The Writing

Jen & Chris discuss "The Writing" - the ideas and methods they used to create their first fiction podcast, THE STRANGE CHRONICLES.

In their recurring segments, they discuss "Technical magics or mishaps," "How the writing is going," and provide a "Podcast tip," something to help you along your journey in making your own fiction podcast.

Email us at info@thestrangechronicles.com

Sign-up for our mailing list at https://thestrangechronicles.com

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

00;00;10;26 - 00;00;24;00
Jen
Hi and welcome to Making The Strange a podcast about how we made our fiction podcast. We will take you along with us in real time as we create our fiction podcast. I'm Jennifer, the writer and creator of the Strange Chronicles.

00;00;24;08 - 00;00;37;27
Chris
And I'm Chris, the producer of The Strange Chronicles, a sci fi noir detective podcast.

00;00;38;06 - 00;00;43;02
Jen
In today's episode, we're going to talk about what it takes to write a fiction podcast.

00;00;43;13 - 00;00;55;05
Chris
We'll also discuss a technical magic that happened along the way and something we hope will help you in an hour. How's the writing going segment? Jennifer will discuss how the writing is going.

00;00;55;26 - 00;01;02;02
Jen
And finally we'll provide a podcast tip, something that you can use as a strategy for your own podcast.

00;01;02;24 - 00;01;05;27
Chris
All right. First, a quick rundown of this podcast and why we're making it.

00;01;06;11 - 00;01;15;03
Jen
Yes. Well, making the strange is kind of a way that we're chronicling our experience of making our fiction podcast. It's an experiment. We have no idea what we're doing.

00;01;15;15 - 00;01;24;14
Chris
It's also a way to keep us motivated and on task. So hopefully you can follow along and see that if it's something you'd like to do, and if we can do it, then you certainly can, too.

00;01;24;27 - 00;01;48;10
Jen
Exactly. If you have any questions or comments regarding making a fiction podcast, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at info at the Strange Chronicles dot com and we'll be sure to include questions in a future episode. Okay, it's time for our technical mishap or magic. And today is a magic. So, Chris, tell us something magical that's happened.

00;01;48;23 - 00;02;08;15
Chris
Okay. Today's magic is the music. Technically not technical. It was kind of a creative endeavor for me. I had a lot of fun doing it. Music is super intimidating. I am not a musician by any means, but I like music a lot. I listen to a lot of music. I have friends that make music and I know what I like.

00;02;09;28 - 00;02;38;17
Chris
So I dove headfirst into Apple's garage band on both my computer and my iPad. Just a little bit of note. On the technical side, the two files for some reason are not compatible. So if you record a file on a garage band on your laptop or computer and then record a file on your iPad or iPhone because they have the app on both.

00;02;38;17 - 00;02;44;15
Chris
iOS is single uses both devices anyway. You can't play them on the other device.

00;02;44;28 - 00;02;45;24
Jen
Oh, weird.

00;02;45;24 - 00;02;58;21
Chris
Yeah. Super weird. Right. You can export the file and then, you know, make it a wave or whatever and empathy however you want to export it. And then in that way you can listen to it on either device, but the actual garage band file is not cross compatible.

00;02;59;02 - 00;02;59;09
Jen
Huh.

00;03;00;02 - 00;03;18;23
Chris
So I did it on both. I started I think I started on the laptop. I made the intro to the to the show on the laptop. And again, don't play instruments, don't read music, but I love it. And I started messing around in there with all the instruments that they do have. There's so many like you can pick all sorts of stuff.

00;03;18;23 - 00;03;42;24
Chris
They have strings, they have percussion, they have the synth, which is my favorite. I love a good synth and you can just start messing around and there's so many intuitive, easy to use tools that if you just have an idea of a sound that you want to try to achieve, I feel like you can kind of do it with a bass level of nothing.

00;03;43;09 - 00;03;49;12
Jen
What inspired the music for this? What did you listen to, to get inspired to make the intro?

00;03;49;21 - 00;04;10;29
Chris
I don't know that I listened to anything. I definitely, you know, as we've talked about this show a lot, you know, X-Files comes up as a big inspiration, and I wanted to do something along that line. I'm not that creative genius where I can make something that's so, so, like, such a good earworm or and so simple. The beauty of that thing is, is that it's just so simple.

00;04;10;29 - 00;04;25;18
Chris
But I definitely wanted to do to me, I wanted to do something was sort of a throwback to the past. Even though we're in the future. I just feel like everything in my brain that identifies future revolves around a little bit of synth. You know, that's.

00;04;25;18 - 00;04;26;07
Jen
Very eighties.

00;04;26;12 - 00;04;28;05
Chris
It's super eighties and I love it.

00;04;29;06 - 00;04;35;05
Jen
But did, did we also listen to intros of other podcasts and like I was playing some for you?

