener can change. So it depends if a commercial, if you’re writing one for like a vegan restaurant versus writing a commercial for a steak barbecue joint, it’ll be written with a different point of view, with a different listener in mind. Because someone who is hardcore vegan is never going to go into a steak barbecue joint and have a meal. So based on who you want to encourage to come to that restaurant, it’s the same with your podcast. You’re not creating your show for everyone. You are creating a show to connect with your listener, talking to them directly, making them feel connected and understood. So write with your listener in mind and use the word you when you speak. And also when you edit your writing, because when you’re going through that organizational stage and editing your written words, you’re going to edit for engagement, connection, and hopefully some inspiration as well. Because once you capture that one ideal person, many of those one ideal people are going to come to your show. And that’s why people think, oh, there’s going to be lots of people listening, right? I get lots of listens, lots of downloads. So that’s lots of people. So I’m talking to everyone. But no, the best shows are the ones that talk to one person directly.

And this isn’t easy to do. It really isn’t, because we spent a whole term, maybe more than a term, in radio school, writing with the word you and having our instructor like, always using that red pen and marking up our papers and letting us know that, hey, we’re forgetting to use the word you in our scripts. So, this is a short tip, but it’s a crucial one, because when you do use the word you, it’s because I genuinely, I want to connect with you. I do. I’m not here to create a podcast to try and sell or persuade and then feel like a sleazy salesperson. No, because if I did that, you could hear that in my voice, and you are not going to care about what I have to say. It’s a total turnoff. So by using the word you, you as a podcast host can also feel connected to the listener, and vice versa. The listener will connect with you and you will connect with your listener and remember to talk to that one person. It’s all about that human to human connection for podcasting and striking that conversational tone. That is what audio does such a great job with to make your podcast effective.

[MUSIC IN]

The final tip that I’ll say about writing that I learned from my radio days is that you have the power to change things at any time with podcasting. If you like to follow a script or an outline when you are speaking and recording in that moment, you can still make things change on the fly. Or if you’ve already published an episode, you can still write up an add on and put that in your show notes, or even record a note and add it to the episode. Podcasting really is so fluid, and it can change along with you. So no matter what you write in advance, you can still change in the moment.

So, don’t think of writing for podcasting as something that is hard like I did when I was in my early 20s. It’s actually freeing because you’ll find it’ll come more naturally because you’re a podcaster. You have these skills, and we’re here to break the rules and speak with spirit and shine in your writing now as well.

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You know, as I said in the intro, there’s also a lot of writing that happens after the episode is recorded, you know, we’re talking titles and show notes and all of that stuff. In the next episode, I’m actually going to dive deep with the writer on my team, Shannon Kirk. Shannon and I will go into our process about writing for podcasts after the episode has been recorded and I get to pick her brain to really understand her thought process about what she tackles first after the episode has been edited, and then how she writes for the ear or what she calls dialogue-esque writing. If podcasting is all about speaking, then how do we turn our speaking thoughts into written words? I touched a bit on it here, but she comes up with some, uh, great tips that you’ll want to make sure you take notes for this one as well. So we’ll talk to you then, on the next episode, more about writing for podcasting.

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<< GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you shared it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to visiblevoicepodcast.com.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

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