How On Earth Did We Make a Radio Series – And How Can You Do It As Well?
The last episode of our 5-part sci-fi comedy Space Station Zeta released yesterday! This is a big deal for us, and I hope you’ll check it out. In this article I’ll talk about how we did it and how you can write your own – how to develop the initial idea, how writing a series is different from a one off, how to record your own series and the pros and cons of a series compared to one off plays.
Before that, you really should listen to the plays – first, there are major spoilers in the article, second, it’s funny, I promise! So here it is: Space Station Zeta, All Five Episodes, about intelligence, love, and Chairman of the Federation Ronald Dump. Once you’ve listened, come back after the break to find out how to do it yourself.
The initial idea and character depth
How to start a radio play.
I wanted to write a short series both as a proof of concept and to learn how to do it. On my list of dreams for when I’m a grown up is to write series – TV, radio, stage, writer’s room or solo – so I figured I should try it out for myself.
5 twenty-minute episodes to fit with our usual podcast lengths. I was (am) a big Ben Elton fan and so looked to directly steal a central two character dynamic: one clever, one stupid, both tied together by circumstance (i.e. Blackadder). “Villains” representative of uncaring authority against which our heroes hopelessly struggle and who, in turn, struggle hopelessly against their superiors. And an artificial intelligence (or, as it turned out, three), because I have been reading a great deal about intelligence and rationality and was tired or people getting everything wrong.
From there you do what you always do. Imagine a person and give them a problem. Ask yourself how they deal with and why that makes it worse. So, who are our characters?
Find characters from the worst parts of yourself.
As always, I reached for stuff that was frustrating me at that moment. Boyle emerges from my frustrations with being a stay-at-home Dad with a PhD, a Naval commission and bar qualifications: the nagging doubt that I could have been more, the constant insecurity and need to mention that I have professional qualifications and am terribly bright thank you, the fear I have wasted my life. While I’m relatively comfortable with my life choices (it’s not like I ONLY change nappies), it wasn’t a difficult leap to imagine an intelligent, qualified character stuck in a position he thinks beneath him and surrounded by people about whom he feels the same way.
Lesson here: when looking for characters within yourself, go looking in the worst places.
An antagonist should draw from the protagonist’s flaws: so Miss Takes was drawn from the path-not-taken, where Keith didn’t marry Myriam and have babies but instead went off to be a lawyer and do research. Miss Takes functions both as a reminder of what Boyle lost and as living proof that she was right to leave him (maybe?). I’m going to emphasise, while we’re mixing fiction with fact, that I made the right choice to follow Myriam to Paris. But drama is rubbish if the characters go around making the right choices (and we’ll come back to Miss (Doctor/Director) Take’s maybe later.)
Taking the piss out of Donald Trump
Golden rule of both sports and comedy: score the easy points. It’s hard to write now without politics sneaking in, just because modern politics makes comedy look sane, well thought out, and full of people taking rational decisions. Honestly, it’s making our jobs harder. How can we make our character’s look ridiculous compared to Jacob Rees-Mogg or Kim Jong-un!
So, early on, for our uber-antagonist, Ronald Dump was born. The key to the joke (asides from the awesomely sophisticated word play)? I’d just take whacking great chunks out of things he had really said and stick them in space. That gets horrifying when you think about it. Until right near the end, when he is freed from his programming and becomes a real person (more on that soon), almost everything Ronald Dump says is a quote of Donald Trump. Especially the sex stuff.
I thought “Ronald Dump” was too obvious but my wife kept on laughing so I stuck with it (that’s a good sign – listen to your audience – the voices in your head think everything’s shit and don’t want you to write anything ever.) And then I got interested in the question. What would it be like to wake up one day and discover you were Donald Trump? And by Donald Trump, I mean every liberal’s worst image of him – the misogynist, rapist, corrupt, Russian puppet moron that he may or may not be. Imagine being a real, decent human being who comes too and discovers that this was their life. Sound like a nightmare? Sounds like a drama!
Finding the characters as you go along : readings, readings, readings.
One year and two readings
It was about a year from start to finish for this project (that’s first words on page to release yesterday). That’s slow by my standards – I was seriously concerned that Donald Trump would be in prison by the time we launched. Remember those days, when we thought committing crimes might be enough for a President to get arrested? S’ok, I didn’t understand Americans then, I don’t understand them now.
But a bigger part of the delay was the two readings I did. That was where the play was born: where it went from being a Blackadder rip-off with a solitary comic premise (Ronald Dump! I changed the letters in his name! I’m so funny!) to being a whole drama. Essentially, the play grew through the process of a) listening to all the bits that made me cringe and b), most importantly, answering the questions of the readers afterwards.
