The Verb is a weekly "Cabaret of the Word", featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance, presented by Ian McMillan. The Verb is a longstanding collaborator with Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writers, offering the chance for writers from our development groups (including Scripted, Writers' Access Group, and Voices) to garner a short audio drama commission - and also the opportunity to appear on the show. 

Once selected, our alumni writers underwent an intense development process with a Â鶹ԼÅÄ Audio Drama North Producer. Below, you can listen to their final audio drama productions, as well as read their experiences of the process. 

The Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writers alumni selected for the most recent Verb audio dramas are Amy Arnold, Alan Flanagan, Matthew Smith, and Karen Featherstone. 

"I was so happy to have my radio play selected for The Verb – KISSING WITH TONGUES was the first thing I’d ever written for radio, and I really wasn’t sure how my writing would translate given that I have mostly worked on television scripts before now. Once I got started, I found the loose brief – to simply ‘celebrate language’ – and also the tight 7-8 minute timing really focused my brain, getting me to think hard about the purpose of every word (I can sometimes tend towards verbose when left to my own devices!)

"My script editor Pippa Day was brilliant in helping me hone the finer story details, and I loved the day I spent in the studio with her and Lorna Newman, who directed the play with so much energy and enthusiasm. Hearing the actors performing my words was really special – for me it was the first time I’ve experienced that, and it gave me a renewed excitement for radio as a storytelling medium. Listening to the final edit felt so intimate and romantic - the perfect way to dive into the inner thoughts of my two characters as they mull over their feelings for one another. I’m so grateful I got the opportunity to create this piece through being part of Writersroom, and look forward to writing more for radio in the future!"

- Amy Arnold

Listen to the full episode of The Verb including Amy's introduction to Kissing With Tongues (at 44 minutes)

"Anyone who's spent more than five minutes in an Ann Summers knows that it's the fate of humanity to eventually fall in love with machines, so I decided to pitch 'Something Borrowed' -- about a dead relationship resurrected by some ungodly combination of AI and wishful thinking. I love writing for radio because there's this inherent weirdness to it, the audience with an ear cocked to their wireless (slash bluetooth headset) will pretty much sign up for anything, so it feels like a great space to explore genre stories. After getting the initial pitch accepted, I faced the agonising uphill battle of bringing an idea to life -- only kidding (I don't work down a mine), it was all smooth sailing with the wonderful producer Vicky Moseley guiding me through several drafts.

"The main challenge was getting so much story into about 8 minutes while still keeping the characters intact and interesting, but Vicky was the perfect collaborator the whole way through. Recording radio is always so much fun, and (after getting over being star-struck by meeting a former Corrie star) I was bowled over by the performances of Jenny Platt and Andonis Anthony. Andonis found the slowly growing humanity in this artificial-intelligence-turned-spurned-boyfriend, while Jenny achieved the impossible by doing an Irish accent that I, a curmudgeonly Irish person, found flawless. I can't thank Vicky, Jenny, Andonis (and Lorna Newman, and others who worked on the project) enough for allowing me to have so much fun bringing this story of literal "it's PC gone mad" to the nation's earholes."

- Alan Flanagan

Listen to the full episode of The Verb including Alan's introduction to Something Borrowed (at 32 minutes, 40 seconds)

"Radio is a visual medium. Well, no. But hold on...

"When I think about audible storytelling - like a podcast, radio advert or interview - the bits that stick with me are the moments where I can visualise the scene. So this was my mission throughout the writing process: write visually. Sure, write well, but for the love of God write visually.

"I committed to an idea which is specific and absurd. On the very first page of my script, a Huddersfield Town fan transforms into a donor kebab. This set the tempo. The rest of the story must evolve from this foolish imagery to keep the listener guessing and, ideally, bewildered.

"My commitment to ensuring the story was populated with lush yet unfamiliar imagery led me to expecting higher standards from my writing. It's all well and good to imagine bizarre illustrations, but none of this imagery is worth spit unless it actually means something. Therefore I interrogated the story's characters, themes, language and structure much more than I usually do; ensuring the ambitious visuals are complimented by ambitious storytelling.

"What I'm trying to say is, more radio dramas should open with a kebab mutation in the John Smith's stadium."

- Matthew Smith

Listen to the full episode of The Verb including Matthew's introduction to No Smoking in the Ground (at 13 minutes)

"My play GHOST IN THE MACHINE was my third attempt to have my work included as part of The Verb, so I was thrilled when it got selected. In a way, having being rejected before helped, I think, as I stopped second guessing what I thought the team would like.

"I just wrote about something which had been bothering me (my increasing claustrophobia in MRI machines; I’m a disabled writer and have had a lot of MRI scans). It was a happy coincidence that the weird noises an MRI machine makes meant they were going to contribute to a rich soundscape. I’m told the sound designers got quite excited at the challenge.

"Developing the piece with the wonderful Pippa Day, and then being invited to the recording were huge factors in me feeling that this piece was going to turn out very close to how it had played in my head. There was a slight delay when we had to find the correct pronunciation of the word ‘parapharyngeal’, but the patience and dedication of Pippa, the actors and tech team paid off. It was really one of the best experiences I’ve had of my writing being produced."

- Karen Featherstone

Listen to the full episode of The Verb including Karen's introduction to Ghost in the Machine (at 22 minutes, 30 seconds)

The Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3 programme The Verb is a weekly "Cabaret of the Word", featuring the best poetry, new writing and performance, presented by Ian McMillan. The programme has regularly collaborated with us at the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom, offering the opportunity for writers from our Drama Room development group to gain a short audio drama commission and the chance to appear as a guest.

