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- [00:00]
Jordan
Here we go.
- [00:07]
Alvin
Welcome back to buzzcast, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at buzzsprout. So today's episode, we actually based the entire topic on a fan message that we got from Sarah, who is the host of Wish I'd Known Then, which she added a podcast for indie writers based on my last episode with Courtney Elmer. So thank you, Sarah. She. She said, I'd love to get your thoughts on podcast scripts, which. Perfect. This is my wheelhouse. I love it. So it's gonna be just Alvin and I today. Kevin is out and Albin, you have a lot of experience with writing scripts for like videos and various things like that. So I feel like you're gonna have a lot to bring to the table too.
- [00:51]
Jordan
I. Well, when you first sent it, I went, jordan, we just did this and I sent you the episode that we did on outlining and you said, no, I really wanna have an EP about scripting where it's like verbatim, word by word level scripts, and mostly we work best with outlines. You convinced me after we started talking about all the things we write verbatim. And for me, it's not podcasting. It might be a talk that I give somewhere. It might be blog or something, or a video script or something that I'll write that's to be read verbatim later on. It is a different type of prep. It's much heavier on the front end production, you know, actually the writing part, but you save yourself a ton of time in the edit or sometimes it. You're performing and so there is no edit that's even available.
- [01:42]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [01:43]
Jordan
So, yeah, I think it's, it's an interesting topic and I was surprised as you started putting it together, how many ideas that we had and, you know, tips that we'd want to give to our podcasters.
- [01:53]
Alvin
A lot of podcasters don't realize how much scripting actually goes into the podcasting process. Even if you're not a scripted podcast, you know, you might have to at least preemptively script out what you want your intro to look like, your outros. If you work with sponsors or advertisers, you have to script ad reads because you can't just go willy nilly with ad reads. There's a lot of stuff that you have to have verbatim included in the language. There's also going to be things like if you need to script out direct quotes or direct facts that you want to get correct. And a huge one for me is transitions between segments. That was something that I Always struggled with. And so scripting out these things can help so much with keeping up the energy of your episode. Because if you're constantly fumbling through an episode and you don't really know where you're going, I know that an outline kind of gives you, like, guideposts, but scripting can kind of help get over, like, speed bumps or things that you struggle with. And they are different, but they're not, like, mutually exclusive. In the realm of podcast planning, an outline is kind of more of like a structural thing. It's. It's the ideas that you have and the order of how the episodes should go. So this is like the segments, the topics, questions, like examples that you have, or just little bullet points of things. And scripting is giving you the exact words that you want to say. Like I mentioned before, like, with ad reads, you have to read certain things verbatim.
- [03:29]
Jordan
Yeah, you're. You're absolutely right, Jordan. And I think when I imagine a script, I imagine the daily. You know, I know the beginning of the daily is written, like, verbatim. And there's been times where they'll actually post the script on social media. So you can see the. Every single word is selected, even the ones they might feel impromptu, at least for that inter. That first segment, it's exactly, you know, set aside. And I imagine that the Daily does that, but I don't think a lot of other podcasts do that level of scripting. But then I was listening to the no Agenda show last night. Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak, I don't know if you heard this. This is really sad. John C. Dvorak passed away in the last week. Yeah, really kind of a. I mean, worked with Adam for 20 years. So has this podcast they've been doing for well over a thousand, maybe even close to 2,000 episodes they've done over the years together. Really popular show. Yeah, I guess I wouldn't want to miss. I have a story about their script, but I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to say, you know, we're thinking of his family. I know he had. He survived by his wife and children, and he was just important to a lot of people in the podcasting space.
- [04:43]
Alvin
It was a huge loss.
- [04:44]
Jordan
Yeah. Our thoughts and prayers are with their family. But what I. What I was thinking about that show with scripting was how when I'm listening to it, just because I want to hear the last episode they put together, I noticed how often they are quoting exact quotes because their prep while it was an outline, they have stories they want to go through. They pulled so many quotes, and they pulled so many news clips and segments, and they all have to be because they're quoting, you know, political figures or news stories. They want to get it exactly right. And when I thought, okay, that actually is a type of scripting, you know, these are verbatim words, it made me realize there's so many more shows that rely heavily on getting exact quotes right.
- [05:33]
Alvin
Yeah, I mean, we do it all the time with, like, fan mail, you know, even if we are condensing down the fan mail messages, because sometimes our listeners will write us, like, a little novel. And though we appreciate that, to read that out loud on the episode would take up too much time. And so for time's sake, a lot of times we have to sort of rework and rewrite and rescript what the fan message is to make sure that we're embodying their question or their feelings while still making it a little bit more concise, which we're going to get into a little bit later. But you bring up a good point about, like, how you don't realize how much of certain podcasts are scripted. And I think it brings up a really good topic that we should cover, which is, like, how much of an episode should be scripted. And I think that that's really going to depend on what kind of podcast you have, because, you know, obviously, if you have a fictional storytelling podcast, you're probably going to be scripting pretty much the entire thing. You might do a little bit of improv when you are just kind of going through, like, maybe the podcast intro or thinking, you know, subscribers that are supporting the show or, you know, whatever. You can do some stuff kind of off the cuff, but then when you get into the actual meat of the episode or the narration of it, you're going to stick to the script pretty heavily. Unless it's an improv one, obviously. Um, and then if you have a podcast that you have guests on and it's more like, relaxed, you're probably going to have an outline maybe, but it's probably not going to be scripted as much.
