Podcast Storytelling – WNP 118

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 118: Podcast Storytelling

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professionals, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and right.

I’m Sarah Werner. And I was a little bit torn about this week’s topic because I wanted it to be something that would be helpful, but I also wanted it to apply to everyone. And if you don’t have a podcast, if you’re not thinking about starting a podcast, I don’t know. I don’t want to say this episode might not be for you. Because I like to think that no matter the subject, we can always learn and take away things from what we’re listening to and learning from. But, this will especially apply to you. Perhaps I’ll say it that way. This episode will especially apply to you if you have a podcast, if you’ve been thinking about starting a podcast, if you’ve started a podcast in the past and it hasn’t gone the way that you wanted it to. This episode is for you.

So I’ve been podcasting since 2015. In fact, the very first episode of the Write Now podcast, I released it in January of 2015. And I’ve been podcasting ever since. You can go back to that very first episode if you want and listen to, how do I want to say this? Listen to how much I still had yet to learn about podcasting and podcasting quality, and storytelling, and all of that good stuff. There is definitely a difference between my older episodes and my newer episodes. And that’s just because we learn and grow along the way.

But I found that connecting with people through audio was something that I just really enjoyed. And we’ll get a little bit more into why that is and why oral storytelling and audio storytelling are so personal, and intimate, and just really lovely to have in our lives.

But I realized after I had been doing the Write Now podcast for a couple of years, that I wanted to try fictional storytelling via podcast. So that is when I started writing, and recording, and sound designing for what would eventually become my award-winning sci-fi audio drama Girl In Space. So Girl In Space came out in August of 2017 and was really a crash course in how I could tell a fictional story through the medium of audio.

So today’s episode, I’m going to tell you what I learned from both my own non-fiction show and my fictional show, and whether you are interested or whether you already have a fictional or non-fictional show. What I’m going to tell you today will apply to both.

So oral storytelling has been around since the dawn of humankind. Even before the printing press, even before everyone was literate or at least it could pass for literate, people needed stories. So cultures, and tribes, and communities would designate a storyteller. And the storyteller was in charge of preserving creation myths, creating and sharing myths to explain other phenomena, keeping the cultural history intact, entertaining other people, teasing out truths about existence. Basically everything that a story does today. This is extremely important, and it goes back thousands and thousands of years.

So this podcast is not going to be focused on the history of oral storytelling. If that’s something that you’re interested in, research it to your heart’s content. But I want to talk about its effect on us today, and then go into what works, and what doesn’t, and all of that good stuff.

So if you haven’t noticed over the past couple of years slash the past decade or two, podcasting has become a thing. It kind of went from being the secret underground media that really nobody knew about, to being a lot more mainstream and continuing to be on its way toward more, and more, and more mainstream. Larger media companies have started doing podcasts. Podcasts large and small have seen the appearance of actors, and famous personalities, and celebrities. Podcasts have been getting turned into TV shows and movies with more and more regularity. It’s just been really nice to see podcasts get a little bit of recognition.

Those of you who have been listening to podcasts for years and years have probably noticed a little bit of a change in that regard. And you may or may not like it. But podcasts are getting more popular, just because more and more people are figuring out how to download them, how to listen to them. And they’re realizing that they’re a great delivery method for the stories that we crave. Whether those again are fiction or nonfiction.

Creators and large corporations have also been putting more money into podcasting, into producing and hiring people to create podcasts for them, because they have been found to be a very good vehicle for advertising. People connect with podcasts very personally, very intimately in a way that they don’t necessarily connect with movies, or TV shows, or even books. There’s just something really magical that takes place in the mind between a voice and a brain.

There’s a huge degree of authenticity there that leaves a lot of creators in other mediums jealous of the response that listeners often have to the content that’s within a podcast.

You’ll notice that neither of my shows has advertisements in them. And that’s just a personal choice that I’ve made. But, I have purchased things that I’ve heard about in other podcasts. So I don’t know. My personal experience probably does not lend much credence or any credence to this thought that people are buying things that they hear about in podcast advertisements. But, that is a thing that a lot of the more corporate podcast creators are looking at.

I mean hey, as long as we’re talking about this, people also have been looking at podcasting. And again, I don’t know if I love this or not. But a lot of people have seen podcasting as a testing ground for other media. Because podcasts are so relatively inexpensive to produce. So a pilot of a TV show could cost a million dollars. Once you get the writers, and the crew, and the actors, and everyone all involved. But creating a podcast episode pilot is just essentially the writing and the voice acting. You don’t have to worry about as many factors. And I produced Girl In Space for, I think the first episode was a grand total of $30. Actors deserve to be paid. Your crew deserves to be paid. Your writers deserve to be paid, all of that. But it’s to such a less degree, because there’s just so much less involvement.