Having been selected, the writers underwent a swift but thorough development process with a Â鶹ԼÅÄ Audio Drama North Producer.  Below you can read their experiences of the process and listen to their produced audio dramas.

"When ADULTING was picked for The Verb it was a real sense of achievement for me. I’d pitched an idea a few years ago that hadn’t gone through, this was totally fair enough (I reread it recently and it was dull as dishwater) but you don’t feel super hopeful at the time. This was a moment for me to say to myself, look – you’ve got better!

We were limited to less than 10 minutes, and I am someone who can ramble. This is where working with a fabulous producer like Lorna Newman, who directed and produced my piece, is invaluable. Lorna focussed my ideas; we talked a lot about weight and food and culture and trips to the doctors and she made sure she knew what I was trying to get across – a pro!

Getting to sit in the recording was a dream. One of the best bits of script-writing is when you get to hear brilliant actors like Chloë Sommer, Jenny McIntyre and Jason Done bring your piece to life.

I’m looking forward to pitching more ideas to Audio Drama in the future."

 - Georgia Affonso

"I loved writing for radio. I haven’t before. My eyes and ears were opened to the possibility by an opportunity presented as part of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom Drama Room 2022 cohort. I was dead chuffed to have my pitch chosen.

If a radio audience can be transported anywhere I wanted to take them to a windswept island in the Firth of Forth and back in time, deep into nostalgia and old dreams. 10 minutes seemed too brief a stay, but actually allowed plenty to space to explore these characters and tell their tales. Producer Jess Mitic was brilliant – she got the story, the tone, the world and all its swirling undercurrents, and saw in the script possibilities I hadn’t explored. I love and admire the respect she has for radio audiences. Her notes were easy and exciting to address and always helped enrich the story or heighten the drama. She also noted stuff she liked!

Most of my work is in theatre and I was delighted to find how beautifully the worlds of theatre and radio correlate. I like working with silence and physical action – storytelling without dialogue – and happily learned that these are entirely possible in radio. I learned that actors can invest hugely in radio dramas, and am so pleased and proud of these performances. And I learnt that the audio FX team are truly wonderful – they created an astonishing soundscape, which truly captures the world of Cramond Island."

- Tim Barrow

"The miracle of radio drama is that you can do just about anything with it: go back in time, into outer space, bring untold stories into people’s headphones. So I wasn’t entirely certain how my low-key romance set in your local Specsavers would be received. Getting the email to say that the piece had been commissioned was one of the highlights of my year.

Over a couple of Zoom sessions, I worked with my brilliant producer Vicky Moseley to add clarity to some of the more obscure references, punch up the jokes, and make sure the piece didn’t fall foul of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s editorial standards… I was more than happy to make a few required tweaks, but retaining the phrase ‘d*ck pics’ was apparently the hill I was willing to die on. I punched the air when the email came through saying that it had been cleared for broadcast.

Heading up to Manchester for the recording, I was full of excitement and the unique terror of a writer wondering what their lines will sound like in the mouths of others (“…but will they empathise the half rhyme of the penultimate monologue. The whole piece will fall apart otherwise….”). But, sat down with a cup a tea at the read through, any lingering nerves melted away as I listened to Emily Pithon and Jonathan Keeble, these two wonderful actors, work their magic and watched as Vicky and the team brought Floater to life. Just a lovely day."

- Alex Riddle

Listen to the writers' interviews on The Verb with Ian McMillan on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3 and Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds

Georgia Affonso shares her round up of the Drama Room 2021/22 group's sessions

Sebastian (et moi) explores the fraught relationship between cat and owner in the midst of the lockdown, strained furthermore by the peculiar intellectual prowess of the four legged former. At a time when we were all experimenting in living differently, Sebastian the cat takes it to the extreme, bending language and quoting Sartre, while locked in the bathroom with his long suffering owner Elle.

1973. Troubled troubadour Nick Drake is a man of few words. Hazel is a woman of a few too many words. Johansson is a parrot of exactly nine words and he’s damned if he’s letting them clip his nails.

“Nothing stays the same”. George has his father’s words ringing in his ears as he leaves the safety of the harbour and ventures out into Mount’s Bay at the southern tip of Cornwall - down where the weather-beaten moorland tumbles into the sea. He’s the last of a long line of fishermen who have weathered storms, industrial overhaul and the gentrification of the village that he calls home.

Fisherman’s Elegy explores the duality of living in a place of contrasts; often at odds with those that inhabit it and which seems to change with each turn of the tide. George must navigate the choppy waters of the Atlantic, his personal grief and wrestle with the legacy placed upon him - facing up to the burden of expectation and the responsibility of tradition.

Listen to Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3's The Verb, Fridays at 10pm and on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds

Find out more about Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom's writer development groups

Listen to previous series of The Verb Short Dramas:

2019 series on the theme "Space"

2020 series on the theme "Renewal"

“I like the way the rhythms of ordinary speech are put under pressure by the needs of the compressed narrative. The sound world, like the writing, seals you into these dramas in a way that never lets you go.” - Ian McMillan (Presenter of The Verb)

“These short dramas can make you feel like you’re caught in someone else’s train of thought – you discover how strange language really is – and that’s something I really value in these scripts" Faith Lawrence (Producer of The Verb)

“They’ve been like little vibrant jewels of sound. - the scripts, have had a precious jewel quality – small moments that stay with you, I like how they’ve taken little everyday moments, a haircut, or an attempt to follow a recipe and show how important they really are” - Jessica Treen (Assistant Producer of The Verb)

Please, No Shouting in the Reception Area is about a woman who attempts the simple task of getting her passport renewed but is faced with a bureaucracy so convoluted that it tears down the fabric of her own reality.

