Story for Podcasts is for anyone working on a podcast idea, whether at the planning stage or in production, for all formats and genres, from history stories to celeb chats, news analysis to true-life crime to fiction.

The workshop is suitable if you:

• Want to shape up a podcast idea ready to pitch
• Have found it tough to get responses to your pitches and enquiries
• Know you need to get better at story structure
• Have your research and interviews in place, but are having problems pulling everything together
• Are at the edit stage and still storylining
• Would like to fine-tune your storytelling, and learn what to dial up and down
• Know something’s not working, but can’t work out what and why
• Can dedicate 2 days to the learning

This professional training allows you to:

• Develop or revise your understanding of the mechanics of successful storytelling for podcasts
• Master the key elements every podcast needs and recognise the blueprint underlying an effective story
• Understand the value of story in series-planning, pitching and producing continuing podcast series
• Become more familiar with the language and grammar of story
• Stress-test any podcast story idea
• Diagnose why a podcast isn’t working well, and simple ways to remedy common story issues
• Gain the confidence to apply the learning to your proposed or existing podcast

Each course is divided into sessions. These sessions are released one by one (weekly or fortnightly, depending on the course).

There’s no need to log on at a set time. You can work through the learning materials whenever suits you, day or night, wherever you are in the world. Just complete the assignments and join forum discussions by the session deadline.

Our teaching method is based on the science of active learning: you read/listen/watch, try out, share and reflect. It’s a social experience – you become part of a small group, feeding back on each other’s writing to build a supportive bunch of readers you trust. Find out more here.

Zoom Workshop Day 1 – 10am – 4pm (UK time)

Morning

• A deep-dive look at the power of story shapes, the classic story engine and how this works in podcasts
• Focus on how podcast stories work over three and five acts, and how to wring out maximum engagement
• Creating drama and audience engagement using end-of-act turning points, midpoint, symmetry and series structure
• Empathy and emotional engagement – how to make your podcast more relatable, the key narrative questions to break a story, and knobs to dial up and down to make any podcast more effective
• Includes: short practical exercises, examples from successful podcasts, Q&As.

Afternoon

• John splits participants into small groups to complete a fun practical story-creation exercise to test their narrative skills. At the end of the afternoon, John will offer feedback on each group’s story and draw conclusions.

Zoom Workshop Day 2 – 10am – 2pm (UK time)

• Pitch your podcast idea or revised story plan to John Yorke for incisive feedback to help you hit the ground running.

Join our alumni – After your workshop, you can join our online alumni community where you’ll meet our growing network of past students. You’ll be able to.

• Rejoin your classmates in a private forum
• Continue to access an archived version of your workshop materials
• Meet alumni from other courses and share work for feedback
• Join discussions about writing, editing and the industry
• Attend live chats with guest writers and industry folk

Mentoring and one-to-one feedback – Our team offer mentoring, script reads and reports. We are happy to quote by job or script, or to arrange a longer mentoring scheme as you work on a specific story idea. We’ll create a package to suit you, so please email [email protected].