Podcasting has been renowned for its unique ability to target a niche down to the granular level. Want to listen to a show about almost famous people buried in Hollywood Cemetery? There's a podcast for that. Need more cowbell? There's a podcast about SNL comedy sketches over its 50-year run.
Today's podcast is definitely niche. It's so niche that it could be considered mega-niche. Or is it ultra-niche.
Anyway, the Adwit podcast is for audio drama writers. It's in the show's subtitle: The Audio Drama Writers' Independent Toolkit.
This is an independent podcast that just so happens to assist indie podcasters because one of the many areas where indie podcasters outshine the large networks is in the audio drama genre. Think Silvertongues, The Inn At The End Of Things, or Moonburn.
The co-hosts are Sarah Golding, who runs Quirky Voices, an eclectic mix of all sorts of podcasts with new writing at its core. She truly loves voice acting, and hosts her how-to voice acting pod MADIVA. Sarah can be heard in over 100 audio fiction podcasts.
Sarah runs annual Dashingly Quirky New Writing competitions with Fiona Thraille, monthly audio drama hub virtual pubs, wherein guests share their expertise in audio fiction creation, co-edits The Fiction Podcast Weekly with Lindsay, pings out auditions for @auditions on Twitter, runs voice acting courses for beginners, and teaches LAMDA to some amazing kids in Herts, UK.
Lindsay Harris Friel earned an MFA in Playwriting from Temple University in Philadelphia, and took her live theater skills straight to podcasting. She wrote and produced the adventure serial Jarnsaxa Rising. For 11th Hour Audio Productions, she wrote Breathless, and wrote and produced The Parsonage and The Audiophile.
Lindsay enjoys helping people find new ways to tell their stories. When she’s not writing content for The Podcast Host, or editing The Fiction Podcast Weekly, she enjoys making audio drama and learning more about the craft of interactive storytelling.
Like many indie podcasts, shows get interrupted by life, the need to make money elsewhere or technical issues. Adwit is no exception. The show began in 2021, was off in 2022, back in 2023, off in 2024 and back this year. The show has produced 30 episodes, and these episodes are primers for prospective audio drama writing.
In their first episode, the co-hosts explain why they undertook this podcast. "Because independently-funded audio drama is where the action is."
Sarah and Lindsay want there to be more
good audio drama podcasts. They also want to make more good audio drama.
In this podcast, they’ve discussed the different aspects of audio drama writing, how these aspects work, audio drama podcasts that show good examples of these aspects, and writing exercises, so the audience can benefit.
In 2021 episodes, the co-hosts recorded a two-parter on Plot. In the episodes, they discuss how to get your characters from point A to Zed, no matter what gets in their way. Then they review scheme and structure, with writing exercises listeners can use to enhance their writing.
One of my favorite episodes was released on May 2025 about Table Reads. In the show, Sarah and Lindsay discuss how table reads are an essential tool for audio drama writers to hear their
work aloud and gather feedback for improvement before production. The
process helps identify issues with dialogue, pacing, and storytelling
that may not be apparent on the page.
Writing is difficult enough. I can't imagine writing a drama in which the audience can only hear the actors speak and background noises, with no visuals. It's an incredibly difficult genre of writing. If you are an aspiring audio drama writer, be sure to listen to Adwit.
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