The Geek Reading
The first reading I recorded was with a group of old friends, all whom are of a somewhat scientific bent. And, as it happens, have done shit loads of creative work on the side. We sat around the table, they did a fantastic reading, then we spent an hour and a half talking about all the things that didn’t make sense in the story.
First, there was all the technical stuff. That was interesting because it was audience specific: that group of guys were much more likely to be interested in how and why a space drill would work than most of a typical audience. This is dangerous for a writer, because I could easily (and a little bit did by the next reading) turn into and hour and a half of exposition on the composition of drills. But that’s my responsibility to balance. What they did was rigorously go through all the stuff that didn’t make any sense. And stuff that doesn’t make sense disengages the audience, because first they get confused, then bored, then they switch off.
Far more importantly, in the process they unveiled all the places where the things not-Boyle did were weird. Up until this point all the characters existed as foils for Boyle (foils for Boyle. God I’m funny). But for every time they pointed to a scene and said “why does she do that, when she could do that “ and “he could have just done this thing earlier” they not only gave me questions the script needed to answer but highlighted a fundamental error I had made (and given me a lesson I have taken into every piece of writing since.) So, what was the mistake and why does series writing highlight that mistake?
Stories within stories: recursive five act structures
Five acts per act.
The structure of a typical story is simple. Someone is living their normal, if unsatisfying, life, when some new thing arrives and disturbs them (Act 1). They attempt to resolve this problem using their normal approach (Act 2). This approach, typically based upon a fundamental character flaw, blows up in their face, makes things worse, and exposes their flaw (Act 3 – including mid-point of the play). They are now forced to confront their flaw to overcome the new and bigger problem (Act 4). They either succeed (comedy – huzzah!) or fail (tragedy – sob) (Act 5). Simple, right?
Here’s the key difference between a normal story and a series. Not only must each episode conform to the overall story (so Episode 1 = Act 1, Episode 2 = Act 2, etc.), but each episode must tell its own story – a problem that resolves within the episode, so that the episode is satisfying, but also contributes to the ongoing struggle as well as setting up and escalating for the next episode (the cliff-hanger.)
A series forces you to make all your characters, erm, characters.
When you are writing one whole story it is easy to fall into this trap: protagonist has a problem that they must solve, characters crop up who aide them on their journey. You’re so focussed on the central journey that you forget these other characters are people too. Oh, you throw them a few quirks. An accent. A funny back story. But you can’t quite escape the feeling that something is missing. Because there is.
Every character is the hero of their own story. Every one of them should have problems they’re confronting, flaws that make that problem impossible, tactics they attempt to overcome them. A series forces you into this just because you must come up with so many problems – and very quickly, because that’s where they should be coming from, they come from the characters.
Hence, Dr Takes[i]’ crusade to save the universe through sentient AI at whatever political cost; Chairman Dumps quest for identity (and in the process a joke character becoming, for me, one of the most compelling and interesting); Emily trying to establish a relationship with the person she considers her mother and dealing with the fact that it is not reciprocated in the way she desires; Cod’s journey learning that love is a about loving a person not an ideal[ii].
The second reading and all the stuff people find interesting.
The second reading was with the brilliant Moving Parts and that was when I learned I needed to get my arse in gear. You see, I still thought I was writing quick Blackadder rip-off comedy. But, a), that underestimates Blackadder (the last episode of the last season makes basically everyone who watches it cry. Blackadder is excellent.) And b) all the stuff the audience wanted to hear more about was the stuff I’d just thrown in to give Boyle more problems. How did the relationship between n Boyle and Dr Takes fall apart? What was the relationship between Emily and Dr Takes and why was Emily so upset? Why did Chairman Dump come to Space Station Zeta and why did he change so much?
OF COURSE, the people stuff is most interesting. Making the problems for Boyle come from the people around him was the best (accidental) decision I could have made. It’s better to be lucky than good!
Did I do it wrong? How do you get a rich story?
So, did I get it all wrong? No. Obviously not, people found stuff interesting. And starting with your protagonist then developing characters as foils to his or her flaws is a solid way to start. But after that, the foils must, ideally, have their own five act arcs. Miss Takes needs to get rid of the Chairman so she can complete the Emily project WITHOUT revealing that he’s an AI. Cod wants to get Emily to love him but needs to learn who she is as a person – and that it’s people we love, not ideas of people. Poor old Chairman Dump needs to find out who he really is and why he has been made to live this awful life. And Emily needs Miss Takes to show that she cares about her, to make her feel that she isn’t alone and unwanted.
