290 | Aaron Tracy On Building An Audio Drama

Hey everyone, welcome back to TSL, I'm Lauren McKenna. Our guest today is Erin Tracy and we're talking about his career as a storyteller and most recently in audio fiction. Erin is a television writer, producer, novelist, audio fiction writer and is on the faculty at Yale where he teaches creative writing and he was recommended to us by one of our brilliant interns, Bronwyn. Over his career, Erin has developed original television series for CBS, USA, Freeform, Lifetime, NBC Universal, Lionsgate TV and others. His series sequestered a legal thriller ran for two seasons on Sony's Crackle. He co-created the tap for USA, a dark historical drama that he made alongside one of his heroes, the late great Rob Reiner. Erin is the founder of the award-winning audio company, Paralax, whose mission is to consistently deliver immersive audio experiences that captivate and challenge listeners. The first audio series he created, the coldest case during Erin Paul, became audible's most successful original show in 2021. His iHeart Radio series, Supreme, the Battle for Row, co-produced by Eva Lungoria, starring Maya Hawk and Willie M. H. Macy, about the 26-year-old lead attorney on Roe v Wade, won the Best Fiction Webby Award in 2024. Other audio fiction he has created, written and directed include Ten Days, an underdog NBA story starring Glenn Powell, the commuter, a domestic thriller starring Lizzie Kaplan, and Murder in Bermuda, a courtroom drama starring Mary Louise Parker. Erin's first novel, The Honeymoon Period, will be published by McMillan this summer. He hosts the new podcast, The Secret World of Raul Doll, a 10 episode biographical series about the shocking life of Raul Doll, produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. It's now available wherever you listen to podcast. Erin, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. I am a long-time listener of the show. I love it. I've listened to so many episodes. I just was listening to Noah Bumbach the other day. Oh, yeah, they were lovely. Emily and Noah were so great to talk to. They were so thoughtful and articulate about everything they were saying, which was no surprise. Right, I know. But it was just a lovely conversation about truth and being inspired. He said something really amazing. He says everyone says my work is really personal, but it's actually, no, they said it's biographical. He said, no, it's personal, which I, which really resonated with me in terms of how you connect to the work without actually literally, you know, just documenting what's happened to you. That's smart. Right. I thought that was more than what's going on in his life. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I thought it was beautiful. Anyway, we're going to talk about you today. But before we do that, we're going to talk about our weeks, what we'd like to call adventures and screenwriting. So my week has been all about, it's that hurry up and wait thing, you know, like I'm working and I'm writing and then I'm sending things out. And then I have to work on, I send it out and then I have to forget it so that I don't get attached to the outcome because that's a waste of my brain space. But it's really hard at three in the morning, not to be like, well, I sent it three days ago. Are they reading it now? Do they already decide they hate it? Are they going to call me tomorrow and tell me they're going to buy it? What are the notes? Like it's that I get stuck in that little whirlwind and then I'm trying really hard not to let it dislodge my writing for that day. And that's really about, I have to sit and write down all my worst fears and then crumple it up and throw it away and then be like, okay, I wrote it all down. Worst case scenario is I hear nothing. Okay, that doesn't change the work I have to do today. And then I have to sit down and do that. But I have to go like all the way, all my fears, what is the worst thing that could happen? What a crazy business that we're ready, where you have to write, lawyers aren't writing down their worst fears. Doctors aren't, and this is nuts that we have to do this kind of thing. But you're absolutely right. I'm totally in tune with that. Yeah, and it's really hard and painful and feels like, oh god, am I punishing myself by doing this? It's like, no, I have to get it out of my head or it sits in there like a like a Wolverine having a fit. So not huge act man. I mean, like an actual or row boring. Do you later down fire or you just crumple it up and throw it away? Well, I do love to light things on fire, but I feel like given my accident proneness, I would probably set my house on fire. So I just crumple it up or I might like dip it in water. The real bad ones, I'll dip in water. Like I don't want anyone to read that or find it, you know. So you know, I recently shredded all my old journals and notebooks so that you know, you know, my did you buy a shred, did you go to Home Depot and buy a shredder? No, I had to like cut it with like a box cutter because it was so visceral. I was like, I turned out, I'm very, I'm a lot more physically angry than I thought I was rage, ever rage, okay? I love hockey. I got a letter age, but no, I did not buy a shredder. I think we have one, but I didn't use it. Anyway, how is your week? My week was great. You know, I say it's great and was, but I also feel very guilty because I didn't get as much writing done as I wanted to. I've got my new podcast out and so I've been promoting it going on podcasts, which is super fun, especially coming on something like this, which I love. But of course that takes me away from the writing. So I try to remind myself like, this is work too. But you know, I owe many pages on two new shows. I'm writing for Audible behind on that. So I'm trying to get that done. And then also the show, my podcast is doing really well. And so the producer said time to start thinking about what you want to pitch for season two. And so of course, you know, I'm not being paid for that. I am being paid for the other stuff, but I put the other stuff away. And I do the fun thing, which is coming up with like, what could tomorrow be, which I'm sure we all do. Oh, yeah, that's way more fun. You know, I've got a bunch of chapters of a book written. I've got, you know, I've got. So that's my problem as focus. It sounds like you're very focused, though. I try to be. I mean, I definitely am working on a lot of projects. I mean, I'd be very, I love talking about this kind of stuff. I think you probably do too. I don't know how much listeners care to hear about it, but I try to get four hours of writing done a day. And then the rest of the day is filled with all the other stuff coming up with pitches, replying to emails, doing podcast stuff, you know, the million other businessy things. I would say I actually get the four hours of writing done one out of five days, you know? So I don't feel very focused in that way. Like if I was really focused, I feel like four hours is not a lot in a 24 hour day, but I so rarely actually nail it. Do you