This episode is a flight check: We’re making sure the underpinnings of our stories are tight and structured by utilising the narrative arc, chronology, and framing. You'll hear from Ira Glass, Chana Joffe-Walt, Sean Cole, and in a brand new interview, from Jonathan Mitchell of the radio-drama podcast The Truth. Jonathan explains his storytelling philosophy and breaks down the creation of one of his stories, Naughty Or Nice.   


Out on the Wire Episode 4: Bare Bones

Out on the Wire is the show about making stories, step by step. Join cartoonist Jessica Abel as she breaks down the principles of storytelling and puts you on the path to crafting your own story—in prose, comics, audio, video—in any narrative art form, fiction or nonfiction. Featuring radio and podcasting star producers from This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money, Snap Judgment, and many more. Listen, learn, and collaborate with us to make something great.

Education

Training

Language Courses

Higher Education

K-12

Educational Technology

Courses

The Episode 7: Dark Forest archive: The Edit with Robert Smith and Jess Jiang

In Episode 8: Your Baby's Ugly we talk a lot about how we edited Episode 7: Dark Forest into into its final form with the help of Jess Jiang and Robert Smith of Planet Money. We wanted to share that process, so here's our original mix of episode 7, which we sent to Jess and Robert, their edit meeting with us, and the final version of episode 7. Enjoy!  


Rough mix: Episode 7: Dark Forest

It’s one thing to finish a story, it’s another to make stories your career. In our final episode of season one of Out on the Wire we talk to three creative professionals, Jakob Lewis of the podcast Neighbors, Dave Kellett of the comics Sheldon and Drive and the documentary Stripped, and Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of the comics Bitch Planet and Pretty Deadly, about how they create their work, put food on the table, and make a life in the constantly shifting creative landscape.  


Out on the Wire Episode 9: Make It Work

 
Dan Waldschmidt and Matthew Williamson just produced the pilot episode of a podcast called "Ordinary Heroes," but they know they need a new point of view on it — time for an edit! Dan and Matthew bravely volunteered to go through an edit on the air with Ben, Matt, and me. We dig into who should narrate the story and how, the role of music in the show, whether we should explicitly lay out the message of the show, and more.  


Out on the Wire Episode 8.5: Workshop

Our stories are our babies, but not all babies are cute. This week, we figure out just how far we’ve still got to go when we take a finished draft of our own show and subject it to the cold scrutiny of an edit by Robert Smith and Jess Jiang of Planet Money. Our baby was kinda messed up, but he’s much prettier now.  Also: learn what makes Ira Glass mad, find out how editing is like biofeedback, and hear how Rob Rosenthal of the Transom Story Workshop and the HowSound podcast trains the next generation of expert producers and editors.   


Out on the Wire Episode 4: Bare Bones

Download our free app to listen on your phone