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Lesson Info

Get to a Finished Piece: The Script

So the first thing like he was talking about this script when you're when you're reading visiting that I do all the time. How do I take, you know, these bits of audio that I've that I've got these great moments And then how do I string them together with it with a script that I narrate? Um And so the first thing you want to do is like the first thing that I did when I first start writing was I would write. And these sort of like very long, florid sentences in the long paragraphs, and I would have all this proper pronunciation. I mean, this proper punctuation, Uh, and I had to learn to throw all that out because a radio script is sort of unlike that it doesn't You don't really use punctuation. What you're trying to do when you're doing a script for audio is to t just keep it as simple as possible, as concise as possible. You have to use real economy, have to throw out like half your sentences on, and you're trying to figure out how to say as much it is possible with as little time as po...

ssible. Um, and I'm The other thing that you have to do with an audio script is you have to sort of what I'm always doing in my scriptures. I'm indicating where we're about to go, and I'm and I'm and I'm commenting on where we've been. So I'm giving you some sort of, like an idea about, like, what just happened in them and that next we're gonna go into this, and that's sort of the idea that I'm doing in the script all the time. Um, I'm gonna give examples of how this works. Um, and the other thing that I'm doing something that and you notice that I do in sort of tape. But I'm also doing this in the script as well as I'm simplifying and clarifying what people have said. So a lot of a phrase I use a lot is in other words, like somebody will say something and it will be very powerful, but it's that quite fully understandable. So I'll come off of that piece of tape and my script. I'll say, In other words, the jig was up or in other words, you know something. And I put it put a simple, simplifying phrase on it to sort of make sure that the point has been driven home. So I'm often simplifying and clarifying in my script. And I'm always trying to give you a reason to listen. Keep on listening. Um, sort of in a sense, it sort of forward promoting you know what's next? What's coming up? Um, so I wanna, uh, going to give an example of sort of all those things. Uh and so I want to play. Um, and one of the places that does this really well is planet money. My old where I used to work the podcast that I co founded, and I used to work there for a long time, and I've left in the very capable hands of the team there. Uh, and this is from a very recent episode of planet money where they were They were that that, um but I think just illustrates all these principles, and so I'm just gonna play it. It's like the first. I think it's the first minute and a half, um, where they and their our whole purpose at planet money was to try to give you a reason to keep listening and to try to sort of and then to sort of give you a sense of the journey you're going on. So here's Here's here's that, uh, clip. If you don't pay your credit card bill, the first thing you might get isn't even saying Hey, just a reminder you missed your payment. If you still don't pay, you'll start getting phone calls. Eventually, you may get a letter. Your bank might pass your debt off to a collection agency. Some guy in a cubicle will start calling and interrupting your dinner night after night. And then, if you still don't pay, there's one final stop for your debt. You might get a call from a guy like Jimmy Ah, guy who I met last week standing outside a boarded up house in Buffalo, New York. You in a rough part of the neighborhood. But I want you to know you're safe. I appreciate that. Feel safe. I feel like you really like you. You all right? But this is This is the hood, man, you know? I mean this This is Buffalo Buffalo. Hello, and welcome to planet Money. I'm Jacob Goldstein. I'm joined today by a special guest, Jake Halpern. Hey, Jake. Hey, Jake just wrote a book called Bad Paper All About Jimmy and This World, and that's our show today. It's the story of this one guy who tried to make something of himself by getting into what's really an ugly business. It's also the story of this whole low level, semi legal debt collection economy that sprung up in Buffalo, and even in a small way, it's the story of the last 20 or so years of global finance. The time when the world went wild for debt. All right, so that was an abrupt ending. I'm sorry, but so So what I love about that is that, like, if you don't necessarily care about credit card debt, he's giving you a bunch of reasons to keep listening. Like first, there's this entertaining character named Jimmy who you're probably gonna hear more from. Then there is the idea of this, the CD sort of semi legal underworld that you're gonna learn about. And then this whole story is