Podcast Scripting: How NOT To Plan And Structure Your Episodes

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to feed. You'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard, along with my co host Tom Hazzard, are gonna talk about how not to script a podcast. That's right. Not scripting.

Something Tracy and I are both very passionate about and have strong opinions on, let's put it that way. So we're gonna tell it like it is.

I never have strong opinions about anything.

Never. Never. What are you talking about?

That's right.

No. But this is really pretty serious stuff for the vast majority of all of us independent podcasters. There's a few exceptions to this, but I think they're pretty obvious. You know, when you have a news program and you're reading quotes from the AP or Reuters or something, or you have obviously a scripted podcast that's acted by profess professional actors, there are differences. There are places where scripting is okay, but for all of us independent podcasters, it's another story.

So I did well over almost 400 episodes of the Binge Factor and interviewed podcast hosts, and I could tell every single time with 100% accuracy when someone scripted their show. So even if you think you can disguise it, it's not the case.

Well, so let's talk about that. Tracy, let's share. Why is scripting so bad? Why? Because that's our opinion. Being authentic and delivering your message through your voice. Good scripting, Very, very bad. Why?

There are scripted shows, shows that belong scripted, that are entertainment. Those are not the shows we're talking about right now. But I can even tell you when that's gone badly there. So I interviewed a couple of comedians who did a really good job of preparing the show. The show was, like, about. I don't know, it's about the royals or something like that. I can't even remember the name of the show anymore. But it was this sort of like, Follow the Royals through, like, all this stuff. And so it had all this historical prep and there was a script, but they were comedians comfortable with improv. They would get the script, they would ingest it, they would, like, not quite memorize it, but they would make it Their own. Even still, you could really tell when they would default out of the banter and into the script. And if you think your audience doesn't know that, you're making a huge mistake. So very few, even professionals, can get away with that and make it something good. And remember, like TV professionals, news professionals, these people do this all the time. They have a teleprompter, and most often you won't. If there's video, there'll be this telltale.

Look down or off to the side. I mean, unless they have a teleprompter, and then they can look directly at the camera. That's true. But even when you are reading a teleprompter, unless you're very experienced at it and you've really reviewed that copy ahead of time so you know what's coming. The emphasis on certain words is wrong. The pitch of your voice, the energy of what you're delivering, it's so unnatural that it sounds bad.

So what's the guy who's been on Saturday Night Live like, the longest? His name is Keenan, I think, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget his last name, but, yeah, he's long time.

Anyway, he's been on the Saturday Night Live the longest. And it annoys the heck out of me when I'm watching a script. I think he's funny. Absolutely. Like, drop on the floor, roll around laughing, funny. But you can see his eye reading the cue cards.

Every actor on Saturday Night Live does that because they write this stuff days before they aired, and nobody really has time to memorize that script very well.

Right. But for him, he's the one person where it's so obvious that he's reading it that it bugs me. Where a lot of them can get away with it. That's an unusual thing. This is what I'm saying. Even professionals aren't always good at this. So this is not something you should expect to be good at.

Yeah, even. You know, there are some videos on our website, poditized.com, tracy, on a couple of our pages, like for the podcast Power Appraisal. That's one of them where I've recorded a video and it's not very long. It's a couple minutes, and it's scripted. And even though I probably did it a dozen times before I got one that I was happy with, even the one that is borderline acceptable, if you watch this show, you watch any of these videos, or you listen to this podcast and then you go look at that video, you can tell, oh, Tom, you're reading A script, or you're scripting that, or you're trying to memorize it, but you're still looking at certain words or bullet points, trying to make sure, you know, you don't forget them. It's just not natural. And what do podcast listeners want above all? They want authenticity. They like watching shows where the hosts and all the participants are being real with them. And that's really what we're talking about here in no scripting. But there's some other interesting things to talk about and some sort of examples.

So let's talk a little bit about why scripts go so wrong. Right? So the script themselves, not how you deliver it, is also wrong. Number one, we don't speak how we write. So by the mere fact you're writing it down, you are doing something that is unnatural and that is contributing to the problem.

That's very true. And I know this because, I mean, you have done a lot more episodes than me, Tracy. I've done. I don't know, I probably participated in somewhere around 1700-2000 episodes of podcasts over the years. You've done about twice that, I think. And I can tell you that it is not only very obvious, the energy being different, all these different things, but I can tell you that when we don't speak how we write. And how do I know this? Because I'm not a writer. I am really not a writer. Okay. Tracy's a real writer, a good one. And you would not speak. What would I do?