- [07:09]
Jordan
You. You wrote this in the outline. This is kind of the difference between a preparation script and a performance script. So a preparation script is. We need to get from A to B. Here is probably some of the things we're going to say, and you're like, we need 80% adherence. That's probably how, if I'm ever going to speak in public, I have written a version that has every word, but I only am expecting 80% of it to be the exact right words. And the other side is, I mean, there's Hollywood directors who are like, I want the exact word I wrote to come out of your mouth. There's like, there's no space for you to improv this, like nail these lines. And it's different ways of structuring the episode. I would imagine a lot more podcasters end up, even the ones that are heavily scripted. On that preparation script side, there's something written, but we're hoping for 80% of it to come out this way. It's really more. We want a highly structured episode.
- [08:14]
Alvin
I listened to Gimlet Academy some years ago and they actually talked about this. I think there's an episode called like Getting Good Tape or something like that. And what they talked about was there's sort of a pre interview script that you can write and you write the interview that you hope to get. So these are like the usual moments that you're going to go into the interview looking for. There's certain things that you want the person to say. There's, there's tips or like, what kind of evidence or decisions did they make? What kind of memories or stories would further your, the purpose of your episode? And then what you do is you write the questions, sort of working backwards to figure out how do I get them to say that? And then you might even have some backup questions. So if you ask them a question and they tell a story, but they don't actually get to the point that you were looking for, how are you going to redirect that? What kind of follow up questions would you ask? Like, how did you reach that decision to do this? How did you, like, what made you decide to go into this? Or how are you feeling in this moment? How did that affect you? And so it's a really good method used by reporters and documentarians. When you write out this stuff and you write out what you're hoping, it's almost like you're manifesting the interview that you're wishing to get. It makes you so much more prepared and more prepared to pivot when things don't go exactly as planned.
- [09:42]
Jordan
Years ago, I did an interview with Jordan Harbinger and I listened to a bunch of episodes about how he prepared for interviews. And I would not have thought of that as scripting in any way until I realized, like he was putting in 40, 60 hours of prep for a single hour, hour and a half of interviews. And when I talked to him, I was like, you know, I know what this is. This is Deposition prep. Like this is the way that lawyers will go, read a ton of documents and then we'll write questions that they know the answers to. And the interview is not as much. I'm trying to learn new facts. It's. I'm trying to get you to tell the story that I already know is in there. And so he would write questions like tell me about the time XYZ happened and then would have follow ups if they war if they couldn't remember it. Or he needed to refresh their memory again, something you would do in Depot Prep. You wouldn't think of interviews as having any level of scripting, but it really does lead to a really good interview because you get people to share the exact right story in kind of a clippable bite size format rather than it being kind of a meandering story. We kind of have to redirect three or four different times to get the important pieces.
- [11:05]
Alvin
Yeah. And I. It's one of those things where it's a lot of front work, but it's going to save you so much heartache in the long run because I think we've all been there where we've done these interviews and you try to make it work, you try to keep it on track. It didn't quite go exactly as planned and maybe you didn't touch on the thing that you really wanted to touch on. And then after everything is said and done, you look at the interview and you realize that you have like an hour and a half of pretty much unusable audio. Like, it's, it's just not. You're not proud of it, it's not what you were hoping for. And then it feels like you left a lot on the table.
- [11:39]
Jordan
In her request, Sarah also asked us something like, how much of the script would you share with a guest if you are doing some scripting with interviews? And I feel like the best answer there is if you're kind of fishing for particular stories, it's kind of the ethical thing to do to tell the person you're interviewing. Here's where I want this interview to go. It doesn't feel good to me to have like, I know what I want to talk about and I kind of want you to be caught off guard and share it. That feels almost like I'm trying to do something dishonest I'd prefer share. I'm really excited to talk to you about these four things. Here are some of the questions I want to ask. Here's some of the stories I'd love for you to tell. And you're going to get a such better interview if they're interested in sharing these things. But you're going to get a much better interview from them because they're going to be able to think through, okay, that, you know, I haven't thought about that in 20 years. But then they can start thinking through, you know, what stories they would want to tell and so the story will just come out so much cleaner.
- [12:42]
Alvin
I love that idea of sharing with them. Like, here's the things that I'm looking for, here's the answers I'm looking for, here's the thinking behind the questions. Because a lot of times we will just send people questions. I would never send a guest your podcast script or your planned like episode script because they don't need to see your like, hi, welcome to Buzzcast. This guest today is a like award winning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't need to see all that. I would keep that private. Um, just perform it to them during the interview. Um, but I do think it's good to send them the questions. And then I actually really like the idea of following the. You like, maybe each question with like your thinking behind the question or what you're hoping they're going to answer, like what you're hoping to get from it. Because then you are both on the same page. Another thing that you should script out when you're podcasting is the stuff that you want to get right.
- [13:37]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [13:38]
Alvin
And you had talked about this earlier with like the no Agenda show. They are speaking on specifics. They have to have facts straight or quotes straight. And there's a lot of podcasts like that where you have to have everything kind of lined out and make sure that you're, you're accurate. Because there's nothing worse than accidentally misspeaking on a podcast. And then you just get like an influx of like, messages like, this is incorrect false news.
- [14:08]
Jordan
Yeah, we got that at some point.
- [14:10]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [14:11]
Jordan
There's a good quote, a note from the team at Radio Lab and where they talk about how they can script things and improvise kind of the banter. So they want to have the looseness that includes banter. And it seems friendly and it feels organic, but also a script as well. And so they, they have this quote that I pulled. Our studio scripts are a hybrid beast. Much of the script will be a list of loosely written plot points, kind of like a real script, but a little bit sketchier. And those parts are meant to be improvised, but will also mark some passages which have to Be read word for word, like we're dealing with. With a passage that contains lots of technical writing. There's no way to improvise it and get it right. But particularly these places where the story turns or the hosts are to take different sides of an issue. These moments are always improvised. I read that and went, oh, that's exactly how Curb youb Enthusiasm does the show.
- [15:10]
Alvin
Really.
- [15:11]
Jordan
It's not scripted. These are all comedians who are improvising, and they're just. They do improv a few times. They're like, here's the beats we need to hit. Here's the things that need to happen in the plot to move it forward. Go. And they do it a few times, and they nail it. And it's funny, and they go, that's the take. And they're just building the episode. But it's a combination of, like, you get the fun of improv, and you also get the aspects that need to be kind of hit 100% for the story to even make sense and move forward.
- [15:44]
Alvin
I like the way that they're attacking this because this sort of hybrid model, it gives a little bit more structure to something that can go off the rails pretty easily. Because what they're doing is they have this narration, they have this. They have interviews and stuff like that. And what they're doing is they're taking beats to sort of react to it, but they're reacting to it in a structured manner. It's like controlled chaos. And so giving yourself, like, in your script, in your outline, you can have, like, the script scripted part, and then after the scripted part, you can have a beat for reaction or opinions or conversation about this. A lot of podcasts will do this. I think especially of true crime podcasts really come to mind. Paranormal podcasts, or even television recap podcasts, they will often read from a script to tell the story, to tell what is happening. And then they will pause after a section when there's something notable that was said, and then the host will kind of like banter on it and say, like, their thoughts behind it or why things were going, and then they'll go back into the story again. And I actually really like that. I think it breaks up something that could be a very monotonous story.
- [17:01]
Jordan
Hearing you say it now reminds me of some scripting advice I got from my dad. I wrote a eulogy for somebody a few years ago, and when I shared it with him, he goes, you don't want a fragile script. It was something like, you don't want it to be fragile. You know, some speeches are fragile because if you don't say the precise word, it doesn't work. So if you're writing a metaphor and, like, the words have to line up to make the wet metaphor work correctly, and you're on stage and you get nervous or you get emotional cause it's a eulogy, it all falls apart. And now you're looking at the script going, oh, I pretty much have to go into verbatim reading mode, which is just not a good speech of any type. And so what he. His recommendation was write the script so it's not fragile. And instead you can use different words in the moment. You can get a phrase wrong and it still flows. But there always will be a few transitions that you just have to nail the exact words. And when you have to nail the exact words, like, those are highlighted. They're in bold. You've practiced them over and over. You know for a fact that they come out of your mouth in a way that they're written on the page. You know, like, you just have to nail it. And there's such a temptation when it's scripting to be like, oh, I know what a final script looks like. It looks like, you know, a script that I get for a movie. You know, you read a movie script. I could just get Chat GPT to give me a script for this podcast, but if I read that ChatGPT script, it doesn't sound like me at all. I can't even come close to reading it in a normal way. And so it has to be written, like, as your own voice with some level of flexibility in there.
- [18:50]
Alvin
I think that that is a really good point. And one of the things that you mentioned was transitions, like, having them, like, highlighted bold, like, help you get through those things. Because a lot of times I have a hard time finding, like, the through lines that are going to, like, bring us into whatever the next segment is, especially if there's, like, a hard pivot that is hard. And so it's so funny because it makes me think of this clip that I saw of Amy Poehler from her podcast Good Hang, and she has a guest on there, it's Will Ferrell, and they are talking about Saturday Night Live. And then she's trying to hard pivot to a completely unrelated topic. I bet I could probably play a clip of this because it looks so funny. Okay, I want to talk about some stuff that you've done. I'm so bad at transition, by the way. Did you see how clunky that was translated? I was like, thank God. I said, okay, stop.
- [19:50]
Jordan
Okay, stop. But you know what? I think that is a great transition.
- [19:58]
Alvin
It's super clear. I said, okay, stop. Okay, stop. Okay, I want to talk about something else. I'm turn this page, and I gotta turn my page. I empathize with Amy Poehler so much in this clip because she is me. We are the same. And I love that I get to see someone who is a, you know, arguably a very professional speaker and improviser stumble and fall in something like this. And she's just like, I'm so bad at this. Like, Amy, if you just scripted out your transitions, it'd be really easy for you to, like, find those through lines and then, like, pull it into the next segment.
- [20:36]
Jordan
You know what I love about this clip is I look at it and I go, oh, that's the same background we have in the Buzzsprout studio. Oh, that's the exact same fake plant we bought off Amazon for the Buzzsprout Studio. Will Ferrell is, like, over lit in this clip, just like I am in a bunch of our clips. And I was like, oh, you know what? Even some of, like, the best podcasts out there, there's room for improvement. Or maybe some of the stuff they're doing is exactly the same as ours. Oh, it's. That's great.
