How To Elevate Your Stories By Doing Little Things

Leave the Stutters

The more editing I did, the more I realize that cutting stutters or stalling words is not always the solution to a better sounding podcast. Firstly, it can make you sound very unnatural. But the most important thing is, you're removing the emotions from the tapes. Uhms does not always mean stutter or stalling. It can also show that the character is thinking, or struggling, or even better, having a battle in his/her mind to say something. By removing these elements from the tape, your character can fall completely flat.

Yes, too many stuttering can sound very annoying. That's why now, I'm listening more carefully to the tapes, sometimes I even listen to that one part multiple times to know what the "uhms" represents. And just remove if it gets a little too much.

A Lesson on Micro-Context

In-depth Creative is a team of detail-oriented perfectionists. We’d take our time with a content material as long as we can get our point(s) across in the best way possible. Quality content is akin to oxygen to our day-to-day conducts, but one thing I picked up from the team’s customs is to always put an extra attention on what I call as “micro-context”.

Micro-context is the supporting imagery you use in a hard-hitting visual work, the piece of news headline you use as a translucent background for a public figure’s spotlight feature. It’s making sure your 3-second video clip of a Reformation protest actually comes from 1998, not just a ‘seemingly fitting’ aesthetic stock video that you find.

In short, micro-context is the non-expository art of keeping your audience’s tunnel vision on what matters. I think that’s such an important lesson for every creative. This takes ‘detail-oriented’ to a whole new level, no?

Saved By 1-Minute Ambience Backup

When recording outside of your studio or normal podcast set up, remember to record one minute of room ambience before you begin your interview/discussion. This will allow you to have a backup recording of the background ambience for emergency use.

I learned this tip when I made a huge mistake during an interview on location. I learned after the interview that my mic wasn’t connected properly so my voice wasn’t recorded at all! Lucky, I had recorded a few minutes of room ambience with no one speaking which I used to revoice over my comments and questions to save the episode.

Building Communities

This is pretty tricky, even for us at times. Starting a community especially for your growing followers is difficult because it involves you to create different types of content. Whether it's on instagram, tiktok, reddit or facebook, it is endless!

What is important to have when creating those social media sites for your shows are not always the content you put out but how you engage your listeners. They always want to get to know you, whether it's how you run the show, create your content or you as a personality. It's important to keep responding to comments and being as engaging as possible. No one likes a disingenuous person, let alone podcaster.

Why Researchers Should Get Into Podcasting

This week I learned that Radiolab’s host, Lateef Nasser, is a PhD graduate from Harvard. Radiolab is one of my favorite shows out there--it’s intellectual but quirky, thoughtful and evocative. So, I was so happy to learn that there are more and more researchers or “academic people” who are doing podcasting pretty much full time.

It debunked the idea that podcasting is a thing mainly for a media person or broadcaster. Behind every great story are curious-driven researchers working on gathering data and looking at issues from a different lens. As someone who came from a research background, it makes me feel like I’m on the right track, it makes so much more sense!

Wear your detective hat and start looking for stories!

All podcasters out there might agree that finding a great story to tell to the audience is one of the most challenging processes in podcasting, especially for those producing non-fiction narrative storytelling podcasts just like us. Although sometimes a story can appear like magic, in most cases, they are not. In fact, most of the time we have to put extra efforts to find one. A colleague recently said to me that the process of finding a good story is basically a detective work. You can start from concepts, ideas or questions you have in mind. And from this point, you have to talk to informants, observe what’s happening around, collect evidence, do the research, ask questions to the right people, examine clues, and finally "uncover the truth".