Writing the script for an audio play is an interesting experience. I’d never done it before. The sum total of my fiction writing consists of short stories in the traditional form, original and fanfiction, and one novel currently in progress (it’s been in progress for quite some time, but that’s another story). 

The thing about an audio script is that there’s no narrator. Well, I guess there could be, but in my script there was none. And there’s no descriptive text. Nothing, really, but dialog and place holders for sound effects. Those are the tools at your disposal. 

Dialog becomes subtly different. Sometimes characters have to talk to themselves when they are alone in a scene, otherwise the listener would have no idea what was going on. When more than one character is present, you sometimes have to include descriptions of surroundings that, in TV or movies, would require only a camera shot to give you the information you need. 

“Look at that!”

“It’s a wall of metal. I’ve never seen one so tall.”

You get the idea. 

This may be why I’ve always found the book, TV and movie adaptations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy unstatisfying. The script was originally written for an audio play. So when Arthur Dent screeches, “What the hell is that!?” And Ford Prefect calmly answers, “It’s a fleet of flying saucers”, that works on audio. In a visual medium, the camera would simply show you a fleet of flying saucers. For me, it’s the original audio version that’s the real McCoy.  

Last year I was invited to contribute a script to what would have been a series of Doctor Who fanfiction audio dramas. That series never materialized and was presumably lost in the Time Vortex. Still, writing it was tremendous fun and now I’m pleased to add that script to the collection of fanfiction on this site. Click on “FanFiction” at the top of this page, then on “Resurgence of the Cybermen”.