Making My First Podcast

I love a creative challenge. Last year, I challenged myself to write a flash fiction story a day for the entire month of October, and I produced a lot of great—and some not so great—stories. This year I’ve been trying something different. Even though I’ve never worked in an audio medium before, I just released my very first podcast.

I actually had the idea for the podcast while I was working on my flash fiction challenge. While coming up with prompts for myself, I imagined a scientist attempting to resurrect the dead in an alternate version of the Victorian era and recording her findings on a fictional prototype of a phonograph. But the story was more than just a Frankenstein knock-off. It was a story that would allow me to explore my recent autism diagnosis, to work through the traumatic experiences of my life that I now see with new eyes, by creating a character that has experienced that same feeling of always being an outsider, of not understanding society, of being constantly told that there’s something wrong with her. The story came together quickly, and I named it Experiment 31E.

Of course, a podcast is more than just the written story. But I thought, how hard could it be? I figured I could get it online in a month, maybe two.

As it turned out, it took nearly a year to release the first episode. I hit roadblocks every step of the way and had to learn something new—a new program, a new skill—each time.

First, I downloaded the free audio recorder and editor Audacity and started recording the script I had written. Then I listened to the recording. It was…not great. There were too many mouth noises, and my words came out muddy and unclear. I realized I hadn’t properly hydrated first, nor had I warmed up my voice. Plus, my acting needed some work.

So I started hydrating early on days when I recorded to reduce those annoying clicks and other gross saliva sounds. I also started using some warmup vocal exercises I’d found online—I really like the warmups and articulation exercises offered by Andrew Hearle on his website StageMilk. As for the acting part, well, I just had to do take after take until I got it right. I found that running through the script a few times, walking about the room and gesticulating to get into the emotion of the moment, helped to get me into the right mindset. But the rest of it was just practice, practice, practice.

Once I finally got a good recording done, it was time to clean it up and add sound effects and music. Audacity has a helpful online manual for instructing us newbies on how to use the program, but there were times when I wasn’t sure how to get the effect I wanted. Since this story takes place in the early Victorian period and is recorded on an early audio device, I wanted the podcast to have an old-timey sound. I was partly able to achieve this by adding some license-free sounds from Videvo (I had to sign up for a monthly subscription, but it was worth the price), such as the static from a gramophone that I added in the background of the episode. But it still felt like there was something missing.

I looked up a lot of how-to videos and articles to figure out how to get the right old-timey sound I was looking for. My favorite was from EZ Tutorials on YouTube. It’s a short and simple video, and it gave me the basics for capturing the right sound. It made the episode sound like it was coming from an old radio—a little tinny, a little muffled, but perfectly eerie.

With sound effects done, the next step was to add the music. Luckily, I happen to live with a musician—my sister, Shannon. Together, she and I used whatever instruments we could find (we have a bunch lying around the house—that’s just how musicians are) to create some basic themes we could loop throughout each episode. Some of the instruments we recorded in Audacity, but the electronic keyboard we had didn’t sound enough like a piano to go along with the Victorian era sound. To fix that, we downloaded Cakewalk, a free music production software. Using some free sound libraries available online, we were able to create a piano theme that sounded like an actual piano was playing.

Once the music was added to the episode—which was mostly a matter of listening to the episode and deciding which of the pre-recorded themes we’d made fit the tone of the moment and then looping that theme until the tone shifted to something else—I exported the Audacity file into an MP3 and had episode one finally, after several months, ready to upload online!

But first, I had to find out just where I was going to upload it.

Podcasters don’t just upload their episodes to each individual podcast directory like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Podcasts need a host site, and then you can submit your podcast to Apple and Spotify and wherever else you want your podcast to be available. Each podcast hosting site has pros and cons—price, features, restrictions, etc. I read a couple articles on which sites were the best, then did some additional Googling to try to find a good fit. Some of the sites had download limits, and while I don’t expect my podcast to go viral and get a million hits, I didn’t want to limit myself just in case the impossible happened (hey, sometimes people do win the lottery).

I eventually went with RSS.com. What I liked about them was that they had no download limits, no storage limits, an easy-to-use dashboard, and most importantly, they automatically submit your podcast to some of the major podcast directories (and for those they don’t automatically submit to, they offer guided submission with easy-to-follow instructions). You also get a free website for your podcast—like this one for Experiment 31E—which also has links to most of the directories where your podcast is available. I find that it’s very easy to share the link to my RSS site on social media, and people can use that link to find it on whichever podcast directory they prefer to use.

While I like my RSS site, I also wanted to have my own website with a domain name. So I created a basic site with Squarespace because I’d heard about how they offer a lot of templates and options that make it simple to create a professional website. I’m keeping my site pretty basic for now—you can see it at Experiment31E.com—but I like that I have a website that’s my own so I can grow my brand as needed in the future.

Episode finished, podcast host achieved, website done, it was time for me to upload my first episode and share it with the world. RSS.com made it easy to upload and submit to directories, and now episode one, “Experiment 31E,” is currently available on most major podcast directories. You can find links on my official site or on my RSS site (see how easy it is to share the one link rather than sharing each individual podcast directory!).

But a podcast can easily get lost out there among all those other podcasts. That’s why the next important step is to promote it! I signed up for a few social media accounts—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—and I’m working on building a following. It’s slow right now—I only have a handful of followers on each social account—but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. There are, of course, plenty of articles out there about how to promote a podcast, but with only two episodes released, I can’t say which of these strategies will work best for me. It’s an ongoing project, but it's one I’m passionate about, so I am dedicated to making it the best podcast I possibly can. Hopefully there are people out there who will like it too.

Creating this podcast certainly has been a challenge, and there were plenty of times when I thought about giving up. But I kept at it, and now I have two episodes out in the world. And people are listening to them! Not many right now, but I see the download number go up at least a little every day on my RSS dashboard. This has truly been an adventure, and I hope it will be one I can continue to participate in and enjoy for a long time.