Please, No Shouting in the Reception Area was broadcast on The Verb on 17th April 2020 - Listen to the whole programme

Avocado Fried Rice is all about a strained mother-daughter relationship, living with dementia and reconnecting with your cultural roots through cooking. ‘Renewal’ in Avocado Fried Rice is the renewal of the mother-daughter relationship - Through learning to cook the recipe her mother has long forgotten, the daughter also gets the opportunity to ‘renew’ and deepen her connection with her heritage - and also to ‘renew’ and reinterpret an traditional, family recipe in her unique, more Westernised way - merging the culture her mum is from and her own; and creating something new and different that celebrates both worlds.

Avocado Fried Rice was broadcast on The Verb on 1st May 2020 - Listen to the whole programme

Ghosts is an exploration of grief, specifically looking at how Freya - a young woman in her twenties - comes to terms with her life continuing when the person she intended on living it out with is taken away unexpectedly. It explores Freya's emerging feelings of guilt and the challenges she faces trying to move forward, of renewing her life plans but in a different way.

Ghosts was broadcast on The Verb on 26th June 2020.

We all have insecurities; most of them are fuelled by our own beliefs and experiences through the world we live in. Our insecurities dictate how we see the world and how we think the world sees us. What truths or lies does RED’s reflection tell them? Maybe Peckham High Street has the answer.

Reflection was broadcast on The Verb on 26th February 2021 - Listen to the whole programme

Find out more about The Verb and listen to programmes now on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds

Listen to last year's The Verb short dramas

'Personal Space' by Matthew Ingram

One of the things that particularly struck me about the process of taking 'Personal Space' from script to broadcast was how different the experiences were when drafting production scripts rather than spec' scripts. I wasn't going to be at the piece's recording, and I knew that the record was going to be quick (only two hours to record the whole thing, in fact). With this in mind, I had to think as much as possible about clarity in my production scripts, considering whether I'd expressed everything I wanted to as clearly as I possibly could before handing the script over to producer/director Lorna Newman and her team to create the final piece.

All those things I'd heard or read about scripts becoming roadmaps, blueprints, templates or 'a series of provocations', as calls them, became true then. Which isn't to say that the artistic processes involved in writing an initial spec script are invalid - all the questions around what you're saying and how you're saying it are totally necessary and are ultimately what drive the piece - but writing Personal Space made me realise that at the point of writing for production, I had to think much more pragmatically about the script - because just writing the thing wasn't the end goal anymore, the end goal was making the thing, and the script was the only place that I could influence the decisions being made.

That's a more concrete learning, I guess, but a more abstract learning from the process was learning that I could write for radio. I remember chatting with Head of Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom Anne Edyvean and Script Editor, Marigold Joy, about a year ago and being asked about what radio drama I enjoyed. I told them that, while I'd read and enjoyed copies of verse plays or poetry collections that had originally been written for radio, such as Pink Mist or Black Roses, I didn't think that radio drama was 'for me'. I didn't listen to Radio 4 or Radio 3, where most radio drama is commissioned, so in my head at the time, that obviously meant that I wouldn't be particularly interested in writing radio drama.

Writing Personal Space taught me that there is a space for me in radio drama, and has inspired me to challenge myself to write in media or genres that I don't think are 'for me'; to deal with curve balls such as unexpected opportunities to write in unfamiliar media in my own way, and to trust my sense of voice to carry me through that.*

*And you can bet I listen to a lot more Radio 4 and Radio 3 now!

'Hag Stones' by Allison Davies

I love audio drama, so I was thrilled when I had the opportunity to pitch for The Verb Dramas on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3. There’s a beautiful intimacy about radio. You can take your audience anywhere you want to go. Anyone for a trip into the event horizon? Well, maybe I’ll keep that in my back pocket for next time.

The idea for Hag Stones, came from a small beach in Northumberland, a ‘thin place’ where you can imagine stepping into other worlds. Sometimes we don’t realise our own worth and I wanted to explore that, and write something that was ultimately hopeful, which is where my character Ellie came in.

I was lucky enough to work with Producer/Director Sally Richardson who did a brilliant job, helping me knock the final draft into shape and looking after the recording, and I was proud and delighted when I heard the finished piece go out. The process did wonders for my confidence too. It was inclusive from start to finish and made me even more passionate about writing longer pieces for radio.

'Borders' by Willow Mirza

Verbs the Word…

When I was asked to write something for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3 I jumped at the chance and immediately sat down to write a symphony that would smash old Wolfgang out of the water. I was then politely informed it was a Radio Drama they were after… probably for the best, I haven’t touched a piano since I was 8 and that was on one of those keyboards with the light up keys.

Coming up through the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Comedy Writers Room, The Verb was my first REAL job so I was bright eyed and full of wonder about what the script to production journey would involve. After submitting my script ‘Borders’ I was put in touch with Emily Demol the producer I’d be working with to get my drama from paper to airwaves. With Emily’s guidance I spent a week or so on re writes (this sounds terrifying, but mostly we just chatted about our favourite TV shows, and agreed to change a few words here and there to tighten up the script).

Any new writers out there wondering how to even start in this over-saturated market, I urge you to give radio a go it’s a great medium (and if you make it on to The Verb the amount of cake they give you is unbelievable).