have a goal for the week like 20 hours this week? And if you don't do four hours on Tuesday, do try to make it up or you just reset like four hours today. I reset. Yeah, it would be too depressing if I carried it over. And so Tuesday, now I got to do five hours or six hours. And of course, I missed that. And so the next day I got to do eight. I know that would be. Yeah, you're setting yourself up for depression. You're predispointed in yourself. If the first time you missed the mark. Do you find this though that the expectations you set for yourself at the beginning of the day, or the beginning of the week, whatever? We are making those for the most part. We're making those for ourselves. Absolutely. Yes. And so we could pull them back a little bit. We could make the expectations a little bit lower. And I think make our lives a little bit happier if we did that, right? Because it's just if we could meet our expectations, no matter what those expectations are, I bet we would feel good about the amount we got done. I think a lot about what is a realistic and accomplishable goal that I can actually do over the course of a day and then a week. And so that I am not setting myself up to be disappointed in myself and feel non-productive. And unfortunately, productivity productivity for me is a measure of success. Just like being able to support myself as a writer is a measure of success. I wish it wasn't true. I wish it was some other marker of "I made beautiful work" and someone read it and loved it. I wish that were enough. But it's not given that this is my job. And sometimes for me, I have to think, "Okay, I literally have 45 minutes on Tuesday given family stuff and meetings and all the things." That's what I can actually write today. Is that going to make me, do I just say my goal is 45 minutes for the day instead of saying it's four hours and then I'm already behind the minute I wake up. So I'm not, it's a battle. I want to do a lot more than I do. I do the thing where I wish I had a whole week of nothing but writing. And then I have that week. And I find a lot of things to do instead of sit down and do the work for some reason. Very good at that. So that, the structure and the focus are a real problem for me because procrastination and the last minute panic push is what gets a lot of work out of me. I'm totally with you. And of course, we're mostly talking about the times when we're not on DeGline. Oh, yeah. No, it works. If you need to work eight hours, you do it. Yeah, exactly. You pre-horitized the rest. You reprived it. You know, can you take her to school? I can't make that call. I can't meet you tonight. I can't do that podcast because you're on deadline. And that's easy. It's just really hard to do it for yourself. Well, you're not on DeGline. Yeah. Especially if you're doing, it doesn't just have to be a money gig, although certainly if it is a money gig, it's so much harder to get the butt. in the chair and get the pages done. But even when it's something which you're being paid for and you like it and you probably even pitched it and it was your idea, but it's just that inspiring to you for any of a thousand reasons. It becomes so, so, so, so hard with all the distractions we have. I mean, it's a nutty thing that we are trying to get pages done on the same device that has every interesting thing that as humans have ever come up with. Yes. That was a terrible, whoever made that, that was a terrible idea. What are your tricks and tools to make the writing happen? I, I, I, I tried to go to myself to four hours a day and that helps a lot. If I tried to write just all day or like when I was starting out and I had a full day ahead of me, I would try to write for eight hours. If you're not in deadline, as we talked about, that's not possible. So just literally, you know, putting a fence around four hours helps a lot because I know that's not forever. I also, if I, a lot of it for me comes from like lack of inspiration and so I'll go and I'll read a script, you know, just a few pages of a script that I love or I'll watch a scene, you know, online that I love. I'll play music just to try to change the atmosphere or the molecules in my body. Yeah, all of those things. Some of them help some of the time and yeah, other times it's just pushing the rock up the hill and there's nothing you can do when you just have to remind yourself, I need to get this done so I can move on to the next project so I can get paid so my daughter can go to school so whatever, you know, you just remind yourself of the sticks. When you're writing a TV show or you're writing your book or an audio drama, is your approach the same to those because the formats are different, of course, and the, the episodes are different structure and timing and length and all of that. Do you have a different approach for those different mediums? I mean, work wise, routine wise, I treat them exactly the same because in a sense they all are the same. It's just me sitting in a chair and getting myself to type. But in terms of, in terms of outlining, I write my audio dramas the exact same way I wrote TV so if I have a 10 episode season, you know, oftentimes I'll have a writer's room which I will, you know, I'll run exactly like any TV writer's room I've ever been in will beat out all 10 episodes and then, you know, go off and go off and write. The nice thing about audio drama is that there are fewer gatekeepers so whereas in TV my experience was always having to, you know, you get, you got to get the story area approved, you got to get the outline approved, you got to get each draft of the script approved, you got to run it by your entire team, your, you know, your production company, your producer, your director, so many people. In audio drama, it's kind of just you. What you write is going to get made which is the good and the bad. I mean, sometimes when you have a good executive or a good producer giving you notes, that's a fantastic thing. So in audio drama, you really got to be diligent and sort of do it yourself and hope that you have a good producer or a good partner who can give you notes. But then yeah, and then you go off and make it. And yeah, the nice thing about audio dramas is they're obviously the budgets are much lower than TV, but you're still working with big stars. I work with much bigger stars in audio drama, in fact, than I, than I ever did in TV. And the production quality is fantastic. And the, the crew is, it's just, it's a fraction of what you have in TV. So it can all oftentimes, hopefully, just go a little bit smoother. Can you take me through the process? So I've pitched audio dramas. I've written some of them. Did I say right and please tell you I didn't say right and I've pitched some. Leave it in. I've written some. I find them fascinating because you can be listening to it while you're doing something else. Just like a podcast, but you also feel like you're getting a story and that you've, and you're watching. And you're creating a radio drama. And people can, that's like a commercial for it. People can do something