Fantasy-Faction’s Short Story Podcast on its way!

If you are interested in joining our Podcasting team we would love to hear from you.
You can e-mail me on Marc@Fantasy-Faction.com

I’ve been floating the idea of bringing back the Fantasy-Faction Podcast for a while now. The thing is, I’ve not been too sure about how to do it.

Part of me thought perhaps doing an audio version of Fantasy-Faction – News, Reviews and Interviews with authors – would be pretty cool, but when I thought about it: we already review books in text form, bring you the latest news over Twitter/Facebook and run audio interviews on a regular basis. As much as I liked the idea of putting Fantasy-Faction into another medium I thought it was more gimmicky than anything else. Much of what would feature on a Podcast would just be us repeating news from the site (by this point out-of-date news), covering articles that you’ve already read and interviewing authors ‘for the podcast’ (as opposed to ‘for the site’). On reflection, you readers – listeners, I guess – wouldn’t actually be getting any extra content.

Another thing I wanted to do – as I try to do with everything we do here at Fantasy-Faction – was come up with a Podcast that was in someway interactive; something that could involve and contribute to the fantasy community in some way. I thought about a book club, but let us be honest, how many people have time to read a novel every single week/fortnight/month? What about if you don’t like the novel for that week/fortnight/month? That means you can’t be involved and if that happens a couple of weeks in a row you could justifiably get fed up with the whole things. A second idea I had was to do a kind of Fantasy Novel University Workshop. Where we break down what makes a certain novel or writer so enjoyable/successful – characters, world building, plot threads, prose, etc. Again though, doing this would take a huge amount of investment in time and if you have no interest in the author we are looking at for that particular Podcast then you’d likely skip it. Additionally, as much as I love fantasy novels, I thought that a podcast focusing on a novel would likely have to be pretty long and could easily get very boring very quickly.

So, that brings me to what I have come up with: a Podcast that focuses on Fantasy Short Stories.

I’ve spoken before on how much I enjoy short stories, how I think they are under-marketed and, as a result, don’t receive anywhere near the kind of attention they deserve.

Short stories are… short. They can be read – and, usually should be read – in a single sitting. The other thing about short stories is that they tend to be technically very complex and have a meaning that far extends the prose. This lends to much discussion on the piece in terms of the craft, the meaning of the short story, what lies beyond the words on the page – as well as the general ‘what did I like and not like about it’ type discussions. The short story also lends itself well to the podcast format: we can cover a number of stories per episode which means there will be plenty of variety and, hopefully, this will ensure it is kept snappy and enjoyable.

My idea, in summary, is as follows:

• Each fortnight Fantasy-Faction will publish a Podcast that will reflect upon 3-6 Short Stories.
• A podcasting team will go over what they enjoyed about the stories, what they didn’t like and try to break down what the author was trying to achieve and how they did. We will focus on what a reader and a writer can take away from the piece.
• We will announce the three short stories at the end of each Podcast so listeners can join in reading the short stories with us and even apply to be a guest panelist. The Forum will have specific topics for each story.
• The Podcast will be completely free

My hope is twofold. Firstly, I hope that this podcast will encourage more people to read and appreciate short stories. Second, I hope that it will help writers who are interested in working within this medium. By looking at the elements that make a fantasy short story work (or not) I hope we can educate and inspire those who love to write (such as myself!).

Interested in joining the panel?

The podcasters make the Podcast. I honestly believe that a podcast about paint drying could make compulsive listening with the right team. Thankfully, we have a pretty kick ass topic: fantasy short stories, but that doesn’t mean we can afford to have a team of podcasters who lack chemistry. Fantasy-Faction will be looking to put together a rotating team of Podcasters who can really do the authors of these short stories justice. The idea is that we have double the amount of Podcasters we need per show (so if we decide on a panel of three then we will have six) and rotate members depending on their preferences and schedule, etc. I’ve been asked if you have to have experience to apply: the answer is no. What you do need is enthusiasm and a love of the fantasy genre. I would also like to say that we don’t expect you to be veteran short story readers – few people are.

If you are enthusiastic, you do love fantasy and you don’t think having your voice recorded will phase you then please consider the following, because you will need time once a month to:

• Read 3-12 short stories – these probably won’t be over 20-40 pages each.
• Record either 1 or 2 podcasts (recording can take an hour or two – obviously it will be edited).
• Get involved with the discussions on the forum and engage with listeners.

If you are interested in joining our Podcasting team we would love to hear from you. You can e-mail me on Marc@Fantasy-Faction.com . We are looking to get started in November. Oh, and anyone thinking ‘there surely aren’t enough fantasy short stories out there to sustain a podcast, are there?’, I just checked my shelves and pulled these out:

I hope you are all as excited about this as I am and I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments section. I will release further updates over the coming weeks.

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