A lot of companies that I won’t name here are essentially launching podcasts and seeing how they do and then saying, “Oh yeah, that would make a great TV show.” Or, “No, audiences didn’t really like this. Let’s go for another thing.”

So if you are a writer who is looking to get your work in front of a large audience, and maybe to even sell the rights and get it adapted into some other medium, podcasting can be a great way to go. Some of you may know that I have sold the rights to Girl In Space, the television and the film rights. And it was a really, really nice little boost. And it felt really good to make the sale. It felt validating. And I also made it a little bit of money from it, which was really, really, really nice.

Okay. One more thing. I want to talk about what is a podcast? So I know that if you were reading a book or a blog, and I said, “well, let’s explain real quick what a blog is.” Or if you’re reading a book, “Let me explain real quick what a book is.” You’d be like, “Sarah, I already know what kind of medium I’m consuming.” But I feel like with podcasting, there’s still a little bit of mystique around what exactly is a podcast?

So a podcast is a show, and it consists of audio episodes. So episodes that are essentially audio files. So an MP3, or a WAV file, or something of that nature. And then what really makes it a podcast is that show is distributed by an RSS feed. So if you subscribe to the Write Now podcast, if you subscribe to Girl In Space, every time I release a new episode, a new audio file out onto my RSS feed, your podcasting app will either download it for you since you’re subscribed, or it’ll let you know that there is a new episode available for download. So it’s really that system that makes a podcast special and a little bit different from a radio show or even a sort of on demand listening experience.

So how do you tell a really good, and juicy, and successful story via an audio only medium? Again, everything that I’m about to talk about applies to both non-fiction podcasts like the Write Now podcast, and fictional podcasts or audio dramas such as Girl In Space. Storytelling principles overall are fairly universal. But today, we’re going to be talking about what makes audio a little bit different from other mediums and how you can sort of situate yourself to find success.

The first and most important thing that I want to talk about is how all of the different pillars of storytelling need to be upheld by three elements. And those elements are dialogue, sound effects, and music. Now, every podcast obviously does not have an equal portion of dialogue, sound effects, and music. Some podcasts are mostly dialogue. Some podcasts are mostly dialogue and sound effects or dialogue and music. So like the Write Now podcast doesn’t have any sound effects other than people who are constantly driving up and down my street, or when [Madorie 00:11:29] decides that she needs to be a part of the show and meows into the microphone. And Girl In Space is mostly dialogue and sound effects. And really, the only music there is the intro and the outro songs.

So a podcast can be a mix of all of these elements, one element, two elements, all three. But this is how the story needs to be told. And this is how each pillar of story needs to be communicated to the listeners.

So what are these pillars of storytelling that I’m talking about? Basically, I’m talking about character, world-building, and plot. So the who, the where, and the why, what, and how. Those things all need to come across purely in audio. And this is something that’s a lot easier said than done. But when done correctly, can be extremely powerful and effective.

So we’ll start with character. How do our characters come across in dialogue, sound effects, and music? So we’ll start with perhaps the most obvious one, and that is the dialogue, the things that are said out loud. We learn about a character by what they say, what others say about them, how they speak, their mannerisms, their accent, if they have one. All of these different factors will come out in the dialogue. And again, whether that character is speaking to the audience directly, whether that character is speaking to other characters within the show, this is applicable for fiction and nonfiction. It’s applicable across all different sorts of point of view. The main way that our characters will come across in the storytelling is through dialogue.

Now, there is a little bit of an exception if you decide to have a narrator in your show, or if you have a nonfiction show like this one where essentially I am the narrator. It’s not necessarily dialogue so much as it is just pure lecturing, or exposition, or that kind of stuff. But I’m going to count that as dialogue in the context of podcasting.

Narrators aren’t super popular currently in audio dramas so in fictional stories. And I think that that largely comes from podcast creators wanting to differentiate their work between a fictional podcast and something like an audiobook. Not having a narrator can help the story to feel more personal and immersive. But it’s also extremely tricky to do. It would be a lot easier if in my show, I said, “Hey, once upon a time, there was a girl in space. And she was all alone, out in space, on a research station. And nobody knew why she was alone. And her parents weren’t there if she even had parents, and nobody knows what happened to them. And also, there’s this scary thing that’s coming toward her.”

