Radio Play: The Highs and Lows of an Audio Medium
WHAT IS A MEDIUM?
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What is a Radio Play?
Everybody gather around the wireless, it’s time to stare at a speaker!
Radio plays hold a very special place in our cultural history. They were the first live communal entertainment streamed directly into homes. Weirdly, nobody can agree when the first radio play was broadcast, but it was definitely in the 1920s, and since then thousands if not millions of hours of fiction have been beamed directly into the ears of listeners.
But what is a radio play, this most aged of narrative mediums? Well, it’s a story told exclusively using the sense of hearing. The narrative is conveyed through dialogue, music, and deliberate use of sound effects.
Given its longevity and its continually expanding library, it can be easily assumed that radio plays span the whole gamut of genre and length. To qualify as a radio ‘play’, though, the story must be of a self-contained nature. There are radio dramas that expand into series and beyond, but we’ll cover those at another time. For now, we will solely focus on standalone stories told in an audio medium.
Because of the requirements of different stations in different regions and countries, there’s no set length for radio plays. Instead, there will often be pre-scheduled slots in the weeks’ timetable for plays of certain lengths and themes to be broadcast. And some of them aren’t even on Radio 4.
Examples of Radio Plays
The Ruffian on the Stair - Joe Orton
Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas
The Dark Tower - Louis MacNeice
Benefits of Writing a Radio Play
Ease of Production
Got some friends? Got a microphone (there’s one on your phone)? Well, then… Get producing!
The trickiest part of producing a radio drama, from a technical standpoint, is the editing. There are free libraries of sound effects online, so even that can be a doddle. Out of all the mediums that require meaningful production considerations, radio plays are the easiest to overcome.
So, if you want to get your work out there, self-produce!
If you don’t want to do that, there’s a hundred open calls for original radio plays that you can apply to right now!
Turnaround
Of course, if a ratty teenager with a microphone and Audacity can make a half way decent radio play in a few weeks, the professionals can create masterpieces in the same time.
From the final full stop to a completed product, the timeline of audio production is much quicker than other mediums. So, if you’re desperate for your play about current events must be released with all haste, email a radio producer.
Craft Training
Radio plays can’t be watched. And dialogue is hard. Worldbuilding without being able to see the world may sound like a drawback, but it’s actually the opposite. If you master the art of writing for audio, your audience will see your world with all the detail they need. If and when you do migrate to the stage, screen, or anywhere else, you’ll be armed with a skill that’ll make every actor add you to their nightly blessings.
You’ll give every actor something interesting to do with their time.
Endless Narrative Scope
Being audio-only means radio plays can lean in to something other mediums probably can’t get away with:
Conceptual writing.
Because of the reliance on audience imagination, some narration and a specific sound effect can conjure all manner of unfilmable concepts. You want someone to turn themselves inside out while reciting Shakespearean sonnets? Go on then. You want them to do it while falling through an endless stack of dimensional portals? Crack on.
Why not? It’s free!
Well, not ‘free’, but filming something like that would cost an absolute fortune, and it’d be so grim no network or studio would show it, if they even figured out how to do it. But on radio? Delightful!
Industry Ears Are Always Listening
We’ll come back to audience in drawbacks, but one advantage of writing a radio play is that someone with influence is always listening. It may be hard to believe in this world of streaming and app-based entertainment that actual people with actual high-paying jobs listen to the radio, but they do.
And if they like what they hear, they’ll give you a job.
If they don’t like what they hear, that’s no bother. They hear a lot of things they don’t like and don’t remember the moment it’s over. So when they do like what they hear, everything beforehand is obsolete.
Which is great, given the above points on turnaround.
Drawbacks of Writing a Radio Play
Diminishing Audience
If you’re writing a radio play for the love of it, don’t expect to be making headlines.
For all its merits, the radio play is… struggling. The bright lights of newer mediums are drawing audiences away from the radio with each passing day.
Also, given that it originated in 1921, a lot of the hardcore fans are, um… well, they’re dying.
Diminishing Opportunities
With fewer audiences, you’d think there’d be fewer stations. Well, there’s actually loads of radio stations, it’s just that none of them are making radio plays anymore. As the suits tighten their belts, it’s been discovered that, despite their low production costs, it’s cheaper to re-run old material and stick to playing music than it is to actually innovate and create new material.
Of course, there is some audience blame to this as well. Fewer audience members means less incentive to produce, but that doesn’t change the bottom line for writers that the ability to get a radio play produced has diminished in recent years.
Competition / Open Call Topic Limitations
As with all production-based mediums, there are people that must be appeased in order to see your vision (hearing?) realised. Given the volume of open calls that are often running, there’ll probably be something to suit your slate coming up.
But it’s not guaranteed. And despite the relative low cost of producing radio, financial incentives are having an impact on the experimentation of picked pieces for production.
Lack of Visuals
Owning your medium is all well and good. It’s the foundation of this series. But who set out in the 21st century to write radio plays? It’s an art that is often overlooked in writing courses. What that means, of course, is that most of us are trained to tell stories visually, so it doesn’t matter whether your story is dying to be a radio play if you’re not equipped to write it.
Without visuals, even if you’re an accomplished writer in other mediums, writing a radio play can feel like writing in another language.
Are the Financial Rewards in the Room with Us?
I may be being slightly glib here, but there’s a solid point beneath the sarcasm. Radio plays do not pay well. Royalties tend to be minimal, if you get any at all. It feels like a medium propped up by the old adage of “being paid in exposure”.
Which is… fine, I guess.
Building a Shared Universe? Pair With These 4 Other Mediums
Zine
Short Story
One-Act Play
Micro Film (Under 15 Minutes)
