Just because it’s drama, doesn’t mean it can’t be funny, or told with a lightness of touch – the Radio 4 Afternoon Play is a great place for single comedy-dramas, and/or stories that seek to make the audience laugh as well as move them.

It’s important for the audience/reader to see in the opening minutes/pages why you are passionate about telling this story.Scripts often start with lots of talking, but stories should grab the reader/listener straight away and surprise us straight away – it’s all too easy to turn off/turn over/tune out – so think about how to use sound to hook the attention.Scripts should try to avoid having too many characters – because radio is not the best medium for a multiplicity of voices – and they certainly wouldn’t say no to more strong female protagonists.Stories need a fresh perspective and you want them to feel in some way ‘adventurous’ – to have a story to tell, to be willing to challenge form (without trying to be clever and ‘innovative’ just for the sake of it).Stories need to have a contemporaneity about them – even if they are not a contemporary setting, what is it that’s contemporary about the reason for telling the story now, for an audience now? (It’s also very very hard to make ‘period’ pieces come to true engaging, convincing life…).Producers enjoy seeing a true diversity of worlds, language (as in idiom), tone, style and stories that are representing the whole of the UK as we know it rather than just a little bit.Radio scripts should feel easy to read – they should flow, have rhythm, not be too dense or text-heavy – if you’re struggling to read a script then an audience will almost certainly struggle to listen to it.We discussed some very useful headline thoughts: ( there’s only so much hilarity you can take in one big chunk.) And we were lucky again (twice in a week, spooky) to have a hugely experienced and knowledgeable BBC colleague – radio drama producer David Hunter - drop by and talk to the readers about how they look at radio scripts and writers for radio. So the readers made a move from comedy to radio drama.

Spooky radio play script