'A Quark in my Cosmos" by Jesse Schwenk

This is the first time I’ve written for radio. But I really love The Verb programme and its celebratory atmosphere, so that was very inspirational.

I think I learnt two things:

Firstly, 5 minutes is very short, practically a micro-drama, so the events of your story already have to be at quite a high level of pressure: the stakes have to be high and events coming to a head. Don’t wait for anything, plunge straight in, at the near-apex of the crisis. Trust that the audience will pick it up.

BUT at the same time the audience needs the situation set up quickly and clearly, so they can orientate themselves. For example, in Quark, Brenda started life as a vague-ish character, probably Ian’s sympathetic work colleague; in later drafts she became the cleaner, because it established her role for the audience more quickly and definitely, and also explained how she might be all over the building and know a bit about everyone’s business.

The second thing I learnt is that radio as a dramatic medium is much more fluid than I thought; it’s alright to let the atmospheres dominate. For instance, you can be in a perfectly ordinary scene – say two friends discussing something in the aisle of a supermarket – and then one of the friends starts thinking about something that bothering them – and radio will just happily move off to this much more internalised place and follow that character’s inner voice and thoughts, or even go to something more abstract, like the narrator’s voice, or discussing a topic that’s poetic but relevant (e.g. in Quark’s case it was the life of subatomic particles).

So in Quark, my excellent director Andrew Smith encouraged me to experiment and play about. In the opening scene, what started in the first draft as a dialogue (between Brenda and Ian) followed by a monologue (from Ian) became much more ‘layered’: in the final draft, as Brenda drones on, Ian wafts off into another world, of thinking about Richard and the delicious world of quarks and quantum particles – until he’s brought back down to earth by Brenda.

I learnt that radio is a very poetic medium, and as long as you have a strong line on the emotional journey of the characters, radio can wander through different layers – e.g. realistic dialogue, narration, inner thoughts, music – without the thread of the story being lost.

I’ve got the radio bug now. Luckily, I’ve got another commission for an episode of an upcoming Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds podcast series, and the writers are really being encouraged to push the boundaries and mix things up, which is great.

I’d encourage everyone to think about writing for radio. Really, it’s an amazing medium, prosaic and poetic all at the same time; you can set anything anywhere – the possibilities are endless. There’s no medium quite like it.

Listen to The Verb on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3 and Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds

Listen to our recent Music Monologues from new writers for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3 - each inspired by a different piece of music

Dodo - by Greer Ellison 

Back in September last year, through the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with some fantastic radio directors and producers, listen to some amazing radio dramas and visit the recording studios where the writing is brought to life.
So when I heard about the opportunity to write a pitch for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3, I was over the moon. Everything in radio happens much faster than other areas of the industry and not being constrained by the budget size of TV and Film allows your imagination to run wild. The freedom is liberating…

We were provided with five pieces of music and the idea was to choose a piece that resonated with you, and create a story around the music. I connected instantly with '' by , it has a fantastically ethereal quality, that shifts dramatically three quarters of the way through, into an intense cascade of tension and drama that provided the perfect melting pot for my protagonist - whilst hurtling towards her death in a small propeller plane, at over one hundred miles per hour - to ponder the more philosophical elements of her life and her experiences.

The idea for the character - Edna Taylor, a quirky ninety-eight-year-old Irish woman who has a fear of heights so extreme that she has never been more than 3 feet off the ground, was inspired by spending New Year’s Eve in - a small Irish town in Donegal - and getting to know the elderly lady who ran the B&B. She herself was in her nineties, had never left that town and had never been in love. She was timid and introverted, but had an eccentricity that was electric and a unique view on life. I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to bring a character based on her, to life.

On the day of the recording itself, I was invited along to the studio, where I met the director and cast, I was included in the creative process right to the very end and left with a sense of pride, accomplishment and hunger to write more and get it on the air.

The Dead Dad Show - by Annalisa Dinnella

Of the tracks I listened to, Steve Reich’s most captured my imagination. In its relentless repetition, I heard the chugging and rattling of a train. I was also reminded of that cyclical ‘spiral-of-doom’ my brain sometimes goes into at about 4 o'clock in the morning when I can’t sleep. Using these two images, I decided that the obvious place to start was with an insomniac on a sleeper train. And, because I automatically associate sleeper trains with the Edinburgh Festival (long story) I decided my insomniac character should also be a comedian. The rest of the monologue took shape from there.

While I was very clear on my character’s internal journey (he uses comedy as a way of deflecting grief) I played around with various versions of what he was actually doing on the train. I set up a mystery and thought I had solved it but was intrigued to discover that my Script Editor and Producers all had different interpretations of events. This led me to experiment and veer off course and ultimately we ended up somewhere that surprised me as much as it did my character. When we got to the studio, actor and director, Marc Beeby, created some electric moments that, again, I hadn’t seen coming. All in all, it was exciting and loads of fun to be part of the team that brought this character screaming to life – a great experience.

Reluctant Spirit - by Athena Stevens

So often when I write I start with a clear idea of what I want a piece to be, and then it ends up looking nothing like the original plan. Very often it means another draft is in order, or that the idea isn’t ready to come into the world. But sometimes I find a story takes me by utter surprise and goes in a very unexpected direction. This piece was the latter. As much I wanted to tell one story, the first few drafts weren’t fitting together at all. Writing, in many ways, is only done out of stubbornness. Very often I know there is a story there, even when all signs count to the contrary.

