Writing radio plays for adults
The radio play market is large and full. The shelves in the shops bend under countless new and re-releases of more or less high-quality works for children and adults. If you want to find an audience for your own radio play, you shouldn't forget your audience in the dramaturgy.
Writing radio plays - dramaturgy has nothing to do with drama
- Remember that radio plays are meant to be cinema for the ears. So you want to show the listener acoustically what he could see in the cinema or on television. Therefore, choose materials that take the listener into another world (not necessarily a fantasy world).
- But: steer clear of shallow formats. "Good times, bad times", "Traumschiff" or "Rosemunde Pilcher" work well on German television despite their "trash factor" because there is also something to see. With GZSZ these are breathless scene changes, with Traumschiff and Pilcher landscape shots.
- You have to do without the optical bag of tricks with radio plays. Therefore, heartbreak and everyday scenes are only conditionally suitable for radio plays.
A radio play is not just a book
- What is the biggest mistake a radio play writer can make? Right! It can drag out a scene unnecessarily. If nothing happens, then nothing happens and that is why radio plays with dialogues that do not advance an action seem simply boring.
- For example, in Karl May novels, ethical and religious topics are often disputed page by page and often only referred to by "I". Hardly any Karl May radio play has ever made use of these parts of the books. Why? Because they are only partially up-to-date, a campfire talk does not necessarily promote the plot and, ultimately, because These conversations may have been important, but usually have nothing to do with the outcome of the story to have.
- So reduce every story that you want to turn into a radio play to your plot. This means that you do not have to waive your entitlement. A core element of the novel Moby Dick is the moral conflict over tyrannicide. A quite legitimate question, to which successful and failed assassinations by Harmodios and Aristogeiton, via Brutus, to Stauffenberg refer.
- Leave out such topics in your adaptation, confuse or annoy your listeners who you actually wanted to win over. Don't forget: children may be captivated with purely action-heavy but undemanding clothes. Adults want more!
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Let adults dream - bring stories to life
- A horror radio play series has been circulating through Germany for a number of years, which has now (as of September 2012) had almost 70 episodes. Well-known and unknown horror stories are set to music. Works by Schülerschreck E.T.A. Hoffmann or Heinrich Heine. The Flying Dutchman was sighted as well as Jekyll and Hyde.
- What's the secret? After all, many of these stories date from the mid-19th Century. Distinguish between content and salary. Johann August Apel's Freischütz comes from the early 19th century. Century. It is the time when idealism and romanticism struggled. But now in the 21st Century do not take a position on this. But what you can do is work out the central conflict, the salary, and focus the action on it. In the case of the Freischützer, this could be seen in the avenging seductiveness of the young hunter (Carl Maria von Weber already had a defusing effect here in his opera).
- To write So new the story without violating it. Remember that very few dialogues from earlier days are suitable for a radio play. Either they were written for the stage or for the readers. But they have listeners and today's listeners have a different approach simply because of the reality of life. So let go of the thought of excessive textual faithfulness to the text, but be all the more meticulous when it comes to the salary.
The sound makes the music - radio plays and their language
- Basically, radio plays are artistic products and, as their creator, you enjoy artistic freedom. Nevertheless, you should identify your target group as precisely as possible and know what they accept and what they don't. Heavy curses, for example, should be restricted to characters they suit.
- Despite all efforts to carry the template into the present day, use language that suits the world in which the story takes place. Make every other effort to ensure historical correctness. How was the behavior, the clothing and the way of life? Note that not only does this need to flow into the text, but also needs to reflect the sounds and life in general.
A good radio play manages to entertain. But only the very good radio plays create worlds in the ears of your adult listeners!
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