else while listening to a story. Well, no, I mean, like I can't sit still. So I can do, I can go for a walk, right? I'm not sitting in front of my TV. I can go for a walk. I can be cleaning the house. I can be doing something that I don't want to give all of my attention to, but, and not all people are like this. Some people maybe sit in a hammock in a beautiful setting and listen to an audio drama. I've never done that. I've never listened to one of these things without doing a hundred other things. Honestly, I think it's the appeal. I think it is a commercial that you're not trapped in one place. You don't have to go to a place or in what you can do. You can be in the world in different ways. And so it feels, it feels like you're not wasting your time, but you're still getting that hit of a story and you can see it in your head. No, I, I love listening to them like audio books with the full cast. Yeah. But the other thing, sorry, not to interrupt, but when, how many, like the last time you were excited about a TV show and you sat down to watch it, how long before you took your phone out? Like I find this all the time. We could be so excited about a new movie or a new show. And within five minutes, my wife and I are like looking down at our second screen. It was Bridgerton and I did not look at my phone. Any of the four episodes I saw because the, the new season is like visual candy. Like I was like, oh, the costume. Like there were so many fun new elements of the new season for me to like chew up and you know, the costumes and the, the set deck and like all of it. So, right. But with audio. Usually. Yes. Yeah. And you're listening on your phone with audio drama. And so while you might be doing the laundry or, you know, make it dinner, I think to me anyway, that is less distracting than when I'm watching a TV show, but actually reading the New York Times on my phone. Well, right. Then you turn the TV show into an audio drama essentially. Yeah. And you're looking up everyone's in a while. So that's why I was sort of, my eyes were glued to the Bridgerton screen because of all that I didn't want to miss out on any of those visual things because they were clues to character development and the shows movement and all that. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, there was that sort of very dystopian line. Derek Thompson wrote a great piece called Everything As TV Now. He makes a great argument about how social media is TV now and the newspapers TV now and podcast are TV and so on. And there was a very, very dark line where he said that he's heard that executives from Netflix are often giving the note to creators and writers that they need to remind the audience of the location in dialogue every so often because people are simply not looking at the screen and they want their viewers to be enjoying it even if they're whatever doing a thousand other things. Yes, I've heard that too in other ways. You've got to remind people who they're talking to. It's the exposition. It's like going back into, oh, hey, Aaron, it's nice to see you again. I haven't seen you since we met back at whatever. So it's some of that coming back. That's fun. Super fun. Super fun. Yeah. And so that just that all speaks to the fact that we are not, you know, we're not paying attention the way we used to. Really intricate, really subtle shows like Mad Men or Disapranos or, you know, a million others, they're going to be harder to get through now because people don't want to give. I guess they don't want to give or anyway, they're not giving the kind of careful attention to shows the way they used to, which is all to say it's a great time for audio. Yes, absolutely. I've been watching my daughter. She's 14 and she puts on her headphones and she has a season of a TV show on. And she listens to it while she does her homework, while she does her laundry chores, like she has another background when she's talking to her friends. I don't know. I don't know if it's the pandemic kid who can't, you know, or if it's her particular stuff, but she can't be the only one, the only kid or person who's doing that. I was at my closest friend's house for dinner last night and his teenage daughter opened up her laptop and just started playing gossip girl. But I watched her. She didn't once look at the screen. She was doing her art, which is super cool. Yes. But she was like, yeah, she was doing art and just listening to the show and maybe glancing over when she was confused every few minutes. But I think that's how Jen Alpha is doing it. Yeah. So it's time for audio. And I've asked her too. I'm like, do you want to listen to a podcast instead? And then I was like, well, what if it was like an audio drama? And she's like, well, do I know what the people look like? Like there were some barriers to it. And so it's like, I don't know. Pull-ups, MacDRs and be like, "Here's what they look like you imagine it." I think that's a big part for my out of age. I'm always trying to cast big stars who you know exactly. Glenn Powell started one of my shows, and you can picture Glenn Powell with every line that he utters. I do think that that helps a little bit. But of course just like with a great novel, there's a huge benefit to doing the imagining your own, yourself, and not having those kinds of cues. And so being forced to use your imagination to picture the character. So, talk me through the process of creating, of pitching, and then the writer's room, it sounds like, is just you at the beginning, with the writers breaking the episode, and then you go off and write all the episodes. So, what is the process of making a show? So I've done, I think I've done 13 of these series, so everyone is different. But if there is a typical one, it's going into Audible or I Heart, and because those are really the two major platforms who are doing these audio dramas with good budgets. and pitching your show. And by the way, this is the first great thing of how it's different from TV. You can pitch them an original idea. It doesn't have to be IP. It doesn't have to be based on a serial box or whatever. You can just have an original idea and sell it, which is awesome. And then once you are sent to script, it's great. They do often require you to send an outline in, similar to TV, so it's not just you're handing them 8 to 10, 30 minute episodes without them seeing what it's going to be. So again, I find that helpful because you want to make sure if there is some disconnect, if there's some issue, you catch it early. But then yeah, I have a writer's room either in person or on Zoom if I want to use LA writers, because I'm here in Brooklyn. Oftentimes I'll use alumni, people who are in my class at Yale or just other yelis. And yeah, and we'll break the arc of the season, both the plot arc and the character arcs. Then oftentimes we'll go a little further and we'll break each episode. And then for the most part, yeah, I go off and I write the scripts myself. There were a couple instances where I farmed out scripts to writers in the room. It's tricky for young writers to write audio