The worlds of radio, comedy and writing have a lot of crossovers as creative industries. With writing being a much older craft, a lot more has been said about it, but i find that a lot of these truisms can be applied across all creative medium. The internet is awash with memorable quotes, truisms and soundbites from a whole host of famous writers about the craft and most of them are various different messages about writing for truth, for joy and most importantly writing often. But one of the most interesting things that I've come across is something that somebody (I believe wrongly) attributed to Stephen King, which is to read 5 times as much as you write. Arguably not something that you necessarily need to apply to every trade, I wouldn't demand that a blacksmith watches 5 times as many forgers as he does himself.
Blacksmithery is the next entertainment industry
But this is something that is interesting to apply to comedy as well and easy enough to accomplish as a stand up because you'll watch 6 other comedians at any amateur night you go to and it's so popular on TV at the moment. But as a radio broadcaster, podcasts similar to what we are doing here at the lock in are things that you have to actively seek out and tie down. It's easy enough to subscribe to plenty of different shows, particularly when they are all available to download for free, but when you have hours upon hours of unheard shows sitting in your podcast library it can be quite daunting to make a start.
The 5:1 ratio is not a standard I can say that I live up to, come close to, or even may be physically capable of achieving. If you consider the fact that from recording to the finished product each lock in podcast represents at least 15 hours of my life (4/5 hours recording and at least twice that post production), each one should demand that I've listened to 75 hours of extra-curricular podcast research. Even just the recording of the show itself would by this rule be the product of 25 hours of podcastery, which is over a solid day of listening. But the very fact that it seems impossible, is perhaps an advantage of the rule. I'm almost certainly never going to be able to achieve it, but at least this way, I always feel like I should be listening/watching/reading more than I am.
I have it on good authority from an artist friend of mine that all of the best artists in the world are thieves at heart. Stealing ideas, techniques and style from their contemporaries and their predecessors unashamedly. But this is widely accepted as true and nobody should complain about it because it's just the way that new ideas and trends are born - from the shoulders of what came before it. So hopefully through my newly enriched passion for other radio podcasts i can find some great ideas to steal and improve. Not to mention that we're always looking for ways to sound more professional and slick when it comes to post-production.
At this point it seems appropriate to mention that I've never actually read a Stephen King novel, on the flawed logic of "It's popular, I probably don't like it". But I've heard a lot recently about what a workaholic he is and it's given me a new found respect for him (one that will eventually manifest itself in the picking up of one of his books). However, in preparation for this post, I made sure to also read at least 5 other Stephen King quotes and though wrongly attributed earlier, he does seem to agree with my argument:
"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." - Stephen King
Also he can be quoted as saying "We came here to fuck shit up" so it turns out he's kind of a bad-ass
No comments:
Post a Comment