[Today’s post comes from Harry Marks, whom you may recognize from his work on the Covered podcast as a frequent guest on Erasable. Harry has written and produced a new show with which I am in love, and you can learn all about it below.]

Ray Liotta voice As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to own my own bookstore. Unfortunately, the economy and, more recently, the virus situation around the world have made achieving that dream impossible. But there was another dream. Once upon a time, I was a film student focused on writing the next great screenplay. As I got older, my passions shifted toward fiction writing and I’ve spent the last 10 years writing six failed novels.

Rather than invest months of time and effort in another manuscript, I wanted to write something I could guarantee would be seen by more than agents and critique partners. And since self-publishing any of my novels was never part of my plans, I figured I’d tap into one of my other hobbies: podcasting.

The Show

The Shelf Life is a sitcom about Edwin Charles (played by yours truly), the owner of Blue Cat Books, a small-town, independent bookstore. The coffee shop next door is run by Vincent Hughes (played brilliantly by the 1857 podcast’s Stuart Lennon). When a young woman from out of town shows up with a bombshell secret, Edwin’s quiet life is turned upside-down.

Getting Started

I knew what story I wanted to tell, so I set up some ground rules. First, each episode would be short—no more than 15 minutes in length. I didn’t want a bunch of scene changes and narration. I wanted each episode to feel like a one-act play.

Secondly, I really wanted to lean into the sitcom aesthetic. Andy Welfle, co-host of the Erasable podcast, suggested I use a laugh track. I loved this idea. It would set me apart from other scripted fiction comedy podcasts, which didn’t use canned laughter. This would sound like a televised sitcom.

And finally, the season would have a hard stop at eight episodes. After that, I’d take time to write and record the next batch. Now that I had some guidelines in place, I needed to begin my research. I started by listening to all kinds of scripted audio drama podcasts. Marvel’s Wolverine, Wooden Overcoats— a British podcast sitcom about rival funeral homes — and Sarah Rhea Werner’s Girl in Space podcast gave me insight into how to design an audio-based world. I paid attention to the plot structure and voice acting, but also to how sound moved throughout each episode. For example, the way a voice would travel from my left ear to my right ear as a character walked from one place to another.

I also knew I’d need sound effects to flesh out each scene. This was a bookshop, so it would require a bell that tinkled every time a character opened the front door, cash register sounds, footsteps, and, of course, the laugh track. But all of that would have to wait until I’d actually, you know, written something.

The first episode took the longest to write. I wanted to get it perfect. I researched scripts from all kinds of sitcoms and comedy shows, including Seinfeld, BoJack Horseman, Bob’s Burgers, and How I Met Your Mother. Writing a full 22-minute sitcom required certain rules to be followed, such as how long in a scene before a joke needed to be told, but The Shelf Life was much shorter in format and I couldn’t rely on visual gags due to it being a podcast.

Instead, I wrote what I knew. My favorite kind of humor had always been the organic kind that arose from a situation or an innocuous setup. I’d never liked the Chuck Lorre “setup > punchline” style of joke-telling so prominent in shows like The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. It always sounded forced.

My jokes would happen more naturally wherever they seemed to fit, while still leaving room for touching sitcom moments (minus the sad violins underneath).

Once I had the first episode completed, I asked some friends to join me in helping bring it to life. Stu was first. I had written the Vincent Hughes character with him in mind from the beginning and I was thrilled when he said yes. Sarah Blair was a writer friend of mine who also had her own podcast, The X-Cast, and she was my first choice for Mrs. Larson. Melody Weister rounded out the main cast with a performance of Lucy Hatten that knocked my socks off during editing.

I got extremely lucky in finding actors who not only were incredibly talented, but eager to join me on this brand new endeavor without any idea of where it would go (if it would go anywhere at all). I am eternally grateful and I quite literally couldn’t have done this without them.

As soon as I sent them their scripts, I got to work on the next episode. I kept a separate document with a list of potential “sitcom plots” for each episode. These are stories that could be wrapped up by the end of each episode, but contributed to the larger arc. For example, in episode two, LARPers camp outside the bookshop for the midnight release of a popular Young Adult fantasy novel—and Edwin has no idea his store was supposed to be open that late. In another episode, religious crusaders boycott the store for carrying the fantasy novel in the first place.

One by one, each actor sent over their recordings as either high-quality MP3s or WAV files. Here’s where things got nerdy.

Editing

In the past, I’d edited my podcasts in Apple’s GarageBand on my MacBook Air. This time, however, I wanted something a little more user friendly. Since I’d already migrated almost all of my computing to my iPad Pro, I decided to put Wooji Juice’s amazing Ferrite app to good use. For those who enjoy nitty gritty workflow details, here’s my current setup:

Hardware

– 2018 iPad Pro with Apple Pencil

– Samson Q7 Microphone

– PreSonus AudioBox USB Audio Interface

Software

– Ferrite Recording Studio

– Audacity

Sound Effects/Music Sites

– Storyblocks

– Pond5

I still use the Mac to strip background noise from each file. Though Ferrite does offer a noise reduction feature, it’s pretty heavy-handed and Audacity does a great job.

Today

The first two episodes of The Shelf Life have been released with six more on the way. New episodes come out every Monday morning. If you’d like to subscribe to the show, you can do so in your podcatcher of choice by either searching for The Shelf Life or visiting the show’s website at shelflifesit.com/subscribe.

I’m incredibly proud of this podcast and all the hard work everyone has put into it. This truly is a labor of love and I hope others have fun listening to it as much as I had putting it together.

As you listen throughout the season, you’ll undoubtedly hear some familiar voices. All three Erasable cohosts pop up in different episodes—you can hear Johnny at the beginning of episode two right now—and I’m always looking to add more to the cast.

To those who have already subscribed, thank you. To those who haven’t pulled the trigger yet, go for it. You have nothing to lose! And if you listen through Apple’s Podcasts app, please leave a review for the show.

To learn more about The Shelf Life, visit shelflifesit.com and follow the show on Twitter and Instagram.

And enormous thanks to Johnny for letting me borrow his site to plug the show. Happy listening!