Title: About stories and scripts
Course: Hörspielwerkstatt / Radio Plays

About stories and scripts

There are dialogues in stories or novels now and then, but often you get descriptions of what is happening or how people or places look like.

Let's look at the following extract. Dialogues (direct speech) are printed in blue and descriptions are printed in orange.

When Tara received the letter, she began to cry. Her best friend hated her and she didn’t understand why. She decided to call Karly.

The phone rang at Karly’s house. "Hello, Karly speaking," Karly answered the phone.

"Hello, this is Tara," Tara replied not knowing what to expect.

(Excerpt from True Friends by Shanna Michael)

This kind of text is perfectly OK for reading, but we'll face problems when it comes to radio plays. In a radio play we can only work with words, sounds or music.

We'll have to find a way to prepare descriptions of what is happening or how people look like for a radio play!