Everything I learned about writing I learned on the radio.
All right, that’s not entirely true. But I’ve learned a lot.
My first stint on Washington, D.C.’s radio juggernaut WTOP (“traffic and weather on the eights”) was nine years ago. I was asked to speak about upcoming weekend events—at least four or five of them—in Washington. I was supposed to be an authority and offer a breezy, assuring discourse about the city.
The producer at WTOP allowed me to go on the air as a favor to a marketing and PR colleague I worked with. The opportunity was immense, especially as it would extend our magazine’s brand to an enormous (biggest in D.C.) radio audience.
Ten minutes before my live spot, I met the producer. He sensed I was nervous and tried to loosen me up.
“You ever done radio?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Nervous?”
“No, not really,” I lied.
“You probably are—so just pretend you’re talking to one person, not thousands.”
“I am talking to one person, right?”
“Well, technically, yes. But…” He didn’t need to tell me that thousands of listeners would judge every voice inflection and informational tidbit like so many behind-the-wheel critics.
I was on the air for four minutes, and it might as well have been four days.
I sounded like an asthmatic bear with a hangover. I stumbled over words. I also ran too many words together in fits of incoherence. Sweat gathered around my collar in salty little pools of shame.
Worse still, I rambled, which is the radio equivalent of a paragraph without punctuation or apparent reason for existing.
Remember, I was supposed to discuss four or five events. I waxed about the first one—a neighborhood festival—for three minutes, which segued to another topic about as smoothly as your average non sequitur from hell.
Four minutes: one and a half topics.
I was horrible.
And I also figured my radio career was toast. Back to the written word—after all, who needs to speak to the great unwashed when I can ramble eloquently on paper?
For reasons still unclear to me, I was asked back the following week. And the week after that—in fact, I’m still doing the live segment every Thursday night.
The radio spot changed my writing, sometimes in not-so-subtle ways. Here’s how:
I stopped being a navel-gazer.
Writing is both high and low art, but it’s always thought of as masterful by the artist, who often inserts needless flourishes in the story to make himself happy. Radio, on the other hand, forces you to tell a story efficiently and without inserting yourself into everything. This isn’t about you—it’s about the listener or the reader.
I learned to cut the crap.
Radio teaches you to get to the point. It’s like telling a story to my wife’s cousins from Queens: If I dawdle, they offer a pained expression, as if they’ve been forced to swallow a fried-green tomato.
I became laser-focused about audience.
As writers, we’ve been taught to understand our audience, but once we get on a roll with an idea, we sometimes stray beyond all reasonable boundaries. With radio, you do think of Arbitron ratings and giving listeners a reason not to switch to the country-music station located on the dial’s next notch. Don’t let them down. Give them a reason to love you and your brand.
I figured out the value of a take-away.
A radio take-away is no different than one in print or online; it’s about finding an original angle. The difference with radio is to offer something that can be remembered or acted upon—a free family event, an upcoming charity dinner or a great hike. We don’t often look for them when we’re writing stories or putting together web pages, but they’re essential for brand allegiance.
I painted clearer pictures.
The show-don’t-tell mantra applies, of course. Listeners want to “see” the wine dinner you’re discussing or sweet jazz concert under the stars.
After all these years, I don’t get nervous any longer, and the producer and I banter about our kids and sports before my airtime.
But after each segment, I go back and listen to my cadence, my words and my storytelling.
It’s the least I can do for our brand and, perhaps most important, our audience.
[image: flowizm]
