Bringing A Fictional Podcast to Life

The protagonist of Maureen Johnson's Truly Devious series is a true-crime obsessed teen who's always got the gristly details of the latest murder playing in her earbuds. For the fourth installment in her series, Maureen wanted to do something new to promote the book: She wanted to make a podcast that brought the brutal crime at the heart of the book to life. And she needed to do it in a couple weeks.

Pulling off The Final Clue was a collaborative effort between Maureen and I. She handled the script and lined up one of the two voice actors required. I was able to pull in another accomplished actor, who was excited to lend his voice to Maureen's script. Getting their reads just perfect was, thankfully, easy. Then the work began.

Making a fictional true crime podcast feel authentic was about mimicking the production approach of the genre, so I immersed myself in it, listening to a dozen or so podcasts in a couple days, keeping track of the audio tricks and techniques they used. It was a fun research project that pushed my skillset in new directions, and left me ready to edit.

Editing was a dream. Two great voice reads, royalty-free music that captured the mood we wanted perfectly, a captivating story: all the pieces were there, I just had to sculpt it into something that would capture the imagination of the listenr enough to order the book. Oh, and do it in just a couple days. Easy.

Editing is only one of the parts involved in launching a podcast. Thankfully, I've done it before, so I was able to craft the punchlist and quickly purchase and configure domains, build the website, design the cover art for the podcast, and get everything submitted to the half-dozen podcast distribution channels out there and make sure everything was validated and ready to go ahead of launch day.

Pulling something like this off, especially with the turnaround we had, was tricky, but once Maureen handed the script off to the voice actors, all she needed to do was listen to drafts, give me some feedback, and give the thumbs up on the final edit. Everything else, from the heavy lift of the edit to the thousand small details that come with a podcast launch was out of her hair. I did the work and she got the promotional podcast she dreamed of without having to deal with the nightmare of getting it all done.