Research into radio plays

Radio play’s first page

• When looking at the first page of radio plays I found there to be an reoccurring theme, of the first few pages: Title, author, date published, character list.

• There was always the title of the play, some seemed to catch my eye more than others. They tended to vary in size when I was looking at them. Some were underlined, capitalised, in italics.

• On most of them the second line had what type of play it was. On all of the ones that had it, it was considerably smaller than the title. Not drawing the readers attention as much as the title.

• On the third line some of them had the word ‘by’, before putting a space between it and the author who created the play.

• The last line of the consisted of who the author who wrote the play. This tended to be bigger than most of the other lines but not as standing out as the title.

Some of the radio plays I looked at, had a page with the title on it.

There was always a line that had who created the play.

And when it was first broadcasted the day, the month and the year.

This title caught my eye when looking at it, as it is bold and underlined making it stand out more than the other lines on the page.

This play had the title first ‘Goal differences’. On all of them the titles were placed above everything else

This one didn’t have the year but it had the creator of the play.

The second line tends to tell you what the play is. Here this play is short clips for radio play.

This one wasn’t the same as the first one I looked at. The only difference was that It didn’t have a date on, so the person who is reading it wouldn’t know how long ago it was made.

This first page once again was different to the last two this one had the title and the what type of play it was and the author on the same line. Instead of them being separate. This showed me how different plays are presented.

This title stands out to me as its bigger and in italics. This means that the name of the title will stay in my head for longer.

This line seems to be smaller than the rest and again in italics. The radio play type and the creator are on the same line making it less writing.

This was another different first page to a play once again having only the title and who it was created by. This title interested me as it had a catchy one word title.

This title is small, in capitals, and underlined. This title doesn’t stand out to me, its not as eye catching to me as some of them have been.

The name of the author is two lines under the title, with small writing again. This is a smaller than some of the ones that I have looked at.

Second page of character names

• Characters- normally the second page lists the characters that you meet in the play.

• They normally go in chronological order to how soon you meet them in the play.

• The characters who are the least important tend to listed at the end, showing these are the least recognised characters in the play. They are also the ones who are shown towards the end of the play.

The second page has the list of all the characters that you will meet through the play.

The main character tend to be listed first, and the ones you meet first.

The characters that you meet first tend to be listed at the top of the list.

Where as the characters that you don’t get to know so well are listed at the bottom of the list. You also meet these characters later, on in the play than those at the top of the list.

Hang dog

How many miles to Basra Once again in this particular radio play they have made the character list small.

They have put the main character first, which is the first character that you meet in the play.

The characters that are listed last in the list, are once again the ones that you meet last. But also the ones who aren’t as important they tend to pop up every now and again.

Killing Maestros The text type is similar to that of all the other plays for the characters. Smaller but bold and underlined.

In this play it is different even though Karl Lieberman is at the top of the list he isn’t the first character you meet in the play, it’s the other character two below him and the last character on the list

This is unusual as the main characters are normally at the top of the list and you meet them first. Whereas in this play it’s setting you up for the rest of the play.

• This made me realise that the title has to stand out to, grab the listeners attention.

• It also helped me to know how to set out the first two pages before I wrote the play.

• With reading a little into these plays it also gave me ideas for my play.