THE RADIO ADVANTAGE

THE RADIO ADVANTAGE Between 1993 and 2002 I wrote and broadcast over one hundred radio pieces for CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadas public radio network). Fifty of those were humour, another fifty, scripts for conversations about folklore. Three were 12-minute features with voice and recorded sound, and fifteen were pieces about shepherding written as letters to the shows host.   Ã‚     Writing for voice is different from writing for print. Some things you simply cant say on air. For example, an early piece concerned the varied liaisons among my angora rabbits. Angora rabbits is difficult to say naturally and clearly. The first RA is the sound of RAW, the second the RA in RAT. On air I said ANGORA BUNNIES instead.  Ã‚     I learned two kinds of timing in radio. My first lesson was to keep to time, write succinctly, and condense every piece to 550-650 words. Anything else either ran over my five-to-seven minutes or had to be read too quickly to sound polished.   Ã‚     My se cond lesson was vocal timing. When you read aloud, breath matters. A sentence had to be short enough to be read aloud easily in one breath, or else break naturally for a breath. (I also learned not to pop my ps or hiss my ss on the microphone!)  Ã‚     I had to use intonation to compensate for missing visual cues, and allow pauses for the listener to react to something funny. Essentially, I learned to perform for an unseen and unheard audience. (Even if the producer laughed as I read, I couldnt hear her from the sound studio.)   Ã‚     This taught me to deliver humour on trust, believing that Id left room for a laugh or a groan in the right places. Writing humour for the page is also a matter of trust – we dont see our readers immediate reactions. When Id done thirty or so short pieces of humour, and had had feedback from listeners, I had a well-developed sense of comic timing.   Ã‚