drama. I mean, it's obviously tricky for new writers in any medium. With audio drama, especially writers who are used to writing like, "Spec TV shows" or screenplays, the big sort of obstacle is figuring out subtext. We'll just be shocked I mean, you won't be because you've done this. But writers who are new to audio drama have a lot of trouble not just putting everything in the character's mouths because you can't do anything with a look. Right. So how do you solve that problem? Yeah, it's practice, honestly. It's just figuring out how to get across exposition, how to get across everything when you don't have the benefit of a character just looking rightly at another character or the camera going off of a character. It's just a matter of doing it a lot until you figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't feel at all clunky. Because it's not just something that you need to figure out at the end of a scene, it's like throughout every scene. And then yeah, and then once we have all eight to 10 scripts. These are 30 minute, usually 22 or 30 or what's the length of the script. So it depends whether you're working for an ad supported, company or subscriber supported. So for audible, that subscriber supported, they don't care how long the episodes are. It's OK if one episode is five minutes and one episode is 50 minutes. For a place like I Heart, which is ad supported, they care about the pre-roll commercials and the mid-roll commercials and so forth. So a little bit better if it's longer than 30 minutes each episode. They don't want a five minute episode. That does nothing for them. But for the most part, just because I think I would go crazy, otherwise I keep them pretty uniform. So I tend to write half-hour episodes. And just that is helpful for structuring a season, I find. And so yeah, so I write it in Final Draft. Scripts, an audio drama script looks just like any other TV script, just with a hell of a lot more dialogue. And then we have a production company on board. For a lot of my shows, I write with James Patterson, a lot the novelist. And so for all of those shows, Broadway Video is the production company. They've been in addition to all the great TV stuff. They also do a lot of audio. And so yeah, so then we'll get Studio Space. We'll cast it. We'll bring on a great sound designer and editor and composer and script supervisor. And by the way, that's kind of it. That's your crew. It's usually about six people, which is awesome, instead of 250 people. And then we'll go making it, obviously, just like TV and film. The longest part of the process is then waiting for your actors. Waiting for their schedules to open up. It becomes especially tricky if you're trying to get your actors together. But in all 13 of my shows, I have probably had actors record together in the same room and full of times. At all other times, I've recorded them individually with a reader that we've hired reading opposite. And I promise you, you cannot tell the difference if you have a good designer. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's animation. That's what I spent years doing that. It's all in isolation. I think-- and then a few times you have actors together for animation. You have to create the baffle rooms and make sure the sound doesn't bleed. And it's actually easier to record individually. Unless you really want that fast-talking old-style radio play thing where-- but it's still very careful with sound. Yeah. No. And so for all those reasons, but I'll just also add. If you're like, I direct most of the shows myself, too. And if you're a bit of a perfectionist, if you are recording an actor in isolation, you can get them to do each line 5, 10, 15, 20 times. Whereas if they're working with another actor, you cannot just isolate one line and have them do it over and over again. So yeah, so that's not ideal. I will say the flip side is there have been probably three times ever where I just-- either as a director or someone else who's directing it-- where we didn't quite have the actor match the tone or the tenor or the emotion of the other actor in the scene because they weren't there with them. And we've had to bring the actor back to rerecord, which is a pain, of course. But overall, the batting percentage is really high. We'll be right back. When I'm really in it with my writing, the absolute last thing I want to do is stop think of a healthy meal to cook, figure out if I even have the ingredients, and then actually cook it. And that's where HelloFresh comes in. It allows me and my family to continue to eat well and take so much of the work out of it. HelloFresh makes it easy to do more of it this year with recipes that feel good and taste delicious every night. So you can choose for more than 100 recipes every week, including from around the world, and meals that help you beat the writing bloz, like my favorite one, sweet soy, organic chicken stir fry. You can choose for more than 35 high protein recipes each week, including new Mediterranean and GLP1 friendly options. And you can feel great with wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone-free chicken. You can even treat yourself with new grass-fed rib-ice steaks, make meals with seasonal produce like pears, apples, and sparigas. Because when dinner tastes this good, nothing hits like home cooking. Go to hellofresh.com/screenwriter10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free zwilling knife, a 144 and 99 cent value on your third box. Offer is valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. Hey everyone, it's Meg LaFob. I'm a screenwriter and co-writer of the movie Inside Out and Inside Out 2. And I'm Lorraine McKenna. I was the showrunner on tab time and the story manager on Inside Out, which is how I met Meg. And together we host a weekly podcast called The Screenwriting Life. And if you've been wanting to dig deeper into the craft of writing, we'd love for you to check out TSL workshops, our membership community that we created just for you. Every month, we host two live workshops on Zoom, where you can share your questions, your conclusions, your breakthroughs, and projects you're working on to get feedback from us in real time. We're so excited about these workshops in our community that we could talk about it all day. But honestly, the people who say it best are the writers inside the community. Last December, I brought my screenplay idea to the TSL workshop to get feedback about a roadblock I was facing related to character motivation. And their questions prompted a breakthrough for me. And they also gave me some feedback that made the next draft so much stronger. The script was a quarter finalist and final drafts big break competition this year. The Scrued Getting Life workshops helped me write a pilot that got me approved to be a staff writer on the show. And it placed as a second rounder last year for us in Film Festival. I honestly can't recommend their workshops and podcasts enough. I truly believe their feedback took that script to the next level and helped me grab the attention of