- [21:09]
Alvin
Another thing that people might struggle with is figuring out, like, what your intro should sound like, your outros, you know, who are you going to think at the end of the episode? What kind of call to actions are you going to have? I think that call to actions, especially don't get scripted by a of people. And I think they should be. If you are kind of talking in circles about what you want listeners to do, what your call to action is, it's not as effective as if you just give them like a 30 second elevator pitch. Okay, hit pause. I want you to go do this. Go do this. Here's how you do it. And it's very clear. Like, instructions are clear. They know what they're doing. Like, they got their marching orders. Go. I will listen to a lot of podcasts and I will hear them kind of stumble over their call to action. It's almost like it's. It makes it feel awkward. Like, I hate asking you to do this, but, you know, if you could, I mean, you know, it's whatever. And then they, like, never actually get to the point. I'm like, I don't know what you want me to do, right?
- [22:09]
Jordan
So somebody recently sent me this clip. It's Like, a bunch of commercials from where he grew up in, like, the 90s. And it was like a husband and wife who have a kind of scratch and dent discount appliance store. And every one of the ads has the two of them closing the door on all the, like, the dryer and the. The fridge. And they're like, opening and closing all of them and saying over and over, come see it in person and save a lot of money in every ad. And my friend was laughing because he's like, I can't believe they keep saying this. See it in person. Save a lot of money. Yeah, or see it all. Save all this money. And I was like, it's because. I mean, that's why this is on a YouTube clip 40 years later. And it's why it's in your head 40 years later. Because over and over, they knew we only get one ask. And the one ask we have is, we've got all the stuff here. We know it's scratch and dense. He got to see it in person, and you're gonna save a lot of money. So they go, see it in person. Save a lot of money. See it in person. And they say it so many times that at the. You can't watch it and not even repeat it because you're like, ah, I know you told me to do one thing. And you scripted it perfectly. And it even sounds goofy because they do it over and over, but they nailed the script. And then I get on and I'm like, hey, you know, if you want to send me a fan mail, like, you could do it. You know, one of the things. And then we just go on and on. And eventually people are like, something. They kind of asked me to do something. I'm not really sure what it was. Come see it in person. Save a lot of money. Like, nail it to that level of simplicity and just keep going. Because people need to hear it multiple times if you really want them to take action.
- [23:53]
Alvin
And I think that's actually a really good example, too, of, like, having your voice and tone. You understand who they are as people. Like, they're casual, they're approachable, they want the best for you. They're go getters. They. They're getting to the point. I think that that is something really important for podcasters to learn, especially in the age of AI. Majority of people are not writers. Creative writing is hard. It is strenuous. It takes a lot of bandwidth. It can be a whole thing, you know, especially if you're writing out an entire episode. And some people even struggle with writing out, like, their intros. Okay, how do I pull all these, like, elements together? How. How am I going to really hook the listener? I'm not a good writer. And so they will use AI a lot of times. But the problem with AI is AI sounds like AI.
- [24:43]
Jordan
It sounds like everybody else's AI.
- [24:45]
Alvin
It's not just that. It's also, AI doesn't write for, like, the human tongue and teeth. And so you'll get this kind of, like, tongue twistery word salad that is so hard to say when you finally say it out loud. Which I think brings us to our next point here, which is like, you have to read everything out loud. And I actually found a really good example of this method. It's called the read hide talk method. This is such a good exercise. Anyone who reads any sort of scripting should do this. So there was an interview that I saw, and it was the production team of you didn't see nothing. And in it they asked Johannes lacour. I think that's how you say his name. I'm probably butchering it, but we're gonna go with it about, like, what the act recording process was like. And so he said that when it was time to actually piece together the interviews and do the narrative that was pulling this documentary series together, he said, I'm a writer, right? I sat down to write, and to be honest with you, I was proud of what I wrote. And then I sat down to read out loud, and it sounded like Masterpiece Theater, which, you know, this is a guy who was in prison, and then he's out on the streets talking to all these people, like, about, like, their very rough environment and, like, culture and stuff like that.
- [26:11]
Jordan
So the tone is just totally off.
- [26:13]
Alvin
It's way off. It's way off. You know, you're. You're speaking. It just. It didn't sound like him at all. It didn't read as authentic. And so one way that you can figure out how to deliver things naturally is this read hide talk approach. And so his production team told him, okay, I want you to read this part of the script, and then you're gonna put it down, and then you're gonna tell us what it is.
- [26:39]
Jordan
Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I'm with it now. I see where this is going.
- [26:44]
Alvin
This is so good. And I have learned that this is the best way to fine tune your scripts, because you can read things and be like, oh, yeah, this totally sounds like me. And then the second you get on the microphone, you start tripping over words. And then you can't take a breath because sentences are running on way too long. So it's like, it's hard to breathe, it' to speak. And you don't sound as eloquent as you were hoping. And so it's much easier to, you know, read a paragraph and then put it away and stop and be like, okay, like, this is basic reading comprehension. What did I just read? What are we talking about? What is the point of this? And a lot of times when you do that and you actually say it out loud, what you're trying to say, what the paragraph is trying to get across, it's much easier to then go, okay, so now I can identify the things that need to be fixed in the script.
