Recipe for AD Descriptions, Women's Audio Report, Promo Help, grants, residencies and casting calls

Issue 297 of The Fiction Podcast Weekly is brought to you by Your Audio Drama Needs a Better Description—Here’s How.

Your podcast’s description is vital to getting audiences to click “play,” but matching your show to the audience’s needs differs from what you’ll find in guides for non-fiction podcasters. Let me show you how to make a short, engaging description that can help your audio drama show grow. Your Audio Drama Needs a Better Description- Here’s How 

News, Roundups, and Announcements

• Women’s Audio Report: Women & Podcasts released by Edison Research and SiriusXM Media found that 24% of respondents listen to Drama, 17% listen to Horror, and 33% listen to Comedy.

• Happy 7th Birthday, Headliner!

• Simplecast has integrated Headliner into their feature set.

• Podnews reports that live video is coming to Patreon. I thought I could get through this issue of the newsletter without mentioning video. I was wrong.

• Roundup: Need a Reality Check? Evo’s got a newly updated collection at The End for you.

• How do you feel about AI voices, music, or scripts in audio drama? Does it have a place in the Fiction Podcast Weekly? Let me know what you think. Write to me at [email protected].

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Share your thoughts in this brief survey. Thanks!

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Creator Resources

• Grow Your Podcast with Promo Swaps. Lauren Passell of Tink Media will join Allegra for this live discussion in the Indiepod Community on Thursday, May 1, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern.

• Ever get your brain blasted by atrocious loudness? How to Automatically Set Your Episode’s Loudness to -19 LUFS in Audacity, courtesy of Matthew McLean on YouTube.

• Ever listen to a great story, only to have dynamic audio crash right through a pivotal moment? How to insert dynamic ads to podcast episodes in Redcircle, also courtesy of Matthew McLean on YouTube.

• The April 2025 edition of All Hear is ready for you.

• Champions of Old Radio by Rob Rosenthal. How did 1930s radio artists create the sound effects that they did?

• ADWIT, The Audio Drama Writers’ Independent Toolkit, wants to help you with Character Breakdowns that Jump Off the Page. Go get ‘em Tiger!

• iZotope/NI Introduce Equinox, a Next-Gen Reverb Plugin for Dialogue and Sound Design by Sarah Buchynski. Create ear candy for your audience!

• Newly updated for 2025, Podcast Promotion: From 100 Listeners to Your Next 100K – Let’s SCALE

Something new to binge...Reimagined Mr. Men!

What if you could interview the Mr. Men? Not a parody but a full-cast audio drama, of interviews, phone calls, and recordings. At times funny. At times unsettling. Always strange. Little White Books

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Opportunities

• Is it just me, or are the casting notices on Backstage.com creepier than usual lately?

• Casting Call: Vampire Surf Cult. Deadline: April 19, and that’s TODAY, so if you want it, here it is, come and get it: make your mind up fast. And if you don’t know that song, don’t worry about it.

• Casting Call: The Next Tenants. Deadline: 11 May.

• Jar’s International Women’s Day Pilot Competition’s deadline is the 1st of May.

• Sound Art Lab invites artists residing outside of Denmark to apply for a one-month residency in our vibrant work facilities located near the coastal landscapes of Limfjorden. This residency aims to support artists working in sound-related practices and offers an outstanding environment for exploration, experimentation, focus and collaboration. Deadline: May 1st.

• Playa Residency Located at the edge of the Great Basin in the remote Oregon Outback, PLAYA’s residencies are open to the global community of scientists, naturalists, biologists, musicians, designers, sustainability leaders, social practice artists, musicians, visual artists, writers, performing artists, and collaborations and individuals engaged in interdisciplinary work or other forms of creative work. Deadline: May 31st.

• Ohio Arts Council Artist Opportunities - a grant for emerging and professional artists in Ohio. Grants are awarded to individual artists at both the emerging artist level ($500) and professional artist level (up to $2500) with no cash match required. Applicants must have maintained legal residency for at least one year. Deadline: 1st May.

Milestones & Debuts

• Your Horror Show. Season 3 debuts on the 22nd of April, and the trailer is available now.

• A Store for Witches and Wizards. A Witch, her Pet Raven, and her New Employee work every day at their humble store, trying to get through another day.

• End of the Loop. Ethan, a man who spent an eternity reliving the same day, over and over again, is now free. He finds himself back in the same quiet town. Its people remain the same—unaware, untouched, and blissfully ignorant.

• Doctor Love. Two true crime enthusiasts explore an old asylum case, digging up recordings, medical notes, and news clippings to discuss a patient's mystery illness and her doctor's infatuation with her.

• Little White Books. Mr. Men & Little Miss — reimagined for grown-up ears. What if Mr. Happy wasn’t so happy? This reinterpretation of the classic world includes secrets, betrayals, friendships — and a far stranger reality than you remember. Extended by AI (text, images, music, sound, and even voices), the show feels bigger than a traditional production. A fun twist: some characters aren’t human. The cast list at the end of each episode reveals who’s who — or, as the notes say, which characters played themselves, (courtesy of ElevenLabs).

Keep sharing good stories.

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