| name | podcast-episode-brief |
| description | Use when turning a podcast angle into a recording-ready episode brief — a hook, an arc, segments in order, a run of show, and the single takeaway a listener leaves with. |
Podcast Episode Brief
An episode is heard once, in order, with no scrolling back. The brief is the spine the recording follows so the story holds without a rewind.
Steps
- Name the angle and the takeaway. One sentence for what this episode is about and one for what a listener leaves knowing or feeling. If the takeaway needs a paragraph, the angle is not sharp enough yet.
- Write the hook. Draft the cold open — the first thirty seconds that earn the next thirty minutes. Lead with the tension, the surprise, or the stakes, never with a throat-clearing preamble.
- Build the arc. Lay out the movement from cold open to close: setup, development, the turn, the payoff. The listener should feel the episode going somewhere, not circling.
- Segment in order. Break the arc into segments, each with its job and its rough minutes. Name where an ad or a break falls so it lands on a seam, not mid-thought.
- Ground it in the floor's research. Pull the argument from an accepted article or chapter rather than re-reporting, and name what the episode still needs — a guest, a question set, a source, a clip.
- Write for the ear. Draft the connective tissue — cold open, segment hand-offs, outro — in spoken-word house voice: short sentences, plain words, a rhythm a host can actually say.
- Set the run of show and the trailing assets. Finalize timing per segment, then draft the show notes and the episode-art request so they ship with the audio, not after it.
Quality bar
- A one-sentence angle and a one-sentence takeaway.
- A hook that earns the episode in its first thirty seconds.
- Segments in order, each with a job, rough minutes, and clean seams for breaks.
- Copy written to be spoken, and show notes plus art prepared to ship alongside the audio.
Output format
A recording-ready brief: angle and takeaway, the cold-open hook, the segment arc with per-segment jobs and timings, research grounding and outstanding needs, spoken connective copy, run of show, and drafted show notes plus an art request.