- [27:37]
Jordan
Honestly, that's the only way I know to write. This is a bit from a blog post I wrote a few months ago. I think when I write, I write in loops and it always hurts. This is about, like, I've always loved being a writer, but I. It's never felt good. So this is what it's like. I write something small. No, that's not it. Delete. Write something again. Okay, that's kind of good. Let's keep that. Write it again. Different part sounded good. Now, new version. Okay, this one's worse. Okay, actually, that's the same as the part that I liked earlier. I guess I'm throwing that out again and again. I rewrite the same piece 10 times, finding fragments of the final version, but they clash and they don't fit into a coherent whole. You can move them around, but I can never copy paste my way there. And there's still something I can't articulate that has not shown up in a single version. I start again. I write it in notes, I write it in paper. I say it out loud. I write like I'm writing to a friend. It gets worse and worse. One Chrome tab, Away chat. GPT whispers. How can I help you today? The escape hatch is unbearably tempting. If I keep banging my head against this, eventually it will all happen in a single instant. The piece will take shape and I'll think, oh, I can write the whole thing right now. And it'll just pour onto the page in one go. It'll happen straight through with the clarity of transcribing something that's already complete. I write it and I'm throwing stuff away over and over and over. And I've never seen a path to. Okay, I know I'm 20% there. I'm pretty much Just stay in like I am 10% of the way to complete on this writing project. And I will be at 10% max until the moment I'm at 98%. Like, it just. It jumps, you know, it's like a. It's like you're downloading a file over old Internet or something. Like, it just doesn't gradually get there.
- [29:37]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [29:37]
Jordan
And there's something to. You have to write over and over and over till it comes into your voice. And then once it's there, it's just done. So I love to hear that there's podcasters kind of that maybe this is a real approach that other people use. Read, hide, talk. And it's a great way to get things to sound like you wrote them and a great way for it to authentically express the thing that you want to share with the world. We do this a lot on our marketing writing, too, where the first draft of anything you write for marketing just sounds very salesy. Yeah, it's like upgrade today if you want to get access to these amazing features on Buzzsprout. And if I read that, I'd feel, like, gross. I'd be like, I'm not signing up for whatever this thing is. We will sit there and be like, say it like a person. And you'll say the exact same thing. And I'm like, all right, think of a specific friend and just say it to them. And then we all start talking totally normal. We're like, you know, there's some real benefits to upgrading that works for people in these scenarios. And that's why I wanted to share with you. That is so much more convincing, because that's how humans talk. It's not how commercials talk.
- [30:51]
Alvin
I'm actually going to pull the curtain back a little bit on, like, our working relationship album because there is something. There's an exercise that you have done with me that was the most infuriating thing for me.
- [31:05]
Jordan
I don't know what this is, but this is good.
- [31:07]
Alvin
It put me through my feels. But I'm so glad you did it, because now it's just, like, ingrained in me, and I actually, like, wait, what's the exit?
- [31:15]
Jordan
What's the thing that puts you in your feels? What's this?
- [31:18]
Alvin
The. When you do these exercises that are, like, very painful, you come out of it on the other end, like, so much better, just out of the gate. And so I feel like my writing has improved, especially for, like, copywriting and things like that. But what you would do is I would read a paragraph or a phrase or a sentence to you, and you'd Be like, okay, what does that mean? Like, what do you mean, what does that mean? You'd be like, well, what does that mean? What you just said, what does that mean? I'm like, it means, you know, and I'm just repeating back the sentence to you. And you're like, yeah, but what does that mean? And it drove me crazy because I'm like, I'm speaking English. I can't be more clear. It's very much like that Schitt's Creek episode where folded in to fold in the cheese. So it like Moira and David, he's like trying to like, do the thing. She's like, well, you fold in the cheese. He's like, how do you fold in the cheese? She's like, I can't think. More clear, David, how you just fold it in. You fold in the cheese. And there's like. It's so funny because sometimes you have to go like, okay, is there a simpler way for me to say this? How else can I explain this? If I were to explain this to somebody else and they didn't understand what I was saying, what is a more simplified or like, broken down version of it? Because I think a lot of us want to be perceived as very, like, intellectual on our. I mean, especially like on podcasts. This is going out to the world. I want everyone to think I am so smart and so I'm going to be very, like, verbose and use flowery language, but really it's just word salad. No one understands what I'm saying. And I find that a lot of people who can explain concepts in a. In more simplified terms to me, appear way more intelligent because I'm like, oh, wow, they were able to explain that so well. Like, they, they're so knowledgeable.
- [33:03]
Jordan
Yeah. You can either sound like Richard Feynman, the physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, who could explain physics really simply and was a famous professor, or you can sound like a LinkedIn post. Not you, but like, we as people like you. Those are Both available and LinkedIn post. It's like the most transparent. I want you to think I'm smart so that you will follow me, so that you will hire me to be a VP at your big tech company.
- [33:35]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [33:35]
Jordan
And it makes my skin crawl reading it because it's so transparent and like, like underneath it, there's nothing there. I'm like, you barely shared a story. And like 85% of it was like, I was a bit of a super genius today at work because I had a problem. And the problem was somebody Else. And I solved it. And you're just like, dude, I can't believe you posted that online. But so much writing really is. You just can. You have to interrogate over and over and over to find, like, what is the thing you're actually trying to say? And eventually it boils down to something. You know, we really. We wrestled a lot when we launched a video for Apple Podcasts. And I was like, it came down to, oh, you know what it is? It's upload one file, distribute everywhere. And we were like, that's what we wanted the whole time. That's the only thing we wanted to say was, hey, there's all these cool capabilities. But the main thing we're doing is you give us one file and we distribute it everywhere. And now your listeners, they can listen, they can watch, or they could read your podcast, but you don't have to do any more work. And it took us, like, hours just fighting those, like, one sentence, but the minute it comes out, then you're just like, God, that was kind of obvious the whole time. And you totally forget how painful it was to get there.
