Students compose a podcast Major Work within the prescribed running time, controlling voice, sound and structure as the medium's distinctive meaning-making resources and submitting a supporting script

What this dot point is asking

A podcast is composition for the ear alone. There is no image to lean on and no text for a reader to re-read, only sound moving through time. This dot point asks you to compose a Major Work in which voice, sound design and structure do the work that print and image cannot, and to understand the audio essay, the narrative podcast and the documentary feature as forms with their own conventions. The trap is recording a written essay and calling it a podcast. The form has to be the reason the work exists.

The answer

A podcast Major Work is an original audio composition within a running time of no more than fifteen minutes, submitted with a supporting script. Sound that functions purely as interval or segue is generally not counted in the running time, while sound integral to the work is. As with every form, the Reflection Statement sits outside the limit.

Composing for the ear

Listeners cannot scroll back. They receive the work once, in order, in real time. This changes everything about structure and clarity. Information has to arrive in a sequence the ear can follow, signposting matters more than on the page, and a confusing passage is simply lost rather than re-read. Writing for audio means writing for a single, forward-moving act of attention.

The resources of the medium

Sound has its own vocabulary. The grain and pace of a voice, the layering of ambient sound, music as emotional underscore, the hard cut versus the slow fade, and above all silence. A held silence in audio is as expressive as white space on a poetry page. These are not decorations on a script. They are the medium's equivalent of imagery and structure, and your composition should use them as meaning, not garnish.

Investigating the form

Listen analytically to audio documentaries, narrative podcasts and audio essays. Work out how a feature opens to hook a listener within seconds, how it braids interview, narration and sound, how it handles transitions without visual cues, and how it controls pace across its length. Reading like a composer here means listening like one: stopping to ask how a particular effect was achieved and whether you could build something similar.

Structure across time

Without pages, structure is purely temporal. You are arranging an experience that unfolds second by second. Strong audio work often establishes a sonic motif early and returns to it, uses recurring sound to mark sections, and paces revelation carefully because the listener cannot jump ahead. Mapping the work as a timeline rather than a page layout is the natural way to plan it.

The supporting script

You submit a script alongside the audio. This is not an afterthought; it is the document that shows the work was composed rather than improvised. It should capture not only spoken words but the intended sound design, cues and structure, so that the audio's deliberate construction is legible. Treat the script as part of the evidence that the composition was crafted.

Voice and intimacy

Audio is famously intimate. A voice in a listener's ears feels close in a way print does not. Deciding how that voice addresses the listener, confiding, reporting, performing, is a central craft choice. Consistency of voice across the running time is what holds a podcast together, and a wavering or generic delivery undermines even good material.

A podcast Major Work proves you can compose in sound and time, where the listener gets one pass and no image. Build the work so that voice, sound design, silence and structure carry the meaning, study the conventions of audio forms closely, and make sure the Reflection Statement can argue that this work had to be heard rather than read. If it could have been a printed essay, the form has not earned its place.