00;04;35;05 - 00;04;41;28
Chris
Yeah, you did a lot of that and you get a lot of like background information as to like don't make it this and don't do that and it has to be this bit shorter.

00;04;41;28 - 00;04;42;05
Jen
Keep it.

00;04;42;05 - 00;04;57;16
Chris
Shorter. Yeah, which I definitely had to do. And I tried a couple of different ones that I threw in there and, and, you know, we threw it out there to some of our friends to listen to as well. And they had some good ideas as far as like placement and when to time things out. But I had a lot of fun.

00;04;57;29 - 00;05;10;04
Chris
The other thing Garage Band does is it has a million loops and they are really high quality and I used a lot of those to varying degrees and I mixed and match things and.

00;05;10;17 - 00;05;14;24
Jen
Yeah, it sounds great. I would never guess that you don't have a musical background.

00;05;15;11 - 00;05;22;09
Chris
Well, I don't, but I love it. And maybe in another life I can go be a musician.

00;05;22;09 - 00;05;37;13
Jen
So if you are looking to make a theme song for your fiction podcast, consider looking into Garage Band. I know there are a bunch of other ways to make music on the computer. There are other there's other software.

00;05;37;13 - 00;05;55;17
Chris
And yeah, there's some fun stuff you can get into out there. There's like I creating music I forgot what the word. Yes, but you can go in and basically like pick a few parameters and say, hey, I make me a song and it makes this weird, like dirt or dirt, dirt, dirt. But it's musical. Some of it. Some of it's a little out there, but music is music.

00;05;55;17 - 00;05;56;07
Chris
It's hitting notes.

00;05;56;10 - 00;06;03;01
Jen
Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of cool that you can channel your creativity in that way.

00;06;03;16 - 00;06;10;27
Chris
Next up, we're going to discuss how the writing is going. So, Jen, how is the writing going?

00;06;11;02 - 00;06;33;12
Jen
Well, this is the writing episode, so we'll get into a deeper chat in a moment. But the update on writing the podcast is it's going fine. I have multiple episodes ready to record and still more ideas, which is a good place to be, and I think it helps that it's summertime, so there's more space for that. So my verdict on the writing for now is all good.

00;06;33;25 - 00;06;34;19
Jen
It's all good.

00;06;34;26 - 00;06;43;00
Chris
That's great. So now that we know that the writing is going well, can you dove a little deeper into the actual process of writing?

00;06;43;11 - 00;07;09;09
Jen
Yes. Well, this is the writing episode. So this is just a basic rundown of how I wrote the episodes of the story. The writing of a fiction podcast is going to depend on the length and aim of your story. So I tend to write stories on the shorter side in general. So our episodes are about 10 to 15 pages long, which comes out to about 15 to 20 minutes for the episodes.

00;07;10;02 - 00;07;36;04
Jen
An important thing for the writing is how to frame your story. What is the engine that pushes it along and makes more episodes? So in our case, with The Strange Chronicles, the podcast is told us case logs. So our main character is a detective who investigates supernatural crimes, usually starting with a missing person. Each episode is a mystery, so there will be a through line with the main characters, and then each mystery is a standalone.

00;07;36;19 - 00;07;41;01
Jen
If you keep the main character list short, you'll have an easier time recording.

00;07;41;14 - 00;07;43;08
Chris
Is there anything you would have done differently?

00;07;44;09 - 00;08;06;05
Jen
Great question. Definitely. I would have had all of the episodes written before jumping in with the recording. I had planned to do that originally and I do have a full outline of the episodes, but having enough time for all the writing and recording and editing is proving to be a challenge. It's a surmountable challenge. And, you know, making this podcast is helpful, you know, to keep it going.

00;08;06;11 - 00;08;11;09
Jen
But it's definitely a pressure that I could have avoided if I had done all of the scripts before we started.

00;08;11;21 - 00;08;28;18
Chris
Yeah, I think if you're doing it by yourself, you know, you're not going to you're not going to save any time by writing and recording and doing that all at the same time. But I think when you have another person helping you, you can write and the other person can do all the posts and do all the editing.

00;08;29;02 - 00;08;31;20
Jen
Which was our plan. I think that's kind of what we're doing.

00;08;31;20 - 00;08;39;17
Chris
Yeah, I know it is, it is. But I think it helps keep things moving along a little faster rather than, you know, waiting for one thing to be finished for. You can start the next week and sort of do them simultaneously.

00;08;39;18 - 00;08;50;28
Jen
Yeah. I mean, and that's how it's going. It's going okay that way. But if I had just like a nice stack of scripts. Brandon Sanderson style, but I could just plop down on a desk.

00;08;50;28 - 00;08;52;20
Chris
So I wrote a book, boom.

00;08;53;08 - 00;08;53;21
Jen
And then I.

00;08;53;21 - 00;08;54;08
Chris
Wrote another.