- [34:56]
Alvin
So, speaking of painful exercises, I actually pulled another anecdote for this episode, and it's about 99% invisible. And for their 15th anniversary episode, they were pulling listener, like, messages in and answering them on the show. Instead of talking about, like, design, they would talk about their show. And Roan Mars read a question about, like, how they write and script their episodes. And he said that sometimes we do these long histories and you just feel like you're plotting along and it. It just capt something that I felt for a long time, but never put words to it. That sort of sense of just like, oh, but if I skip from 900 A.D. to 1800, I have to put, like, three things in between. But you feel that they're unnecessary. And sometimes we just free ourselves from this idea and instead of being relentlessly chronological, just do the parts that are important and fun for the story and stop being so relentlessly chronological. This is another thing that AI will do. It will include way too much information. And I love this exercise. And they said that when they do their meetings and they're reading through what the script is, these are two things that show up in every single meeting. And it's CWGF, which means, can we get here faster? And relentlessly chronological, which is meaning that you are just relentlessly going through chronological order of things without just for the sake of, like, keeping things plotted along. And they talked about how painful it was. It was so Frustrating because they felt like, you know, I have to have all this information. They're like, no, no. It's too much like, we gotta get here faster. Can we skip 100 years? Can we get to the point quicker? Do we need all this nuance? Do we need all this context? And it's a really difficult exercise that they have to do, but it makes their writing so much better, and it makes things a lot more exc. For the listener because they're not having to sit through all this information just for information's sake.
- [37:02]
Jordan
Right. And you're condensing these long passages. So the. The pacing is up. People are engaged. People are dropping off. A good story doesn't have tons of extraneous detail. A good story is, like, meticulously crafted, that everything is nudging you towards this final realization where the whole story kind of locks into place.
- [37:23]
Alvin
And I know that these are exercises that are kind of like, big picture, sharpening the ax, but if you are actually in the process of editing a script right now or editing an outline or whatever, and you're struggling with making writing a little bit more human, there's some tips that I got, actually, from Kate, who is on the buzzsprout support team. She was a guest on Happy to Help, and she talked about writing more casually. And I really feel like this actually applies to scripting for speech as well. One of the things that she talked about was, like, definitely adding in contractions into your writing, because a lot of times we will write everything out. Like, where did you go? Is it in the thing? It is not this. And. And we don't. We don't speak that way. And it can actually make reading and speaking more to our natural tone a lot more difficult. And so you have to use contractions. You have to say, where'd you go? Instead of, where did you go? It just sounds like a lot less AI Right?
- [38:30]
Jordan
You want to be using normal language. You're using contractions. You've got kind of the false stops of normal conversation. You have kind of the cadence of a normal conversation. And that is possible to script, but I think it has to. To script it. It has to be running through, reading it out loud, listening for rhythm, and then merging that back into the document itself.
- [38:53]
Alvin
Mm. And there's, like. There's another tip I saw from this woman who wrote for Dialogue for, like, screenwriting, and she said that one of the ways to write for speech is to speak directly to the audience. So saying you like just actually saying you instead of, like, I would like to Ask the audience, or I'd like to ask my listeners. It feels very much to me like Bridgerton, like Dear gentle Reader. It's just like a little too proper, as opposed to just saying, like, oh, for this episode, I wanted to ask you to write in and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it feels more casual, it feels more intimate with your listener. And which we always want. We always want to develop deeper relationships with our listeners. And that's like a little trick that you can do to kind of engage more and make it sound more casual.
- [39:44]
Jordan
So to land the plane, let me read from the script you wrote for our conclusion. The big takeaway is that you can script while still sounding natural. A script is just a tool. It can help you decide where the episode is going, protect the details you want to get right, and give you something to fall back on when the words aren't coming natural. But you don't have to read every word you write. The best script isn't the one you follow to a T. It's the one that helps you sound like yourself and maybe a little bit more clean and concise. And as always, it's going to be even better if you have someone like Jordan who edits out all of your fault starts. All right, it's time for our fan mail where we read the messages you sent in to us and maybe we talk about it.
- [40:35]
Alvin
Maybe.
- [40:37]
Jordan
All right, we got some fan mail from Colette who wrote in and said, I have a question about national versus local sponsorships. I recently made my first attempts to get an event sponsor, and I went to national companies who mostly said no, but they did recommend that I reach out to their local branches. I didn't want to waste my local branches time because my audience is not local. But now I'm wondering, did I miss a big opportunity? I wonder what you all thought. I appreciate the show and all of you and look forward to your answer. I would be interested to know a bit more about what the relationship is between these national brands and the local brands. You know, the first thing that jumped to my mind is like, car dealerships, where car dealerships are associated with, like, a international umbrella company, but then there's regional companies that do different ad packages. And then the local dealers all do their own level of ads. And it makes sense because, like, you buy a car locally, you know, you buy it from a person. And so there's some things that do need to be that you can try to work with national brands, but some things where really all the money is kind of down there at the local level. Jordan, you have a take on this? I, I think for me it really depends on what type of, what type of product she was talking to.