So what would you do, Tom? Right. So if you're a podcast host, you're kind of a speaker, right? It's very common for it to be that way. And what do you do? You would get somebody to help you write this. So, number one problem, after you don't speak how you write is that you got somebody else to write the script. So it's not yours. Now, it doesn't matter if you got a human to do it or an AI to do it, it's still not yours. It's not in your voice. It's not in the way that you would say things. It's not even your own ideas completely. If you've had somebody script this separately from you, Right. I mean, how many times is it? Sometimes we'll get a description and I'll rewrite the entire thing. Because it's not what we're going to talk about, this coaching call, because our angle on it is so different than what someone would commonly think. Because our advice is unconventional. Yeah, right. So that's really the case. So there's this somewhat famous influencer.

Oh, I would say quite famous.

Quite famous, yeah. Written lots of books, had lots of success on television.

A nationally known recognized name of which we're not gonna mention because we don't wanna really bash him.

No, and it's not about bashing him at all. It's that he was preparing videos and doing all of these things and he had had the what the scripts written by AI. The team purposefully did that because he was doing something that had a conversation about spiritual. So like the two things were going hand in hand. And so he wanted the AI to write it so that it would have that kind of angle. But what happened is as he's reading it, as he's giving, doing the videos from it, he disagrees with what is written there. And you can hear the hesitation in his voice or the like, do I rewrite this, do I say this, do I contradict it? Or do I just keep going because I don't want to do this video again? Like, whatever's going through his mind, you know, you can hear it in the sound that comes across from reading it. So there. When you don't 100% buy into the script, you'll have a hesitancy that your.

Audience will hear and your audience will feel it. Right. They won't believe you, you will be less credible on the topic. So how you deliver it, it's always much better if it's coming truly from you, from the heart, from your brain. However you think of it, it's obvious if you script it.

So I had another podcaster that I interviewed on the Binge factor and he did two a day and his whole goal was to have blogs on his website. Like it made his money from web ads, right from pay per click. So he needed content and he knew that when he put the video or the audio file onto the page that he would get more Google traffic and make more money off of his site. So this was his strategy. So he honestly really didn't care about how his podcast sounded. Just didn't matter to him as much as that he plugged it out. And so he would write blogs, he would write two a day and he would read them. And so it was kind of a short show. I would say it's not even five minutes, seven minute show kind of thing, but he would write them out and it would be a written blog. I could tell the difference though, when he switched from what was probably like Tom and I know this, the Romanian blog farms that write all the content for you because like, there was a big trend of doing that and I guess to say in the about 10 years ago, about 2015ish, there was a big trend of using them for this and they were very cheap and you could get like a blog for 15 bucks and then you'd make way more money off of the site. So it was like, well worth doing that. So you could tell when he switched from that to AI, it got a little bit better. There was a little less garbage in it, like resaying, resaying, resaying. But there was so many filler words that didn't make sense as he's reading it and saying it. So many filler phrases that were just like, not what I call nonsense phrases, things. A good editor should strike that out. But then you wouldn't have the word count you wanted to, and that's why he left him in. And you could just tell the difference. And so I know it didn't harm his website traffic because at that point in time, when I interviewed him, they didn't know what to do. But they weren't blocking AI, they weren't screening for it. They weren't doing any of those things back then. But you could definitely tell the difference. And there is no reason for someone to listen to that show. That's why he couldn't make money off the podcast.

And that gets you saying he was writing a blog, either conventionally or having them written by AI or maybe some blog farm somewhere or ghostwriter. So writing it the conventional way and then delivering that as a podcast.

Yes.

He must really have not cared about the quality of the podcast then.

He couldn't. And this is what I'm saying is like there was a reason he could make money off of his website because the SEO was all crammed in there, but the podcast had no value. No one wanted to listen to that.

Yeah, I mean, actually, the whole concept of having blogs on your website for SEO, I mean, obviously everybody listening to this show for any length of time knows that that's something we believe very strongly in. But it's going the other direction, speaking your way to the blog, taking the human pattern, imperfect grammar and word order of how we speak and turning that into a blog. Google regards that kind of text as very original and valuable and ranks it higher for the keyword phrases that are in it. So we're very much in favor of that. And every podcaster, if you're not doing that, you're missing a huge opportunity for yourself, even if it's just to find more people to Find your show. But there's also other, like Tracy was saying, monetization options from that, that come from that.