It’s so much easier to do an exposition dump with a narrator than it is to tease out the story, and the character traits, and all of that other stuff, personality from someone’s dialogue. But it can be done. And when it’s done well, it really works.

But it’s up to you if you would like to have a narrator or not. And please do keep in mind that if you do have a narrator, that narrator counts as a character. It will be voiced by someone. And that can be fun to play around with too. Even if you have a non-fiction show like this one with a narrator like myself, I’m still a character in this show. I’m someone that you like, or dislike, or connect with, or don’t connect with, or any of that stuff. So I go through my own little character arcs every episode. Or maybe you can tell that I’ve gone through a character arc since the beginning of the show back in episode one where everything was terrible. Regardless, character needs to come out through words. We’re not going to see this character. We’re not going to know that they have brown eyes, or that they’re 5’7″, unless it comes out in the dialogue. And this is where things get really complicated. And this is something I’m going to talk about in just a little bit, when we talk about clarity and realism.

So if you don’t have a narrator or somebody who’s essentially there to dump exposition on your audience, all of the details about a character will need to come out within dialogue. So again, what characters are saying out loud to each other, to themselves, etc.

This is a lot harder than it looks. And if you’ve attempted to write for audio, you may know this. If it’s important for you that your audience knows that your character has brown eyes, how would that come across in dialogue? Would another character come up to them and say, “Hi. Wow, your brown eyes sure look beautiful today.” Would you you have the character mutter under their breath, “Wow. I wish my eyes weren’t so brown.”? Would you have another character humming Brown Eyed Girl to this character? Or, is it even important that your audience knows what color this person’s eyes are?

I know that this is a thing to consider too when you’re writing prose, when you’re writing a book or a short story. There’s often a scene, and I don’t know, it’s maybe become a little bit of a cliche, but I try not to be too judgmental about cliches. Because sometimes, they do serve a purpose. But there’s often a scene in the beginning of a story, in a novel, in a short story where a character looks at themselves in the mirror and appraises themselves just so that the audience can have an idea of what they look like. So I walked to the mirror. I sight at my appearance. 5’7″, brown hair. Could be longer, could be better cut. Brown eyes and a sad smile. And that’s sort of how people in books and stories let their audiences know what their character looks like.

Again, in addition to being a little bit of a cliche, I wonder sometimes how important that is. And, if those details if they are important, if they can come through in different ways. What’s important for you as an author to convey? And what’s important, and we can even say what’s important to the plot or to the story for your audience to know?

So in Girl in Space, my main character X has spent her life aboard this space station. And she has this greenhouse that produces fruits, and vegetables, and she eats very well. She’s learned how to make cheese from goat’s milk. She eats very well, and she doesn’t really have a lot of reason to be super athletic. So in the story, comments are made about her weight and her curviness, and how those things are said to her, and how she responds to them, really aluminate not only the world that she’s in and the world that other characters are from, but also how the character views herself and views the subject of weight and curvy bodies in society, or in this case outside of society. So character can come across very simply, or in a much more complex way through dialogue. What people hint at, what’s in the subtext, how people address each other.

Another thing I see a lot of in books and podcasts I’ll say is siblings addressing each other or establishing their sibling relationship out loud. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And again, this is a question of realism. Would real people speak like this? And is it believable that someone would speak like this? I’ve seen examples where one character will say, “My brother Mark is coming over this afternoon. I think you’ll really like him. He’s great to be around.” And that works. That’s something natural that people would say, especially if the other person doesn’t know the brother Mark at all, or very well, or has never even heard of him.

But when two siblings are talking to each other and one sibling says, “Mark, brother, let’s go have lunch.” I don’t know. I have siblings. And we very rarely, unless we’re making a point or a joke about it, will very rarely say, “Oh sister,” or, “I’m so glad you’re my sister.” It’s just not things that we naturally say out loud. But I do see a lot of that in storytelling as writers attempt to establish the audience’s understanding of two characters’ relationships.

Mother and father, mom and dad, aunt uncle, that’s a little bit easier. Because at least in English, we do tend to call people by those relationship titles. But, sometimes I think that less explanation can be more. And the more that can come across, the more that the audience can figure out, “These two characters are joking with each other. I wonder if they’re siblings, or they’re talking about a shared experience from childhood. I wonder if they’re siblings are childhood friends.” It can really be a rich experience for the audience to realize that relationship through context clues.

