A relay race? …with a baton? This episode of How Sound (now called the Sound School Podcast) is itself masterfully woven together from two different reporters’ stories, each woven together from their field recordings. Masterful indeed.
The quote does not hand the baton to the narrator. It’s more like Pam picks up another baton and changes lanes. Regardless, this is classic good writing and structure for radio, especially in new stories. […] Mose Buchele wrote very differently for a recent story on NPR. Mose narrated right up to the quotes in the usual way, handing the baton to the quotes, but then he let the quotes hand the baton back to him when he changed scenes. Not once, not twice, but three times. I was stunned.
~ Rob Rosenthal 2:15 from, https://transom.org/2015/writing-out-of-tape/
Some of us indie podcasters are writing, and trying to weave together a narrative from things we’ve recorded while talking with someone else. It’s not something I do at all [famous last words I suppose], but it struct me as intriguing to those of you who do.
I’ve long thought of a the conversations I have in real time as having a “talking baton.” Sometimes the other person is desparate (even if they don’t realize this is so) to hand off that batton, and grabbing it out of their hands is a gift. Sometimes holding onto it is the gift… Sometimes it gets dropped on the floor… But it hadn’t occurred to me that the baton analogy works equally well in story or narrative construction.