Resonate Podcast Festival’s Chioke I’Anson on blending fiction and nonfiction
The imaginative art form of "docu-fiction" can be one of the best ways to tell the truth. Plus, win $10,000 to make your podcast pilot.
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Hi storytellers –
Back in June, I introduced a concept I called the “Backpack Test” to help you clarify your creative direction and take more risks. In that post, I asked, “Would you be more likely to sustain the effort if you followed your curiosity, no matter how crazy or risky or new-to-you that path seems?”
This question is particularly resonant for me now. I hope after you read this post, it will be for you as well.
Yesterday I learned that I’ve been stuck in a rut I had no idea I was in. I also realized I had skills and experience I’d completely discounted.
I feel almost certain the same is true for you.
Let me explain.
Resonate Podcast Festival Founder Chioke I’Anson
I was interviewing Chioke I’Anson, founder of the Resonate Podcast Festival, this year’s hottest audio conference. For the third year in a row, the festival includes a podcast pitch contest, called the Podcast Pitch Party. Three finalists will present their podcast concepts and trailers to a panel of judges in front of the Resonate audience. The winner takes home $10,000 and receives assistance developing their pilot.
They also get exposure to publishers like Audible and Condé Nast. In years past, finalists and even contestants who didn’t make it to the final round drew the attention of publishers, widened their professional networks, and received invaluable help developing new productions.
The deadline has just been extended to September 15.
The tricky part? Your podcast concept must be what I’Anson calls “docu-fiction,” or a blend of fiction and nonfiction. If you consider yourself a practitioner of one genre — you’re a journalist — or the other — you write novels, screenplays, or audio dramas — the blend may seem puzzling and out of reach.
I’Anson urges us to reconsider this blended art form, which is one of his favorites. Fiction helps us understand the interiority of people’s emotions in a way that nonfiction alone typically cannot. (For more on the interiority of fiction, see my post, “And then what happened?”) As I’Anson says, “The use of fiction allows for the show to find the truth that's deeper than what the nonfiction show is capable of doing.”
Equally counterintuitive is that facts can and often are used to skew the truth, as we all know from suffering through this age of disinformation.
I’Anson is urging all of us to experiment — to, well, follow your curiosity, no matter how crazy or risky or new-to-you that path seems.
“I think that there are many people who are sitting on, or who have thought about, projects that deserve their moment to shine,” I’Anson says. “The pitch party potentially could be that moment.”
The elephant in the room holding you back
I’Anson acknowledges that most creators consider themselves nonfiction or fiction producers or writers, but not both. Furthermore, most listeners choose only one of the two genres. “But I listen to both and I enjoy both,” he says. “Some of my favorite producers produce both.”
Even if you’ve never tried it, do you have an inkling that you could write or produce both fiction and nonfiction, seamlessly woven together? Perhaps, like me, you already have — but you’re so wedded to your identity in one or the other genre that you overlook your lesser-used skills?
I’ve been a nonfiction writer all my life. But as I’Anson and I were talking, I realized, to my surprise, that I have, in fact, produced fiction. I bring this up to highlight two things:
1. Are you “forgetting” work that you’ve done in a genre outside your comfort zone, as I did? Perhaps, like me, you’re in denial. Maybe you’ve simply experimented on the side, for fun. Or maybe it’s been a very long time since you wrote a short story or tried your hand at reporting. It all counts. Experiment.
2. Perhaps two examples of my work could spark some ideas about what you could do in these next two weeks:
I doctored “New York State of Crime,” an American Scandal series (a Wondery podcast) about several generations of New York lawmakers. The series examined the corruption of a slew of well-known political figures, including Mario Cuomo, Donald Trump, Roger Stone, and Eliot Spitzer.
In American Scandal and other narrative longform podcasts, Wondery employs what it calls “immersive storytelling” — meaning fictional scenes, based on historical fact, are sprinkled into the nonfiction narrative. Done well, it’s both transparent — the listener knows the scenes are fiction — and compelling. (This is not to say that the form isn’t controversial. It has its share of critics.)
It’s great fun to write scenes like that. Done well, they can help create a more vivid, empathetic connection for the listener. The technique can help us get to the heart of a story in a way that facts and figures alone cannot do.
I also blended fact and fiction in my Sound Judgment episode about Accidental Creative author and podcaster Todd Henry, who upended an 18-year business and brand in order to live up to his commitment to creative bravery. Rather than presenting his story as a regular Sound Judgment episode, I wrote a seven-act play within a play, interspersed with interview clips. Again, it was great fun, more compelling than the interview alone would have been, but still based on fact.
Such a blend of fact and fiction can take many different forms. Helpfully, I’Anson offers other examples:
“Think about Joe Frank. About Magnificent Jerk. About Theory of Everything’s False Alarm. Remember Love and Radio’s Girl of Ivory. The Meeting of the Mind episode of Secret Adventures of Black People. Listen to the opening of Dreamtown. Listen to all of Flash Forward. Or everything Mermaid Palace has ever done. God, they are so great.”