The team at the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom did an amazing job on refusing to keep me stagnant. Fearless about making suggestions we went back and forth cutting events and even completely changing the point of view of the piece. It kept us all engaged, and myself as a writer very challenged. Around the second draft I came up with the idea of a child who didn’t want to grow… not grow UP like Peter Pan, but actually wanted to stop getting bigger. It’s such an unnatural idea in a lot of ways, children need to grow, and yet I can remember being very sad when my favourite shoes didn’t fit anymore. If a child’s deepest desire was to stay small, what would she see and how would her world reflect that desire? The music is Für Alina by Arvo Pärt.

Every Night - by Steve Lawrence

When I got the chance to pitch for this opportunity my first thought was that it was a little outside my wheelhouse. Whilst I’ve written for radio before it’s all been jokes and sketches and out of the list of songs provided as inspiration I hadn’t heard any of them. Yet, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom it’s that it’s always worth having a go.

The first thing I did was listen to all of the music provided by the producers to see which track might spark an idea. As I went through the list I filled my notebook with a few snatches of character but it was only when listening to Morten Lauridsen’s beautiful, sweeping, epic ‘O Magnum Mysterium’ that what felt like a fully fleshed out person (or former person) began to take shape in my head. I found myself lost in the voices of the choir and as I listened memories of my guilt ridden Catholic school upbringing began to coalesce with my interest in horror - soon I was transcribing the story of a modern vampire trapped in an endless cycle of terrible nightclubs wracked with snatched memories of a dark past.

I was happy with the pitch but I have to admit I was surprised it was selected for development considering how odd elements of it were. One of the joys of radio is the ability to go to places that TV might find restrictive due to budget or content and I’m delighted that those involved in the decision making process wanted to take some risks and tell some stories you might not have heard before.

Of course once selected I had to write the actual monologue and flesh out my central character. I consider myself a comedy writer and my first instinct was to go toward the jokes - the juxtaposition of an immortal being searching for prey in a sticky floored club (shout out to the Carleton in Morecambe for the inspiration) but in doing so I managed to swerve away from the emotion of the original piece of music. Thankfully script editor extraordinaire Ros Ward was on board and she was instrumental in helping me get to the heart of who my main character was beyond the fangs and throat ripping and why his story was worth telling. Over the course of a couple of sleepless transatlantic flights (I’m method) it went from something comedic to something dramatic and romantic even (with a few laughs) and whilst I’m a little nervous to be entering the world of drama I’m really excited for the world to hear our blood addicted creature of the night tell his story.

At the very least I hope you don’t think it sucks...

Le Festival de Men - by Nicôle Lecky

After being sent the brief and going through the list of songs, I sat there dutifully listening and waiting to be inspired. When I heard ‘Cuban Overture’ by George Gershwin, the funny thing is that I actually was. I was incredibly inspired. I pictured a festival, I became aware of the music's changeable moods and I came up with my piece ‘Le Festival de Men’. Looking at the world of online dating and what that might look like in the future. I wanted to explore my character Candice’s excitement, after being presented with a wonderful opportunity. Similar to Charlie in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…Candice pins everything on this day, only to be disheartened by a cruel twist of events.

I throughly enjoyed working with my script editor, and Â鶹ԼÅÄ Writersroom. I didn’t stop going on about IT BEING MY FIRST TIME WRITING FOR RADIO and they were supportive and eased me into the process. First focusing on the story, and then helping me to improve each draft to bring it closer to a script ready to be performed and recorded. On hearing it I was so pleased that the world I’d pictured had been brought to life in such a fun, and thrilling way. Now I’ve ripped the imaginary bandaid off, I’m looking forward to writing more Radio in future. 

Listen to all 5 Music Monologues on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3 and Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds

When my producer, Polly Thomas, and I first started thinking about pitching Lorenzaccio as a project to Radio 3, we had to make several decisions. For one thing, the play is enormously long, probably pushing five hours. We had to find a way of bringing it down to fit the ninety-minute slot without wholly sacrificing the epic scale that is so distinctive and thrilling about the play. Second, when we pitch a project, we always ask ourselves, why this play and why now? Third, and most important, why is this a play for radio? What will the specific form and dynamics of sound drama add to this play?

The form we eventually arrived at was, in a way, an answer to all three questions. Lorenzaccio is a nineteenth-century play set in the sixteenth century but it is very contemporary. We live in a turbulent political period and many of us have asked, what can good people do in bad times? Lorenzaccio is asking the very same question and, indeed, Musset wrote this historical play in part as a way of reflecting on the thwarting hopes, the compromises, the contradictions of his own era. We thought we wanted to let Musset speak to our times too. We considered entirely relocating the play to the present, to set the play, for example, in something like the Trump White House, but we decided against it; for one thing, there are many aspects of the plot – like the machinations of a Papal envoy to secure a position of authority in the Court – that fit perfectly well in the logic of sixteenth-century Florence but would strain credulity in the twenty-first-century US. But also, my initial impulse was that I wanted people to get to know Lorenzaccio by Musset, not a new play vaguely inspired by it.

We decided to do something that is extremely common in the theatre, but something we’d rarely heard done on the radio; that is, a modern-dress production. I was very struck by ’s production of Othello at the in 2013. The language was more or less unchanged, but the action was transferred to the contemporary world, in military bases, neon-lit offices, and so on. The transposition was so perfect that the play was clear and utterly thrilling; I remember my wife saying to me as we went out at the interval "I can’t wait to see the next episode!" It had that box-set feeling to it. Of course, modern dress is scarcely the point in radio, but our version was to retain the play’s sixteenth century setting and language (Cardinal, Duke, Marchesa, Your Highness, Sire, etc.) but create a wholly twenty-first-century sound world; that is, they would still speak of sending letters and fighting with swords but we would hear Skype and gunfire. This in turn answered how this play would gain a particular radio life, as the work of the listener would be to coordinate in their minds the fiction and the world, enjoying, we hoped, the reframing of the action in modern forms.