So, character needs to come across through dialogue very strongly. But it can also come across in those other two elements that I mentioned. It can come across through sound effects, and it can come across through music.

One really strong example of music that I always go to in my mind is in Star Wars in the original super old movies that I grew up with, Princess Leia has a theme. Whenever we see Princess Leia, we hear the Princess Leia theme. Whenever we see Darth Vader, we hear his very famous theme. I don’t want to get copyright claimed or anything, and plus I don’t want to subject you to my singing voice. But if you go back and watch these movies, or if you Google Princess Leia theme or Darth Vader theme, you’ll see sort of what I’m talking about.

Conveying character through music or through a theme for a character can be very, very subtle. And honestly, it’s not something that I’ve done in my own work, but I have seen it done very well. We associate those musical themes with certain characters after it’s drilled into our heads a couple of times, “This song always plays when Darth Vader’s on the screen. That is his theme.” And the theme has undertones of darkness and power. It’s very militaristic. Whereas the princess Leia theme is very flute-y, and fluid, and gentle, and nurturing, and has a beautiful note of hope to it.

These themes convey information to us. Either consciously or subconsciously, we’re absorbing that information, that data, and we’re associating these feelings that the music brings to us with the characters whom they represent.

Again, this is not something that I know a whole lot about. I am not a composer. I am not a music theorist. I am just a very normal writer who doesn’t know a whole lot about music. But if this is something that you’re interested in, it can definitely bring extra depth and resonance to your story. And especially to your character building.

Finally, character through sound effects. There are just so many fun, secret ways to let your audience know who your characters are, what they’re all about, what their motives are, and who they are as people through sound effects.

So this is something that never comes across in the dialogue. This is something that it’s not ever really stated in Girl In Space. But every time my main character X is walking, I have the sound of bare feet, because she doesn’t wear shoes. She’s just always barefoot. And this says a lot of very subtle things about her character, and what’s important to her, and what resources she has available. And it’s not huge. It’s not a huge thing, but it’s just a little detail that helps really elucidate who her character is.

I have another character who’s constantly brushing down their space suit like they’re afraid that there’s dust on it or debris. They do that when they’re nervous. There’s also things you can do with coughs, and breathing, and laughter, and sighing. Maybe a character is tapping their foot impatiently. Maybe they’re knocking with just a little bit too much force on the door. Maybe they’re revving their engine a little bit more than they need to. Maybe they’re sniffling withdrawing a handkerchief or a Kleenex.

But I want to get you thinking about what sort of sound effects, what sort of background noises, what sort of ambient sound can your characters produce that give us an insight into what they’re thinking, what they’re motivated by, what they want, and who they are.

And I was going to get to these two elements later, but I might as well just talk about them now. And how can we do this with A, clarity, and B, realism? Clarity is important because when you’re not able to see the medium, when you’re not able to really feel what’s going on, you’re only relying on one sense to get the entire story. You’re relying on your hearing. Clarity is important because we need to understand what it is we need to be focusing on. So there can be other layers of sound. There can be background sounds. There can be dogs barking. But if we really need to understand what’s going on in the story, we need to be able to hear the dialogue really well.

So what is it? What elements of music, dialogue, and sound effects, what elements need to come through at any given time that your audience needs to be focusing on? So you don’t want to drown out some really important dialogue with a loud swell of music. Well yes, that’s great for the emotion. But also, we can’t hear what’s going on. Similarly, if you have somebody tapping their foot and patiently, we don’t want that to be jarring against the music. We don’t necessarily want that to overshadow important dialogue.

So clarity is important. And then realism, does this really sound like somebody tapping their foot, or is it very obviously somebody’s banging a piece of wood on another piece of wood? The human ear is very, very well attuned to what’s real and what’s not real, and what’s believable, and what’s not believable. And that’s part of the reason that audio is such an intimate medium, is that we can hear truth better than we can see truth, or perceive truth with our other senses. Our hearing is very attuned to what’s real and what’s not real.

You can tell, maybe not by looking at a person, but you can tell by listening what fake laughter sounds like. Even if a person is doing all the right things with their face, you can tell when laughter is not genuine. So you need especially, maybe music not so much, but you need your sound effects and your dialogue to be very, very realistic and believable so that your listener can immerse themselves 100% into your story without popping out and being like, “People don’t talk like that to each other.” Or, “Oh wow. I can really tell that that is just somebody making a scratching sound on a piece of vinyl. That’s not somebody brushing off their clothes. I can tell the difference.” Or, “That walking sound is a little too fast for someone to be realistically walking.” Things like that. Clarity and realism need to come through in the dialogue, sound effects, and music that you choose to bring your characters fully alive.

