Revisiting - Don't Write, Tell

Rob – What do you think makes for good writing for radio? 

Noel – I don’t know. I wish I did know. I mean, here’s what I think. Okay. 

Rob – Wait a minute, why am I talking to you? 

Noel – (laughs hard) 

That’s a hilarious thing to say. I think she was just being humble. Because Noel King actually knows a LOT about good writing. She’s worked in the field for years and years and years. 

These days, Noel is a co-host of Today Explained from Vox. When I originally spoke with Noel back in 2017, she was reporting for NPR’s Planet Money. Going further back, Noel worked at  Marketplace and The Takeaway. She’s written a LOT of stories. Despite saying she doesn’t know what good writing is,  she has a lot of great writing advice well worth sharing again in an episode from the archive of Sound School. 

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This is Sound School. The backstory to great audio storytelling. I’m Rob Rosenthal. 

The episode with Noel started with an anecdote about a time when she had trouble writing a script for Planet Money. 

She said it was a complicated story. And she was doing what she always does. Sitting at a computer, trying to get the story down on the page but the words weren’t coming. 

Until she remembered how Planet money thinks about storytelling: Imagine you walk into a bar and tell a friend a story about the economy. 

Noel -  And, I was like for the first time I looked at that and I was like OK what if I was to just walk into a bar and tell a story which is something I do know how to do… 

So, I got 15 years of telling stories in bars under my belt. So I called up a friend and went out to a bar with her and said I'm working on this very difficult story this very difficult episode about Baltimore. Can I just tell you what it is? 

And then from telling her that story. You know we were there for like three hours. But I told her the story and I could see the places where she was getting bored and I could see the places where she was really engaged and I could see the places where I was being confusing. And ever since then that is that's how I write for Planet Money. 

I take someone out first. And I tell them the story in person and then I read I read their face and then I go back and then I walk around and then I tell myself the story in my head again. And then I go back and then I sit down and then I write. So, that’s really different than starting with an opening line. 

In short, what Noel took away from that experience was this: when you’re writing for radio, you’re not really writing. You’re telling.

Noel - Yeah absolutely. Absolutely. I need to hold your attention for the next three minutes thirty… I don't wanna write you an essay, dude. I want to like tell you. I want to tell you something.

To take this idea one step further, Noel says feel what you’re trying to say. 

Noel - Yes absolutely. Absolutely. That's what makes for good talking usually, right? Laughs. 

You can hear this approach to writing -- or maybe i should say “telling” – in a story Noel produced last fall on flood insurance. Which noel readily admits is not a riveting topic. 

Noel – Definitely deadly boring. Yeah. 

Yet Noel makes the story interesting because of the way she tells it. She peppered her three and a half minute story with little turns of phrase and brief, unconventional choices. Writing that sounds more like telling. 	

The premise of the story was this. According to Noel’s reporting, billions of dollars will be paid to homeowners with flooded homes in 2017. The payments are made through the national flood insurance program of the federal government. A small fraction of the claims – just one percent – account for twenty-five percent of the payments. 

Clip – Noel -  They're called repetitive loss properties. Jennifer Bayles owns one. This is her third flood since 2009. By now she's an expert with a spiral notebook she jokingly calls "The Book of Life." It's a list of everything she owns for the insurance adjusters.

Jennifer Bayles: Front door mat, Revere stockpot. Let's see - 10-inch griddle, 8-inch skillet.

What catches my ear in that clip is when noel says this: 

Clip - Noel – By now she’s an expert.

Noel - Yeah that was that was a good example of when I say write what you feel. 

So, I was down in Houston for four days talking to people like Jennifer whose houses had flooded repeatedly. And I felt sympathetic right of the bat. There’s no way around that. But, the thing that made me frustrated and infuriated on their behalf was that to them this no longer feels like a monumental deal. 

Everyone has their checklist for when their house floods. Everyone has the first thing they do. The second thing they do. The third thing they do for when the house floods. 

And, I was sitting there and I was talking to people I'm like “Why are you guys” (trails off). Look, at points, I was actually getting kind of worked up and like “Why are you guys acting like this isn't a big deal?” And that people kept telling me some version of that because I've done it three times. Do you understand that if you've done something three times you're not a rookie anymore you know exactly what you're doing. And so that line “by now she's an expert” was one born out of my own frustration and amazement that people whose homes flood repeatedly, they know exactly what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. 

Clip – Noel -  Jennifer made me strap on a respirator before we went inside her house.

Jennifer: I would suggest putting this on.

Noel: Oh, I will put this on, OK.

Jennifer: Put your stuff down, and I'll show you the house.

Noel: This is a real mask.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Noel : OK. Let's see.

Noel - Because when the water came up 5 and a half feet, it wasn't just water. It was sewage, too.

Jennifer: This living room was completely full of sewage water and mud.

Noel: Oh, God.

Jennifer: But there's a lot of feces in here, too.

Rob – Here’s something else you wrote. “Jennifer made me wear a respirator before we went inside her house.” Now, I feel like typically a reporter might say “We wore respirators.” Or, “I put on a respirator.” But the idea that “Jennifer made me” I don’t know, it just sounded different to my ear.  

Noel - Yeah. No. That's another “come-back-and-think-about-what-really-happened-when-you-were-in-the-field-and-feel-it.” And I'll tell you this I didn't want to put the respirator on because I'm a deeply anxious person and in a respirator it's really hard to breathe. And, so, I was, you know, Jennifer pulled it out and I looked at it and I thinking in the back of my mind “Oh shoot I don't want to wear that.” And then she put it on me.  You know if you could hear the raw tape from that there's like a minute of me being like “(heavy breathing) Jennifer! Jennifer! (heavy breathing) it's very hard to breathe!” And like having a minor anxiety attack.