00;08;54;08 - 00;09;09;18
Jen
Sorry over Boom, referring to the writer, another book video. If you haven't seen that Brandon Sanderson so famously made like a bazillion dollars on Kickstarter by writing for books over the summer or over COVID. COVID, yeah, his.

00;09;09;20 - 00;09;11;26
Chris
His, his, his. It was brilliant. His little.

00;09;11;26 - 00;09;12;12
Jen
Yeah, that's.

00;09;12;12 - 00;09;14;11
Chris
Funny Kickstarter because I just loved it.

00;09;15;09 - 00;09;37;09
Jen
So yeah, I wish that I had it all fully done, but I have a lot of other work that I'm doing at the same time. So getting in the character's heads, when you're in another, doing another job and you're as the writer in their head, it was hard to jump back and forth, but luckily for right now, I'm solidly no, that's not true because I'm revising something else.

00;09;37;12 - 00;09;56;28
Jen
But I was going to say, when I'm working on the podcast, I'm solidly in Gray's head. It's kind of a trippy thing to be jumping around from projects, so I do wish I had done them all, but at this point I'll just be so grateful if I can finish this all by our you know, our launch date of Halloween.

00;09;56;28 - 00;10;21;06
Chris
So woo, woo. Better get a move on. I better get a move on. All right. So what what's your best advice on writing the fiction podcast? You're a multi medium writer. You write, you know, scripts, you write books, now you're writing a podcast. Are there differences between those mediums like if someone thinks, you know, some author wants to go do their own podcast or someone wants to switch from doing screenwriting.

00;10;21;19 - 00;10;22;15
Chris
Yeah, tips.

00;10;23;09 - 00;10;47;15
Jen
I guess a tip could be. I think I mentioned in the story episode that choosing a popular genre is helpful. I have no idea how the story will be received. So my advice on doing this is like, you know, pertains to my experience. But no matter what story you want to tell, no matter if it checks the right boxes, what's really the most important thing is for you to tell it to finish.

00;10;47;27 - 00;11;15;15
Jen
I would say as far as mediums, like different mediums of writing, sure, they all have different structures and different rules, but forget rules, just write the thing. You know, I'm probably breaking a lot of rules with the podcast and scripts and, you know, book stuff. I think the most important thing is to write the thing and then you can fix, you know, once the thing is a thing, you can fix it, you can shape it, you can make it better.

00;11;16;03 - 00;11;41;15
Jen
I think writing is always really in the revision. It's that blank page that kind of gets. Yeah, I just think that it's really important to get through all the cobwebs of doubt and make sure that you're doing the writing. Start something today even if it changes tomorrow. But if you start something, you'll be making a fiction podcast like you are a fiction podcast writer if you write one sentence today on your fiction podcast.

00;11;41;15 - 00;12;04;01
Jen
So that's my biggest advice. And yeah, sure, if you if you write other things that might help you, if you don't write other things and you really want to do this, that's fine too, you know. But yeah, I think it helps to have written before because you have like an innate idea of like, you know, the three act structure or whatever.

00;12;04;01 - 00;12;10;23
Chris
So that finishes up the writing that of the episode. And now it's time for our podcast Tip, something we learned to help make your journey easier.

00;12;11;12 - 00;12;30;09
Jen
I just alluded to it in the writing section, so the podcast tip for today is just start. Yes, I know it sounds simple, but I think that sometimes when we want to do something creative, it can be easy to talk yourself out of it before you even begin. I mean, this project has been years in the making for us.

00;12;30;18 - 00;12;52;13
Jen
I've wanted to do a podcast for a very long time, so I say to you, if you want to make it, just start open the file, write one word, write. My podcast is about dot, dot, dot and fill in the blank. My podcast is about whatever you want it to be because the tiniest effort to start can be a great motivator to continue.

00;12;52;22 - 00;13;08;05
Jen
So if you can open the file or write an idea for a fiction podcast and then tell someone you've started working on a podcast, that energy will maybe make you write sentence number two tomorrow. So that's your podcast tip. Just start.

00;13;08;24 - 00;13;11;29
Chris
Well, that's it for this episode of making Strange.

00;13;12;16 - 00;13;33;26
Jen
We want to thank you for tuning in to our journey and creating a fiction podcast. We hope it will inspire you to create your own story because we believe that everyone has a story to tell. Please email us with any podcast tips or questions you may have at info at the Strange Chronicles dot com.

00;13;33;26 - 00;13;40;03
Chris
Thanks for listening. You can follow us on Instagram at making the Strange and at the Strange Chronicles podcast.

00;13;40;18 - 00;13;50;05
Jen
Please join our email list to get all the latest updates on The Strange Chronicles, a sci fi detective fiction podcast coming out soon. Until our next episode. I'm Jennifer.

00;13;50;09 - 00;13;57;27
Chris
And I'm Chris. Keep it strange.

00;13;57;27 - 00;13;59;23
Jen
This has been a kings of content production.