part of this bunch of larger story that we have all been through, and all of that is sort of promised in the billboard, and then, obviously has to be delivered 100 final piece. But but that's what you That's what we sort of, uh, you know, sort of You try to build the stakes and then you. So what it does is two things. One is it builds up the stakes for for what you're about to hear. And then the other thing is that it give you a reason to keep a listening for a long audio story, especially. It's really helpful to have, like, a little bit of a road map in the beginning so that, you know, like, so that when you're and you're sort of doing this in your mind, as you know, So you've been like so you've been promised, you know, interactions with Jimmy. You've been promised seedy underworld of debt collection, and you've been promised the connection to the last two decades of sort of global finance. And so you know that going in and now you're gonna be listening for that. And each time you hear it, when you hear it referenced in the upcoming story, it orients unit was like, OK, so here here I am, I'm this far through the story. Now I know where I am. The one of the biggest problems with listening to a story. A story in audio. Long story, especially, is the feeling of being disoriented, like not knowing. How long are we going? How long you have to go? Why am I listening to this particular part? Where we headed, You know, there's That's the thing. When people turn off audio, it's often because I'm like, I don't know where we're going anymore. I've lost. I've lost the path here and I don't wanna I don't want to keep listening. I don't I don't have faith that we're going anywhere. Interesting. So if you do this in the beginning, if you sort of give people a roadmap in the beginning. But we're gonna go through this, we're gonna go through Jimmy, we're gonna go through the seedy underbelly, and we're gonna go through, sort of like how it all connects the global financial system. You know, this thing in Buffalo that connects the global financial system, and we're gonna take you on this journey, You know, it gives you a reason to keep listening. Um, and this is something that I have been dealing with. Start up. Um uh and so I figured It would be nice to just play you like the first two minutes of of a recent start up podcasts. And I'm gonna put up the script, Um, as as it's playing so that you can sort of listen and read the script as it's going along and that that might be helpful to sort of see what I'm doing. But so with with start up the it's essentially the same problem, but each but because it's a serial, you know, sort of a continuing story. I had a problem that I hadn't really faced before, which is sort of how do I tell how to catch people up without, like, you know, sort of boring. The people have already heard what's come before, and so I'm trying to do it as quickly as possible, but sort of remind people where we've been and then also sort of given set us up for what's coming next. Um, and so I have come up with the formulation that I basically sort of say at the end of at the beginning of every every podcast, which sort of gives you the sense of sort of like, OK, here is what this is about, um and you'll hear me reference it. Well, here, you'll hear it in the beginning, so I'll just play the beginning of that and you can see it. This is the script, them in playing. I'm Alex Bloomberg and you're listening to start up podcast miniseries documenting the launching of my podcast company, Meta. I know it's the business origin story you never actually here set down before the fax conf Aidan toe. This is the garage where it all started. Mythology most honest and transparent account I can make but something that happens every day in this country. But we heard that received first hand starting a business you're listening to. Episode four This is the first episode you've heard. You can go back and listen from the beginning. Mr. Recap previously on startup trip to California to pitch an investor, Matt Maggio ended with him pitching me to expand my idea to include more technology. Podcast listeners, he said, should be able to do with podcasts what they do with articles and photographs and videos online. I want them to be able to message back and forth. I want to be able to make new friends, create new connections. I wish I could do micro transactions. I wish I could do a crowdfunding campaign. The idea made sense essentially create the instagram of audio. But as I told my wife later, that conversation made me feel bad about myself. I'm describing something that feels like the biggest thing I've ever done and like it seems small to him. It was becoming increasingly clear to my wife, my friends, even my investors I needed a business partner which eventually I found a guy named Matt Lieber. Finding business partner is very similar to finding a romantic partner right down to the proposal. If you wanted to come along on this ride, that'll be great for May. Matt eventually said