You should make a narrative podcast

There, I said it.

So what makes narrative podcasting so darn special, you ask? Why are you recommending it to everyone? You wouldn’t recommend distance running or home coffee roasting or playing the harmonica to anyone, would you?

But you would say “Everyone should make a narrative podcast?” You better explain yourself, buster.

All right. A narrative podcast begins with a script. You probably knew that. A script, as in writing. Rewriting. Editing, like cutting the 10-30% of the words that aren't bringing much to the party. Editing some more. Getting some feedback. Maybe even scrapping that draft and starting over. (Ouch!) Rinse, wince, repeat. 

It sounds awful, doesn’t it? Yes! Sometimes it is. All that wrestling with verbiage, like one of those old greased-pig-catching contests at the county fair? Who wants to win the prize of self-understanding bad enough to get that dirty? And it is a dirty process . . . you’re never going to get out of writing anything real without getting your clothes wrinkled and your hair mussed up at the very least. And when you write something that really changes you, you’ll feel wrung out and just want to space out under a long, hot shower.

(Wait, this is how you’re selling me on narrative podcasting? You’re doing a pretty crappy job of it . . . this writing business sounds exhausting, and isn’t this just the first of three steps? Isn’t there still recording, and audio editing / sound design after this? Good grief.)

But hold on, stay with me for a minute here — I promise I’m fumbling toward a point here: there’s a story of this Jacob guy in the Hebrew Bible, who gets visited by an angel one night at a crucial point in his life. Instead of, say, asking for advice or protection or three wishes, Jacob chooses to wrestle the angel. Of course, right? 

But here’s the good part: he says to this supernatural being, I’m not going to let you go from this half Nelson until you bless me. And the angel kinda cheats and disables Jacob with his magical angel powers so Jacob has a dislocated hip (and since this was maybe 1,500 BC, there were no physical therapists or MRI’s so Jacob probably limped for the rest of his life) . . . but he got his blessing: he was never the same person again. He got a new name, a new purpose, a new sense of self-understanding. He had somewhere to go with his life. 

And that’s kinda what writing a script for a narrative podcast can be like: you have to wrestle (with yourself), you may get hurt, but you’ll never be the same person again.

So let's write! And hope see you in the scriptwriting workshop.