Words
Words are the most important aspect of telling a story in radio drama. Just like words in a book, they are what tells the audience what they need to hear about what’s going on; words are used to describe the current location of a scene and the characters that inhabit it, inform the audience of events and plot twists, give characters a voice and just in general help provide the mental image of the drama in the mind of the listeners. This is why radio drama is such a unique and vastly creative medium, when watching a televised or cinematic drama you are told and shown everything so there’s no need to think any further of it; in radio drama you are given a description which your mind can interpret in any way it wants to, although your told a female character is highly attractive, your mind could make that character look like Jennifer Lawrence or Zooey Deschanel. You have more freedom to create the look you want to create, a process of imagination created entirely by the power of words! Take for instance the following extract from the radio drama adaptation of 'The Hobbit', we are given a vague description of what Gandalf the Grey looks like; not so vague that we are clueless as to what he looks like but just enough to build our own mental image of what he looks like.
Voices
Although words are the most important part of the 'radio drama code', when it comes to the characters, voice is just as important. The voices being heard can set the tone of the entire drama, if you have a narrator talking in a saddened voice then it sets the drama up to be upsetting; if the narrator is talking in a calming, comforting voice then it tells the listener that the drama is going to be light hearted and may have a touch of humour in it. The power of the voice is also important with the individual characters, voices are necessary in order to distinguish one character from another, they can also be used to tell you vital information about the character, what they are doing and how they are feeling; if you hear a character's voice trembling and sniffling every now and then, the audience knows that particular character is feeling upset and is possibly fighting back tears. Referring back to the extract from 'The Hobbit' radio drama, notice how the narrators voice is very calm and gentle, this tells the audience that the story is laid back and enjoyable to listen to.
Ambience
Ambience is a key code when creating a radio drama, it is quiet background noise that is used subtly to inform the listener of the location where the current scene is taking place; for instance, if you heard the sound of birds tweeting and wind softly blowing, you'd know that the scene is taking place in an outdoor area like a field. Although ambience tells the listeners where the scene is set, it doesn't go into detail about every little feature that's present, this is because ambience is used to give the listener an idea of where it's set, they have to create the mental image in their head of what the place and the overall scene looks like; this is what makes radio drama a very personal and highly imaginative media format, the drama could be set in Stantonbury field or Campbell park or anywhere along those lines thanks to ambience, meaning no two person's interpretations are the same. Ambience is also used to create the mood of the scene, In the following scene from the long-withstanding radio drama 'The Archers' has the sounds of birds tweeting, wind blowing and the slight sound of trees rustling in it; these are the sounds that you typically hear in the middle of a field on a calm summers morning, the listener resonates with the ambience and makes the connection in their heads that the scene is set in this calm summer morning in the middle of a field, making it easier for the audience to understand the atmosphere of the events happening as well as helping them paint a better verbal picture of the story in their minds.
Music is just like words in terms of 'radio drama code' as it can be used in many different ways. The most notable way is the theme song and credits song, these are the songs that are played at the beginning and end of a radio drama and gives the drama its identity; these are the most important pieces of music as they have to sum up the show in a short piece of music, if drama has sad themes then the music must reflect that with sad violins and piano playing, if it's a sci-fi drama then the music will be upbeat and use techno instruments to give it a science feel. Music is also used when a scene changes, these are called transitions and are used as jingles to indicate when a scene has ended and a new one is beginning. The 'Doctor Who' radio dramas make use of music like this, the theme song is full of techno instruments and really sells the science fiction feeling that the drama strives to achieve.
Sounds
It's a fair assumption to say that sound is very important in a radio drama, ignoring voices, ambience and music (as they all class as sound and I've already gone into detail about those); sound is used to complete the creative progress of the radio drama and the listener's interpretation of what's happening. Sound is used to tell the listener all the important things that characters are doing or what something important to the overall plot is doing, for instance if we hear a door opening and footsteps afterwards then the audience know that a character has either entered or left a room; or if we hear the sound of book pages being turned while a character is talking, the audience knows that the character is reading something while chatting. An example of sound being used to help build a bigger picture is in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' where we hear an airlock being vented, a door swinging open then our main characters screaming; this tells the audience the airlock our main characters have been trapped in has opened up and chucked them out into space.
Conventions
Cliff Hangers
A Cliff-hanger is a type of ending a radio drama can (and mostly does) have. It is where the story is left in a tight corner or seemingly impossible situation that has the listener biting their teeth, the drama then ends and leaves the audience wondering what happens next; this is done to make the drama seem much more interesting and to ensure that the listener tunes in next week to learn how the issue is resolved. The best example of this would be in the 1938 radio drama of 'War of the Worlds', the story was told in between pieces of ordinary radio music and had each piece of the story end with a cliff-hanger to fool the audience into thinking that the stories events were actually happening; this worked so well that American listeners went into mass hysteria and started preparing their weapons for war, some reports indicate a few people committed suicide out of fear!
Flashbacks
A Flashback is an episode or scene in a radio drama that cuts away from the current story to deliver a relevant story from the past (or in the future with Flash forwards). Flashbacks are an effective way of telling the audience important information while still making them create a mental image of what's happening, these are usually used at the start as 'catch-ups' where the events of a previous episode are summed up neatly so the audience remembers all they need to know for the new episode, all within a short space of time. When a second radio series of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' was made, the opening episode featured various casually done flashbacks to remind the audience what happened in the previous series and what the main characters are doing now, it's essentially setting the stage for a much bigger occurrence.
As the name implies, scene changes are when a scene in a radio drama changes; being able to do this opens the radio drama up to be in more diverse locations and broadens the listeners imagination. Although they are very easy in movies and TV shows, scene changes are much more difficult to do in radio drama; this can be done in two ways: the sound can fade out into silence before fading into a new set of sounds which indicate a new scene, the other way is by playing a familiar jingle that's 4-5 seconds long between the ending of a scene and the start of a new one. (Used in the archers)
Silence
Silence is usually seen as pointless and something that should not exist in a radio drama, however as I proved in the previous description of scene changes, it has its uses. If used at the appropriate time, silence can heighten the emotional impact of a scene, if a character is stunned or searching for words or is thinking then silence is the answer; this helps the listener create a reform with the characters as it is common for these moments to happen in real life and as the old saying goes: "Silence can say more than words ever could." The best example of silence being used effectively in radio drama is in the 1950s 'Gunsmoke', the protagonist has to tell a woman that her husband is dead, the constant pauses and silence conveys to the listener that not only is the protagonist struggling to break this news and shows he is nervous and upset, but it entails the sheer seriousness of the situation and how this is a saddening scene; this makes the scene more powerful and engaging to listen to, it's storytelling that listeners find satisfying and want to hear more of every week.
Just like in literature, narration in a radio drama is a device that aids in telling the story. Narration is when an outside voice (meaning only the audience can hear it) plays and supplies a running commentary/description of what is currently happening in a scene, as radio drama codes and conventions can only go so far to build a mental image, narration is sometimes the only way to get tell the story right; it is also used at the very beginning of a radio drama to tell the audience what they are about to listen to, who is in it and any information from previous episodes they may need to know (refer to flashbacks for more details), as well as being used at the end of a radio drama to tell the listeners when the next episode will be on. The original 'War of the Worlds' radio drama is 100% reliant of narration as it is used to tell the entire story in order to make it more believable and realistic.