yes. Which meant that my valueless company with no investors have just doubled in size. All right, so you can see all the things that I'm doing. So this first paragraph is just me trying to sort of create a reason toe Listen, which is sort of like I'm saying, like, this is the story is a story that you that you here but usually hear it after the fact that I'm telling it to you in real time sort of warts and all. So hopefully that gives you some sense of sort of, like, why you want to hear this story. And then all through the script, I'm trying like the little things my entire, like terror is that you're gonna get bored and stop listening. And so my entire sort of you know what I'm the entire sort of motivation that I have is to keep you listening. And so, for example, right here, And I'm doing a lot of things that I talked about earlier I'm doing, um ah, right here. A trip to pitch in investor Matt Mazzeo ended with him pitching me. So just that line, like where I was talking about, like, sort of like getting giving you another reason to listen. That's like, Oh, well, what are you talking about? Like, how does that work? It's a it's a reset. And so that buys me another 2030 seconds. You know, basically of people's attention, because they're like, Oh, I want to hear How did how did you start pitching him? And he started teaching you. Now I am interested. I'm, uh, talk about reframing and simplifying. The idea makes sense essentially create the instagram of audio right again. He said this thing I want to give you a sort of shorthand toe. Hold on to the idea in your mind Instagram of audio becomes that thing. Um ah. Um and then and then again, here's again. Ah, process. The process of finding a business partner is very similar to finding a romantic partner again. New idea. Keep people listening something like a new It's another reset. I get another 2030 seconds. So I'm constantly trying to sort of give, you know, and a lot of times it happens in the writing. You're giving somebody a reason to keep on listening. Um, so anyway, that's just a example of Of what? A script look like that again. Here's the tape the tape is in is in parentheses. I mean, is in italics. And the script is and is in bold. I want so this is it. I want I want to play a piece of tape for you. Um, and again, this is all about like so what I'm gonna do right now is I want to play. I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna play you piece of tape the way it was originally edited at the party. It's a part of a story, the way the reporter originally played it. And then the reporter and I sat down and we sort of went through an edit. And then I'm gonna play you the edited piece, and I'm going to show you the original script eventually the edited script. Okay, so you can really see, like what we're doing here. And like all these stories, they take some set up. So this story is about cotton subsidies? Um, uh, so But it's about this really weird feature of American cotton subsidies. Which was that? America, The American government? In the American taxpayer. Many people might know that the American American tax money goes to various farmers to, you know, to help them to support whether or not they grow the clap. They get these subsidies, they get lots and lots of agricultural sectors get subsidies. What few people know is that there is a big portion like, I think it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars of American taxpayer money that is goes to Brazilian cotton farmers. Um, and eso American taxpayers are subsidising Brazilian cotton farmers, and we were telling the story of how that came to be on planet money, and it's this really crazy, fascinating story. And it involves, like this group of cotton farmers in Texas and this, like crazy, crusading cotton cotton farmer in Brazil and sort of all these sort of like working these international WTO's rules. And it is actually quite a pretty amazing story, but it involves cotton subsidies. Uh, and so the reporter Han Androphy Walt, who's like this amazing reporter like I'm in constant off her. And she had found the story and she was gone and she got down to Texas. And so there's basically and she noted, that was basically, it sets up pretty well. There's there's two antagonistic. There's a Texas carton firmer thighs guy she met named Dalin. And there was this Brazilian farmer, this guy named Pedro. So she has them and those there that sort of the ones who are fighting with each other. And they're a big part of this story. Um, so she sets up and she in the way she and should The way she original played the story for me. I was her editor. She played the store from me and she said it up. She's like I was I was down talking to this farmer in Texas and out of nowhere, we're just talking about cotton where cotton comes from, and out of nowhere He mentions, uh, this other company, this other country, Brazil and it's And then the story went from there. Yeah, because sometimes I mean just backs or fax Brazil, for example. The only reason