All this stuff is going on AT THE SAME TIME as Boyle tries to win his commendation to Starfleet, resolve his feelings of failure both as an engineer and as someone dumped at the altar, and get off the Space Station alive. That’s what makes it rich. Once you have your foils, try and tell the story from their perspective. The more they become people, the closer you are to having real drama.
Oh, you may just find on the way that one of your other characters is a better protagonist. Time for a re-write! Thankfully, Boyle just about stays interesting enough.
What to do after a reading.
Listen to EVERYBODY. Then use the bits you think are useful. Some of what is said will be rubbish, but the stuff that you really want to have been rubbish probably won’t be. What do I mean? My golden rule is that I should listen hardest to anything that which hurts most, which makes me defend the most aggressively, which gives me the strongest emotional reaction. If the lady is protesting too much, she’s probably got a weak argument (I’m the lady in this example.)
Organising the recording
When are you ready to go?
Ok, eventually, after a few more redrafts, a few more readers, a lot more work, you have a script ready to go. How to you know it’s ready to go? Because you’ve managed to organise a day when the cast is ready, and you’ve run out of time. That’s it. The script is ready when the deadline passes. And when you manage to get everyone in a room.
You can record five 20-minute episodes in one day, with determination, preparation, and the expectation that some people will be late and some stuff will blow up. I usually work at a rate of four minutes time needed for one minutes of recording. I send the script a few days before (you can send it earlier, but the actors won’t read it until just before the recording). The exception to this is if you are sending the script to try and get the actors to agree to be in the cast – then this process is going to start much earlier and take much more time.
Show them the love.
I’m not going to talk much about casting here, because it deserves a whole article. But two things. First, you need to be extremely flexible – you’re going to lose people at the last minute, somebody will be late, somebody will have to go early – be cool, build a plan with spare time, and, well, stay cool! Second, show the love. Acting is hard and stressful. Good acting is extremely hard. Take care of the actors. Bring them cake and things to eat. Make sure everyone has water. Give them breaks when they need them, even if you’re boiling with frustration inside. What they are doing is both very difficult and essential.
Speaking of flexibility, that’s how I ended up playing Codswallop – which was a shame, because the two people who played him in previous readings were SO good. But you lose people on the way, and you must be ready to work with what you have. I was so lucky to end up with such a fantastic cast (read: I worked hard, know amazing people, and did a lot of begging) – and was so lucky they managed to hold up my performance! Our Emily stepped in during the last 24 hours – and my God, she was amazing. Which brings us to another thing about cast: timing and how long it takes.
You don’t record a radio play in order.
Space Station Zeta Recording Plan
| Scene | Page | Words | Mins | Estimated | Boyle | Cod | Emily | Miss Takes | Dump | Time | ETC |
| 7 | 37 | 1426 | 9 | 18 | y | Y | z | Y | y | 18 | |
| 10 | 53 | 1624 | 10 | 38 | y | y | y | Y | y | 38 | |
| 12 | 66 | 784 | 5 | 48 | y | z | y | 48 | |||
| 13 | 71 | 806 | 5 | 58 | y | Y | y | 58 | |||
| 15 | 77 | 1465 | 9 | 76 | y | y | y | Y | y | 1.16 | |
| 2 | 4 | 1382 | 9 | 94 | y | y | y | Y | 1.34 | ||
| 6 | 33 | 628 | 4 | 101 | y | Y | 1.41 | ||||
| 8 | 45 | 847 | 5 | 112 | y | y | y | 1.52 | |||
| 16 | 86 | 1524 | 10 | 131 | y | y | y | 2.11 | |||
| 1 | 1 | 613 | 4 | 139 | y | y | 2.19 | ||||
| 5 | 26 | 1116 | 7 | 153 | y | y | y | 2.33 | |||
| 4 | 19 | 985 | 6 | 165 | y | y | z | 2.45 | |||
| 11 | 62 | 596 | 4 | 172 | y | y | z | 2.52 | |||
| 14 | 75 | 318 | 2 | 176 | y | y | z | 2.56 | |||
| 9 | 51 | 390 | 2 | 181 | y | y | 3.01 | ||||
| 3 | 13 | 1092 | 7 | 195 | y | z | Y | 3.15 | |||
| 97 |
Respect your actors time. If an actor is only in five scenes, do those scenes first then let them go home. Do each scene twice. The first will have more energy, the second will be better read. You’ll cut the good bots from the first take into the second. Whenever they make a mistake, stop them and go back to the beginning of the phrase (the last significant pause or breath – you don’t want to be editing mid-sentence [although you will be!]). Never lose your patience. Never forget that they are doing something very difficult and need your love and support. Treating your actors like shit will result in a shit play (plus it makes you a shit person, so there’s that.)
