Mar 27, 2023
Show Notes
Tara Altebrando is a scripted audio creator and author who was part of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992. She spoke to Will Bachman about her journey since graduation. As a senior, she had been the arts editor of The Independent and had interviewed various artists passing through Boston. She met the editor of a magazine based in Dublin at a New Music Seminar in New York and expressed her interest in working for him. After this conversation, Tara went to Dublin and was given an internship at a magazine called Hot Press. She also worked at a bar-restaurant, music venue called the Rock Garden and wrote a column for the magazine reviewing demos by unsigned Irish bands. After a few years, she decided to move back to New York and tried to pursue rock journalism, but ended up cobbling together a bunch of weird jobs in writing-adjacent fields. She eventually worked at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, where she watched TV with a headset and summarized programs for their database. She went on to work as a proofreader and copy editor for Romantic Times Magazine. While there, she noticed one of her classmates was already writing novels, and this led to her trying her hand at writing a romance novel.
From Romance Writer to Published Author
Tara wrote two thirds of a contemporary romantic suspense novel, and a novel about a 20 something working at a music magazine, but neither were successful. She decided to take fiction workshops to learn the ropes as a fiction writer, and ended up finding a job in publishing houses as a proofreader, copy editor, and copywriter. She found the books she read varied in quality, and decided to write her own. She was working at Simon and Schuster at the time, and they published women’s fiction at a time when Chick Lit was popular. Will and Tara mention how 80% of literary fiction is bought by women, and more than 50% of paperbacks are romance novels.
From Copywriting to a Young Adult Author
She wrote a novel called Love, Love Will Tear Us Apart about a celebrity journalist hired to write the biography of a pair of conjoined twins. The book flopped in the market, but it led to her success as a novelist. However, when she was given an assignment to read a Young Adult novel, it inspired an idea for a Young Adult novel, and decided to explore writing in this genre. She had a book come out in June 2020, but due to the pandemic, it didn't find an audience. This made her reevaluate what she wanted to do with her time and creativity and led her to explore the world of scripted audio dramas. This was a new direction for Tara, and it was exciting to explore the possibilities and potential of audio drama writing.
From YA Fiction to Scripted Radio Dramas
During the pandemic, there was an influx of interest in this kind of screen-free entertainment because families needed something to keep them occupied during quarantines and lockdowns. She pitched an idea for a series called Dream Breachers which was picked up and is now in its third season. Tara describes the process of creating a scripted drama, from scripting and finding actors to recording and producing. They discussed differences between writing for audio dramas and audiobooks. Tara noted that for audio dramas, the writer needs to convey everything through dialogue and sound effects, which can be a challenge. She revealed that she often plays a game with herself to figure out how to convey information without being too obvious. Tara also shared her pet peeves when it comes to audio dramas and talked about moving into producing her own show, and building an audience for these shows.
Chasing Creative Projects
Tara followed a pattern of chasing creative projects throughout her career. She explains how the creative process differs when writing for a series over writing for a novel and shares how writing for Dream Bleachers required going deeply into world building and setting rules which cannot be broken. When writing both YA and middle grade fiction, Tara draws upon her own life experiences and memories, and finds talking to her children a source of both information and inspiration when creating her stories. She also does research on topics relevant to her work, such as memory science for her YA book The Leaving and artificial intelligence for her most recent book.
Courses that resonated with Tara are Creative Writing with Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Sociology of Peace, EthnoMusicology with Graeme Boone, and a professor whom she particularly enjoyed listening to was John Stilgo.
Timestamps
03:29 From Rock Journalism in Dublin to Writing Adjacent Jobs in New York
05:04 On Romance Writing and Editing
08:14 Writing a Contemporary Romantic Suspense Novel
14:24 The Personality of a YA Writer
16:22 Staying Current in the YA Market
20:12 Scripted Radio Dramas
28:29 Exploring Audio Production and Building an Audience
33:48 Incorporating Reader Feedback into a Series
35:02 Exploring Creative Pivots and Entrepreneurial Initiatives
Links:
https://pinna.fm/blog/a-sit-down-with-tara-altebrando-by-amy-thetford
CONTACT INFO:
https://www.facebook.com/TaraAltebrandoBooks/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-altebrando-0831b3201/