the showrunner. Right now, you can try TSL workshops free for five days at tsoworkshops.circle.so. The link is in the episode description. We are so excited to be building something special here a supportive, curious, committed community of writers so come join us. And as we always say at the end of every episode, remember you are not alone and keep writing. Welcome back to the show. I know from feature animation how long it takes to record years and years and years to get all that exactly right. And then I know from TV animation and then I've done some audiobooks stuff, the timing of it. It's not going to take five years and it's not going to take two months. How many sessions are you having with an actor? Each actor is different. But I remember it's been a learning curve. My first show with Aaron Paul is the show called The Coldest Case. And we booked Aaron for-- I think we booked him for 12 days. And we wrapped him in four. And so from then on, we sort of learned from that and realized how long it takes. I mean, the first show I did was in COVID. And so that was really hard because there were so many technical glitches. And we had to record actors in their bathrooms and help them put up blankets on the porcelain and stuff like that. But when you're doing-- So super glamorous work. Super glamorous, yes. When you're bringing them into the studio for a lead role, boy, you're doing something wrong if it's four-hour show and you're taking more than three days with the actor. I mean, it's quick. You know, in different actors, you know, some actors want to work six hours. I just worked with Lizzie Kaplan on one of my shows and she just, she wants to work all day. And so we, you know, wrapped her out after a few days. You know, some actors just want to do a couple hours a day. So everybody's different. And when it's not a lead role, when it's a smaller role, it rarely ever takes more than one day. You got like two or three takes a line. Yeah, I mean, it depends. It depends how comfortable I am pushing the actor, like how in all I am of them. I had Richard Schiff come in who's like one of my heroes and I did not want to ask him to redo a lot, a stupid line that I wrote five times. I would have felt like the worst. And then you have, I had Tom Lennon come in who's like the funniest person I've ever encountered. And he just wanted to do it over and over again because he kept I glibbing and coming up with good improvs and that was a totally different experience. So it's just, it's like TV, like movies. It's just the vibe you have with your, with your cast. So when you're writing the scripts, it's a lot of dialogue. You're setting location and tone with sound. So you're writing that into the scripts. Are you writing sound effects in the script? Are you writing music into the scripts? What do you, how is the script built so that you can hand it to a sound engineer? Yeah. I'm not writing music. I'm sure some people are who are just, what I mean is like, you know, music, you know, slow, melancholy. Are you doing things like that? Yeah, no, I know what you mean. So I've been lucky enough to work with the same sound designer a bunch of different times. And so he and I just have a shorthand. I know that whatever he comes up with is going to be a hundred times better than what I put in there. So for the most part, no, I don't do that. And at this point, I don't even, if I know I'm working with him, his name is Mark Henry Phillips. He's just, he's brilliant. He's a great sound designer. He did, if you can hear in your mind, season one of serial, the music, that's him. He came up with that. He's also a composer. It's haunting. But so when I have him, I just basically leave it to him. If I'm working with someone new, you're right. I will put in something just to indicate what the vibe is, what the tone is. But I don't often put in like door slam. Oh, you don't. OK. I don't really just because a good sound designer and you're going to be working with a good sound designer no matter, no matter who it is, if you're working with Audible or I Heart or a good production company, they're going to figure out that the door needs to slam there. And I like when they figured out and they're oftentimes will come up with a million things that's way better than what I would have come up with. Oh, that's, I love that. Because I had this idea that you had to write all that stuff in. You know, the fire, the fire pops, the slam the door, you know, that kind of stuff. If I have a really creative idea for a sound effect, then yeah, sure. I'll write that in. And for the more pedestrian stuff, like character leaves and the door slams, no, I'll just, you know, I will trust the process. But bigger thing, like a police siren or, you know, it starts to pour rain. Like, you're going to, if that's going to affect the characters and the plot movement. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe. But if I have a character in dialogue, say something that indicates that a police siren is coming, then I know the sound designer is going to put that police siren in there. But yeah, if I have a more creative idea, I'm sure. I'll definitely put that in there. Oh, that's, yeah, that's a shift from how I thought you would write one in a way that alleviates some of it, some of the stress of trying to figure all that stuff out. Like I'm writing for sound. You know, I'm just writing a script, then essentially. Yeah, I mean, like, remember, like this is not the, this is not the last chance also to get that in there. And if the first cut comes back and there's no police siren in there while the characters are talking about hearing a police siren, I'm simply going to say, you know, you messed up here, you need to get a siren in here. And it will take him all of half a second to get that in there. And so maybe that's why it's some, it's, it's just not top of mind for me because you just have so many opportunities to make sure it's, it happens. And TV and movies, you know, there's so much more money on the line that, yeah, you want to make sure you get it right the first time. I've noticed that a lot of the audio fiction is thriller, crime, you know, high stakes, life and death type things. Are there, what is it that our heart and audible are looking for? And what is that pitch? Because I've, I've pitched before and there's something I'm not quite cracking, I think, you know, is it like I need a narrator? You need, you know, you need the main character voice over ring through it, telling you the story. It's what is it that they're looking for? It all, you know, the annoying answer is it always changes. I'd never used to have a narrator. My first few shows, no narrator, I just let it unfold like TV or film. But then I did get a note from audible a few shows ago that they, they did notice their audience was preferring a narrator sort of like, you know, making it similar to an audiobook where, of course, you have a narrator. And I have used a narrator. I resisted it for a while and then it's one of those things. I resisted it probably for no good reason other than