Narrative Podcasts Masterclass: The Invisible Art of Audio Storytelling

Narrative podcasts have hooked millions of listeners with compelling personal stories, true crime investigations and historical explorations. Audio can achieve extraordinary intimacy due to the emotional charge of voice and the power of sound to trigger the imagination. But though podcasts can SOUND effortless, that doesn’t mean audio storytelling is easy!

Distilling a complex narrative into must-listen serialised audio storytelling requires an understanding of the audio medium as well as conventional elements of storytelling such as rounded characters, strong writing, engaging plot and twists. To harness the full power of narrative podcasts, you use the unique grammar and logic of audio to build a rich crafted aesthetic that is way more than the sum of its parts.

Acclaimed podcast producer, host and critic Siobhán McHugh will reveal the invisible art of audio storytelling and show how words, voice and sound itself can combine to make irresistible story. This four-hour masterclass will:

• Show how to write for voice, not print

• Discuss how you can be an engaging host that listeners relate to

• Show how to develop your real-life human subjects into 3-D characters

• Explore how sound and scenes can advance and energise an audio story

• Discuss use of music, textures and timing

• Demo basic audio editing

• Survey the narrative podcast canon and analyse exemplars

• Work out an episode structure for a series

• Workshop your budding audio stories or podcasts

• Deconstruct McHugh’s multi-award-winning podcasts from idea to serialised story

Workshop includes a tea & coffee break (no lunch).

SIOBHAN MCHUGH is an audio producer, critic, award-winning author and academic, whose documentaries/podcasts have won numerous awards including seven gold at New York Festivals. The Greatest Menace (‘Australia’s S-Town’) won 17 awards and helped trigger an apology in NSW Parliament to men incarcerated for being gay. The Last Voyage of the Pong Su asked why a North Korean cargo ship dumped sacks of heroin on an Australian surf beach. Phoebe’s Fall examined how a young woman died in the garbage chute of a luxury Melbourne apartment. Siobhán’s book, The Power of Podcasting: telling stories through sound was featured in Harvard’s best Books on Storytelling (with Stephen King and Toni Morrison) and on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Siobhán co-hosts Heart of Artness, about Aboriginal art in Australia and its dark colonial past. She is Founding Editor of RadioDoc Review, the first journal of in-depth criticism of podcasts/audio features and writes on podcasts for The Conversation.

Siobhán has spoken at global industry events alongside pod luminaries such as Dana Chivvis, producer of the blockbuster hit Serial, and tech guru Kara Swisher, host of On With Kara Swisher. She has given masterclasses in narrative podcasts at the Irish Writers Centre, International Association of Literary Journalism Studies Conference (2024), Oral History Association of Australia Conference (2024) and Sydney Writers Festival (SWF masterclass participant Sue-Lin Wong, from Sydney, says Siobhan’s class taught her how to make the acclaimed podcast biography of Xi JinPing, The Prince – her first podcast!). Siobhán is honorary Associate Professor of Journalism, University of Wollongong, Australia. W: https://siobhanmchugh.org/