I’Anson holds a doctorate in philosophy. Not surprisingly, he looks at storytelling through this lens. I found his philosophy about why we should consider using all of the storytelling tools available to us so fascinating that I want you to hear it in his own words.
(Caveat: This short clip was a Google Meet recording not originally intended for audio. It’s not broadcast quality.)
I like the Pitch Party as a prompt to inspire us to think about crossing or blending genres, regardless of whether format and whether you employ the technique for a contest or not. The Pitch Party itself was my prompt to address this issue. Hopefully it has inspired you in your own work.
I’m considering holding an open Zoom discussion next Friday, September 6, for people who decide to work on this fact/fiction project and want to bounce ideas off of one another (whether you plan to enter the Pitch Party or not). If this interests you, please reply to this email by Tuesday, September 3. If I get enough serious interest, I’ll schedule this free session.
Try This in Your Studio
Prompts for blending fiction and nonfiction
1. Create a fictional character who sounds true to life by drawing from factual sources. For instance, if you’re writing historical fiction, look for primary sources. Including a famous character, like George Saunders did in Lincoln in the Bardo? Use their words exactly. Conjuring a fictional character living in a particular era? Research how people like your character behaved and spoke.
2. Try your hand at writing a scene in Wondery’s “Imagine you are…” style. In this exercise, you’re writing to the audience in second person. For instance, say you’re writing about Eliot Spitzer’s New York gubernatorial inauguration. You might start by saying “Imagine you are an invited guest to the inauguration. In the row in front of you, you notice two famous lawmakers, X and Y. They’re in a heated argument.” Then, spin out a fictional scene based on the facts of your topic. Know the facts of what each character wanted and use dialogue to move the plot forward.
3. Pursue interiority. Typically, in a novel, we can get inside a character’s head to learn what they’re thinking and feeling. In a play, movie, or podcast, we can’t. We have to show it instead through dialogue and behavior. Show a character feeling doubtful, sad, fearful, or exhilarated through their actions and dialogue.
4. Create a scene with tension in it from the get-go. Drop us in.
5. Experiment with a different form altogether, like a monologue that blends fact and fiction.
Try keeping these exercises short. Work quickly to overcome your inner censor. Don’t attempt perfection — in fact, try to ignore the need to perform. The more fun you can allow yourself, the better.
New! The Reader’s Corner
The Sound Judgment reader community is so rich in creativity! Inspired by you, I’m adding The Reader’s Corner as an occasional column. In this section, you’ll find reader-contributed work, along with an origin story, a challenge confronted, or a storytelling lesson learned.
Today’s Reader’s Corner was inspired by Sally Flatman, a former producer for the BBC’s Radio Documentaries unit. In 2023, she founded Our Plant Stories. The Guardian named it a “best podcast of the week,” applauding its “charming green-fingered stories.” Follow Sally and the show on Instagram at ourplantstories_podcast. Listen on any app here.
Here’s a bit of its origin story:
“I have loved plants all my life and from my first tiny balcony in Liverpool to my small London garden, plants have always been a part of it. I took the opportunity to do some exams with the Royal Horticultural Society in 2016 and I think they taught me the language to talk to gardeners and horticulturalists.
I left the BBC to follow a new path and in April 2023, I started Our Plant Stories.
Plants tell stories. They tell us stories about the people who grew them, the places we find them and the reasons we love them. So this is a podcast where those stories are shared and we learn how to grow the plants.”
Sally shares the process of making Our Plant Stories and some delightful clips from the show here. Take a listen.
Interested in participating in The Reader’s Corner? Pitch me! Tell me about your work in progress (published or not) and why you think other Sound Judgment readers would be interested in your creative challenges and choices. Reply to this email or send a note to allies@podcastallies.com.
It takes time, research, and thought to bring you this newsletter — and I want to offer more resources than ever. All of the posts are free when they first come out. But paid subscribers get access to upcoming fireside chats, book discussions, discounts on classes, and the soon-to-be-released Grand Master List of Storytelling Resources. I know it’s not easy to subscribe to every newsletter you’d like to. But if you’ve been finding value in Sound Judgment, it’s going to get even richer and deeper as I pour more time into it. I’d be so grateful if you’d become a paid subscriber today.
As always, it is a joy to be with you.
Elaine Appleton Grant
Epilogue
"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart."
— Salman Rushdie
Oooh, I love his term “genre agnostic.” I think that applies to all podcast forms, not just fiction/non-fiction: narrative, interview, drama, etc. I’m working on a pilot with two co-hosts for the first time and it’s challenging me in all sorts of new ways. Thanks for opening up a new genre idea that I’d love to try sometime!