I heard a lot of bad narration. But guess what? It doesn't have to be bad. You're the right, good narration. You're the right, you're the role of that and the writer, right. Yeah. So I've stopped resisting it and I've put narration in my last couple shows and it's work great and you can obviously play around with it and have unreliable narrators and so forth. And so yeah, so I think that is helpful for audible to have a narrator. They are looking for thriller. They are looking for sci-fi, but it's across the board. I wrote a romantic comedy for them last year. No, it probably, it helped that I had a big star attached to that one. I think they're obviously looking to, you know, to service their overall deals. I always tell people rather than going straight, I mean, this is sort of an obvious thing, but not everybody does it all the time, which surprises me, which is if you are starting off and you don't have much of a relationship with these executives, like go through one of the production companies that has an overall deal with them because they're just much more inclined to buy from those production companies. And there's, by the way, there's a bunch of great production companies. I always lose track of what the current deals are, but at various times, I hard and audible have had deals with James Patterson's company with Smokehouse, George Clooney's company, with Kenu Barris's company with Kevin Hart's company, Queen Latifus company, Obama, the Obama's, you know, higher ground. I mean, there's so many. So yeah, that's a great way of doing it. Yeah, and like I said, you don't need to limit yourself to just thrillers or sci-fi. Romantic comedy works for them. Straight up comedy, Broadway video does a ton of comedies. A lot of them are written by certain laborators, but a lot of like half hour comedies. Yeah, so they're just looking for good material, oftentimes to service their deals, oftentimes with big stars, oftentimes with Buzzy, you know, elements to it, just like TV and film. But the great thing is that I would never go pitch a TV show that had no IP attached. That's just an idea I came up with in the shower. You can do that in audio drama. I think that's good advice about going through production company or someone with an overall deal for any endeavor right now because especially if you're new because Broadway video or one of those other companies, they have a track record. So when you go with them to pitch an idea, audibles like, great, we know that Broadway video can make that. Like they have the resources, they can produce it and push it through the pipeline and get access to the people and the things that you need to make that successful. Whereas if you go in alone, they're like, okay, well, what do you, now what? They have to do more work, cooking you up with something. Totally. I mean, there's that and there's also that with some of their production companies, they are obligated to buy a certain number of shows per year. And so you can be one of those shows. Now, I will say there is also, there could be a downside to it. If you go in with a fancy production company, that's going to raise the budget of your show. If you have an idea that, you know, isn't, doesn't feel as safe to them for whatever reason, they might just want to take a flyer on you. And if you come in with, with Broadway video or some other, you know, very fancy production company, they might say, well, we're not going to spend that kind of money on this, on this flyer. So every, that is to say, every project needs to be treated differently. And you got to sort of figure out where yours makes the most sense. Yeah, these in general, these are, yeah, these are, these are good strategies. We'll be right back. Hey, guys, my rescue dog Rocky is my new best friend. He sits at my feet while I write and jumps around with me when the writing is going well and takes me on a walk when it's not going so well. I give back to him with pets table dog food from Hello Fresh. 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That's thepetstable.com code screenwriter 55. Tell me about your process when a little bit about what we spoke about earlier. You've come up with this idea, whether it's TV or you're pitching on IP or a new idea, and you pitch it. They're like, "Great, we love it. You sell it." Then you were talking about how maybe you weren't inspired, even though you came up with the idea. What happens between. Because for me, it's, "Oh, shit, now I have to do it." Yeah, I came up with this idea. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. I know everything about it. I pitch it. Yes, we're going to make it. I'm like, "Awesome!" And then you have the commencement call, and then you're like, "Yes, let's do it." And then I'm like, "Oh, fucky, ducky." It's not that I'm not inspired. It's that I'm like, "What the fuck did I just do?" It's so much easier to have. be excited, have an idea, and then like, "Okay, open final draft." Completely. Yeah, when you're in the idea phase, "Oh my god, it's Annie Hall," or it's Shakespeare, it's a perfect movie. I mean, there's nothing better. But then, yes, once you realize the limits of your skill or your ability to focus or your. any of the million things for me, it just becomes reality instead of this perfect thing. And so what was the question? How do I get past that? Yeah, well, I mean, for audio drama, you have this idea, you've pitched it, you get to have a writer's room who are listening, and then they help you break the series, and it's so attractive, because if I sell a TV show and they're like, "Great, go write the pilot," and I'm like, "Okay, so first you need to write the story area," and then the outline. That's still hard. And then you're, you know, like all those steps, because those are really hard things to put together after this huge show you've come up with, but you're by yourself or with your writing partner. But for this, you have a writer's room of like five, four brilliant people who are going to come in with their own enthusiasm and ideas to help push it forward, which for me is wildly attractive. You know? Yeah, that's it exactly. Yeah, whenever I sell a TV pilot, I'm with you. It gets, I get very depressed pretty quickly because I know that the odds are so low if it ever getting made, right? That's just the nature of it. I've sold so many pilots and I've had so few made. That's just, like everybody, that's just the nature of it. With audio drama, there's a lot more enthusiasm, both because, as you say, you can sort of write a writer's room right away, but also, you know it's going to get made. You're going to be in production of all these shows that I've done, only two, which is not great by the way, I wish those two didn't exist, but two of them have not been made the rest have. And so I think that does give you a just real shot in the arm, you know, that you don't have in TV and film when you sell something because you know, even if you've sold it and you're getting paid, the odds are still really low. The cameras are ever going to roll. Would you suggest trying