I probably should have called this post “how to convert your stories to scripts”. To be fair, both imply I have a f***k what I’m talking about, which I don’t.
I don’t know about any other fiction/novel writers, but when I’m writing a story and I’m picking up from where I left off I always read the last part aloud. Most of the time I write as though I’m talking to someone, or telling a story. Of course the language is a bit different, but to me most stories are meant to be told aloud, that’s where they have their origins in the lands of time when only a minority could read.
When it came to converting my series of stories into scripts I didn’t find it that hard. The stories were written in the third person, or by an omnipresent narrator, but there were a few changes I wanted to make to the story anyway so writing them afresh was a good idea (not to mention that they were at least 5 years old when I found them so blowing the cyber dust and cobwebs from them was my first priority).
I procrastinated a lot when re-writing these. I think I was getting my head around all of the other things that go with making a podcast that I just kept putting off actually getting some content. I hope it doesn’t show.
I had 4 original stories (or 3.5 since the last one was only half done. What can I say, I’m the Queen of I’ll do it later, and later never comes). All were about 20 A4 pages in length (I know, I’m a rambler, even when writing fiction). Some details, and cringe worthy bits were removed during the re-writing. I also wanted my episodes to be between 15 and 20 minutes long.
On average, those 4 original stories gave me 10 episodes of content, so I was laughing. The new addition is the present Sarah, the one looking for answers about who funded the IPP study. I would tell you which episodes are original and which ones new, but I think it’d spoil the listening experience.
Let me tell you, if I hadn’t had those 10 scripts in place I probably would’ve given up completely. I wasn’t in the right creative world to write ghost stories (I’ve since moved away from the obsession which started the original stories) so finding those last 5 episodes of content was…challenging.
Hence why I started to explore other avenues. I mean there are only so many ghost stories you can tell without it getting repetitive. I had left the IPP study very ambiguous, very open to what phenomena was meant to be investigated. I admit, weaving in scientific with supernatural proved more difficult than I was antitipcating, especially considering that the supernatural is actually real in this case. But there’s a lot more to parapsychology than just ghosts, thank God.
I also made a rod for my own back when investigating the science behind parapsychology. I wanted to make it as close to the truth as possible. There’s quite a lot of scientific journal articles about studies that were conducted, and obviously a plethora of books. Thanks to my academic career, I knew where to go for the journal articles (and it’s not Google Scholar, FYI). That became a whole other rabbit hole. I hope it paid off. The experiments condicted on all psychics and mediums in the podcast are based off of real experiements conducted by real academics, just in case you want to try recreating them…
To learn more, check out the podcast!