How to transport your listeners to another place and time
Today’s column on specifics is the last of my six-part series on the “Six S” framework for hooking and keeping your listeners. Read the overview here.
The 6S Framework is a set of practices that work separately and in combination to ratchet up the wow factor of your podcast or radio show. Before we get into specifics, here’s a reminder of the framework:
Sound Vision — Can you hear the story in your head? (read about Sound Vision)
Structure — Take listeners on a journey. (read about Structure)
Scenes — The engagement backbone. (read about Scenes)
Surprise — Even the most straightforward of episodes should contain surprises. Look for them. (read about Surprise)
Suspense — Intrigue creates forward momentum. (read about Suspense)
Specifics — Details create driveway moments. (keep reading below)
One key to enthralling listeners is to transport them into another place and time. But how, exactly?
The more creators I meet, the more I realize that specifics, in both language and sound, are the vehicles that transport listeners into the worlds we build.
That sounds pretty lofty, so let me bring it down to earth with a few examples.
Here’s a passage from an episode of Crime Show, a Gimlet podcast that, sadly, was canceled last year.
“He took me to my first game. I wasn't even two years old. And he carried me through the tunnel at Wrigley Field. And I remember seeing how beautiful and green it was at not even two years old. I have that memory planted in my mind, 60-something years later…it was the most beautiful, lush, gorgeous thing I ever saw in my life.
It wasn't just the beauty of the field that seared that day into Steve's memory. It was the fact that that beauty had been shared with him by his dad."
That’s how Steve, a character in the Crime Show episode “Paging Dr. Barnes” describes seeing Wrigley Field for the first time, along with host Emma Courtland's insight about his recollection. That wash of feelings created his lifelong love of baseball – a reverence, in particular, for that stadium. It’s transportative because it’s so visual and because he feels so strongly about it.
We emerge with him from that dark tunnel into that sublime, 3D world.
That 30-second scene accomplishes much more than introducing us to Wrigley Field as an important setting that will recur throughout the episode. It serves as shorthand, conveying emotions both efficiently and cinematically. Many of us can remember riding on a parent’s shoulders, of the feelings of power and wonder that come from viewing the world from above.
The specifics communicate the bond between Steve and his father. (Whether our assumptions about that bond are entirely reliable, we’ll find out later.) Regardless, we’re now invested and curious, and highly likely to continue listening.
Another producer who excels at specifics is Sam Mullins of the award-winning Campside Media series Wild Boys.
The series is about two strange teenage boys who mysteriously appear in Sam’s hometown of Vernon, in British Columbia. Here’s how he introduces us to Vernon.
“Vernon's a white town. It's a hockey town. There's lots of churches. There's lots of retired folks. There's a winter carnival parade every year. And the city has never once held a gay pride parade.”
I was struck that Sam never used the word “conservative” to describe Vernon’s residents. Rather, he noted that Vernon has never held a gay pride parade. If instead he’d called the residents conservative, listeners might have glossed over it entirely. Worse, they may have begun to silently argue with the narrator, since “conservative” is a generalization. “Really? Is every Vernon resident conservative? How do you know? What do you mean by that anyway? Who are you, and can I trust you?” By recounting a fact — Vernon’s never held a gay pride parade — Sam has given us a piece of indisputable, specific history. He allows us to make of it what we will.
As in Crime Show, this detail serves as shorthand.
Sam doesn’t have some secret in-born trait that makes him excel at specifics.
“As a comedy writer,” he says, “I’m obsessed with lists.”
In this case, he and his wife played a list-making game: the object was to write “one-sentence morsels” to describe Vernon, where they both grew up.
He gave the resulting sprawling list to his story editor, Karen Duffin, who would help him choose the best morsels to include in the script. She selected only those “specific enough to give us the information that we need for the rest of this story,” Sam says.
“What are the specifics about this person?” he asks. “How can I describe them in a way that no one else would describe them, but in a way that will help create a 3D image in the listener’s head?”
He also does the same thing when introducing characters. Simply describing a character’s appearance, he feels, is unsatisfying. Rather, he’s striving to capture a feeling.
Witness a story he told for The Moth. In it, he’s a waiter on a hectic night in a restaurant when a family sits down in his section. He’s been seriously depressed. In one short sentence, we see that the entrance of these diners, especially the affable, confident father, begins to lift Sam’s mood.
“They kind of became my number one priority,” he says. “They were my oasis in the mayhem.”
I asked Sam about the origin of the phrase, “They were my oasis in the mayhem.” To me, these seven words convey an unexpected depth of feeling, along with context: the restaurant is noisy, hectic, and anxiety-provoking. Mayhem.
Just as he does when wrestling a setting to the ground, Sam turns to listmaking to evoke characters. “What are the specifics about this person?” he asks. “How can I describe them in a way that no one else would describe them, but in a way that will help create a 3D image in the listener’s head?”
This technique is worth practicing no matter the genre. Consider, for instance, the ingenious way reporter Sally Herships introduces Steven Mnuchin in the award-winning audio documentary The Heist.
SALLY HERSHIPS, HOST: You may have seen this photo. It went viral. It’s the one where Steven Mnuchin, he’s Secretary of the Treasury, and his wife Louise Linton, are at the Bureau of Engraving. She’s got a blonde ponytail and she’s dressed all in black, including long leather gloves. And they’re holding up sheets of money, grinning.
Here’s Mnuchin on Fox News, talking about it.
NEWS ANCHOR: Mr. Secretary, some folks say that you two look like two villains from a James Bond movie. I’m sure you’ve heard that. I guess my question is, what were you thinking?MNUCHIN: I heard that. I never thought I’d be quoted as looking like villains from the James Bond. I guess I should take that as a compliment that I look like a villain in a great, successful James Bond movie. (fades out)
It’s evocative, funny, and visual. It immediately tells us that we’ll be going on a ride that’s not your typical staid news documentary. It’s as specific as it gets, down to Louise Linton’s long leather gloves. (It also sets up a puzzle we need to solve. It’s almost impossible not to continue listening.)
This scene sets a tone: It’s likely that we’ll have some feelings about Steven Mnuchin. At the very least, we’ll infer that he loves money.
At the same time, it’s worth noting (and may surprise you) that this scene is squarely reportorial. “We hold strictly to journalistic ethics,” Sally says. “I wouldn't say that he's a bad guy or good guy, just that we're doing our best to report the facts as we find them.” Like Sam Mullins did when he told us that there’d never been a gay pride parade in Vernon, she presents us with the photo and leaves us to decide how we feel. But the facts these storytellers choose inspire us to feel something — and to remember these characters and stories.
So the next time you write a script, try this: Ditch the bland descriptions of hair color and height. Write lists. Find the emotional shorthand. Choose the specifics that are necessary to tell the story, and throw out the rest.
And let me know whether this exercise expands the world you’re creating from two dimensions to three.
To learn more, listen to the Sound Judgment episodes mentioned above: