Narrative Podcasts course introduction // transcript
Narrative Podcasts Introduction … fall 2022 update
Welcome to Narrative Podcasts, where you’ll gain the tools to master the art and science of audio storytelling. We’re so glad you’re here.
We want to take a few minutes to help you get familiar with the different elements you’ll find in the modules, introduce ourselves, and provide some guidance on how to get the most out of the materials.
Let’s get started. What can you expect to get from this course? First, whether you’re a new or veteran audio storyteller, you’ll get a start-to-finish guide for creating the next great narrative podcast: yours!
So what is a narrative podcast? Podcasting as a whole is so young that you won’t find an “official” definition, but what we’ve come up with are these three criteria: a narrative podcast
Number one, tells a story;
Number two, is based on a written script, and
Number three, includes careful audio editing and sound design.
By contrast, a narrative podcast is not just sitting down with a microphone and pressing Record (whether it’s one person talking, an interview, or a panel discussion). The most famous example of a narrative podcast is This American Life; other notable narrative podcasts you may be familiar with include Ear Hustle, Radiolab, Snap Judgment, Serial, Radio Ambulante, or 99% Invisible.
Now you may be thinking, “Wait, this episode I listened to the other day had some interview clips in it — does that mean it’s not narrative?” But no, narrative podcasts often do include interview clips or archival tape, but always carefully edited and integrated within the larger story or script. The trick with narrative podcasting is choosing which parts of an interview or source are the right parts to include — and when, and in what order. It may not be chronological! (But we digress; we’ll get into this a lot more in module 9, Great Structure.)
Anyway, this three-part approach of written script, telling story, and careful editing is the approach you’ll also find on Shelter in Place, which we use as a case study throughout the course — because it’s the narrative podcast we can take you inside.
In addition to the “great structure” module I just mentioned, the 16-module curriculum also covers scriptwriting, audio editing, interviewing, voiceover narration, sound design, pitching, networking, collaboration and critique, and project management. As we said on the website, the goal was to distill everything we learned over two and a half years of making Shelter in Place an award-winning, top 1% global podcast — and give it to you in one semester.
But as you may also remember from the web site, mastering audio storytelling is only half of what this program is designed to do. The other, equally important half, is creative living. The big picture vision of this course–and of Shelter in Place–has always been about learning to live better, happier, more fulfilled lives, even when life isn’t perfect. The “creative living” aspect is what makes our approach both more demanding than other programs — but ultimately, we believe, more beneficial to the whole you. As you work through this course, you may confront some challenging things about yourself. You really dive in deep, it will probably get uncomfortable. But you’ll emerge more integrated and self-aware, not just as a creator, but as a person.
That’s why you’ll find modules that address things like motivation, sustainability, burnout, and your creative personality. On a vocational level, you’ll find leadership development tools to gain a better understanding of your priorities, goals, and where you’re headed next.
Like a lot of things in life, you’ll get out of this what you’ll put into it. If you move through all sixteen modules, listen and watch all of the tutorials and episodes, and complete all of the exercises, you’ll finish this course with a pilot episode, trailer, and a roadmap for where you’re headed next. And equally important, you’ll have a clearer sense of yourself as a creator.
We offer different variants of this program, but they all operate from the same core curriculum. You can take the course as entirely self-paced, coming back to the modules on your own time. A couple of times a year we also offer this course with a companion workshop, where you can receive group and individual coaching on your work.
So who are your instructors?
Laura Joyce Davis, my better half, is the host and executive producer of Shelter in Place, and the CEO of Narrative Podcasts. She’s also a full time lecturer and managing editor at the Stanford Storytelling Project, where she spends half her time teaching narrative podcasting in the classroom, and the other half managing students as they make episodes. That model of hands-on learning is one she’s passionate about–both because it’s the model we used in our podcast training intensive (where we developed this curriculum), and because it’s how she went from podcasting newbie to podcasting teacher in just three years.
Before Laura came to podcasting she was an award-winning fiction writer with an MFA. She learned from an exceptional group of writers, including Anthony Doerr, Yiyun Li, Victor Lavalle, and Daniel Alarcón (see more on the Sources and Inspiration page on our website). Laura’s also a mom of three kids, and we live in Oakland, California.
I’m Nate Davis, and my background is also in a kind of fiction writing — or as most people would refer to it, advertising. It was work that I felt conflicted about for years, and the desire to help others answer their own inner questions about creativity and vocation was a big reason why we’ve included so many personal growth exercises in our curriculum. (For a lot more on my long and winding vocational road, and how it contributed to our programs here, check out the reflection I included on the More About Nate page on our site.)
A key stop on that vocational journey was starting our podcast training intensive in January 2021 where we taught live the earliest version of this course. I’d been Laura’s editor and creative sounding board for years, on everything from her Fulbright applications to Shelter in Place scripts, but it took the intensive for me to fully embrace that a full creative life isn’t just about working on your own ideas, but about editing, amplifying, and collaborating as well.