Right. And so what you have to remember is a blog is not a script. Right? That's the difference here. A blog is not a script. This is not dialogue. And that's why it fails. It is not going to resonate with your audience and it is going to, Tom. And I know that scripted shows do significantly worse quit at a faster rate from podcasting than non scripted shows. And there are two reasons for it. One is the audience doesn't come, and two, it's a heck of a lot of work and most people don't have the bandwidth to keep it up. So those shows will not succeed in the podcasting ecosystem and listeners don't really want them anyway. Like I said, again, this is not entertainment shows. This is strictly more of the how to shows, more of your entrepreneur shows, more of your vice shows. Right? They want something very authentic. They want to know what you really think. And that doesn't come across well in a script. So that's scripting an entire show, Tom. Right. Like that is definitely on our no no list. But sometimes we need to script our intros or our bios or a teaser or an opener. We need to script a little part of that because we have to get it into a certain time segment. We're really concentrating on boosting up our video shorts, our YouTube shorts, or other things like that. And so we think about these things. But I also think that it's a mistake there as well, to do a.

Full on script, especially in the beginning, in the intro to your show. I think it's a big mistake. I think you agree with me there, Tracy, right?

Yeah. Because everyone will tell you that the first 30 seconds to one minute is absolutely critical to draw someone into your video or your podcast show. Absolutely critical. And if in that first minute you're reading something, you miss the energy of drawing them in. And the energy is more what will attract them than the actual words being said because they aren't paying attention yet.

Yeah, I see it happen a lot where a podcaster and honestly, it doesn't really matter how the structure of the show is done, if they're recording the intro last or if they're doing it all linearly in one take where the guest is on the meeting riverside or a zoom meeting with you, and then you introduce them and start reading their bio as a part of it while they're there reading the bio. I really also don't agree with now I know, there may be some important points and details and should you have some key points and bullet points written down that you can reference and read? Yes, you can. And I know that may be important for some people. You're not going to memorize everything about their bio, but have three bullet points. You don't have to give a whole chapter of their life, you know, their entire synopsis of their life in this introduction, just a few key points. And then you can have a full bio in your blog post or in the episode description or somewhere else for people to read.

So I take it, Tom, that usually the bio that they send me as I take it and I blow it up really big because, you know, my eyesight's not so great. I mean, I have contacts on, but I don't want to put my reading glasses on to read it, right? So that's been a godsend because it makes me not read it. So. But what I do is I, I blow it up and I highlight or bold face anything that I don't. I don't want to get their name of their book wrong. I don't want to get the name of their company wrong. I don't want to get their name wrong. Like, whatever it is, I might boldface those things or highlight them in that larger script. And honestly, because I'm in the energy of speaking, that's the only thing I see. And that helps to draw you out of actually reading it. So if you feel like you need a, I'm going to call it a baby step in between, just a bullet point with those items on it, which is really what I do most of the time, but is to take that whole thing and then just boldface the important concept that you want to get across, the important five things, three things that are in that bio that you don't want to mess up because there's nothing more embarrassing than messing up somebody's college or somebody's book name when they're on the air with you, that sets the tone badly when you start your interview. So especially if you're doing it in a linear format. I get why you want the crutch of the bio, but let's break ourselves of it a little bit and let's get ourselves standing on our own by helping ourselves by doing some tricks like this.

Well, pro tip, that's also why we really don't recommend you record everything linearly in your interview in the first place. Conduct the interview first and then record an intro to the guest later and then just put it at the front of the episode so that you don't have any of those awkward moments and set that bad tone with your guests. It's not a great way to start what should be otherwise a very engaging conversation. Right?

Yeah. And so the idea of having things that are not scripted doesn't mean that you have no structure. Right. There's a difference between scripting and structure, and that's a little bit of what we're reinforcing here. We want you to have structure, but we don't want the script to drain all the energy from the show.

Structure's important. You know what? I'm a free talker, and sometimes that can go wrong when you swing the pendulum too far the other way. But that's not what we're here to talk about today.

Cut down the rabbit hole.

Doesn't mean I'm not prepared, though. A little outline, some key bullet points of things I want to remember to talk about. Tracy's holding up. For those of you listening to the podcast, and you might want to go check the video out at this point.

These are the notes from this show. Tom and I prepped ahead of time. We do care that we're aligned with the order of things, that we have a structure for you. We care about that. How many times have I glanced down at it? Twice.

But you want to have a notepad with some of those key points. So that. And I've done it, too. I get to this point, I'm, like, making a really good point, and then in that moment, I forget, what was it going to say next? And you quickly glance at your bad, and then you absolutely know what the next point you want to make is. And so you're guided to go ahead and continue on with the real important points that you set out to make. So preparation and structure. Yes, Have a roadmap. But it's just a sign now and again to make sure you're going the right speed or you're going down the right road. You take the right fork in the road. Whatever that is, don't script it.

