How do you get narrative podcast ideas?

These prompts have sparked many episodes for us:

• What’s something you really want to understand better?

• What podcast are you surprised no one’s making?

• What’s something you need progress on?

• What’s keeping you up at night?

Whether you are going to be the writer, story editor, or both, the purpose of each of these self-diagnostic questions is to help you figure out what is really important to you, because whether you are an indie podcaster just starting out, or you’ve been hired to produce a new show at a network, deep intrinsic motivation will keep you going during the long, rigorous process of creating a great narrative episode. Earning money or building your reputation or making connections can all be worthwhile external success markers from making an excellent narrative podcast, but it’s the internal factors that we believe fuel the long-term creative lifestyle that transcends any single idea.

That’s why so much of our course is dedicated to self-assessment and personal growth, everything from creative motivation to different creative personalities; interviewing ethics to the symbolism of voiceover; personal boundaries to creative habits; overcoming blocks and collaboration skills. In addition to the obvious podcasting-related lessons like scriptwriting and audio editing, these other items in the toolkit will equip you to grow and succeed in any creative endeavor — and get you through the rigorous narrative podcast production process.

What do we mean, “rigorous process?” Well for us, for a 15-minute episode like this course intro, we might spend two hours just taking out all the extra pauses, breaths, mouth noises, and mumbles from our voiceover. We’ll spend another few hours putting in music and adjusting volume levels. And of course, that’s after spending many more hours than that writing and editing multiple drafts of the script in the first place! All told, a “quick” narrative podcast episode might take us 20 hours to produce.

So what makes narrative podcasting worth it?

As screenwriting guru Robert McKee talks about (one of the many experts we refer to in the curriculum), a great story lifts us outside of time. And a great story podcast begins with a script, so we spend a lot of time on scriptwriting and editing in the course. But in audio storytelling, as opposed to print, a great story also means great sound quality: home recording studio best practices, pro voiceover tips, and then careful editing so there’s nothing distracting the listener from what you’re saying. (Yes, there’s a lot of material on voiceover, audio editing, and sound design.)

But that’s on the listener side; as we talk about in the course FAQs, making any podcast can help you find, and embrace, your literal and figurative voice. And doing any sort of creative writing can help you make sense of the world, connect with others, understand your past, process old trauma, earn money, get famous, or touch on any of the myriad motivations for doing creative work (we get into this more in module 1 of the course, Why create?).

But after making 200 episodes of our narrative podcast Shelter in Place, we can say definitively that there is a special degree of pride, of self-awareness, and connection with others that only comes with making a high-quality scripted or story-based podcast. It’s a painstaking, often-exhausting process — and we wouldn’t trade any of it!

That’s the love we have for this genre, and the conviction we bring to the podcasting curriculum for the course, and the enthusiasm we bring to our coaching sessions. We cover each of these elements extensively in our course, and also provide writing exercises, templates, and exclusive discounts on audio editing and gear to help you practice!

(Or if a whole self-paced podcasting course feels like too much right now, check out our one-day workshop series instead.)