to do one of these on your own, like writing a pilot and getting all the smart people in Hollywood that you know and like creating a teaser or a pilot for an audio drama as sort of proof of concept, is that worth it? The spec market doesn't really exist in audio drama. Writing the spec TV pilot makes a lot of sense. You can get actors attached, you can get producers attached, you can go in and sell it. Yeah, if you write a spec audio drama pilot, you can't really get anybody attached, right? Nobody wants to attach the first episode of an audio drama partly because there's just there's no money, but also executives at these networks don't want to read a spec pad. They'd rather hear a pitch. So no, so much better save yourself the work of writing it and go in and pitch. You also don't need it as a sample. You can use a TV sample or a feature sample or a short story to get hired. So no, I definitely do not recommend that people write it on their own unless they want to go make it on their own. And that's a real thing. You know, if you want to write the entire season and then go make it with a few friends because you can make it on the cheap and then have this thing that for the most part is you know, probably not going to get picked up by a major platform, but you could release yourself and make fans that way. And by the way, like enjoy the creative process of creating something from nothing. I think that's a totally fine thing. But I would do it because it's that the craving to have something made, right? In the absence of someone else making it and feeling like I'm doing all this work for free all the time, like just making something feels really satisfying and appealing, whether it becomes something else or not. Just the like, I'm going to the studio. I'm going to direct this actor. I've written some pages like seeing something become something is such a magical, powerful thing in this industry that like you said, I've sold a lot of pilots and I've written them and then you know, so I've written a lot of, a lot of scripts, a lot of things that like for one reason or another, you know, I've one feature that's been in and out of development, production, for like years. And it's like, just someone make it. So to go and like even just to write a pilot that's 15 minutes long and get together with some friends and then like make it and experiment and see what that process is. And then like, oh, I love that. I hate that. You know, just the, because for me when you're making and doing, that's when more opportunities come, it feels like because you're, you're not just sitting in that, I'm not just sitting in that place of like, oh my god, I have so much to do and I'm not writing my hours today and I have to go to the doctor and you know, it feels kind of like I'm digging a pit and then just sitting in the bottom of it. I'm doing great today by the way. Don't worry about me. Ah, super fine. Super ready. Got it. I'm all under control. But the making something and that is something that feels like if you have access to anything, you know, people ask me like, how do you do a podcast? I'm like, I don't know. We, we just recorded it and then upload it. We had 16 listens on the first episode. The first two episodes we had 16 listens total. And I think probably most of those were me trying to figure out how stupid I sounded. So like you just sort of, that feels like something you could do to learn. I totally agree. I completely agree. I think so many good things in my career have come from just, just try and new stuff. You know, this first audio drama, I wasn't expecting to write 13 series. Like the first one was just kind of on a lark and it was so fun. I enjoyed it so much. And you know, I just come from having like a heartbreaker like everybody has where I wrote a pilot and we made it and it was such a good experience and it didn't get picked up to series. And so I was like, I have to take a break from that. I cannot emotionally do that again for a while. And so I did this and I absolutely loved it. And then it was so fun. I did another and then oh, you know, what the next one I think I'm going to direct. I'm going to ask if I can direct and I direct it for free because no one's going to hire me and I direct it. But it went well. And so I did get hired to direct the next one. And so it was just like you never know what is going to lead to the next thing. So yes, if you have an idea that makes sense for audio or you have an idea for TV that just hasn't worked and you want to find a different outlet for it or any of a thousand different reasons absolutely, you know, try this, try this new thing. And then you wrote a novel and that's coming out soon. Yeah, yeah. And so it's an audio novel. So it's for Macmillan, but it will never be printed. Macmillan does a few of these audio novels a few times a year, which is like, right, that's writing an actual printed novel that would be in the bookstore. That feels a little bit too alien to me, but an audio novel is kind of maybe a nice gateway to eventually doing the printed novel thing. This is a little bit different in that it is more of a novel. So there is a central narrator who's doing a lot of the heavy lifting. There is much, much less dialogue, much less back and forth. It's really you're in the head of many. So you get to do that internal novel stuff, but also have. So yeah, okay, I know I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I got it. And so yeah, so I'm excited for that. So that that will be I'm doing my third polish on it now for for my editor Macmillan and hoping to turn it in in the next few weeks. And then we'll record it later this year. And then it'll be out top of 2027. And it's it's a romantic comedy. It's called the honeymoon period. We already have a cover for it. Yeah, it's fun. It's it's again, it's like a different thing for me, which is which is always fun. I can't wait to listen to it while I'm doing something else. [laughter] I would have it no other way. Congratulations. I think that's really awesome. Oh, thanks. You've done like your writer, director, producer, you've done TV, you've done this audio, fiction, you're a teacher. What advice do you have for our listeners? One thing is the biggest problem I see with my students and I teach both a TV class and a podcast class at Yale and this holds for both, absolutely, is they treat the script that they're writing as their opus. Absolutely. You're going to rewrite it. Yes. Over and over and over again and it's going to be word perfect and they put so much pressure on themselves and they're so much exciting. You've got to treat it as one of many, many scripts you're going to write in your life. That, you know, not everybody can take that in but if you can, it makes the whole process about a million times better. Yes. I think the part of that advice that I, is like if you've worked on it for more than a certain amount of time, you got to move on. You got to start writing something else. I've talked to people that are like, well, I'm working on this for five years. I'm like, oh, five years. You