Of course, as I was translating the play from French as well as adapting it, there is, in literal terms, none of Musset’s actual language, and the choices you make as translator are never neutral. I tried to replicate Musset’s mixture of modern French and a quasi-Shakespearean reach into metaphor and image – I had to find a language in which the characters could both say (as the character Philippa does) "each murder begets murder and soon hatred takes root, sons are buried in the coffins of their fathers, and each new generation springs from the ground with a sword in his hand" and (as the Duke says of Lorenzo’s sister) "I like a girl who talks dirty"; this seemed also a way of conveying Musset’s shimmering ambiguity between the contemporary and historical. And sometimes I smoothed somewhat the clash between the Digital Age and the Renaissance by slightly opening out the language to permit both centuries, so that the characters usually speak of ‘weapons’ rather than, say, ‘daggers’. The effect, I hope, is of a certain collage, the language clashing and shifting between high and low, old and new, alien and familiar, which is, I think, what Musset is doing too.

Every project is different of course and the more I’ve worked in radio, the more interesting the form seems to be. With hindsight, I suppose I listened to quite a lot of audio drama when I was growing up (The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy was a particular favourite), but when I started writing for radio drama in the late 1990s, I was slightly daunted by what seemed a strange and unfamiliar medium. Is it a wholly verbal form of drama or do you want to create an entire physical landscape for your play? What does action sound like? Do you need a narrator to populate and describe the world? I puzzled over these things until I got a great piece of advice from Polly, my producer: write it like a screenplay.

In other words, radio is a visual medium: it’s just that the images play out in the mind. Famously, when radio drama was being developed at the Â鶹ԼÅÄ in the mid-1920s, they struggled to figure out how to make sense of a storytelling medium that was entirely sound and so set the first play down a coal mine during a blackout (A Comedy of Danger by Richard Hughes), thus providing a rationale for the lack of visuals. And no doubt, some very interesting plays can be created in that way, but it’s not necessary and it’s as thrilling for the radio listener to suddenly experience something visually extraordinary happening. One of my first plays had one of the architects of the Houses of Parliament blow up the building the night before it was due to be opened by Queen Victoria: he describes watching St Stephens’ Tower rising up out of the explosion like a rocket and soaring into the air. Equally, and perhaps just as perversely, radio drama loves silence: the moment where, if you’ve hooked the audience in right, they are leaning in, totally absorbed in that invisible soundless space, because the characters have stopped talking and something has happened and we want to know what. Visuals, silence and not knowing what’s happening; against all the odds, these seem immensely valuable tools for radio drama.

Radio drama is a wonderful medium for a writer. In almost all cases, the script is fundamental to the experience, so you really get to hear how your writing ideas have worked out. There’s very little time in the recording to make substantial changes, so it is very exposing for a writer; the play stands and falls on the writing, which can be thrilling and can be mortifying, but you will learn about your writing by writing for radio in a very intense way. You also get to work with the most extraordinary actors: I’ve had Alex Jennings, Michael Palin, Glenda Jackson, Sam West, Anna Maxwell Martin, Bill Nighy, Sarah Parish, David Harewood and too many more to mention individually in my plays. Not all actors enjoy radio, but those who do can find wonderful things in your writing that you didn’t even know were there.

It’s also wonderful for a writer because you have an audience. Something around a million people listen to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4 Afternoon Drama (just after The Archers on a weekday afternoon); in fact I was once told that, because of The Archers, the Afternoon Drama usually starts with around two million listeners and loses half its audience by the end. I’ve always had that image in my mind; the listener finishing their dose of Ambridge life, their hand reaching for the off-switch. How do you keep them? How do you quickly immerse them in a new world, a new story, a new experience, and keep them there? If you can, of course, it’s a staggering thing to imagine a million or more people listening to your work: to put that in perspective, it took the musical around two years to play to its millionth audience member. And you often get lovely messages from people, and now because of social media, you get live commentary, which is... mostly enjoyable.

Finally, radio is a valuable writer’s medium because, more than most TV, more than most theatre, it is a space to experiment. Sure, there are some conventional radio plays, and many of them are great, but there are 250 Radio 4 Afternoon Dramas a year, 250 episodes of the 15-Minute Drama during Woman’s Hour, 50 episodes of the Classic Serial, 50 Saturday Dramas; that’s a lot of space to fill and a very loyal audience, who don’t want the same thing every day. My experience of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio Drama audience is that they are hungry for new things, new ideas, new experiences. I wrote a play, Cavalry, a few years ago which purports to be the recordings – glitches and all – of a Â鶹ԼÅÄ reporter interviewing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at the End of the World. I wrote another, My Life is a Series of People Saying Goodbye, which was a collage made up of scenes of people saying goodbye to someone else (a wife divorces a husband; a schoolgirl says goodbye to a favourite teacher; a constituency party deselects its MP, etc.), but we blurred the boundaries between the stories, so that the character sometimes changed before the actor, or the setting changed before the dialogue. It created a tapestry of loss and longing and I still find the production and those wonderful actors very moving as the various stories start to knit together and the emotions build on each other. Radio drama is a very flexible form with a very flexible audience.

But to say, as some do, that radio drama is a writer’s medium is only part of the truth. It’s also important for me to acknowledge that my work in radio has all been a collaboration with my producer, Polly Thomas. Every idea goes through a long process of discussion and thinking, with Polly advising, adding ideas, giving feedback. It is the producer who will turn all the various ideas you come up with together into what you hope is a commissioner-friendly pitch. If the play is then commissioned, the producer will comment on drafts and discuss casting, music, the sound ‘feel’ of a project. They direct it on recording days and have the final word on the edit. So, while it’s absolutely the case that I do all of the actual writing, the final drama is inextricably a creative collaboration.

A third figure that I must mention is the sound designer (though might sometimes be credited as co-producer or editor or something else), who is the figure responsible technically for recording the actors and is a key figure in bringing everything together in the final edit. In the last few projects I’ve been very lucky to work with Eloise Whitmore, who is a sound designer of genius. She has an extraordinary ear and is able to put sounds together, change a few settings, and suddenly you’re in a Renaissance cathedral or in the middle of a nineteenth-century battle or on the moon.

Any radio playwright needs a Polly and an Eloise, by which I mean, you need brilliant people with whom you collaborate as equals, because when you work with great people (producers, sound designers, actors) it inspires you to try more and more complex things, to challenge yourself and your audience, to push at the edges of the form.

The Â鶹ԼÅÄ is one of the most prolific producers of radio drama in the world. It’s a really valuable space for writers at all levels to develop their craft before a large, demanding and engaged audience. When I started, I think there was, in some quarters, a vague idea that radio drama was a rather old-fashioned form. Now, in the world of podcasting – where you can gather a few friends, some pretty basic equipment, and a couple of bits of free software and send that out literally across the world – radio drama is at the leading edge of the culture. There is an expansive intimacy about radio drama, a form that is collectively experienced individually, that seems to speak to our world of tribes, bubbles, walls and borders, yet reaches out across those dividing lines to encourage us to understand and experience a thousand possible and impossible worlds.

Listen to Lorenzaccio now on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds

A few weeks later, I was sat, staring blankly at a blank word document, when I remembered my first brush with audio-drama: I was five years old, staring blankly at a blank wall in my attic bedroom, which was so high-up and hot, it induced nightly nosebleeds and delirious visions of monsters made out of flannels. I’d barely slept for a year, and my parents were probably near breaking point, when some kindly corner-cutting mother recommended some audiobooks for lulling children into night-terror-free sleep, and they gave it a go... It didn’t work – I still didn’t sleep at all - but that didn’t matter because the stories were melting the blank walls of my hot, high, Pringles-tube of a room, and letting in a secret world of creatures, and treasures and faraway woods. And I remember seeing everything for real, and being completely agog, and not ever thinking about how those images had gotten into my head.

Of course, you can’t solve everything with stories, and the nosebleeds continued, but at least this slightly traumatic memory helped me twenty-two years later, whilst staring blankly at that blank word document. I remembered that my favourite tapes had always been the most visual – or rather, the most provocative of imagery (whether through sound or language). Those ones – the stories I really saw - were full of action, and dynamism, and movement, and used sound as a means to convey a world, with depth and life and scale. Those stories embraced the black-hole between story-teller and listener, and never underestimated the audiences’ ability to fill the gap with their own imaginations. And I stopped worrying about describing how someone might pour coke over their head, and thought instead about their mental state whilst doing so, and where they were in their head at that moment. Using that internal voice meant I could move anywhere without actually leaving the shop, and the world was suddenly open - those blank walls melted away like the ones in my bedroom twenty-two years ago.

I had a lot of fun hinting at worlds, like trying to conveying what sort of shop it is from the buzz of neon, and the sound of the electric bell above the door, or even what sort of temple Jim imagines from the sound of wind-chimes and goat’s bleating in the distance. I found I didn’t have to write a huge sound-scape, but that actually even a couple of distinct noises or phrases were enough to set up a mood or a place or a person for the listener to spar with. I thought of the whole thing as images described through the language of sound, and loved how satisfying it was to convey something without explanation, like the difference between describing your favourite place to someone, and actually taking them there – which, of course, with radio, is very do-able. If I covered as many story beats as I could with sound, and not description, I could reserve language for salty, driven dialogue, and I found that the story gaps which needed filling by spoken exposition were fun to play with once I’d accepted the knowingness of those lines (e.g. finding funny foods for Sam to get irate about, or Jim over-describing the coke as ‘own brand’). It may be the years of nosebleeds and night-terrors talking, and it may be contradictive, or obvious, or boring to say, but imagining the visual was key to me thinking about writing the audible, and went some way in solving something which has long been a bit of a mystery to me. And now I can’t wait to see the next inexplicable, inaudible image, and then spend ages working out a way to help others see it in the dark, through sound.

(at 26'16" into the programme, 9 more days to listen)

, a development scheme in partnership with theatres across the UK

There will be three more short dramas by Writersroom 10 writers broadcast on Radio 3's 'The Verb' over the next few weeks.