You want a straightforward scene to start with and then try and hit your high energy stuff while your actors have high energy. They’re trained, they can handle jumping about. Just before the take, help them be recontextualising the scene – what has just happened, where are the characters in their heads. You’ll notice a couple of things from the diagram above. First, we had Joe (playing Chairman Dump) done and out of there in under an hour and a half. That’s great. You get your performance, he gets the rest of his day and the feeling that you’re efficient and good to work with. Plus, bored actors hanging around with nothing to do get in the way.
I didn’t do the same thing with Stef (Miss Takes) because we were recording at her house! Otherwise scene 3 would have been recorded after scene 6. Finally, notice all the little “z”’s for Emily? Those are scenes where she speaks the introductory line as the elevator voice. We were set up to record all of those in a row after scene 5 so she could go early as well – as it happened, she stayed on, but everything is built to minimise the waste of the actor’s time. Always respect your actors time and effort.
The “ETC” column was “Estimated time for Completion.” I updated it based upon the actual time as we completed each scene. It will surprise nobody who knows me (or who knows the Royal Navy) that we finished exactly 5 minutes before our scheduled end time!
How many takes?
A trained actor can give you a great reading straight of the page the first time. Two takes are to give them a chance to try different things. You may need to schedule a rehearsal if you are working with amateurys (on a different day, because they’ll get tired). Record the rehearsal – you can steal pick up lines from the rehearsal! Then have confidence in them on the day. Treat them like pros and they’ll rise to the occasion. Give them the cake. Tell them they’re brilliant. Get them to re-read the lines and talk gently and positively with them about how they can do the good stuff they are doing better. Acting is terrifying for everyone, and especially for non-pros, so be a facilitator. Not a dickhead.
I’m lucky enough to work with people who know what they’re doing, so my focus is on supporting and respecting their work. Listen to their ideas. If an American tells you that your American character would say something in a different way, listen to the actor. No point in using pros if you’re going to treat them like puppets. Then get on with the next scene. This is radio, you’ve got no money and you’re making no money, so don’t waste time.
Ok, what if someone is shit.
You are going to get times when your actor is really struggling. Luckily, for Space Station Zeta everyone was amazing – I say luckily because we had a flash tram strike, a hail storm, a last-minute bout of laryngitis and all the usual theatre stuff. But if you do have an actor who is struggling, stay patient. Explore if it’s a problem in the writing. Explore if you have mis-cast (like every singer, every actor has the range), and talk about the part to find an interpretation that works for them. Give them time with the lines. Don’t get angry with them (yep, everything comes back basically to “don’t be a dickhead.”) Give them space to find their own ways to do things – it may not be quite what you wanted, but you may also get something wonderful and surprising.
I have had one occasion where the actor was, I’m sorry to say, so poor that they were unusable. In those circumstances, get what you can and then listen carefully to the cut. For one play, we were able to change the script and cut together bits of their other lines so that it sounded passable (seriously, the sound engineer made sentences composed from several other sentences) – but that was awkward and sub-optimal.[iii] For the other play we shelved it and re-recorded the part. Audacity is your friend and you can do these things. After they’ve been terrible, thank them, genuinely, for their time and effort (you’re the one that cast them and brought them out there – you made the mistake – own it). And then don’t use them again.
Technical Stuff
We recorded in Stephanie Campion’s front room. Modern tech is amazing. You can record in a quiet room and get good sound. I sue Shure Q2U microphones and a ZOOM H6 – you’ll get a decent recording plugging the Q2U’s direct into a laptop, but a good Zoom does amazing things to clean up noise, if you can splash the extra cash.
Make sure the mikes are on stands and the actors are facing each other, able to stand properly and speak across the mikes, and read their parts from paper scripts. We did SSZ with the scripts on screens to get rid of paper rustling noises, which seemed liked a good idea at the time. But most actors don’t like it. They like to make notes on their paper, which are a big part of them following their part. So, give them paper scripts, make sure everyone pauses and is careful with the page turns, and get used to editing out paper rustling.
Remember to record a good five seconds of silence before each take so you can apply noise reduction. Check your levels and make sure all the mikes are on. Seriously. Always make sure the mikes are on. The time you make that mistake is going to hurt.
