Hi,
I'm a newbie to script writing and was thinking about doing radio as opposed to TV or a movie. My questions are:
1) how does it differ from the movie/tv script formatting examples that they have on this website?
2) Would the 100 pages equal a single, hour long drama? (The real question is time versus pages.)

Please give me any help you can.

Hi Sachi,

I'm new to this too and I've also chosen to try to do a radio play. I downloaded Celtx (it's a free programme) and they have project templates for all the various formats, so this may be something to look at. Also, check out the other thread - it gives links to a couple of sites that give advice on writing for radio.

So far as the timing is concerned, I assumed it would be roughly the same as for tv/movie etc 1 minute/page, so I'm planning to do 4 1/2 hour long episodes which will give me 120 pages by the time I'm done.

The BBC recently asked for radio drama scripts for a "targetted development Opportunity" (they are not allowed to call it a competition, apparently), called the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award (the deadline was the end of February). It was for a 45 minute play - and as a guide they said it should have a maximum of 7000 words. That would be around 155 words a minute.

So, if you work on an average page having around 150 words, then "a page per minute" is probably going to be a good enough gauge.

Dave

The BBC also used to have a collection of "preferred" script formts - which now seem to have disapeared from the writersroom website. However, a quick google shows that they are still there - it seems there just aren't any links to them.

This is the one for radio drama:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scriptsmart/bbcradioscene.pdf

Dave

I've found Script Smart Gold -- a free utility for Microsoft Word from the BBC -- to be very helpful. Here's the page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scriptsmart/

It can be quirky in Word 2003, and almost unusable in Word 2007, but it is great once you get used to it.

(TIP: If you're at the end of your script and the formatting stops working, delete any extra spaces after the cursor and click on the button for the paragraph style you're supposed to be using. If it's really bad, do that and then backspace to the last properly formatted line.)

A couple of years ago I wrote an Audio Book series using a template that is still available on Tony Palermo's Ryosonic website [http://ruyasonic.com/downloads.htm]. It was just a simple MSWord .doc template (.dot) but it was simpleto use and easy to understand. It's major selling point is that it is part of a learning package that Tony has set up that specifically covers radio/audio drama. I can't praise it highly enough - he has a gift for communication.

I've since used Celtx and the best way to describe it is as comprehensive! If you know what you are doing it has every tool necessary for writing and producing for all media, including audio.

My problem this year is that I am using a eeePC running Linux whilst I am out and about and I'm not sure I can fit Celtx on there. OpenOffice runs on Linux and has a couple of options in their Extensions/Templates ...
ScreenWright [http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/scr2] Comes highly recommended but frankly I couldn't work out how to use it.
OOScript [http://www.geocities.com/n2geoff/OO/oo.html] Sounds like a template with macros which can do a lot but again, the learning curve for instalation and use is is not exactly plug & play. They have a development forum HERE [http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=989&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15]
... if anyone knows any more about either of these I'd be interested in hearing about them.

These are the ones I know about, but there are bound to be others around. One that I found the other day that I haven't had time to check is David Ossman's "Notes on Script Formats" [http://www.natf.org/scriptformat.html] which is just one of many articles, templates and podcasts on the US National Audio Theatre's resources webpage [http://natf.org/category/resources]. I wrote an article in Acrux [http://issuu.com/kirok.of.lstok/docs/acruxprintzine-0802.7] last year (p10) about my experience in Script Frenzy and ended this with a collection of links to material I had found at the time, if you are looking for more info, that would be a place to start.

Because I need something simple to dash off a basically formatted script on the run, I'm thinking of using the Ryosonic template on OpenOffice on my eeePC (Oo can run the MSWord template) and then transferring the text to Celtx to buff and polish it for production.

Cheers

Kirok of L'Stok

Hi Sachi.
I'm new too. Did NaNo and won this last go round. This is my first Script Frenzy.

If I remember my days in radioland as a copywriter, one page equalled a minute. However, when you figure in the 'business' like SFX and music cues, you're only talking about 100 pages being 30 minutes most likely.

Then again, you're mileage may vary. Depends on how chatty your characters are, how many SFX you incorporate, and how much you rely on music.

Excuse me. I have about six hours of Lux Radio Theater and Mercury Theater loaded into the MP3 player to listen to for research. Oh, the Humanity!

Just found this on the BBC website:

"Very approximately, one side of A4 typed lasts about fifty seconds in an audience show and forty seconds in a non-audience show.

Time your script by reading it to yourself, but a half hour script is normally six to seven thousand words."

Can anyone tell me how to handle this problem? I'm doing sketch comedy, which means many small scripts. In one of them all the character's names are in a different language, but none of the names I can find are obviously male or female.

So how can I include a note that a particular character is a woman?

Thanks!

It is normal to include a short introductory paragraph before the start of each sketch explaining the setting (so the production team can create the right ambience, and select approriate sound effects, for recording), and summarising the genders, ages (if appropriate) and accents of the characters. If you list the character names here - with their genders - then there shouldn't be a problem.

David

You can run CeltX on a Linux-running EeePC... I do! You have to monkey around with a few settings, but it's not beyond an intermediate user. Here's the instructions I used. I suggest enabling Advanced Desktop Mode if you haven't already (assuming you haven't put EEEbuntu or anything like that on).

Thanks, Frogfall -- the formatting example I have skipped that whole part.

Steve