1200 scripts: when you see them all together stripped bare of their envelopes, it's daunting, a room full of ideas, new worlds, exposition, un-thought through ideas and thank goodness strokes of genius that make you read on and laugh out loud.
So from all these the submissions in different shapes and sizes our readers started their workÌý in December to find the most compelling drama and comedy scripts. This takes time, andÌý after weeks of reading and much debate a shortlist was created for both sets of judges. Ten dramas for writer,Ìý Roy Williams and R4 Drama CommissionerÌý Jeremy Howe and eight comedies for Caroline Raphael, Commissioner R4 ComedyÌý and Miles Jupp, Comedy Writer and performer, with me reading all of them.Ìý

I'm always asked how can you tell whether it's any good, what do you mean by the writers voice, when you say my play lacks ambition what's really wrong with it. Of course it's got a story say you and I say actually no nothing happens, no one is changed, the stakes aren't high enough, I just don't care what happens to those characters. And with comedy we're looking for original ideas with a strong premise, real characters not cliches, that have the potential to surprise andÌý engage an audience week after week.Ìý It's not easy,Ìý and we were looking for work to develop and commission so its real time and money at stake. But then something inexplicable, compelling, extraordinary grabs you and makes you turn the page.Ìý

Yes it's all subjective but when the judges met on Wednesday February 6th, all of us with a vast experience ofÌý reading scripts, to consider theÌý final short list for the Writer's Prize one thing was certain, we did not feel that our time had been wasted. Roy Williams, Jeremy Howe and I were genuinely impressed by the range and calibre of the Drama scripts we were asked to consider. From cycling grannies in space to noir thrillers and pharmacies, boy eating polar bears and the ethical dilemma of which parent do you kill when the food runs out. We were confronted by complex storytelling, boldness and an emotional engagement that comes from writers passionate about their subject.Ìý We were unanimous about the strength of the two dramas we selected for commission-Ìý Rock me Amadeus by Simon Topping and Bang Up by Sarah Hehir.Ìý Jeremy Howe said that "Rock me Amadeus by Simon Topping is a delightful sharp romantic comedy with a difference. Charlie is 16, and has a twin sister. Although he is a boy, he knows he should really be a girl. He has a crush on the German exchange who comes to stay with them, and so does his sister, only he can’t admit it – because he is a boy and he is not gay. It is clever, beguiling and handles a tough subject with a lightness of tone and a freshness of voice that makes it an utterly engaging read. Bang Up by Sarah Hehir is a drama about a woman trying to teach a young offender in a detention centre. Her life is imploding, while his has hope, but through the course of the play she finds her way as he utterly loses his,Ìý it is beautifully written, moving and insightful." Perhaps we were more disappointed by the range of ideas for comedy, the lack of and maybe too many familiar set ups but the selected scriptÌý for Comedy development was The Joy of Adult Education by Mark Wallington in which a beginner’s woodwork course and a small earthquake help an everyday couple save their exotic ravioli business. Miles Jupp said " The characters are beautifully and lovingly drawn too, giving a real warmth to this understated joy of a script."

Here’s what the writers had to say:

Simon Topping

“I'm absolutely thrilled, honoured, flabbergasted, flattered, gobsmacked and very grateful that my play has been selected. Thank you bbc writersroom and judges! Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, as Kate Bush might have said (the last two wows in a deep voice).�

Sarah Hehir

"Being selected for theÌý Writer's Prize feels like a life changing moment. I'm so excited about the future!"

Mark Wallington

"Delighted to be working in radio again. I've always thought radio is about as much fun as a writer can have".

Anyway we will keep you in the loop with developments. But don't forget be bold, don't try and second guess what you think the networks are looking for - what do you want to hear?Ìý Write that as best as you possibly can and keep writing. (Oh my god that sounds like Brucie!)

The Writer's Prize was a joined partnership between Â鶹ԼÅÄ writersroom and Audio & Music for radio drama and comedy writers.Ìý The prizeÌýwas theÌýopportunity for a Radio 3 or Radio 4 Drama commission, or a pilot commission for a Radio 4 Comedy.

You’ve probably noticed by now that has opened its doors to original drama and comedy scripts. Which made us think: are there writers out there who don’t know what a brilliant opportunity radio is?

So here’s a round-up of some of the very good reasons why any writer should want to write for radio:

• Â鶹ԼÅÄ radio is by far the biggest single commissioner of original drama and comedy in the world – full stop
• The vast majority of opportunities for drama writers on radio are highly individual single, authored pieces (even if you somehow managed to get your movie script made, you’d still struggle to get into the cinema the number of people who would hear it on radio)
• Many hugely popular and brilliantly original TV comedy shows started their life on the radio – Little Britain, Knowing Me Knowing You, Goodness Gracious Me, Miranda, The League of Gentlemen, The Mighty Boosh, Dead Ringers, That Mitchell and Webb Look, Hancock’s Half Hour, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Day Today
• A vast array of brilliant writers have worked in radio – from Tyrone Guthrie and Dylan Thomas, to Douglas Adams, Spike Milligan and Marty Feldman, to Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, Anthony Minghella and Lee Hall, to Mike Bartlett, Roy Williams and Katie Hims
• You can get amazingly successful and celebrated actors to be in your radio play – and they don’t even need to shave/do make up/commit to weeks of filming
• Radio is the cinema of the airwaves – it’s all about the visual world conjured up in the listener’s head, and the ambition and scope the writer brings to it
• You can take your story, characters and listeners anywhere in the known (or unknown) universe without the budgetary constrictions you’d get with a film or TV shoot
• In radio, writers work very closely with producers and are intimately involved with the development and production

• In radio, writers can have an extremely intimate relationship with the listener – and therefore can tell stories in ways that just wouldn’t work in any other medium
  
  
  is a brand new opportunity for radio drama and comedy writers to write for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio.Ìý We are looking for original, multi-character narrative scripts.The prize is the opportunity for a Radio 3 or Radio 4 Drama commission, or a pilot commission for a Radio 4 Comedy.Ìý
  
  Join us on Wednesday 7th November from 11.30pm - 12.30pm for a special Twitter Q&A on The Writer's Prize. Tweet your questions to using the hashtag #WritersPrize.
  
  

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