Writing creatively for radio dramas (and other things).

In the second part of our Creative Writing class, we studied a unit on radio dramas. In this unit, our class was put into groups and wrote our own radio dramas. The dramas had to have a plot with a setting and characters designed to create a picture by listening to different sounds.

Our group of four guys: Neil, Sean, Steve, and I, came up with "Hot Ice." This was a radio drama about an elite group of specials ops agents assigned as Olympic detail to ensure public safety during the games. The group of four special ops agents heat up the action as they run around the city of Vancouver for clues after finding out from drug kingpin Chike Moi that something bad was going to happen at the Olympics.

The story was centred on bravery and heroism with a little bit of cliche and a lot of fun.

Here was a work sample of the dialogue my group and I presented in our class.


2. CHARLES NORRIS: See Moyer, nothing good ever comes out of a life of crime.

3. JERRY MOYER: Charles, can I finish him off. There’s no one around. No one will know.

4. CHARLES NORRIS: Come on Jerry. He’s scum, but let’s not stoop to his level.

5. CHIKE MOI: It’s too late special ops squad. I’m already dying, but you’ll be in the same boat soon enough.

6. CHARLES NORRIS: What do you mean Moi? Spit it out you scumbag.

7. SOUND: GURGLING SOUNDS

8. CHIKE MOI: You’re time is coming. The Russians will take care of you and your squad soon. The Olympics will be your doom. (DYING)

9. SOUND: DYING SOUND

10. CHARLES NORRIS: What Russians? What did he mean?

11. MUSIC: THEME SONG.

12. ANNOUNCER: Join us next week for another exiciting episode of Hot Ice.

As you can tell, this is our (and my) very first attempt at writing radio dramas so it may have sounded rough and even too cliche. The idea behind our drama was supposed to be funny and easy to listen to. Our target audience of aged 18-30 yeasrs old would like this kind of material as it is easy to understand and the episodes were easy to follow even if one was missed.

Writing and planning the script was pretty enjoyable. I would say writing the episode loglines really helped in ironing out the details of the story. The hardest part was thinking of eventful scenes for the entire 20 episodes. The episodes needed to make sense and needed to have some sort of linear component to it while each episode still had its distinct plot arc.

In the end, our group was able to come up with something we thought was fun to listen to with a plot that was unpredictable.

If there was an image that depicted our drama it would be this:


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An example of a well-written audio drama could be found here:
http://www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk/index.php/component/jotloader?Itemid=15&cid=2&id=100

The Wireless Theatre Company was a company that still produces radio/audio dramas and released the drama called DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI on Feb. 10, 2010. I foundnd myself liking dramas about war or dramas that had heavy action in them. I really enjoyed 'Afghanada' and thought that style of drama was really interesting to listen to. So when I realized that DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI was about the experiences of soldiers in the first world war, I downloaded the mp3 (it's free!) directly from the web site.

The unit on radio drama opened my ears to something pretty cool. The way I looked at it was radio dramas was like reading a book, except someone was reading it for you!

I thought writing for radio dramas was good training/experience in writing creatively in a sequence that made sense. I thought it was good practice for what was still to come - video writing and video game scripts!

In this screenshot from the game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for XBOX 360, a character chose an action from a set of actions the gamer can perform. The path the story went would depend on the action chosen by the gamer. There was a choice of three different actions ranging from passive, active, and agressive decisions. Passive took the easy way around the story while the agressive choice usually lead to more villians along the way in this role-playing adventure where you select a team of four people to fight beside you.

The type of creative writing on this game would be very elaborate as the writer(s) would have to think of multiple scenarios to give gamers a choice of things to do and allow them to take the story to a whole new level. I'm sure they only wrote two or three different endings but the path to get there and the way the story unfolded had 20-30 different variations... or more!

I am excited to see what type of video I'd come up with!