Writing for Podcasts and Radio with Zoë Comyns
Info
Date: November 6, 2024
Time: 6.30pm - 8.30pm
Duration: 4 weeks
Level: Beginner |
Cost: €120/€108
This course will take place online on Wednesdays for 4 weeks.
Course Summary
Learn to write for the ear. Participants will learn about effective audio narratives – documentary/short features and fiction, from generating an idea to ways to record your work. Topics covered will include:
- How audio stories differ from those written for the page.
- Tips on story, scene and sentence levels.
- Reading your own audio writing.
- Adapting work to audio forms.
Podcasts & radio techniques, proposals and treatments, audio cues/SFX, integrating sound and audio will be explored in these workshops. Participants will listen to examples of pieces that prompt ideas and outline techniques. Participants will complete short exercises that will help them better understand how to approach their own work.
Course Outline
Week one: Introduction – how to listen to audio, what makers are doing, fine tuning your ear, the structuring and layering of images.
Week two: Short audio essay – samples, techniques and practical exercises.
Week three: Features & factual – scenes, timing, styles, tone, signposts, shaping voiceovers and interviews in the edit.
Week four: Fiction – point of view, narration, character, dialogue, setting, contrast.
Course Outcomes
Participants will leave with
- A deeper understanding of how writing for the ear differs from the page.
- The styles, formats and techniques involved in writing for podcasts and radio.
- The confidence to start their own projects.
Zoë Comyns is a multi award-winning independent radio producer and works across drama, essay, factual features. Presenter and producer of Keywords, the short writing series for RTÉ Radio 1. Her programmes have broadcast on RTÉ (Radio 1, Lyric Fm & Extra), Newstalk and BBC Radio 4, Radio 3 and BBC World Service. She won the 2019 John McGahern Award for Literature for emerging writers. She was the inaugural podcaster-in-residence at the Royal Irish Academy in 2022. She is currently developing a new short writing series for RTÉ Radio 1.
Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.
