Want to write a successful radio play?  Don’t build steadily to a big ending.  Start with a bang!

Last year I had the privilege of reading more than 300 entries to our Little Wonder Radio Play Competition.  I read every single one and gave feedback to almost a hundred.  This was an incredible opportunity for me to see on a large scale what does and doesn’t work in a play.  And one of the most common mistakes made by our playwrights was that they thought a good play should look like this:

This seems to make sense.  Start calm, introduce a mystery, steadily build tension until you blow their mind M. Night Shyamalan style with an ending they’ll never forget.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t work at all.  In this article I’ll show you what this approach looks like, I’ll explain why it doesn’t work and I’ll show you the alternative that will keep your listeners listening.

I am writing a one-hour script to be broadcast as 5 mini-episodes.  For my first draft I wrote the whole play as one story.  But the structure requires more discipline:  each segment must tell its own little story, seamlessly advance the main story, and end on a cliffhanger.  How do I keep the action moving to make my mini-episodes compelling stories in their own right?

To help me I have used with three classic screenwriting tools:  rising action, escalation and switches.  In this article I will talk about what I understand these things to be, how to implement them, and how to avoid some easy mistakes.  How do you make the parts of your story as exciting as the whole? (more…)