The second pillar of storytelling that I want to talk about as it regards to audio storytelling is world-building. Just like with your characters, your world building needs to come across in an audio only way. Through dialogue, sound effects, and music.

Now if you want, again, you can have a narrator that does a big exposition dump and says, “This world came to be in 1892 when the separatists and the whoevers went their different ways, and then came back years later for a war that caused volcanoes to erupt. And now the whole planet is a volcano.” That’s really terrible by the way, but you can have a narrator who just tells us about the world and why it is the way it is, and hints at what’s going on in the culture, and what’s going on presently, and what went on in the history, and what things look like and smell like. If there’s trees, if there’s flowers, if it’s a barren wasteland, all of that world-building stuff can come across through a narrator doing an info dump. Or it can come across through dialogue, sound effects, and music.

Again, I know it sounds like I’m totally trashing narrators here. And I’m not. Narrators can be fantastic. But also, if you didn’t want to have a narrator, what I’m saying is you need to make sure that all of these important details come across in your dialogue, sound effects, and music.

So I’ll start with dialogue here, just because that’s the first one that I’ve talked about with characters. So I’ll talk about that first here with world building. What are people saying about the world? What kind of casual conversations are they having with each other? What details will come out. About, “This water tastes recycled.” What does that say about your world? Or, “I just missed my hover train.” Or, “Things aren’t like they used to be in the old times.”

Do you have a special slang? Do you have a special language for your world? What are the different cultures like, and how can that come across in dialogue and how people speak to each other, how people treat one another? What struggles, and problems, and limitations are the people in your world having and facing? What are the different powers that are vying for ultimate power within your world? And are people talking about this clearly and realistically in a way that we believe when we hear it?

Another cliche that I see a lot, especially in written books, but I’ve also heard it in a lot of podcasts, is people in a world explaining to each other how their world works, even though both parties already know how the world works because they live in it. So an example of this would be one character saying to another character, “Boy, I sure do hate living in this oppressive totalitarian regime. I wish we didn’t have to fight each other every day for protein globs. And that’s what we eat. And I wish we didn’t have to sleep on the floor in this overcrowded room.” Some writers and creators try to get around this by using the, “As you know,” sort of phrase or frame when their characters explain something that they already know, and that the person they’re talking to would already know. Like, “As you know, in 1893 when the separatists split from the non-separatists and went their separate ways, then the war began.” When really in the world, in the story, these characters would really not need to explain this stuff to each other. And it’s just done for the benefit of the audience. So is it realistic? Is it not realistic? That’s up to you as a creator to decide what works for your story when it comes to illuminating your world through dialogue.

Music is very similar to character building in this case. Different cities might have a different theme. You can express the culture through the music, through different instruments and different percussions. And whether you tie in nature sounds into your music, or if you have that as an ambience, a lot of world-building can be through music.

And again, not something that I have a ton of experience with. But I have seen it done very well. Maybe a character is even listening to a type of music, which would give us insight into not only the character, but into the world around them. What they’ve chosen to adopt from this world to take as their own to enjoy.

All right. And finally with world-building, what kind of sound effects are there in your world? What does your world sound like? Are there constant sirens? Are there volcanoes erupting? Is it the deep and silent vacuum of space in the background? Is there wind whistling through trees? Are there any trees at all? Are your characters on a pirate ship, and the ocean waves are lapping against the wood of the ship, and ropes are creaking in the background as people hoist sails? Are your characters walking through a very crowded marketplace area with lots of different background characters yelling things and throwing things with hoof beats of horses in the distance?

What does your world sound like? And what do the different settings in your world sound like? Maybe the outside world is very busy, but your characters have a place where they go where it’s quiet and serene. Outdoors and indoors can sound extremely different.

And it can be really, really difficult to translate what your world looks like in your mind to what it might sound like. But making sure that you perhaps make a list of all those elements or really close your eyes and imagine what you might hear while you’re in that particular world, that can help you really understand what different sorts of sound effects you’ll need to put in the background. And again, this world building needs to be clear and it needs to feel realistic. Always clarity and realism.

Finally, the third pillar that I want to talk about is plot, AKA story. AKA, what is going on? And this is includes action. So we need to convey what’s going on, what is happening through dialogue, sound effects, and music?