So the one thing that I want to end with on the structural part is like, you're like. But I have no script, and my show is a solo cast. Like, okay, I feel like I need to. I'm providing a lesson or I'm providing it. Look, Tom and I do this every week. Right. For you. And we have a plan for what we want to accomplish because we are very, very focused on our topic that we're giving you a coaching, we're giving you a training, and we Want to be specific about that. We want to get everything in that we think about that. So structure's still happening, but never once did we script all of this out.

We're also being very intentional, and we have a discussion before every coaching call. But, all right, we know what the topic is. What are the things we think are important to talk about, and we have an intention of what are some of the keyword phrases we want to work in that maybe we're trying to expand some of the topics that our website comes up in Google search for. We're actually thinking about some of the things. And it's not like we have a dozen different phrases or words we're putting in. No, we're talking about a small handful, three, four, five at most. And we had a discussion about that, you know, oh, we want to make sure we work this in because that's really important for search. So that's another part of the structure, not just of the content you're providing, but the structure that when you can. And I'm gonna say when to all of you, especially if you're not doing it yet, but when you create a blog post for every episode, which is gonna be in your best interest long term, that it actually Google scans it and gets some of those things in there, you want to be known for. You want to. When people search on that subject, you want your episode, your blog post, your website to come up in that search. That's another structural thing I just wanted to mention. That's important.

Yeah, but you all are probably sitting there going like, okay, how do I do this alone? Because Tom and I do this together, right? So this is a lot harder for you to be doing this alone and not feel like you need the script. So I'm going to provide you the simple structure. When you want to get someone in, the most important thing that you want to give them is context. That's the first thing that you want to get across. Why should they listen to this show? Why is this topic important? Why is this guest important? It's your why. You lead with your why. Start with why. Right? Like, this is exactly what you should be doing every single time. Leading with the bio doesn't do that. That's leading with the who. Now, you might have a really important who, but why is that who important to your listeners? Why is it important to your show? Why is it important to your topics? Why is it important to your niche that you're an expert in? Right. Why has to come first on everything we do, and only you can answer that that's the critical part that I want to get across. No blog writer who's a ghost writer or some blog farm, no AI understands the why unless you tell it. This is the one thing you know. Anyone can read a script that's not uniquely you. If you want to be the host to a show that is in demand that people come back for binge on, listen to every word, repeat it, share it with other people, then you must be giving them something that only you can give, because otherwise they'll just find somebody else.

That is probably the most important piece of advice that our listeners are gonna get out of this episode, Tracy, is to lead with the why. Because you're right. Anybody can do the who. Everybody's always focused on who am I going to have as guests on my show. They are focused probably more on the who. But what is really important, you got to remember, listeners are searching through literally millions of podcasts now, maybe not in every category. Maybe in your category you're in. There's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands in your particular general genre. But people are looking for what's in it for them. One of a speaker who I really enjoyed, who's no longer speaking, but I really went to enjoyed all of his speeches, would always talk about wiifm what's in it for me? And that's what listeners are looking for. And sometimes the who will attract them if they know who they are, but.

You gotta give them the context of why. I mean, look, as I told you before, almost 400 episodes of the Binge factor, and yeah, I had a show that was possibly bingeable. Now, sometimes it wasn't, and I told you it wasn't afterwards. But the idea was, is why is this host worthy of being on my show? Why is this host an example for you? Why is the critical factor? And that's the first thing you want to get across if you want someone to stay and listen and get across it in an energetic, excited way about why you're bringing on this guest, right? And then you go to the who, the who, what, where, when. Like, you can do that somewhere in that scope that's covering your bio, that's covering all the things that's leading them up to. Then the conversation. Then you have your conversation. Now, this is an interview episode, but here again, what we forget is our clothes. We forget that only we can provide what was valuable. They might have heard it, but they're not at the stage of podcasting that Tom and I are. They might have missed the most valuable point. Our Job is to make sure and point that out in our clothes. That can't happen in a script. A call to action can happen in a script, but it's a sales pitch. It is not a what did I learn that has me so jazzed and so excited to share this with someone else? What am I going to share from this episode to other people? What am I going to take from this episode and apply myself? Those are things that you, only you, because you are the unique host of the show that you can bring to that. And that has to happen ad hoc. It is an improv item. It is not something that should be scripted or can be scripted because the script didn't apply. The whole episode didn't apply to everything you've heard or everything that was said. So that's in that if you're going for that solo cast model again, you still have to give them action items. You give them something to take away, something that they can do something with and make sure to. To recap the most valuable point. That's another way to do that. At that end. These are the two unique things that you bring that no AI could ever bring. No one who just writes a script could ever bring. This is what you bring that is special, is this contextual perspective. And that's why people are going to listen to your show, binge on it again and again and again.

