“Karen was fantastic at distilling years of experience into advice that we could easily comprehend.
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This is a 4-week workshop that meets on Mondays, 6:30-9:30 p.m. from March 13 to April 10 with an additional Showcase on April 24. There will be no class April 3rd for students to have time to work on their projects outside of class.
Everyone’s looking for audio stories that are “narrative.” But how, exactly, do narrative stories differ from traditional radio reports? (Hint: the answer has nothing to do with music or chatty narration.)
In this four-week workshop, WBUR’s Karen Given will deconstruct the elements of narrative storytelling and offer practical, real-world techniques to turn your “reporting” into “storytelling.” You’ll learn how narrative sounds and why it sounds that way. You’ll also learn methods of interviewing for story, discuss options for structuring narrative features, and consider ways to shake out of old habits and embrace a different way of approaching your stories.
With lots of support and encouragement, you’ll apply these techniques over the workshop and produce a 5-minute narrative story.
We recommend this class for intermediate or advanced producers. If you have a grasp on reporting, writing, and producing feature stories in a traditional public radio style and want to deepen your storytelling - this is the workshop for you.
DATES
The workshop meets at the PRX Podcast Garage on Wednesdays, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
3 consecutive classes: 3/13, 3/20, 3/27 with a week off to work (4/3) and final class: 4/10
The Showcase will be held on 4/24
PRICING
The cost of this four-week workshop is $250 for non-members and $200 for members of the Podcast Garage or members of the Harvard Ed Portal (i.e. any Allston-Brighton resident).
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We're offering scholarships for this workshop. Learn more here.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Karen Given is the Senior Producer of NPR’s Only A Game, produced by WBUR in Boston. She’s worked in radio since she was 16 years old, but only made the switch to narrative about four years ago, when she was tasked with transitioning Only A Game to a narrative/storytelling format. That transition required her to stop being simply a listener of narrative shows. Instead she started start dissecting them, to see how they work.
The transition to narrative has been successful for Only A Game – making it NPR’s fastest growing existing weekend show. And using her newly developed narrative skills, Karen won her second national Edward R. Murrow award for sports reporting in 2017.
Our programming is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.