Damned Dwelling from Black Hare Press is my first foray into writing what’s effectively an audio drama.
At the backend of 2020 BHP ran an unusual writing competition for dark dialogue-driven stories featuring at least one character from a horror fantasy world (i.e. vampire, demon, ghost, fae etc). No rules, in respect to the format, other than the dialogue had to account for 90% of the content. I’d not written a dialogue-driven story before but I’d been looking at scriptwriting and when this came along it game be an excellent opportunity to write an audio drama. First off was understanding the format. I’m a big fan of the BBC Audio Drama’s so was not surprised to find there was a format for such things.
Music: Awkward Meeting by Kevin MacLeod
I’d written a very short story (500 words) way back when I started writing in 2018 for the /r/fantasywriters Reddit forum. It told the tale of three ghosts condemned to live in an antique shop, soul-bound to the objects that killed them. In the interim years, I’d considered revisiting the story a few times and when the dialogue competition came along, it struck me as the perfect fit – i.e. a small cast of characters, one location. and already dialogue-heavy.
I spun the story out into three scenes to give it a proper beginning, middle and end. The first scene is very much the seed of the original story but with more insight into the characters and their predicament. I won’t give away too much more, but to say it’s very much a British farce that would be no stranger to any BBC Radio 4 drama fan.
My next goal with this little project is, having written the script, is to get it performed. To find a suitable audio production/publisher who can make it come alive (pun intended) as it was intended. Watch this space.
In the meantime. if you like your dark tales with a twist of comedy why not pick up a copy today.
BUY – books2read.com/damned-dwelling