413: Elsie Escobar on Narrative Podcasting

Today’s guest is Elsie Escobar. Elsie runs a yoga podcast and has extensive experience in the performing arts. She doesn’t have personal experience creating narrative style podcasts, but she does have a lot of experience listening to them and some really great insights to share. http://thefeed.libsyn.com http://shepodcasts.com http://bit.ly/elsiesemergencyexcitement Elsie’s story: Elsie started a yoga podcast on her own, which had nothing to do with narrative. She was in Los Angeles and the LA podcasters were all storytelling podcasters at that time. All were creating what we would consider to be more of a storytelling type of a podcast, minus all the hyper-produced musical interludes and overtone of the narrative between the conversations. They were done in a way that struck me as a human being telling stories. Tim Coin had a podcast called The Hollywood Podcast. Dan Class had The Bitterest Pill. Lance Anderson had Verge of the Fringe. Kush had Things I Say. All four of these guys were producing a podcast telling stories, and all did it completely different from each other. For Elsie this was an incredible learning to understand how powerful a narrative could be in that it doesn’t have to be a specific type of way. She also worked as an actor for 10 years, did theatre and movies and TV, and worked in Hollywood for a while. In hindsight, she says she didn’t have confidence in who she was as an artist, she didn’t trust herself, and that was one of the reasons she quit. She didn’t have the creative life she wishes she could have had. Elsie says podcasting gives that to her, the creative control and expression she was searching for. A listener perspective on narrative podcasts: When working behind the microphone with all the editing and producing, we can forget what it’s like to be on the other end of the microphone. Even when we listen to podcasts we forget what that listener experience is like. Working in theatre is similar. Doing musicals, Elsie always got notes from directors that would say ‘you have to earn the right to start singing the song’. There are times in some narrative podcasts where she felt that they had not earned the right to insert that piece of music there, or to narrate this portion, because it’s more contrived. It needs to be furthering the throughline of the storytelling process. Although like anything else in podcasting there are very specific ‘rules and regulations’ around what constitutes a strong listening audio piece, there is also the ability to mess with them to the point where you don’t have to follow any rules. Creative juices sometimes get stuck in the technical world. Elsie explains the technical stuff comes from one side of brain and creative comes from the other. If you’re thinking about the technical that’s the editing and producing etc. The narrative and storytelling and strategy and heart of the piece is the creative. It’s either too ‘out there’ with no form, or it’s too form-ish with no impact that you’re looking for. A balance between both is what makes the most incredible narrative podcast. You’re into it, you create the thing, maybe you have a team. But then find someone not a part of the “in crowd”, maybe they’re the audience, maybe there’s a person who would benefit to listen or someone you want to reach. You have them listen to see if it works, like a mini focus group. Tips for planning and crafting the narrative: Make sure before you start that you/the team have the key points you want to drive home or the overarching theme and WHY of this podcast. What’s the bottom line of this podcast? How is it that in the...