CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 4/25/08

Writing for the Ear:
Scott Allan Woodard on

Crafting the Audio Drama

By jason davis

Scott Alan Woodard has written produced scripts for cult favorites like Doctor Who and Dark Shadows, but he has to rely on his audience to fill in the pictures, because his stories dwell in the often overlooked medium of audio drama.

Moving to LA in 1993, Scott Alan Woodard found work in the special effects industry before a chance encounter with some executives from Warner Bros. led to him writing promotional material for The Animaniacs and other Kids WB properties. A long-time fan of Doctor Who, Woodard parlayed his professional writing experience into an invitation to script audio dramas based on the property for the U.K. firm Big Finish Productions. CS Weekly caught up with Woodard to learn the tricks of writing drama sans images.

Your day job is as a promo writer for ABC Family. How has that impacted your dramatic work?
When it comes to promo, it's the greatest thing I ever did for writing. It taught me to accept notes and criticism without batting an eye. It doesn't affect me personally. On a daily basis, I get notes on stuff two, three, or four times. So, it was quite shocking to [Big Finish producer] Gary Russell when I submitted my first draft of [my Doctor Who story] "The Juggernauts"and he came back with a page or two of notes and my response was, "Great! I'll get another draft to you as soon as I can." Within a week, I had the revisions. There was no complaining, no whining, no crying—no drama whatsoever. That's what he wants. I'm working for him. I have friends who are writers and they're nervous and afraid of submitting stuff. The only way I was able to get over that as well as I did was by working in TV promo.

How did you come to write a Doctor Who story for Big Finish Productions?
I've been going to [LA's annual Doctor Who] conventions since '93. Gary Russell was one of the guests. I could tell we were kindred spirits. We had very similar taste in music, comics, toys, and stuff. One day, I said to him, "I'm a writer," and I gave him a spec script for a Buffy episode that I had co-written with a friend of mine. He read it and it was enough for him to realize that I was legitimate. Then one day, out of the blue, he called me and asked if I'd like to write a Doctor Who for him. I said, "Yeah." No hesitation. I thought, even if I fall flat on my face, I've got to try to do this. He then sent a laundry list [of elements he wanted in the story]. I worked out a 20-page outline. There were a few little tweaks here and there, but it all came together.

Can you describe the production process for the audios?
That was something to behold. Seeing Gary direct audio was amazing. I went over [to the U.K.] for the recording of "The Juggernauts." I work with audio talent all the time, but to see how quickly Gary would go through stuff and how smoothly it all worked… He'd sit there and he'd say, "Okay, guys. Let's do a read through." Then he'd say, "Let's record one." They'd record it and he'd say, "Let's go back and fix this." Done. That was it. He'd pick the page up, slam it on the stack next to him, and move on. There was no going back unless there was a technical hiccup or something. For the most part, he just machine-gunned through the scripts. There were five individual booths, all in a half circle, looking into a center booth and then the glass, the [mixing] board, and Gary. He could see everybody, but they were all isolated. [The actors] could still all see each other, though.

How much research do you do when writing the scripts?
I hadn't actually watched Dark Shadows [1966-71 version] in many years, so I had a crash course. I placed this huge order online and got a slew of DVDs, bouncing around in the series so I could get early ones and late ones. I was voraciously reading every non-fiction book I could get. I was reading and writing simultaneously. At one point, especially with Dark Shadows, it was nuts because on my desk was a stack of books and a stack of DVDs. I'd be writing with the little window playing an episode in the corner of the monitor so I could get the flavor of the dialogue. I didn't want to write it exactly as it was, because Dark Shadows was a very clunky show. It's endearing and it's wonderful, but there was no way we were going to emulate [the five-episode-a-week quality of the original series]. From the outset, we were told it wasn't going to be modern. The idea was that it would take place "a few years" after the series had ended. I always thought of it as being mid '70s. I always listen to music when I write, but I listen to appropriate music, so I listened to '70s rock. I immersed myself in the '70s.

What are the particular challenges of writing for audio only?
I find it really liberating. Once you get into this mode, you start to see things differently. I rarely will write something and then realize that there's no way it could work in audio. There was one exception when we were doing "The Juggernauts." There was some scene that involved the Doctor (Colin Baker). It had slipped past Gary and we were in the studio and Colin was doing his line. He said, "Gary, how does the audience know that I'm doing this?" Gary looks at me and says, "Scott, how does the audience know that the Doctor is doing this?" I said, "Um…I don't know." So we stopped, and Gary and I, within five minutes, came up with a solution. It's not challenging, per se. You have to describe stuff, but you don't want to say, "Look at the size of that giant green monster with the three eyes that's starring down at me." You have to trust the actors and put a lot of faith in the sound design. If you say there's a monster flying through the air, you desperately hope that the [sound designer] is going to have flapping wings and screeching in stereo from left to right and a nice whoosh. Then you just write your character saying, "Duck!" That's all you need.

There's no way to avoid the old screenwriting challenge of 'show, don't tell'?
Well, here, it's obviously tell, don't show. I will say that when I'm writing an audio script, I do multiple read-throughs, and you have to read them out loud. I act out all my plays, and you'll find that if something isn't right—if it's not clear enough—you're going to know it. Immediately, out comes the red pen and you just have to change a few things. The only times it's really sticky is when you're describing something that has to be on a grand scale. Then, without making it sound so corny, you have to say—in one line—what am I looking at? You speak in a different way. For example, in "Absolution," there's a scene where the Doctor (Paul McGann) is first shown the world that he's now in. It's this horrifying Hell on Earth. The line is something about, "It looks like something from a painting by Bruegel." That's all you have to do. If you don't know what that is, go look it up on the internet and now you know what that world looks like.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of working with established characters like those of Doctor Who and Dark Shadows?
The advantage is that it gives you a chance to explore them a little bit more, but the disadvantage is that you can't go too far. Everything has to be created with the same level of respect it had on the TV series or in the film or whatever. There's the familiarity aspect—even if you don't know the character, you can always go and get enough research material to find out about that character and see other writers' treatments of that character.

What do you find is the strength of the audio format?
It immerses you a lot more…especially if you listen with headphones. Because you have to really concentrate—you have to focus all your attention on the audio. People always tell me they listen to audios while they drive. I've done it and you miss a lot. When I listen to audios, I sit down, put them on, and really listen to them. I think they tell a story in a way that you have to completely focus on it. You take a lot more out of it than looking at visual overload. It doesn't matter if it's an audio of Doctor Who or an audio of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera, which Big Finish had just recently released. It also has a lot of strength over an audio book.

Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Dark Shadows: The Rage Beneath, Doctor Who: Absolution, I, Davros: Innocence courtesy Big Finish Audio

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