And, so, then I got back and I'm thinking to myself “What really happened in Jennifer's driveway?” And the answer to my question was “You were anxious. She told you, you’ve got to put this on because the house smells like sewage. You didn't really want to but she made you.” And so that's another example of, again, if I was telling you that story --- well I did tell you that story right! (Laughs) I wouldn't have written it like that. But that's certainly how I would have told it because that was what I was feeling and that was what happened. 

Clip – Noel - Jennifer isn't required to have flood insurance because her mortgage is paid off. But her mom was an accountant for Harris County, and she would come home and tell horror stories about what happened to people who didn't have flood insurance.

Jennifer  -  It was a no-brainer. It was just a no-brainer. You just have to have flood insurance.

Noel - So Jennifer appears to be doing everything right. But when you look at the numbers, something's going very wrong. Jennifer paid $83,000 for this house back in 1992. After the first flood in '09, insurance paid out $200,000. After the next flood - another $200,000. And now, the worst one yet, she expects insurance will pay out about $300,000.

Jennifer -  This one will pay out far more than the house and even the land is worth.

Noel - When her insurance check arrives in a few months, Jennifer's three-bedroom brick house will have cost taxpayers around $700,000 so far. Here, I'm going to let Carolyn Kousky, who directs Wharton's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, state the obvious.

Carolyn  - A private insurance company would never keep providing insurance to a home like that. And yet the National Flood Insurance Program doesn't drop anyone and offers coverage to everyone, and so...

Noel -  So you have situations like this.
 
There’s a lot in that clip that sounds more like telling than writing.  For instance, the way noel delivers the numbers. 

Noel - When her insurance check arrives in a few months, Jennifer’s three-bedroom brick house will have cost tax payers around seven hundred thousand dollars – so far.

And the way she finishes Carolyn Kouski’s sentence. 

Carolyn - The National Flood Insurance Program doesn't drop anyone and offers coverage to everyone, and so...

Noel -  So you have situations like this.

But did you catch how Noel introduced Carolyn? 

Noel - Here, I'm going to let Carolyn Kousky, who directs Wharton's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, state the obvious.

Noel - Born out of sheer frustration! Born out of sheer frustration! You and everyone listening, if you have stuck with me through the numbers you know exactly what's going wrong here. You know that this is not how insurance works. You know that Jennifer's house should not be insured and that Jennifer should not be in that house and that house should be demolished or raised. And convention dictates that I need someone from Wharton to tell you what you already know….

I always have some real feelings about these stories when it has to be boiled down to 3:30 and an expert has to be brought in however good they are however great their tape is and Carolyn's tape was terrific. But, like, let's be honest. She's not she's not coming on here in this moment in a three minute thirty second story, she is not coming on here to blow your hair back with some her expertise in risk. She's going to come on and tell you this is not how insurance should work. So yeah. Laughs. 

Now, of course, as much as noel may lean on telling rather than writing, there is writing involved. 

In this last clip I’m going to play, Noel says it’s a section she wrote more than told. In fact, she says she re-wrote the section several times looking for the perfect cadence. But even though this section was written, the way she reads it still sounds like telling.  

Clip – Noel - There are also grants to relocate people like her. Buy them out; demolish their houses; return the area to grassland, an idea that Jennifer loves.

Jennifer - The house - I don't care. It could get blown to smithereens, and I'll dance on the ashes.


Noel - That's the tape where she says “If this house was to burn down. I dance in the ashes.” And so I I'm trying to like trot that tape on stage in the most compelling way possible. And one of the things I really think about radio that makes it so unique that I love about it so much is that cadence can do so, so, so much, right? So, you get these short choppy sentences one after the other after the other after. And then one of them doesn't go all the way through but Jennifer jumps on stage and says something outrageous.

As Noel and I talked, we recognized that in some respects, this idea of telling rather than writing so that you fell what you’re saying, sounds a bit… well, I called it woo-woo. 

Noel – Instead of woo-woo I would say flakey. 

Okay. Flakey. Either way, convention says a reporter is relating a true and factual story and they’re expected to be dispassionate. To suggest a reporter should tell the story in order to feel it…

Noel - It does sound woo-woo. It does sound flaky. But here's the thing I'd say. Can we defend ourselves with this? It does tend to work! You do need people to keep listening to you. You've done all of this work and you do need people to whatever extent possible to not tune you out. And if you are feeling it… We know this, right? Having done this for a couple of years, we know if you're feeling it someone is much less likely to tune you out and to turn off the radio or to have you on as background noise. We know that their ears are likely to perk up and they're more likely to pay attention if you feel it. So, it is woo-woo. But I don't know, man, you just you have to do whatever works, right?

That’s Noel King. From my interview with her in 2017. 

Theme music.

OK - quick - what are your rules for making audio? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Erica Heilman. You probably know her from the Rumble Strip podcast. Someone just asked Erica this very question – what are your rules for making audio? 

She took the question to heart and was surprised by how hard it was to put her guiding principles into words. But also how important. 

As part of Transom's new project called The Listeners, Erica wrote a feature articulating her rules when making the kind of work she makes. 

It's generous...full of audio examples...and a great playbook for anyone interested in making stories that embrace the full range of the human experience. Check it out over at Transom.org!

You’re listening to Sound School from PRX and Transom. Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, and Jennifer Jerrett have my back. I thank them. A lot! 

And you, too, of course. Thanks for listening. 
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