Spare memory cards, power leads, a back up recording device, stuff for the actors to eat, plenty of water, spare jumpers. Think about it like a camping trip where everything is going to go wrong. Then make sure you’re ready for it.
Go big – then go home and sit in front of your computer for many hours
If you’re going to record a whole series, then make it about something fantastic. We have explosions, space ships, robot heads, gigantic drills, fires, more explosions, weird voice effects – go big or go home. Or rather, go big then go home and realise you’ve got to edit all this.
There are inherent advantages in recording a five-part series to recording five separate plays. You can re-use lots of sound effects. You only need one theme tune (I can’t believe how much original music I’ve written this year – not something I expected). But you still need to give yourself lots of time for post-production because you’re going to be juggling a lot of things in your head.
The first thing to do is pull together a rough cut with the scenes in the right order. Do this soon afterwards, while the performance is fresh in your head. I strongly recommend audacity, because it is free and awesome.
While you’re going through this first cut annotate a paper script at your side with all the sound effects you didn’t realise you needed but now do. Also, give some space to your creative side. This is radio. Sound effects are good. Write a number list (scene and SFX number) in chronological order of every sound you need. Then, cry, and, if you drink, have a stiff drink. We’ll do an article about how we edit another time. Just be ready: a whole series is a big project.
Chris did all the sound for this, because he loves doing sound and wanted the challenge. That’s why the sound is so bloody fantastic.
Don’t be discouraged by trailing numbers.
Less people will listen to your series than your individual plays. This is part of our modern consumer culture. A series is an investment of time that nobody feels the have.
We released Space Station Zeta on a weekly basis because that kept our content coming and our podcast active, but in terms of the way people consume series now this was not the right approach. I know I binge watch series. You do to. Waiting for next week just seems hard.
Don’t let a lower number of listens than your normal shows discourage you. Once the series is up, people can discover it later. The purpose of making a radio series was to learn and, equally, to make a portfolio piece: something a bit special that we can have on the site and show we can make big, shiny, amazing things.
I’m not discouraged.
Space Station Zeta, in terms of the quality of sound (thank you Chris) the amazing artwork (thank you Owen), is the best and certainly the most ambitious thing we’ve produced. We will make series again. It is a fantastic learning experience as a writer and a wonderful thing to have been involved in. I feel deeply privileged to have seen my group of actors work on, develop and make my silly Blackadder rip-off characters become real. Thank you, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to listen.
Hopefully this article was helpful in giving some ideas on how to manage and produce a radio series. At some point I will be brave enough to write a critique of the writing (there are lots of things to say about it!) But, regarding making a series, feel free to ask questions in the comments (or suggest articles you’d like written) – and encourage people to come listen to Space Station Zeta. It has spaceships! And jokes! And explosions! I’m so proud of everyone that made this happen.
[i] There’s a Supreme Court hearing going on as I write this, and the Democrats keep calling the key party “Dr Jones” while Republicans refer to her as “Ms Jones.” (Not all, not consistently, just a noticeable trend). As a doctor who gets called Mr a lot, this pisses me off, and I get to experience it without the weight of patriarchal undertones. Thus, just in case anyone was in any doubt, the whole Doctor/Director/Miss/I thought he was a man thing in Space Station Zeta is me being very angry and putting it into the text. It’s a comedy. A COMEDY!
[ii] Cod is intended to be a loveable idiot, which is at least in part to ease how very, very creepy is his behaviour towards Emily. Building her a surprise Sexbot? Declarations of love for someone to whom he can’t talk? Yep, without his character journey, and the changes he is forced to experience, he would have been declaring she had “friend zoned” him by the end of the play and calling her a bitch on reddit. Did I mention this was a comedy? Another evolution that I adored is that, if you look carefully, for every subject OTHER than romance Codswallop is right about everything that happens – and is almost always the one that comes up with the plan that fixes the problem. Now that he’s learned women are people too, maybe he’ll go on to be a great Chairman of the Federation. Or, given today’s hearings, that’ll just disqualify him unless he can say the word “beer” 52 times in one speech.
[iii] If you’re one of my actors and are reading this and thinking “oh shit, was that me” it wasn’t you. I promise. That actor knows who I am because they invested some time and effort in telling me what an awful person I am and won’t be reading this blog anyway because they’ll be too busy campaigning for Asselineau and reading up on how vaccines cause autism. Yes, these were probably warning signs I should have paid attention to before we tried the recording.
