How to Write a Radio Serial Drama for Social Development- PDF

52 Chapter Four: Blending Story and Message in the Drama Plot
Guidelines for Creating
Original Stories
1. Base the drama on the
realities of the audience
members’ lives, including:
• their current
problems,
• stories and
characters they like,
and
• their physical
environment.
2. Create realistic
characters who have lives
outside the message.
3. Include unexpected twists
in the plots.
4. Be creative and original in
developing plots.
• The family suffers economic hardship because they have too many
children; and
• A wise counselor and advocate, often a school teacher, works hard to
persuade people to listen to the health worker’s advice on family
planning.
While all these events do occur commonly, the writer needs to find ways to
make each serial new and fresh—even when it communicates message and
events that have been covered by other writers in other times and places. The
following guidelines can be useful in avoiding clichéd stories.
Guidelines for Creating Original Stories
1. Base the plot, characters, and conflict of the drama on the realities of
the audience members’ lives. Visit and find out what problems of real
and lasting concern currently exist in the listeners’ community. Use one
of these problems as the main plot of the serial, even if it is unrelated to
the behavior the project is addressing. The message can be brought in
just as successfully through the sub-plots as in the main plot.
Basing the main plot on whatever problem is currently of
greatest concern to the audience will attract and hold the
listeners’ attention.
Find out what types of stories and characters the
audience enjoys. Observe which types of people community
members admire and which types they dislike. Discover what
type of humor appeals to them, which behaviors they find
amusing, and which people they like to copy. Base the
drama’s characters on these types.
Examine the audience’s physical environment closely.
Consider whether something in this environment could
give rise to a crisis and dramatic climax instead of relying
on the message to provide the conflict. The story, for
example, could revolve around a young couple who are
expecting their first child. While the pregnancy has gone
well, there is a raging rainstorm on the day the mother goes
into labor. The river breaks its banks, making it unlikely that
the health worker will be able to reach the young mother to
attend the birth. The event of the birth can be used to teach
important lessons about pre- and post-natal care, but the
crisis and climax of the story do not rely on the stereotypical
event of something going wrong with the birth itself.
2.Create characters who have lives outside the topic being
addressed by the serial. If the central uniting character is a
female health worker, for example, the story should not show
her only in the health clinic and in conversation with her
clients. She also should have a private life—perhaps with a
husband and children—and personal problems with which
the audience can sympathize.