Script:
Hello one and all, you rabid writers!
Welcome to the first (and only) episode of WRAPP! The Writing, Reading and Publishing Podcast! It’s your host with the most, Roxanne!
We’re kicking off this to talk to you fine folk about creative writing! Our theme of the day isss: niches and my own piece! Quite ironic considering the tone of voice, but we’re rolling with it.
The piece in question I’m talking about today is none other than ‘Museum Del’egal’, my accidental monologue turned radio play!
A quick overview for the new viewers at home: Museum Del’egal is a quirky tour around a museum with a twist – the staff are all criminals, and the items are stolen from other locations! While yes, not groundbreaking, an inside look into a fully functioning stolen works museum is certainly something you haven’t seen people like Maurice Leblanc write about.
The radio play itself is mainly following through Shelby, a rather energetic tour guide who has a spring in her step and one too many secrets to spill about their whole operation. The play takes you through a set of displays that are a little more than meets the eye, going so far as to piece together a slight mystery of how these objects came to be in their possession.
Now you might be wondering, ‘how did this become a radio play’? Well, it came down to a bit of mis planning on my end, a happy little accident if you will. This change, however, did work for the better as by me describing the museum using a script form, I can implement ‘specific images that add up to the information we want to convey[1].’ This isn’t just in the text itself, but in the sound effects and characters speaking, which is always a fun time. With this shift from a rambling monologue from one perspective to a rather more engaging radio script that shows interaction, it made writing in such a fashion more descriptive, while using less description.
‘But Roxanne,’ I hear you say, ‘What about niches?’ Now we’re getting to it.
Through this piece, I struggled to pin down what genre or niche this was aimed for. Funnily enough, I was inspired by Maurice Leblanc, specifically his book ‘Arsène Lupin Gentleman Burglar,’ in which he and his gang of thieves steal from a millionaire and his family from right under their noses[2]. For this, like a lot of Leblanc’s works, can be overtly seen as mystery books, but pinning down the niche can be harder.
Let me explain.
Genre and niche can be seen as two separate things. To define genre, it’s simply a ‘recognizable pattern for providing specific kinds of information for an identifiable audience[3].’ In simple terms, it’s extremely useful to group together topics in one go. We can look at Arsène Lupin and put its genre as mystery straight away as an example. While there are plenty of genres and sub-genres to work with, they’re seen more as general classification.
Looking at niches on the other hand, tend to focus on writing in not only different topics, but different forms too. For example, someone could be an expert in a marketing field by writing informed blogs on the subject. Niches tend to focus on certain topics, which are like sub-genres, but less vague[4].
Now, how does this help with my own writing?
Well, you see (or hear in this case), my own writing happens to be in a less than typical fashion, which can be quite tricky when trying to ‘label’ what it is I’ve written.
With the theme of ‘Museum Del’egal’ being a crime museum and the style of writing being more on the comedic side, placing it in a metaphorical box is easier said than done.
As I said earlier, my radio script started off as a simple short story with a lot more information about the different exhibits, going through and learning new things about each area while also hinting at the fact it was all stolen or forgery – the goal being to create a sense of mystery and comedy in one.
What I succeeded at in voice, I failed at in niche. There was too much emphasis to be a well-rounded piece (which is fine in other cases, but not for this one), and the meanings and story got muddled. Turning this piece from something simply just speculative into the criminal museum/ mystery niche that can be conveyed as a comedy was tricky, but took a matter of… perspective, if you will.
Radio plays allow more to set the scene, more to describe the layout without describing it – you know, stuff my short story was lacking. It also allowed for me to add more audible gags/descriptions in there, such as overemphasising sounds to add effect vs describing a scenario with flowery descriptions which, quite frankly, wouldn’t fit in such a setting.
Now, while Leblanc happened to write a ‘villain’ with such charm and the settings so elaborate, I wished to play off his use of language to perfect my speculative comedic mystery. I utilised how his characters speak, trying to mix the more exaggerated tones of the main speakers into one character (that being our girl Shelby), and turned the tone from a story with ‘a bit of everything,’ to a radio play that you know is focused on a museum that has more than meets the eye.
So how did the goal of publishing impact this? Well, it definitely led to me thinking more about my audience. The topic of niche is something I always struggle to pin down. After ironing it all out and having a platform to happily put it up on, it’s helped me to keep on theme. As a wise woman once told me: If you’re going to write a certain genre, you should be reading it. I take this to heart.
I thank you for listening to our season finale (how time flies)
Until the future – keep dribbling, drabbling, and dreaming to the stories of tomorrow!
Bibliography:
What Is a Genre? [n.d.]. https://www.utoledo.edu/al/english/programs/composition/studio/pdf/What_is_a_genre.pdf
Leblanc, Maurice. 1907. Arsène Lupin: Gentleman Thief (Arcturus Publishing)
Melanie G, How To Find Your Niche as a Freelance Writer, April 26th 2023, [Online], Available at: https://contentwriters.com/blog/how-to-find-your-niche-as-a-freelance-writer/
Perry, C. , & Sanders, E.H. (2022). The Art of Reader Engagement. In SceneWriting: The Missing Manual for Screenwriters (pp. 75–94). New York: Bloomsbury Academic.