Situations, Characters and Dialogue

The following section provides you with some ideas to get you and your group thinking about creating a story. Remember, you do not have to use these ideas but you can if you wish to. Some of the ideas suggested may give you other new ideas – that’s totally fine too! Ideas can come from anywhere. If you get stuck, look at these to help you.

There are different ‘ingredients’ to making a story. The three key ones we will focus on are:

Situations: what is happening

Characters: who is there

Dialogue: what somebody is saying

Situations

A situation is a setting (time and place) and a problem. A situation could be, for example, funny, strange, scary, exciting or mysterious. There are so many options. Below are some examples of situations, discuss them in your group and consider the following questions.

Which ones do you like?
Which ones do you think can be ‘bigger’ and become a story?
Which situations would be possible to perform on radio?

Let’s look at situations in the setting a hospital at night time.

A doctor is very tired and making lots of mistakes
There is a fire in the hospital and people need to escape
There is a power cut at the hospital and all the lights and machines have turned off!
There are zombies in the hospital

Now let’s look at situations in a different setting – in a jungle during the day time.

A group of people are lost in the jungle
A group of people are looking for treasure in the jungle
A group of people have met a tribe and they do not speak the same language
Somebody is being chased by a tiger

Let’s look at one more situation in a different setting – a shopping mall on Christmas Eve.

Two fathers are arguing about who gets to buy the
final doll for sale
Somebody is caught stealing from a shop
A child is lost in a shopping mall
The price of all gifts goes up by 2000%

Characters

Characters are a good way to think of ideas too. A character is a person in the story and every character is unique. It is very important to add details and information about a character so that they are more interesting and so the audience/reader can understand something about them.

For example:

Character: a student

Is this a useful description of a character? A good way to see if a description is useful is to ask some basic questions:

How old is the character?
What do they like or dislike?
Do they have any special skills?
Where do they live?
How do they feel?

We do not know the answer to any of these questions because the description is too vague.

We need to add more details, for example:

Character: a friendly kindergarten student that is extremely clever. He/she has an IQ of 200 and is smarter than all the teachers too.

This is a much more useful description. We know that the student is very young, and this helps us think about how to perform their ‘voice’. We also know something about them: they are very smart, and this can help us think of ideas for what might happen in the story.

Let’s take a look at another example:

Character: Spider-Man

Before you scroll any farther, is there anything wrong with this idea that limits creativity?

Something that must be considered when designing a character for your radio drama is this:

Is it original (has it been done before)?
Does it use your creativity?

Using characters that already exist is not encouraged. It is better to think of your own ideas so that you can impress and surprise the audience with your creativity. Sometimes you can be inspired by existing characters by using some of their qualities or special skills:

Character: a student that can climb walls like a spider and is very naughty

If you just take a character that already exists, such as Spider-Man, then the audience will not be using their imagination so much. You need to create new ideas that take your audience on new journeys!

Take a look at these example characters and discuss them in your group.

Which ones do you think would help make an interesting story?
Which ones would be easy to perform on radio?

A TV presenter who is always excited
A parrot that can speak English fluently
A treasure hunter looking for gold
A librarian who never speaks
A person who always sneezes
A very old person who takes a long time to say something
A nervous teacher
A person who lives underwater
A child that laughs a lot
A person with a very boring voice that makes you want to sleep
A mother who has twenty children and has to take care of them all
An inventor who is always having crazy ideas that never quite work
An evil CEO that plans to destroy all the forests in Hong Kong to make new offices

Which characters have helped you to think of a bigger story? Which characters are easy to show using a special ‘voice’?

Dialogue

Look at the dialogue below and discuss the following questions in your group:

Who is saying it?
Why are they saying it?
What is happening?
What is going to happen next?
What happened before?

“We don’t have enough time, it is going to explode in five minutes!”

“I don’t love you anymore!”

“I know you cheated in that test.”

“I bet you that I win. If I don’t, then you get to keep it.”

“We will never be able to steal that painting!”

“Which of you here can help me do this dangerous task? Who is willing to risk their life for me?”

“I don’t want to go!”

“He escaped and I don’t know how!”

Which of the example lines of dialogue helped you to think of a situation, characters and a story?