I bring them up is just because they lash out at us a lot of times about how we do things and very negative about the U. S. They keep coming to the table, coming to the court and always grabbing and always bitching and complaining whenever you know. I mean, we don't you know what? We stepped up to the plate every day and played the game. The reason Dehlin Hancock is so obsessed with Brazil brought it up three times without being asked. There's a back story, and the back story begins with a guy named Pedro, a Brazilian who disputed all of Daylan sports analogies that the U. S. Plays the game better than Brazil with a sports analogy of his own. Although I didn't quite get it at first they're taking shots. They're taking shots. Well, no, no, they're taking shots. The shots here. How to say the hormones? Uh, they're taking prohibited. Uh, you know, it said they're taking hormones on and we play fear. What Pedro means is steroids, and it turns out how to buy cotton in the global economy. This question that we're asking is not about comparing prices or quality. It is about this. The United States and Brazil are in the middle of an eight year war over cotton. It's an emotional and quiet war. And where we end up buying our cotton has everything to do with this work. Okay, so this is, um, the script that she wrote, and everything that is in black was what she had originally. And everything that is in green, purple or red is stuff that we added later. So after the edit, So her first edit, she was she it started with that guy Dehlin saying, You know, facts are facts. Brazil producer presents competitive, stepped to the plate and play the game. He says that And then she went just straight to Camargo that the Pedro guy saying the digging shots, they're taking shots. And what she was thinking was it was like an artful way of sort of setting up this conflict between this guy, this American cotton farming, this Brazilian cotton farmer. But what? When I heard it, it was just utterly confusing. I didn't know what he was talking about with shots. I didn't understand what the thing was. She hadn't sort of set up any of this stuff. And then she went, She didn't have any of this stuff in there. And then she just went on to serve a story about Pedro. And you had no idea why you were listening to any of this stuff. And so everything here we added later, and it was all to do the stuff that we're talking about provide stakes, give a sense of where you're going, all that sort of stuff. So here eso he says stuff. And when Hot and I did this together, she she actually color coded sort of what each one of these each one of these pieces of script is doing. And so some script that we put in is just sort of like pay attention like this is a big, important part. Okay, and this was down here. It turns out to determine how to buy cotton in the globe. Economy is about is not about this. It's about this eight year war over cotton that the U. S and Brazil are in. And the minute you sort of turning into an eight year war over cotton like you're like, OK, now I'm like, now I'm not hearing the word subsidy. I don't I'm not hearing something that I'm hearing about a war between two countries. Like something is going on here, right? So I'm like something that I care about. The other thing that she's doing is is like with the green. She's saying, Turn here Like what? In other words, like, sort of like Okay, you've just heard from Dalin. And now I want to redirect your attention over here to this guy from Brazil, and I'm going to now set him up, right? And so So that's what this is. The reason Dehlin is so obsessed with Brazil brought it up three times without being asked. There is a back story, and then so should. Then she sets up this idea that like, Okay, now I'm gonna tell you this big story. Um and then and then, uh and then this is And then there's more, which is sort of like, just like we're pumping it up. This is gonna be great. Let me tell you why. It's gonna be great. Okay, Um and then and so she's like, sort of like, gives some color to Pedro here, she says it says with the Brazilian who disputed all of Dehlin spaces, sports analogies with his own sports analogy. It just sort of sets up what you're about to hear in a way that makes it easier to here and then down here, she says. It's an emotional and quiet war, and where we end up by our cotton has everything to do with this war, which sort of, like makes it feel like Okay, now I want to hear this story about cotton subsidies that maybe before hopefully I want to hear the story cotton subsidies. Where's before? I definitely didn't want to hear a story about cotton subsidies. So So So that's a lot of what you're doing with the script. Is trying to is doing those things you're saying to people like turn here, put focus your attention over here. You're saying pay attention to this Is this is this is the good part, right? Like the thing about tell you is a good chart or, um uh, Or were about to go, Uh, we're about to go someplace really exciting.