- [42:03]
Alvin
Yeah, I, I agree with you and I think that Colette maybe answered her question a little bit within the question, saying, I don't want to waste my local branches time because my audience is not local. I mean, if your audience is not local, it doesn't make business sense for that local branch to sponsor your podcast. And I mean, I personally would feel a little bad for securing a sponsor that was local for an audience that is never going to like, you know, step foot inside of their brick and mortar door. But if you have someone who is a creator or officer, offers a service and they're located locally, yet their services extend beyond the local area, absolutely. Go for it. For dreamful One time I had, it was like a Sherlock Holmes episode and I partnered with this boutique tea company based out of Portland, Oregon and I know a bunch of people that like bought their teas from them because you could order it online. And so yeah, it was a small boutique place, but they were able to get business from outside because they had an online shopping and I was able to give listeners, you know, a product code or whatever. So things like that. Absolutely. But I think if it's a brick and mortar, like they only do things in person, probably not. I don't think I would reach out to like local. And I want you to know that it sounds like you have done many attempts to get other companies to sponsor your podcast. Sponsorships are really difficult to secure and they take a lot of effort, but it's not impossible. So sometimes you have to get told no like 20 times to get one person to finally say yes. But you really just need that one yes to get a little bit of momentum under your belt and be able to show people how awesome your ad reads are and things like that.
- [44:07]
Jordan
Yeah, I completely agree. It kind of segues nicely with this next fan mail we got from Utah Family History Drama Podcast. And they said, I hear recurring taglines or jingles at the end of some podcast episodes and they will mention who hosts or distributes their podcast. I think of there's some I used to listen to that would always be like, this is a headgum podcast. Yeah, very end. And they said, would you consider creating something universally recognizable like that so we can give homage to Buzzsprout with each episode, maybe even giving us a small discount if we opted in and included enough episodes. And I read that and I went, that's kind of like what an ad is. Right. The idea would be that people could say, we host this show on buzzsprout and if you click the link in the show notes, you will get. You could sign up for Buzzsprout and join me and we'll both save $20. They could use their refer a friend code or we could even add just a really, really, really big ad buy into buzzsprout ads so that anybody who uses buzzsprout outs could accept the ad and put it into all their episodes.
- [45:12]
Alvin
That's fun.
- [45:13]
Jordan
Feels like an easy win. That feels like something we should have done. I like this. It's a good idea. We do always plan everything that we work on at buzzsprout six weeks in advance. And we just launched our cycle today, so this is at least two months out before we've made any headway on it. But I do really like this idea. It makes sense. We say that podcast advertising works. Why don't I put some real money wherever my mouth is and buy a bunch of podcast ads?
- [45:45]
Alvin
I love that idea. And also I want to say that you can get started right now on this because in your buzzsprout account you can go down, you can find your referral code link that is specific to your podcast and it's really easy to record dynamic content promoting that you host on buzzsprout and like include your referral link in the link provided in dynamic content and you can insert that into all your episodes and that sort of works the exact same way. And then you get a kickback.
- [46:16]
Jordan
We got another message from Tampa, Florida from Sarah who actually inspired this whole episode. And she said, I was wondering about the tags and keywords field. How does that impact search? Some directories might use that. I cannot tell you any that do.
- [46:32]
Alvin
I don't think so.
- [46:33]
Jordan
The one area that it actually is used is we use those with our embed players. So if you have a recurring thing, you know, maybe on Buzzcast we have, you know, a whole group of episodes that are all about podcast growth and we have a whole nother group that are all about podcast monetization. We might put the tag podcast monetization in a bunch of episodes and then somewhere we embed a player that has all of the podcast monetization episodes and it's useful there. I think it used to be so much more used in the industry for different purposes and it really has not become less valuable over time that there have been times where I've actually advocated internally. Maybe we don't take this totally away. But we hide it down in kind of advanced settings and make it not as important because I don't want people to take a bunch of time and fill out a bunch of keywords, thinking maybe these keywords are going to get picked up by Apple and Spotify. But Apple and Spotify say no. We actually like the transcript so much better. It's a way better representation of the content. So we're looking there. I'd rather focus people's attention on the thing we know moves the needle. Really good titles, good description and a high quality transcript.
- [47:53]
Alvin
Yeah. And I will say that I've seen people use these keywords and tags in very creative ways. I've seen people make sort of like collections on their website where when they talk about a certain topic. So, Sarah, let's say that we write a, that you, you have a topic that is writing techniques or technical writing or something like that. And then you add those keywords to each of the episodes that touch on that topic. And then on your website you create like sort of a course and then you have a playlist at the top of that course that has all the episodes that are on that. You could do it if you have a mythology podcast, let's say that you have a page dedicated to like Greek mythology and all the episodes that you have on Greek mythology, you can do a playlist there. And then all the subsequent episodes that you upload, you can add that same keyword and then it'll toss it into that same playlist on your embed player on the website. So it's a really cool way to kind of gather together episodes that have like the same themes and topics and actually think that may help quite a bit with your podcast SEO on like Google and stuff like that, because you'll have a dedicated page to these topics and you can write out like your blog and then have the embed player with all of that together.
- [49:14]
Jordan
Jordan, you got a nice message. You and Courtney Elmer got nice message from Audrey Wiggins, Technical Abyss Talks. Really enjoyed your latest episode about the five podcast choices that could be costing you listeners some of the quotes in here. This is a long message, but things like, oh my goodness, this was fantastic. I've been a podcaster since 2011 and you know what, it's great to go back and see everything I could be working on. Just, we actually got a lot of messages about that episode. So congratulations, not just for me, but from Audrey and I think quite a few other people who wrote in via fan mail.