So if you hear two people talking and one person says, “Hey, let’s go for a walk.” And the other character says, “Okay,” and then you hear two sets of footsteps on a gravel path. You can kind of have an idea of what’s going on in the plot. It’s a very simplistic view of that.

But I’ve also read a lot of podcast scripts where the plot is conveyed through things that might be difficult to convey. So one character punches another character. How do you know who is punching and who is getting punched? Maybe the person who’s doing the punching lets out a grunt of [inaudible 00:35:41] as they’re punching. And maybe the person who’s being punched groans in pain [inaudible 00:35:46] as they are punched. Or maybe one character’s like, “Ow, why’d you hit me in the ear?” That’s a line from Fight Club. And it really explains the action without saying, “And then character A took his fist and hits character B in the ear.”

Again, as with the other two elements, you can have a narrator who’s talking about all of this stuff. That’s totally fine. But if you don’t want to have a narrator, I want you to think really hard about how am I going to with realism and clarity, convey to people what’s going on through audio? How does this plot come across? A lot of it will come across through dialogue, and it has to be very masterfully done.

I ran into this a lot with Girl In Space where maybe my main character was reaching into something and pulling out something. And it’s like she would do this in silence. And she really wouldn’t narrate this to herself like, “Okay, here I go. I’m putting my hand into this box and I’m withdrawing. It’s a weird plant. And the plant is glowing. And it has blue flowers on it.” A lot of this stuff we wouldn’t naturally narrate to ourselves. So for me, I built in a narrative device. I built in the fact that my main character is sort of talking about things in a forensic way into a handheld recorder. She sees herself as a scientist, sort of like Scully going through an autopsy on the X-Files. Like, “Hey, it’s 5:57 PM. I’m looking at this corpse. There’s a rupture here and here. I’m going to go ahead and weigh this,” and etc., etc. So I sort of built myself in a little narrative device. I didn’t know this at the time. It is a little bit cliche. It’s a little bit of a crutch to lean on. But again, if it works for your story, it works for your story.

My challenge to you is what kind of dialogue can I use to have the plot come across and still have it sound you know it, A clear, and B realistic. Sound effects for conveying plot. I feel like this one’s kind of obvious. If somebody is walking to the store, it should sound like they’re walking to the store. If somebody is drawing a sword from a sheath, we should hear the sword being drawn, just so that people know that that’s what’s going on. If someone is running, we should hear fast footsteps. Maybe the echo of those footsteps, maybe some heavy breathing from the actor.

And finally, music can really serve the plot here more. I don’t want to say more than it can with the world and the characters. But music can really lend emotional cues to the audience to let them know this is a tense moment, or this is a scary moment, or this is a moment of relief for our characters. Music can really clue us in into how the plot needs to make us feel. And again, you can do this in fiction and nonfiction shows.

All right. So if you are creating a podcast or an audio only story, I want you to think about how can you convey the pillars of character, world-building, and plot through the use of dialogue, sound effects, and music for each of those elements. How can you balance it? How can you really make your story come alive? And how can you do that with both clarity and realism?

I hope that today’s episode has given you some food for thought. If you have your own podcast and these are things that you’re already doing, I would love to hear more about your experience. If this is something that you didn’t know about or that you would like to try, I would love to hear about that as well. As always, your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Out on the show notes for today’s episode. This is episode number 118, and you can find the show notes out on sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-N-E-R.com. And by navigating to the show notes for today’s episode. If you scroll down to the bottom of the show notes, you’ll see a comment box. It’ll ask for your name. And then whatever your thoughts are, you can just hit submit. I do read and respond to every single comment that I receive through my website. So again, I would love to hear your thoughts. If you’re thinking of starting a podcast, if you already have one, if you’re struggling with it, if there’s things you want to change, let me know your story.

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Special thanks for today’s episode go out to Amanda King, Laurie, Regina Calabrese, [Evie Knight 00:41:30], Garrett, Leslie Duncan, [Ladija Hernie 00:41:33], Mark Bullock, Michael Beckwith, Sarah Lauzon, Sean Locke, Summer, Tiffany Joiner, Tim Shen, and Whitney [McGruder 00:41:48]. Thank you all so, so much for your generous support. I would not be able to make this show without you.

Again, if you would like to become a patron on Patreon, just go out to my website, navigate to the show notes for today’s episode, and click on help support this podcast. I would greatly appreciate it.

And with that, this has been episode 118 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. 

m Sarah Werner, and I’m really excited for you to make a podcast.