You’ll hear more about the intensive throughout the course, because even though trainees worked on just 14 of Shelter in Place’s 200 episodes, those episodes were important test cases for training on podcast production. That’s also why we invited some graduates to be guest speakers, because someone with a similar background, who’s just been through the same things, can offer uniquely helpful and encouraging insights.
But of course, it’s also helpful to hear from experts, which you’ll recognize if you looked at the Guest Speakers page on the website. Just as we have, you’ll benefit from their range of knowledge on networking, promotion, award shows, audio gear, and more.
So to sum up, the audio storytelling and creative living roadmap you’re about to explore is one that’s been years in the making. It’s the course we wish we’d had when we started podcasting. We say that it’s what we learned in two years, boiled down to sixteen weeks — but it’s really the quintessence of our last twenty years of creative and life experience — and an essence we refine with student feedback each time we run a class.
So let’s get into the five specific elements included in each module.
Audio and video tutorials
We recommend that you listen to the audio tutorials first, before you dig into the exercises. Think of the audio tutorials as your intro and overview for the module. They are typically 15-20 minutes long, and we’ve intentionally recorded most of them as audio, not video, to allow you to get you away from your screen.
There’s a long history of writers and artists and creators who got their best ideas while walking or running or moving in some way, and so we hope that you’ll put in your earbuds, press play, and get outside while you listen.
When you signed up for this course, you also got access to a private Narrative Podcasts audio feed, so if you’d rather listen to the audio tutorials in your favorite podcast app, that’s always an option. We’ve included transcripts, so you can read along or refer back to key details.
There are a few situations, like with audio editing, where seeing someone actually moving their cursor around the screen is really useful, and those are the spots where you’ll see a video tutorial.
2. Sample Shelter in Place episodes
The second element you’ll find in each module is one, or occasionally two episodes of Shelter in Place, and a corresponding reflection conversation about how that episode was made and how it relates to that week’s module. Think of these episodes and conversations as case studies, a chance to pull back the curtain and go deeper into the challenges and learning opportunities that happen when you’re creating episodes quickly, as we were.
3. Module exercises
The third element you’ll find in each module is a series of exercises to help you think through both the specific details of your own podcast project, and general principles that apply to creative living. Many of the exercises you can do just as easily with a pen and paper as with a computer keyboard. (You might want a dedicated journal just for this course.) One of those exercises will always be something you can accomplish very quickly, in thirty minutes or less, so if you have a busy week, you can still get something out of the module even if you only have time for just one thing.
4. Forms and Templates
The fourth element you’ll find in each module are forms and templates to apply what you’re learning. We recommend that you have a folder on your computer where you store these so you can easily come back to them for future projects. We also know that some of you will love that structure, and others will find it restrictive. There are many ways to find your way to a great story, and so we recommend that you see these templates not as rule books, but as possible tools to draw from in your creative toolbox, ones you can always come back to in another season.
5. Self-assessment quizzes
The fifth element is a short, but important one. It’s a self-assessment quiz that will track your progress and give you the option to provide feedback to us. When you finish the course, you’ll get a summary of those reports and see how far you’ve come, as well as where you’re hoping to go next.
Finally, each module includes a bonus section labeled “further growth.” These are books, articles, podcasts, or videos that either guide you much deeper into a given topic, or connect only loosely to that weeks’ module, but were too valuable to not mention.
We've intentionally designed the course so that you can go at your own pace and still get a lot out of each module even if you haven't completed all the exercises or have to stop and start.
A couple of times a year we offer a version of this program, called Labs, that includes group coaching sessions as a supplement to these materials. If you’ve signed up for that version, you’ll get weekly emails with prompts for that week’s coaching calls, and instructions on how and what to submit.
And if you’ve signed up for the self-paced course but are now realizing you’d like some additional support, we offer private coaching sessions during most months of the year, so you can always sign up for those on our website, narrativepodcasts.com, or email us at hello@narrativepodcasts.com to get some more support.
After working with a range of students and personality types, we’ve tried to provide plenty of structure, but at the same time allow for the messy parts of the creative process.
Which is a good segue to what is perhaps the most important bit of advice we can give you as you start this program: whenever possible, be open to change. See even failures as opportunities to grow and learn and do things better. Creative work is risky. Life is risky. Do this long enough, and you’re going to get hurt. People will misunderstand you. They’ll assume things about you that aren’t true. You will try things that don’t turn out, and you’ll have days where you want to quit. That’s always an option. (And we’ve been through all these things!)
But I hope that even on those dark-gray days, when you wonder if any of the struggle is worth it, you will remember that the single most significant thing you have to offer this world is yourself, your humanity in all of its sparkling, scuffed-up glory. Be patient with yourself every step of the way. Especially on the hard days, treat yourself and those around you the way you would your very closest friend.
Wouldn’t it be great, if the best moments of your life, the ones where you felt strong and capable, were also the moments that made you grow? But almost always, it’s the opposite: it’s the struggles that make us grow. Often it’s the act of putting our warts and weaknesses under the bright light of honesty that shows us the way not just to better work, but to our better selves. We’ll see you out there.