Four right ways to write an audio script.

About all the tricks we women writers have for something that will not be read but listened to. Scripts by Isabel Cadenas, Patricia Sulbarán, NK Kelly and Maru Lombardo.

Today’s story is for audio nerds

Thank you for reading and sharing the Clandestine Manifesto for audio lovers. I had a lot of fun writing it and was very happy to see it come true, I wish someone who works in a print shop would see it so we can print it on flyers and post it on audio studios. A pasquin, a beautiful utopia. I wonder if you would like to hear me reading my stories in a small audio file.

All very self-referential: if I ever read out loud what I write at loud I fear I'll be one step away from having a suffix and someone referring to all this as Lauraubatismo…

Speaking of meta: Check out this beautiful episode that Tristana and Peces Fuera del Agua did. It's nice to have a sound memory of what has been producing podcasts in Spanish and to know the diversity of references we have. In my case, I talked about the podcasts of Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, my beloved Viajes Inmóviles, and the strange moment we are in. I think the coolest thing about growing up is to see how your references change: Nowadays what I like the most is what Molten Heart produces, the stories of Invisibilia and some episodes of The Heart. I no longer listen to men talking about music anymore. Here is the most shared phrase of the episode:

"The podcast industry in Spanish (independent) is not that it is done for free, it is done at the cost of a currency that is called enthusiasm... and that currency runs out." Inspired by Remedios Zafra’s essay “El Entusiasmo”

Thanks to Florencia Flores, Maggie Morett, Oscar Iván Pérez and Mike Mora for writing the oral history of podcast in Spanish. And to Eolio for this beautiful pic.

Now let’s get into it.

Four right ways to write an audio script.

Whenever you're developing a new narrative podcast you have a shared mission: This is the story and it has to last so many minutes. Your job, as a scriptwriter, is to deliver something that is recorded, put in other voices, moods, and music so that it lasts more or less what was asked for. It is true that in the podcast the duration of the audio is not as strict as in the radio. But when it comes to sound design and mixing, every extra minute costs extra hours of work. So for the sake of the team: you have to fulfill the mission. But how do you know the lenght of your audio just by writing?

So far, my measurement was "One page of script in Arial 14 size with single spacing is about one minute of final audio" and that's how I got the first few scripts out. Now, as I'm working with different teams and projects where I'm not in all stages of production, I realized I have to change my method: I wrote an 18-page script and it came out to 36 minutes of audio. Not good.

So I spoke with Patricia Sulbarán, Isabel Cadenas, Maru Lombardo and Nicole Kelly to find out their writing preferences and it took me into an aesthetic adventure that I would like to share with you. Meet four correct ways to write a script and at the end, the definitive answer to page count.

1. The traditional option: Arial is all you need

I, Laura Ubaté, attended an audio school ruled by Arial 14. It is a school that favors effectiveness and hygiene. Arial 14 is the default font in Google Docs, it is designed to be easy to read, so it is used a lot in the podcast and radio. In this font, you can do a quick scroll and see the script structure and edits easily. My opinion is that what reads in Arial 14 and feels good, is because it's written really well. It exceeds the expectations of the typeface.

For me, that was the most universal typeface. But it's just one way to do it.

2. The elegant option: Times New Roman

Patricia Sulbarán was a longtime correspondent for BBC World News, then wrote scripts at Futuro Studios and today is doing podcasts for the New York Times. She's not a fan of reading in sustained capital letters. Sometimes she records in Arial, but size 12, because "it makes several things fit on one page" so when she records and finishes reading it, it's like, "Yess! Mission accomplished. Fewer pages."

As effective as it is, Arial doesn't flow for writing, for that Patricia prefers Times New Roman. And well, if it makes you feel more inspired, why not? Writing in Times makes me feel like I'm Virginia Wolf in a room with a view and that's the way you want to be to do justice to a news story. So go for it.

3. The retro: Courier

Maru Lombardo has been a screenwriter for several fiction series at Ochenta and Loro Podcasts. He writes in Courier, inspired by the American screenwriting method, where the spacing is wide and the text looks like it came out of a typewriter. It makes sense. This typeface takes up more space on the page and therefore asks you to use shorter sentences, more action-oriented.

Isabel Cadenas writes the scripts of De eso no se habla in Courier too, with some preferences: "Size 11 and for Acts capital letters and bold. Anything that is not like that makes me nervous. I see something in Arial and I get very upset, in fact sometimes to write faster what I do is write in something I don't like and say 'until I finish this paragraph I can't change the font'".

As for Isabel, she is launching a new subscription campaign and producing a new season.

3. The colorful option

NK wrote bitchface and co-produced a season of The Heart. She writes scripts for tv and other podcasts and her preference, same as CC Paschal, from Molten Heart is to edit and write the script with some color-coding.

"I like the narration to be in Helvetica and the tape to be in Courier. My signature style is to edit in all caps hot pink, that's my trademark. Even when I write for myself I do it all in pink. I use purple to indicate parts of the narrative that need to be developed further. For titles, I have to feel that the end of the act is a bigger size than everything else. And the title of the scenes has to be in bold."

And why all of this matters?

The most paradoxical thing about writing audio scripts is that they are meant to be listened to, not read. You write for the pleasure of imagining how it's going to be heard and just for that reason, I think it's great to step outside the standard to create your own system. Part of the diversity of audio is that there is no one right way to do it and if your team understands your scripting conventions then: go for it. I celebrate throwing narrative neutrality out the window and I celebrate the myriad ways there are to write a good audio script. Someday, hopefully our scripts will be seen as well.

Something to keep in mind:

Note that all the examples I have just given favor short sentences, and the fast pace between words and sounds. Whatever your method, this principle is fundamental: we write as someone would speak. We write short, to be heard. If you see a script with long paragraphs without a pause, it's a sign that it's not a great audio story.

Screenshot of The Outlaw Ocean, by Ian Urbina.

Now the pragmatic solution to the issue of typography and length:

Count the number of words, not the number of lines or pages.

This is a rule courtesy of Daniel Murcia, one of the sound engineers who worked with me on Uribe Acorralado.150 words equals one minute. If you have a script of 3,000-3,500 words, you're at 20-25 minutes of finished audio.

Thanks to Dani, the girls, and you, for coming to learn audio nerdiness at Write Out Loud.

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