An audio drama script is laid out so that everything the audience will hear is easy to find: who's speaking, what sounds are heard and where the music goes. Each of those is a numbered cue, with a label on the left and the content on the right. The clearest way to learn the format is to see it working, so here's a complete two-minute scene, followed by notes on why each cue is written the way it is.
The example: “Low Tide”, scene 1
SCENE 1. BOAT SHED - EVENING
1 SFX WIND. A LOOSE SHEET OF TIN BANGS OVERHEAD.
WAVES, CLOSE.
2 SFX A PADLOCK RATTLES. A HEAVY DOOR SCRAPES
OPEN.
3 NORA (off, approaching) You said you had the
key, Sam.
4 SAM I had a key. Turns out Dad owned about
forty.
5 SFX FOOTSTEPS ON BOARDS. THE DOOR SWINGS SHUT.
THE WIND DROPS TO A MUFFLED HOWL.
6 NORA (close now) God. It still smells like
him.
7 SAM It smells like diesel.
8 NORA That's what I said.
9 SFX A BOX DRAGGED ACROSS THE FLOOR. GLASS JARS
CLINK.
10 SAM Nora. Is that... he kept the answering
machine?
11 NORA Don't.
12 SFX A PLASTIC BUTTON: CLUNK. TAPE HISS.
13 MACHINE (filtered, flat) You have. One. Saved
message.
14 SFX BEEP.
15 DAD (on tape, wind behind him) Nora, it's me.
I'm down at the shed. Tide's wrong for it
but I'm going out anyway. If your brother
calls... (beat) Tell him I fixed the
engine. He'll know what that means.
16 SFX CLICK. TAPE HISS, THEN NOTHING. THE TIN
SHEET BANGS ONCE.
17 SAM (after a long beat) He never fixed the
engine.
18 NORA No.
19 SAM Then what does it...
20 SFX OUTSIDE, MUFFLED: AN OUTBOARD MOTOR COUGHS.
CATCHES. RUNS.
21 MUSIC A SINGLE LOW NOTE. HOLD UNDER.
22 NORA (barely a whisper) Sam. Who else has a
key?
23 MUSIC UP AND OUT.
Cue by cue: why it's written this way
Cues 1 and 2: the place arrives before the people
There's no narrator saying “a boat shed by the sea, on a windy evening.” Wind, loose tin, waves and a padlock do it in five seconds. Opening a scene with its soundscape is the audio equivalent of an establishing shot: the listener knows where they are before anyone speaks.
Cue 3: perspective is movement
(off, approaching) tells the actor and the sound team that Nora starts away from the microphone and walks in. That's how audio stages an entrance. By cue 6 she's (close now), and without a single description the listener has felt two people cross a threshold.
Cues 4 to 8: relationships without introductions
Nobody says “as your sister.” “Dad owned about forty” gives us siblings, a father and the fact that he's gone, all in a joke. Then three short lines (it smells like him / it smells like diesel / that's what I said) tell us how each of them is grieving. Keep an eye on length too: most lines here are under ten words. Short lines are easier to act and much easier to follow by ear.
Cue 5: a door changes the room
When the door shuts, the wind drops to a muffled howl. That change in the sound is what moves us indoors. If your scene goes from outside to inside, write the acoustic change into the cue, or the listener stays out in the weather.
Cue 10: names, said out loud
“Nora.” Sam says her name to get her attention, just as she said his on her way in (cue 3). Listeners can't see faces, so each character needs to be named in dialogue early in the scene. The trick is finding a moment when a person really would say it.
Cues 12 to 15: a device that earns its exposition
The father has to deliver information, and a monologue from a dead man would be hard to justify. A saved message solves it: the tape gives him a reason to explain himself, and (on tape) gives his voice a texture no one will confuse with the living characters. Phones, radios, recordings and voicemail are an audio writer's best friends, because the filter does the work a costume would do on screen.
Cue 16: silence is a cue
“Tape hiss, then nothing.” The pause is written down, with a single bang of tin to make the quiet feel longer. In audio, a silence nobody wrote is a silence somebody will fill.
Cue 20: the turn is a sound
The biggest beat in the scene has no words. An outboard motor starts, the same engine we've just been told was never fixed. The listener makes the connection half a second before the characters do, which is exactly where you want them. If you can hand your plot twist to a sound effect, do it.
Cues 21 to 23: music with a job
The music cues say what the music does: hold under, up and out. They don't describe its mood in adjectives, and they don't name a song. The low note arrives after the motor, not before it, so it underlines the turn instead of announcing it.
The format, in five rules
- One number per cue. Every speech, effect and music entry gets its own number, restarting with each scene. “From cue 15” is how a recording session finds its place.
- Labels on the left. Character names, SFX and MUSIC in capitals, so each department can scan for its own cues.
- Effects and music in capitals, dialogue in sentence case. The eye separates what's spoken from what's played.
- Directions in parentheses, usually at the start of the line: (off), (close), (filtered), (beat). Keep them about distance and delivery, not feelings.
- A scene heading with place and time, even though nobody will read it out: the sound designer needs it.
There's no single industry standard for audio drama the way there is for screenplays, and you'll see variations. What matters is that the layout is consistent and that a producer could mark up every cue without asking you a question.
Try it: turn a prose line into sound
Take a sentence that would be fine in a screenplay and impossible in audio:
Nora notices an old photograph on the wall and her eyes fill with tears.
Nothing in it makes a sound. Rewritten for the ear:
24 SFX A PICTURE FRAME LIFTED OFF A NAIL.
25 NORA (unsteady) He kept this one? I look
about nine.
The frame tells us there's a photograph. The line tells us who's in it. The delivery tells us about the tears. That's the whole craft in three lines, and it's worth doing as an exercise with any page of prose you have lying around.
Write it and hear it
Scriptico has a radio format built for this layout: a label column and a text column, dedicated elements for sound effects and music, and cue numbers that count themselves and restart in every scene. Since an audio script is literally what the audience will hear, the best way to review it is to listen. The AI table read plays the scene back with a different voice for each character and performs directions like (barely a whisper) instead of reading them aloud, so you can catch the line that's too long before you book a studio.
If you'd like the principles behind the example, start with how to write an audio drama script.
Frequently asked questions
What does an audio drama script look like?
It's a list of numbered cues. Each has a label on the left (a character name, SFX or MUSIC) and what's heard on the right, with delivery and distance notes in parentheses.
What does SFX mean in a script?
Sound effects: any sound that isn't speech or music, from a door closing to a storm.
How long is a page of audio drama?
It varies with the layout and with how much sound there is between lines, so page count is a rough guide at best. The reliable way to time a script is to read it aloud with a stopwatch.
Does an audio drama need a narrator?
No. Many use one, but a scene can establish place, action and time with sound and dialogue alone, as the example above does.