Make a Write

When I first read the article featured in the previous blog, a rebellious little part of me thought "You know what? What does that Crook guy know?  Well, quite a bit as it turns out.

I turned to the BBC and their site How to Write,  which contains all sorts of useful tidbits about writing in various formats, including a radio play. (A bit odd if these never got off the ground in the UK, but I digress.)

The article "How to Write a Radio Play" is found here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/howtowrite/radio_struc.shtml


In the article, award-winning writer of radio plays, Mike Walker has a similar view to Crook:

"What you're aiming to do at the beginning of a play is hit the ground running. You don't want to spend time introducing, laying the ground work and saying this and that. You just want to get in there and grab the listener so that the drama is moving from the very second the play begins."

But as I mentioned earlier,  since each script runs at about two minutes each, I don't think that starting off slowly is going to hurt the play. It's slow, but it's short enough so that the listeners (hopefully) don't grow bored.


In terms of characters, they suggest no more than six characters in every half hour play. (Does that mean I need less in a shorter play? Probably)  Each episode I've written so far consists of an Announcer and a Narrator (both voiced by me, but with different accents and vocal qualities) and no more than three named characters per episode. No more than two characters interact with each other at a time, which should keep it easier for listeners to tell who is who. The other advantage to this is that I require less actors. 

"Each [character] will have their own individual speech mannerisms. Don't have them all speaking in your tone of voice."

Each voice I've already established within my scripts, is unique:
The Announcer: Loud and booming like an old-time ham radio personality.

The Narrator: Relatively neutral, very much like my own voice.

Drake Mandible: Smooth, cheerful, classy, reassuring or hard-edged when needs to be.

Nickelby: Archetypal British butler, mature, measured voice.

The Assassin: Low and sultry, with an indeterminable European accent.

The Computer: Electronic (like that lady you hear on your message bank)

Jake Mandible: Can be similar to Drake (they ARE brothers after all) but a bit higher. Rougher around the edges, with a surfer dude/ bogan quality. Perpetually friendly.

This encourages my actors to test their versatility with characters that are noticeably different from each other.

As the series progresses, I will be slowly introducing more characters, which may necessitate finding more actors for these roles.

Walker then explains the need to establish the characters early on, which I hope I've managed to do with the first lines of each character:
The Announcer: THE ADVENTURES OF DRAKE MANDIBLE (Audience instantly knows this is the announcer)

Drake: My goodness, what a magnificent morning! (Suggests intelligence/masculinity and also sets up the precedence for Drake being a little old fashioned.)

The Assassin: Mr Mandible, I presume. (Mysterious, beguiling and possibly a little dangerous)

Jake: Hey, hey, little bro! (Perpetually cheerful, laid back demeanour)


Again, once the story progresses, the characters will change and develop further but for now, these first lines of dialogue establishes the characters as they stand.


That's about it this time. Stay tuned, ladies and Gents ;)

Nate.