That's so true. Tracy. I want to throw in one little story which we talked about earlier. I'm going to do it. I don't know if I was going to do it, but I'm going to do it. Whether you like him or hate him, there's a really good book and a movie about Howard Stern and how he became the shock jock that eventually he became. That's a nationally known celebrity. He's actually in his elder years here. Become a very, very good interviewer, surprisingly. And his interviews are really well worth listening to, I think. But before that, when he was really starting out, a local DJ in Connecticut, he was given scripts because they always, if you ever, you know, I'm sure you've all listened to terrestrial radio at some point. They have radio DJs read scripts for ads especially. And a lot of times it's live. Sometimes they, I think, like to pre record them more. But a lot of times it's a live DJ red ad. And before he was anybody, he didn't know anything. He hadn't become Howard Stern yet that anybody knew. He had to read the script and for an ad for some sports sporting goods store and he ad libbed as he's reading it. He went off script, actually, which was. Ended up being a good thing. But he said, oh, you know, when I was a kid, I used to go to this. My parents would take me to that sporting goods store, and they always had what I wanted. And then he kept reading script and the grand opening of this store is next Saturday. So he got caught in a lie that he hadn't really gone to that store. And the point of this is not about really the script or the ad. Living ended up being a good thing because he was really kind of being himself. And afterwards, his wife especially told him, you know, hey, she said, oh, I like the show today. Oh, what'd you like? Well, you know that part where you're talking about that sporting goods store? I thought that was the best. She's like, what are you talking about? I messed up. I lied. No, I know, but you were honest about it. You came clean. You were being real. You were being you. And that's what she liked, and so did other people. So that's just a neat little story. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, Actually, I think it's a pretty good one. Whether you like Howard Stern or not, there's a lot of. It's fun, but there's a lot of interesting things that are, in a lot of ways related to podcasting. Even though that was broadcasting on terrestrial radio, there's things to learn from it.

And, you know, I'm so glad you did mention that story, Tom, because what we really do care about is what you really think. That's why we're listening. We chose your show because we care about what you think. We care about the perspective you bring. We care about the connections you can bring, the great guests that you're going to bring on, or the great topics that you're going to cover. Care about that. That's why we listen to your show. And when you fail to do that, you subcontract that out to a writer or to AI and you fail to bring that perspective and your energy, there's no way you're going to sustain a show. It's not gonna happen. It's why so many shows fail.

Well, plus, I would think as a host, you might get tired of that, too. I mean, there's something to be said for how are you gonna continue? And sometimes it amazes me, after so many years in podcasting and doing this, Tracy, that I still have fun doing this. Part of it's because I have fun doing it with you. And I like our interaction and doing it together. Part of it is I still get very energetic about these things. I'm pretty passionate about what works, what doesn't work, trying to support people to have success doing this. But there always seems to be another niche topic to discuss. Once in a while, we'll revisit an older issue, add some new information that's come about or how things have changed. But if you're not having fun doing it, you're not gonna keep doing it.

Absolutely. I'm so glad you said that, and thank you.

Aw.

I love doing the show with you as well. That is one of my favorite things that we do every week. It's why, you know, even if we have, like, three people show up on our coaching call, we don't care. We still do it because we have a good time doing it.

Plus, we're generating content for our podcast and our website. Right, Right.

It still has a purpose. But the reality is, is that I don't like to do the same thing twice. You know this. I hate to do something that's so repetitive. So scripting something like, you're creating mundaneness into this. You're creating a grind to it. So stop the grind. Stop scripting. Make this something special. Make this really uniquely your perspective, and start to figure out ways to get yourself more comfortable. Take off the training wheels of the script and make this your. You can do it. I believe in you because I have seen so many turn like, what you were just telling the story about Howard Stern. He was not good at this. He became one of. He has become one of the best interviewers. I see the same thing in all of you. Some of you start out rough, but you get better and better the more you do this. It's practice.

It sure is. All right, so I do encourage you to go check out the video if you're on listening to the podcast. See that little pad Tracy held up? It was actually a potatoes custom notepad made for taking notes during podcasting that our customers get. But anyway, there's the blog post for this episode with links to everything we discussed. Will be when this airs as a podcast on podcastregioni.org and of course, our tip library is there, and you can find us anywhere on social media. UnitedWePod. Isn't that right, Tracy?

UnitedWePod.org and podcasters, United.org, either one.

Oh, did I say that wrong? About the. Oh, they're both okay.

They both go to the same place, so you're good either way.

All right. Well, thanks everybody. We'll see you next time. It's been Tom and Tracy on feed. You'd be in.

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