could have written so many other things and not to say that that's not worth that time and effort but like, that's one thing you've worked on for five years. And remind yourself, it's not a meritocracy. Like you could write the greatest script that's ever been written. That does not mean it's going to get made at all. So there's no reason to go to write the same script over and over and over again. Write it until it's ready. We're telling people don't get attached to the outcome and yet as professional writers, we want the outcome. Sure. You know, like we want the thing to get made but it's dealing with the constant disappointment of most things we write don't get made. It's a nutty business. You never know where the success is going to come from. What's going to make it happen? But you know what you, what you can almost guarantee is it's not going to be the thing you think it is. Like whatever script you have that you think, oh, this is my ticket, you can almost guarantee that's not going to be it. It's going to be something else. That's great advice. So I'm going to ask you some questions now that we always ask at the end of the show. All right. Here we go. Ready? What brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing? Probably. I'm a big researcher. I read a lot of true stories. And so my favorite thing, maybe my favorite thing in the whole process often is when I'm doing some research and I come across just like a little gem and I know that is going to make for a killer scene. And it almost feels like I don't even have to do any more work. That scene will write itself. That will make the whole script so much better. And it's just because I did the hard work. I found that on page 194 of this random book I was reading, that's a great feeling. It makes me feel good. What pisses you off about writing? I think to go back to what we talked about at the beginning, you know, when the day is over, if I didn't get my four hours of writing done or if I didn't get much writing at all, if I look back at the day and I realize I just spent a lot of time on Twitter or some other site or for whatever reason, my to do less and I just didn't get much done. I can even feel myself as I'm like saying like I get such a depressing feeling. Now the day is over, it's dark outside. You got to go down and have dinner with the kids and you know, it's just like you blew it is how I feel. That's a bad feeling. And the funny thing is even though I know how bad a feeling that is, I might still do it again tomorrow. The next question is if you could have coffee with your younger self, what advice would you give him? So I made, I think one of my biggest mistakes when I was starting off was, you know, like any of us, right? At a certain point I was lucky enough to get an agent and a manager and I wrote some scripts and I was sent out on a lot of meetings like all of us. We call them general meetings, right? The idea is you're just, the agent says, you know, just get on the list, right? Just, you know, have them like you and get on the list and stuff like that. So that was a giant mistake. I should have treated every one of those meetings like a specific or what are the opposite of a generalist like so many of those meetings we ended up just talking about the weather or baseball or whatever. I don't even like baseball, basketball, whatever. And nothing came of them. Whereas after several years of that, I started treating them very differently and I would go in having, you know, having done a lot of research about the company and I would have three ideas in my back pocket, you know, metaphorically. And I would then just pitch a log line just like casually in conversation and oftentimes they would say, and it's not for me. Then I would pitch my next one casually and they would say, oh, that's interesting. And I would say, oh, good, I'm glad you like it. How about I get you a three-pager in a couple days? And then they end up liking the three-pager and guess what? Now you have a project in development. That doesn't mean it's going to go anywhere, but it's sort of, you know, when you haven't been paid, but it's still in development. It has a chance of going somewhere. But I would have treated every meeting like that because when I look back, I had so many meetings that were just completely wasted. And that's great advice. It's a broken system. What a crazy thing. And it was the executive or the producers' time too. No, they don't want to just talk about the nicks with you. No. They would much rather give them an awesome idea that fits, you know, their mandate or whatever they're looking for. Because they're always going to ask you, what are you working on? Or what do you like to write? Or, you know, what do you love about TV? There's always some question where you can be like, well, what I love about TV shows like this. And actually, I have a show that I'm working on like that. And then you can, without saying, let me pitch you my ideas. There is always an opening. Our last question is, what's your proudest career moment to date? You know, it might be, I got such a good, cold email from a woman who I, you know, never met before. And she said, I'm a producer with the criterion collection. And here's what the criterion collection is. And I mean, I did not need to read a description of the criterion collection. I am a criterion obsessive. I love the criterion collection. And they asked to use an interview that I did with the screenwriter Jewels Fifer as a bonus on the criterion release of "Carnel Knowledge." And so I'm in the criterion collection. Oh my God, that's awesome. Isn't that the greatest thing ever? Yeah. That is. I love it. I got that. I love that. Yeah. I've got several copies of the DVD. It's just, it's so cool. You just played at dinner party. Have you seen this? Oh, well, look at this. I really should. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. That felt really good. Thank you so much. I learned so much. And thank you for your time and your generosity in talking to me about all this. It was wonderful. It was so great. Oh good. I loved it. It's been so fun. Oh good. Thank you. Thank you so much to Aaron Tracy for joining us today. You can find and listen to all of Aaron's audio projects on ListenToParolex.com. The Screen Riding Life is produced and edited by Alex Alce. For more support, find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. You can also head over to the screenwritinglife.com to learn more about TSL workshops. We have a growing library of pre-recorded workshops covering everything from craft, like character want and outlining a feature to the business side of writing, including how to navigate the elusive general meeting. We also host two live zooms each month where you can talk to me and Meg about the projects you're working on. The link to sign up is in the episode description. And if you have any questions, you can always reach out to the [email protected]. Thank you for listening and remember, you are not alone and keep writing. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]