Using dialogue to help think of a story

One way of creating a story using dialogue is to choose what is said at the end of the drama. You then have to think of a story that ends with that dialogue, for example:

________________________

WOMAN: And this is the last flower on Earth.

THE END

__________________

What would have to happen before this for there to only be one more flower left on Earth? That’s a story!

You can also use dialogue at the start to help inspire you. For example:

Scene 1

TEACHER: Class, look in the sky – a UFO! It’s landing in the school playground.

After reading this dialogue you should have an idea of a situation, some characters and a problem. This is the first step to creating a radio drama.

How can you write your own inspiring dialogue?

Writing Dialogue

If you cannot think of any dialogue then you can try creating some in groups by using a word bank. You take lots of words and make different sentences with them. Here is an example of a word bank, remember you can change the tense of a word if you wish – for example eat can become eats, ate or eaten. You can also add your own punctuation including question and exclamation marks.

you me us them

I he she eat

build want try strong

destroy

steal love diamonds

money

chair world potato

bank

a the

these those will

this his her

their to and

Here is some dialogue made from the words in the box:

You want me to destroy the world?

She ate the diamonds!

Steal the diamonds and I will love you.

I want us to try and build a bank.

Can you make any more? Do they give you any ideas for stories?

Now you can make your own word bank. Make sure to include verbs, nouns, prepositions and adjectives. You can add words that you really want to include in your story. For example, if you want your drama to be a horror then you may include words such as ‘scared’, ‘ghost’ or ‘scream’. Make your word bank and then take turns creating dialogue. Soon you will have some ideas! This is also a great warm-up!

Exemplars

We have looked at three different ways of getting ideas for stories: situations, characters and dialogue. The next part of this page shows some exemplars of how the above examples could be used to write a radio drama. Remember, there is no model or perfect answer – creating Radio Drama has endless possibilities.

Exemplar 1

Here three ideas have been taken from this chapter. These are the ingredients:

Situation: in a hospital at night time and a doctor is very tired and making a lot of mistakes

Character: A very old person who takes a long time to say something

Dialogue: “I don’t want to go”

____________________________________________

Scene 1

In a hospital.

Sound effects: there are sounds of heart rate monitors beeping. A curtain opens.

Elderly man: (speaking very slowly) I don’t want to go, Doctor.

Doctor: (yawning) Mr Chan, we need to fix your leg now!

Elderly man: (confused, speaking slowly) My leg? But doctor, I came here for you to fix my heart. Also, I am Mr Yip, not Mr Chan!

Doctor: Don’t be silly, it’s time for you to go for surgery. Now, which leg did you break skateboarding?

Elderly man: Skateboarding? I haven’t been near a skateboard for 80 years!

Doctor: Now now, no need to lie. Your father told me this morning that you hurt your leg skateboarding!

Elderly man: (confused, angry) My father?! Doctor, I am 101 years old! My father is no longer alive. Now, I would like to speak to your boss.

Doctor: (yawning) Let me check my notes

________________________________________________________________

The above exemplar shows how the three ideas have been combined to create a Radio Drama. It has a clear setting, characters and a problem.

What do you think could happen next?

Exemplar 2

Situation: In a jungle in the daytime. A group of people have met a tribe and they do not speak the same language

Character: A treasure hunter looking for gold

Dialogue: (taken from the word bank) “You want this?”

________________________________________________________________

Scene 1

Sound effects: monkeys calling, insects buzzing. There are footsteps through the bushes.

Treasure Hunter:Right, let’s stop here and check the map again.

Explorer 1: I’m so tired.

Explorer 2: Me too. Are we any closer to the treasure?

Treasure Hunter: Yes, I think so. According to this map it is just one hundred metres over there!

Sound effect: Sound of paper unfolding

Explorer 1: What was that?

Explorer 2: What?

Explorer 1: I saw someone over there, behind the tree.

Treasure Hunter: Yes you are right! Hello?

Sound effect: Bushes moving and then people talking in a strange language that is not English.

Treasure Hunter: My word! They are a tribe from the jungle!

Explorer 2: Look at their spears, so sharp!

Explorer 1: They don’t look very happy!