Radio drama never went away; it changed its name. Today it's called audio drama, audio fiction or a fiction podcast, and it's one of the most exciting formats for telling stories. It has one huge advantage: no shoot. And an equally big demand: everything the audience understands has to be heard.
The golden rule: if it doesn't make a sound, it doesn't exist
In a screenplay you can write “Lucía slips the letter into her pocket” and the camera shows it. In audio drama, that action doesn't exist unless we hear it. Every piece of information has to arrive through one of these channels:
- Dialogue. What the characters say (careful not to turn it into exposition).
- Sound effects. A door, rain on a tin roof, footsteps fading away.
- Music. It sets the tone, marks transitions and shows time passing.
- Perspective. Close, distant, behind a door, over the phone: distance tells the story too.
- A narrator, if there is one.
Audio drama script format
There's no single standard, but audio scripts share a few conventions:
- Character names in capitals, followed by their line.
- Sound effects set apart (often as SFX or FX), so the sound team can spot them at a glance.
- Music cues with their function: in, up, under, out.
- Perspective notes in parentheses: (close), (distant), (off), (filtered, on the phone).
- Numbered scenes, so you can rehearse and record in parts.
Here's what a short scene looks like:
MUSIC: A tense sting, then under.
SFX: Rain on a tin roof. A train in the distance.
TOMÁS: (out of breath, approaching) Lucía! You're late again.
LUCÍA: The train was late. The train is always late.
SFX: Paper crumpling.
TOMÁS: (quietly) What does the letter say?
LUCÍA: (beat) Not to come back.
MUSIC: Up and out.
Notice there's no need to describe the letter: the crumpling paper and Tomás's question do the job.
Techniques for telling a story with sound
- Make voices distinct. Listeners can't see faces: if two characters sound alike, they blur. Vary age, pace, register and speech patterns.
- Name characters in dialogue, especially at the top of a scene, so listeners know who's there.
- Keep scenes small. Three or four voices at once is already a lot.
- Use silence. A pause in audio is as expressive as a close-up on screen.
- Effects should tell, not decorate. Every sound should carry information or emotion.
Common mistakes
- Describing what can't be heard. Colors, gestures, looks: if they matter, turn them into sound or dialogue.
- Forced exposition. “As you know, Tom, we've been brothers for thirty years.” Nobody talks like that.
- Scenes with no sense of place. If we can't tell a train platform from a kitchen, the listener gets lost.
- Too many voices at once. In audio, a six-person argument is just noise.
- Never hearing it before recording. The most expensive mistake of all.
Hear it before you record
In audio drama the script is literally what the audience will hear, so the best way to review it is to listen to it. Read it aloud yourself or, better yet, with a different voice for each character.
Scriptico has a radio script format, with elements for sound effects and music, and an AI table read with a voice for every character. Acting directions like (quietly) or (beat) are performed instead of read out, so you can hear the whole audio drama and fix the pacing before you cast it and book the studio.
The bottom line
Writing for the ear means working with fewer tools and more precision: dialogue, effects, music, perspective and silence. If every scene makes sense with your eyes closed, you're on track. And the only way to know is to listen to it.
Want to see all of this on the page? Here's a complete audio drama script example, annotated cue by cue.