Working with the community:
Since people are staying inside more, people are using their computers more as well. This means that many public forums or discussion-based social media sites like Reddit are more active than they have been in the past. In these places, people share stories all the time. For example, in the subreddit /r/TIFU, which stands for “Today I F***ed Up,” you’ll see stories of how someone screwed up their days, years, or even lives. However, some of these stories are fun, and could be adapted into a podcast. Another subreddit that could work to find people is /r/AskReddit, where redditors can ask fellow redditors various questions, whether for advice or funny stories. There are also interesting personalities on the site, such as /u/TheEarthquakeGuy, who comes on and analyzes earthquakes so people can understand their impacts better.
Another place I’ve found can work to find people is through Discord. Discord has countless servers dedicated to all sorts of niche interests, whether it be knitting or some MMORPG with 100 total players. On Discord servers, there is generally a general chat where you can post things or talk about whatever. You can also see all members of the server, so you could cold message some people in an interest server for an interview about the interest.
In my opinion, the most important part of finding story ideas is just to talk to people. I say this is the most important because generally, podcasts are between at least two people talking to each other, with one asking the other questions. But just talking to someone to see what interesting stories they may have could help generate your own stories, or get you in contact with more people who would make for a better story. After that, I’d say doing research on a topic is important. Having a conversation without knowing anything about the topic would be fatal for the interview. Without research, you won’t be able to ask a guest anything: you would just kind of ask, “hey what do you do?” and the conversation wouldn’t have much flow. Also, by having general knowledge about the topic, you can be more critical of the person you’re talking to in case they don’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re presenting some kind of baseless information that you don’t want on your platform.
3 Ideas:
- Inside the decision making at tech companies during COVID. I’m curious as to how the product managers at different tech companies, such as Discord, Twitch, Slack, etc. made decisions regarding what to give their users and what not to.
- What it’s like being a vaccine researcher at this time. We see it in the news all the time: headlines like “Vaccine could be out by end of year.” However, we don’t know the amount of work that actually goes into making a vaccine, so a lot of people may trivialize how hard it is.
- Inside the minds of indie game makers: Indie game makers generally have pretty unique ideas when it comes to storytelling or game mechanics, so I’m curious as to how they come up with them, design them, etc.
Out on the Wire:
Focus Sentence: People are forced to be isolated because the COVID pandemic has come over the world, and take up new hobbies to pass the time, but they discover new passions because of this time.
The podcast will focus on people’s experiences in isolation during the pandemic, and help tell their story of how they might have discovered something new about themselves, or how their experience may have differed from other cultures.
In terms of how I could apply these ideas to my actual podcast, when editing it could help me better cut the clips together to form a story. For example, instead of just playing interviews one after another, I might notice similarities between different people’s cultures and their reactions to the COVID pandemic, and then I could weave them together to tell a more cohesive story on people’s experiences. By following the model, I could also create a more compelling story with a conflict and some kind of satisfying resolution.