A sci-fi audio drama / podcast typically runs 20-40 pages per episode and is defined by speculative audio fiction that builds futuristic and alien worlds entirely through sound design, vocal performance, and the listener's imagination — the theater of the mind at its most expansive.
Audio sci-fi builds entire worlds through sound alone — and it works because the listener's imagination does the expensive visual effects for free. Technology sounds need to be distinctive and consistent: what does a starship engine sound like in your world? AI and computer voices should be scripted with specific vocal characteristics. Alien languages or accents need to be described clearly for voice actors. Environmental audio (space silence, alien atmospheres, technological hum) creates the world. Exposition about technology and science must be delivered through natural dialogue — no one explains their own phone. Radio communications and ship-to-ship dialogue are natural audio formats. The scope can be as big as your imagination because there's no VFX budget.
Open with the world in action — a transmission, a discovery, a journey (2-4 pages). Establish the episode's central speculative scenario (5-10 pages). Explore the implications through character dialogue and sound-designed sequences (6-12 pages). Deliver the episode's climax (3-6 pages). Set up the next chapter (2-3 pages). Total: 20-40 pages per episode.
Define your one big idea — the single speculative element that makes your world different from ours.
Build the world through character experience, not exposition. Let the audience discover the rules alongside the protagonist.
Ground the speculative concept in a deeply human story. Strip away the sci-fi and the emotional core should still work.
Create a glossary for yourself but keep jargon to a minimum in the script. If a reader has to pause to decode terminology, you've lost them.
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