- [49:50]
Alvin
Yeah, I would say that this was the Episode, the episode with Courtney Elmer. It was such a good idea to get her on the show. I'm so glad I did it. I'm so glad she was willing to come on because she is just such a wealth of knowledge. And it did turn out to be such an awesome episode. And I think that this might be one of the episodes I've gotten the most feedback from, like, just constant people, like, writing in or, like, messaging me or texting me. Even people from my life have been like, man, that was a good episode. So that never happens. So thank you, Courtney. I appreciate you gracing us with your presence. All right, well, thank you all for listening. And until next time, keep podcasting.
- [50:34]
Jordan
All right, Jordan, you sent me something. And he said, do you have a post show? And I said, no. And he went, well, it's been a big year for animals, so we could talk about that.
- [50:47]
Alvin
That checks out.
- [50:49]
Jordan
And honestly, I thought the only thing I. When I heard Big thing for Animals, I went, oh, did we pass some, like, animal welfare laws or some sort of like, you? I was just like, that's the only place my mind went. And I'm like, okay, what's the good news? And you said, I'll tell you in the post show.
- [51:09]
Alvin
Yeah, okay, but I know it's not
- [51:10]
Jordan
an animal welfare law, so what is it? What good things have happened to animals? It's a bit. A big year for animals.
- [51:16]
Alvin
It's been a big year for animals. It is not a big year for, like, animal kind. I think it's been a big year for specific animals. Like viral animals. I should say.
- [51:25]
Jordan
Viral animals.
- [51:25]
Alvin
Viral animals. So, okay, if you think about it, I think it was like. Like this year or within the last year or so. Do you remember Mu Dang?
- [51:36]
Jordan
The. The hippo? The baby hippo?
- [51:38]
Alvin
Yes. So Mu Dang, the baby hippo, which was so cute and just, like, went viral everywhere. Everyone's obsessed with Mu Dang. And then we had. There was the dog that, like, ran down the slopes at the Olympics that went super viral. There was, like, the dog at the Olympics, and everyone's like, give him a medal. Do you remember that?
- [52:00]
Jordan
No, I don't think I saw this.
- [52:02]
Alvin
Okay. That was also, like, a huge thing. It was very viral. Everyone was really upset that he didn't place. And then there was Punch the Monkey, which was the monkey that got bullied at that Japanese zoo. And then everyone was, like, obsessed with Punch the Monkey, and he had, like, a little toy.
- [52:20]
Jordan
Oh, that was so sad. Yes, I saw that. Where the other monkeys were mean to him. And then he had a toy and went off by itself. This isn't a good year for animals. These are.
- [52:28]
Alvin
It's a great year for animals.
- [52:30]
Jordan
The dog didn't get an Olympic medal. The monkey got bullied by the other monkeys. You're just saying because they went viral.
- [52:37]
Alvin
Just saying because they went viral. It's just. It's a big year for cute animal viral stories. And the newest one is Jimothy.
- [52:45]
Jordan
Okay, I do actually know. I didn't know the other ones. I do know what Jimothy is. Jimothy is like a. I want to say like a raccoon in Oregon or something like that.
- [52:57]
Alvin
Jimothy is a raccoon in a neighborhood of Seattle, and he's like a local celebrity there, but he has just, like, gone super viral. He's very famous now, and it's literally to the point where Roku. You know how Roku TVs have that screensaver, and it's like this famous screensaver of, like, a city, and there's always, like, these Easter eggs in it. They added Jimothy the raccoon to the screensaver. And for those of you who have not seen Jimothy, I. I'm. This probably sounds insane. I'm gonna explain it. So Jimothy's spine is shortened, and so he's just like a ball with legs. Yeah, he's got cute little raccoon face and, like, a nub of a tail. And he is just so cute. It's. It's kind of sad because, like, obviously this mutation, but he's so cute. And so, anyway, so he's on the raccoon, the Roku screensaver. Now. I saw that Dungeons and Dragons have added Jimothy as, like, an official, like, creature, like a cryptid in DND lore. What?
- [54:00]
Jordan
How are these, Jordan? These are not good things for animals. These are so good. People on Tick Tock really liked something bad happened to an animal. This is the opposite of a good year for animals. Except for Mu Dang, who but though is kept in a zoo. Not optimal there either.
- [54:18]
Alvin
I mean, Punch the monkey is doing great now.
- [54:21]
Jordan
What happened to Punch? The story was the other monkeys were mean.
- [54:25]
Alvin
Yeah, the other monkeys were mean to him. Everyone was like, oh, my gosh, like, save Punch. Like, justice for Punch the monkey. And then, like, everyone sent him a bunch of toys to the zoo, and then eventually he actually got accepted by one of the monkeys, and so he finally was, like, starting to make friends, and now he's, like, integrated into this, like, little monkey community.
- [54:47]
Jordan
Once he had a ton of toys. They all accepted him.
- [54:49]
Alvin
They're like, all right, yeah, he got famous.
- [54:54]
Jordan
This reminds me, if you pay attention to the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer song, yeah. They all treat Rudolph terribly and then at some point they actually really need Rudolph because they're like, oh, Christmas is ruined unless the guy we've been bullying the whole time helps out.
- [55:12]
Alvin
Yeah.
- [55:12]
Jordan
And Rudolph kindly is like, I'm gonna put all that aside because Christmas is what matters. And then all the reindeers loved him and they're like, oh, Rudolph, you're great. And I'm like, this is a bad story to tell kids. Like, hey, the, the story is you could bully people for looking different and they still should probably help you out if you ever need it. Like, terrible story. Terrible year for animals. I disagree with this whole post show.