How Rod Serling Used The Talking Draft Method
Rod Serling was an award winning screenwriter, playwright and TV producer who massively shaped the early years of TV. He penned scripts for Kraft Theatre, Studio One, The U.S. Steel Hour, Playhouse 90, and 12 feature films. Most famously, Serling wrote 92 Twilight Zone episodes and 36 scripts for his TV series Night Gallery. This staggering output was aided by his inspired use of The Talking Draft Method.
Rod Serling recorded his scenes on 1,152 dictabelts which are currently with The Rod Serling Collection.
According to the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation, the writer began dictating scripts early in his television career as a way to save time. Additionally, the Foundation which has been administered by his widow and children since his early death at age 50, suggests that his use of The Talking Draft Method also probably “influenced his writing and his mastery of dialogue.”
Listening to Serling’s dictabelts reveals that the writer not only dictated the dialogue — he also included action lines containing scene descriptions and character descriptions. This approach remains, today, the core of the Talking Draft Method.
For decades, Dictaphone machines were used by businessmen, doctors, screenwriters, and others to record correspondence, notes, and drafts of screenplays. They or their assistants and/or secretaries would then listen and type up the tapes for review. Often, documents would be reformatted and revised again.
Even with those steps, Serling’s use of the Talking Draft Method made his prolific output legendary in his own time.
Today, TalkingDraft.com has cut those steps down to one. We are the only way to automate this time-tested and time-saving screenwriting method which was proudly used by one of the greatest writers to ever work the craft.
With TalkingDraft.com, rather than have your transcribed text get painstakingly reformatted by hand later, you format it as you improv your scene… A.I. does the rest. We are proud that our app outputs to every single major screenwriting program.
The Talking Draft Method has been the fastest way to produce a first draft since its invention in 1936. The method is an inspired use of technology to capture the magic of the creative flowstate, which in the hands of a master of story like Rod Serling, is the key to generating a mountainous legacy of classic hits.
