What makes a production boring?
Think of everything in life that’s interesting. Rollercoasters, action movies, dramas, cars, music, love, landscaping, mountains, the list goes on.
How can I make those things boring? I flatten them out. A rollercoaster with no hills, action movie with no action, a drama with no conflict, a flatbed car with no curves to distinguish it, music with a single note and no dynamic contrast, love that never develops, landscaping with just grass.
The story arc has been discussed ad nauseam. As a consumer, we pay no attention to the strings guiding the puppets along the performance, especially if the story line transports you.
As a creator, it’s our job to compose something entertaining, interesting. We must learn to recognize the lines that add surprise.
A fallacy of podcasting hosts is believing they are interesting. We all love ourselves and love to hate ourselves but unexamined we’ll never know how entertaining we are to others.
The best trick I can think of for podcasters is to sit down and listener to your show with someone else. It can be a friend, a stranger, or a spouse. Watch how they react to the show.
They don’t know where the story is headed, nor do they know anything that happened pre or post production. They know what they hear.
Do they seem bored?
