In Episode 8: Your Baby's Ugly we talk a lot about how we edited Episode 7: Dark Forest into into its final form with the help of Jess Jiang and Robert Smith of Planet Money. We wanted to share that process, so here's our original mix of episod

Out on the Wire Episode 9: Make It Work

Jan 20th, 2016 42m 32s

It’s one thing to finish a story, it’s another to make stories your career. In our final episode of season one of Out on the Wire we talk to three creative professionals, Jakob Lewis of the podcast Neighbors, Dave Kellett of the comics Sheldon

Out on the Wire Episode 8.5: Workshop

Jan 12th, 2016 1h 8m

Dan Waldschmidt and Matthew Williamson just produced the pilot episode of a podcast called "Ordinary Heroes," but they know they need a new point of view on it — time for an edit! Dan and Matthew bravely volunteered to go through an edit on t

Out on the Wire Episode 8: Your Baby's Ugly

Jan 5th, 2016 32m 47s

Our stories are our babies, but not all babies are cute. This week, we figure out just how far we’ve still got to go when we take a finished draft of our own show and subject it to the cold scrutiny of an edit by Robert Smith and Jess Jiang of

Out on the Wire Episode 7.5: Workshop

Dec 14th, 2015 36m 15s

Céline Keller is making an autobiographical audio story about how she turned her life upside-down in order to raise two wild baby boars on her father’s remote farm in Germany. It sounded good on paper, but now she’s stuck in the dark, German fo

Out on the Wire Episode 7: Dark Forest

1 Dec 7th, 2015 35m 40s

The Dark Forest is where we go when we're deep in the writing process and lose our way. Overwhelming feelings of self-doubt, confusion, and inadequacy threaten to halt our stories’ progress. Sometimes, we forget why we started on the path in th

Out on the Wire Episode 6.5: Workshop

Dec 1st, 2015 34m 33s

This week, Matt and Ben and Jessica critiquing scenes written by members of the Out on the Wire working group. An ethnographic memoir about marrying into a new culture, a literary biography of a dancer who found success copying the competition,

Out on the Wire Episode 6: Proof of Concept

Nov 23rd, 2015 33m 35s

It’s time to get some ink on that page. We’re in the lab, testing our story hypotheses in the crucible of the writing process. We put things in order, break them down, build them with little blocks, iterate, signpost, and answer the question, “

Out on the Wire Episode 5.5: Workshop

Nov 16th, 2015 35m 38s

This is our 5th workshop episode, where we discuss work posted the Out on the Wire working group. This week, interviewing—we talk about space monks, schadenfreude, the value of interviewing vs. reading for research, and how to feel confident as

Out on the Wire Episode 5: You're Not Lucky, You're Just Good

Nov 9th, 2015 46m 41s

Don’t be lucky. Be good. Manufacture your own luck with the right kind of preparation for an interview. We hear from Zoe Chace, Robert Smith, Ira Glass and Jenna Weiss-Berman on how to research, prepare, and execute an interview that will provi

Out on the Wire: Interim

Nov 2nd, 2015 3m 42s

Young Ira Glass learns a lesson about how to make his own luck in this story that appears in Out on the Wire (the book), but didn’t fit in episode 5, about interviewing. Enjoy!

Out on the Wire Episode 4.5: Workshop

Oct 27th, 2015 39m 46s

In this week’s workshop, we’re critiquing work from the Episode 4: Bare Bones challenge: stories of a modern cinderella, a veteran seeking justice, and an antique dealer with attachment issues. Plus we riff on the idea of theme and how to do ad

Out on the Wire Episode 4: Bare Bones

Oct 19th, 2015 45m 14s

This episode is a flight check: We’re making sure the underpinnings of our stories are tight and structured by utilising the narrative arc, chronology, and framing. You'll hear from Ira Glass, Chana Joffe-Walt, Sean Cole, and in a brand new int

Out on the Wire Episode 3.5: Workshop

Oct 12th, 2015 45m 22s

In our third workshop episode we critique a few of the character profiles posted in the Out on the Wire Working group. This week: stories about Lithium mixers, a future detective noir, a sci-fi allegory about identity, and the true story of a t

Out on the Wire Episode 3: Walk In My Shoes

Oct 5th, 2015 41m 23s

Today we dive deep into character, characters that let us walk in the shoes of someone else. But how can we create characters that feel genuine while also functioning to move the story? Glynn Washington, Joe Richman, Ira Glass, Jay Allison and

Out on the Wire Episode 2.5: Workshop

Sep 29th, 2015 42m 34s

In our second workshop episode we're talking about some of the focus sentences and XY story formulae posted in the Out on the Wire working group. This week: stories about going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, self-help, comedy and PTSD, entrepr

Out on the Wire Episode 2: Focus

Sep 21st, 2015 40m 37s

How can we know if an idea is a good one? This time on Out on the Wire, we investigate how to refine story ideas using the focus sentence and the X/Y story formula. Plus, Ira Glass recounts a reporting trip gone sideways and Jay Allison's taked

Out on the Wire Episode 1.5: Workshop

Sep 14th, 2015 44m 40s

In our first workshop episode, we take a crack at some of the great ideas popping up on the Out on the Wire Working Group. Join Jessica, Ben, and Matt as we dig into how to make your story ideas stronger.

Out on the Wire Episode 1: Eureka

Sep 7th, 2015 37m 7s

Out on the Wire is the show about making stories, step by step. Join cartoonist Jessica Abel as she breaks down the principles of storytelling and puts you on the path to crafting your own story—in prose, comics, audio, video—in any narrative a