The scariest part of any writer’s day is surely the white blank page. This is equally true for the radio writer or perhaps worse, because the words this writer writes will never appear in the written form. The radio writer is writing words and describing sounds and giving sound directions initially that only the writer can hear.
The Beginnings of the Inspiration Process.
In time the radio scribe’s writing will become sound and spoken words, produced, engineered and finally mixed together. Radio writers by and large are that rare breed that should genuinely always listen to the voices in their own heads. So what can start this process and how can a writer begin the process? Radio has by the nature of the medium itself some fundamental building blocks.
- Voices - male, female, and child.
- Sound Effects - sounds individually collected or from commercial libraries.
- Music – both originally produced music, and commercially available tracks.
- Silence – the use, availability and types of silence should never be underestimated.
Let’s look at voices and voice work in more detail. After all, apart from a very few instances most radio work is a ‘Play for Voices’, or features the spoken word as the main element. The first step therefore is often to put together a group or a bank of voices to listen to.
Voice Overs, Voice Talent and Voice Casting.
There are a constantly growing number of actors and presenters looking for voice work, and a multitude of voice agents who represent some of them. The agents will tell you of course they represent the best of them. Before writing any radio script whether for radio drama or commercial work, it’s very easy to get a feeling for the voices available.
Each voice will or should have their own speciality and their own voice and once the writer has an idea in their own head of the talent able to voice what they write, in the way they write it and is able to hear that voice speaking the written word, writing spoken words becomes so much easier. To hear these voices, just go to any of the actors’ or agents’ websites and download the voice over demos. That’s what they are there for.
The Range of Voice Overs Available for Casting.
A listener to another voice on the other end of a phone of a person they’ve never met, generally involuntarily builds their own picture of how that person looks. Just from the sound of that voice. How often does the reality not fit the picture when the two meet? This is one of the real strengths of radio. Just think of the types and huge variations of voices available, either natural voices or learned and trained disguises from an actor. These can be divided by some of the following descriptions:
- Age and Sex
- Nationality and Region
- Depth or Pitch
- Defining Characteristics
Once a radio writer has created this bank of voices to work with, they are able to tap into these voices in their own head and the scenario they build up will become more real to them and their listener. To do this only in sound is easier when the writer can genuinely hear the voices and the sounds they are writing with.
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