So You Want To Write Radio Drama?

‘A useful new addition to NHB’s eclectic So You Want series. A radio dramatist and a radio play producer, the authors take you step by step through the process, from defining what radio drama is and how it works, to creating your own and, most importantly, the practicalities of marketing your work. It’s an inspiring book which left me thinking that perhaps during this bright, shiny new year I ought to hone my creative skills and have a go myself.’

‘A hands-on guide, ideal for aspiring radio writers. Representing two books in one, it tackles both the initial process of writing a script and the daunting progression to getting commissioned. The authors’ passion for radio effervesces throughout and makes for a motivational read.’

Claire Grove, who died in 2013, was a Sony Radio Academy Award-winning radio producer who created over three hundred dramas for BBC Radio 4, Radio 3 and the World Service. She produced Classic Chandler, a landmark series dramatising all eight Philip Marlowe novels, and The Complete Ripley. Awards include: Sony Gold for A Woman in Waiting by Thembi Mtshali, the story of a South African domestic worker; Sony Gold for A Matter of Sex by Nick Stafford; and a Silver Sony for Banana Republic by Greig Coetzee, one of three plays to mark ten years since the first democratic election in South Africa.Career highlights include working with Mike Bartlett on Love Contract and Not Talking, and with Charlotte Jones on The Diva in Me; directing Gary Oldman in Walk Right By Me by Christopher Harris, and Sir Patrick Stewart in Stephen Wyatt’s Double Jeopardy; and recording Nick Darke’s drama-documentary Underground in a Cornish tin mine.Claire was posthumously awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Radio Drama Award in 2014.Stephen Wyatt is the only writer to have won the Tinniswood Award for best radio drama script twice – for Memorials to the Missing in 2007 and Gerontius in 2011. He has written over twenty original scripts for radio and numerous dramatisations including Dante’s The Divine Comedy. He’s also written for television (Doctor Who and Casualty) and his theatre work has been seen everywhere from London’s West End to the Bubble Theatre’s touring tent. In conjunction with New Writing South and the University of Sussex, he created the UK’s first online radio drama course in 2009. His novel, The World and His Wife, was published in 2019.