No. 027 To Script or Not to Script (That Is The Question)

Should I use a script? It’s one of the most common questions we get from aspiring first-time Showrunners. In this week’s episode, we analyze when it’s right to use a script … and when it’s not.

But we start with a fun question that was posed in our Showrunner Course forum … based on a dream someone had: if your house was being flooded, and you could only save what you could carry, what items would you grab?

We share what happened in the dream and what our answers are. And we’d love to know yours. Tweet them to us: @ShowrunnerFM, @JerodMorris, @JonNastor.

Then we hop into script talk and discuss the following:

  • Which formats work with scripts, and which ones do not
  • The long-term drawbacks to using scripts
  • Why it’s perfectly fine to use scripts when you’re first starting out (we did!) … but why your goal should be weaning yourself off needing scripts before too long
  • What we mean when we say “use scripts as a tool, not a crutch”
  • How Jerod and Jonny still make use of scripts to this day
  • Why writing is an important preparation tool before you record, even if you’re not scripting exactly what you’re going to say

We did not use a script for this episode of The Showrunner — we never do. But we did use a more detailed outline for this episode than we do for most. If you want to see what our outline looked like, click here.

Then we hop into our listener question of the day, and the question itself actually offers more value than our answer!

The question is from Chris Handy of ToGO.fm, who submitted this:

Here’s a question: I’ve added my podcast below my email signature with the linked text stating, “Are you listening to my podcast?” Using tracking links for this has shown me that this is driving real traffic to my podcast website. What I love about this is that it is often friends or family that I would otherwise never send repeated marketing emails to.

What other *indirect* ways are other folks using to promote their shows that I haven’t discovered yet?

We love Chris’ idea of including your show link in your email signature. We plan to do it ourselves.

And we close with another podcast recommendation from a showrunner pitching you on their own show, and Jerod explains why we’ve chosen to structure the podcast recommendations this way.

This week’s recommendation: Chris Conner explains why you might be interested in Life Science Marketing Radio.

Listen, learn, enjoy …