Amar Patel Interview
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!
Amar Patel is a writer, editor, copywriter, and producer. Over the past ten years, work has been “a constant hustle, trying to sniff out opportunities,” with a striking collection of clients. (Microsoft, The Quietus, and Lions Rugby among them.) Since late last year, Amar has been writing scripts for podcasts in Broccoli Productions’ Cancelled series, which tells the stories of controversial attempts to cancel celebrities, companies, and brands. (He’s worked on episodes devoted to Janet Jackson and the Dixie Chicks.)
Can you talk a bit about your professional journey?
After university I sidestepped the legal profession to pursue my interest in writing. I was captivated by many forms of music – anything with soul, intensity, honesty – and wanted to learn how to use language to explore my relationship to sound. Call it a calling but was there a career in it? I had to find out. I had grown up in a newsagency surrounded by newspapers and magazines so perhaps that’s where the early fascination with words came from. NME, Melody Maker, Q, Select, The Face, Uncut.
My writing was wholly unremarkable at college. Poor structure, occasionally verbose. But reading the likes of Jack Kerouac, critic Lester Bangs and The New Journalism made me want to learn how to move a reader in a matter of words. And I would never describe my knowledge as encyclopedic. So I thought I could be a useful journalist by sharing what I had learned, without making myself the focus on the story.
After completing a postgraduate diploma in magazine journalism in my hometown of Brighton, I started freelancing for a couple of local publications as well as music magazines including Straight No Chaser, Urb, and Undercover. Chaser became my academy—as it has been for many writers, illustrators, photographers before me. My entry point to lots of splintered music scenes across the world. I learned so much about jazz and countless other forms of creative expression in those pages. I progressed from an unpaid internship to reviews editor, fulfilling the role while working at a content marketing agency called Story Worldwide.
At Story, I worked my way up to editor of the Lexus Europe account and would write and commission stories about art, culture, design and architecture. It was a pivotal time in the industry as print titles were grappling with the internet and scrambling to pivot. Contract publishing companies were no different. I have always been a magazine guy, but I was excited by the possibilities of interactive websites, apps and other platforms.
Sadly, the client was very cautious, despite innovation supposedly being at the heart of the brand, and very few of our proposals reached the public. Around this time I started sharing a desk with copywriters from the web design agency that Story merged with. I wanted to also do what they did.
After leaving there in 2012 and a brief stint as the editor of O2’s customer magazine, I went freelance as a copywriter and editor. I wanted to explore this space between journalism and copywriting. To be able to write words for different formats, with one eye on truth-telling and the other on expanding my craft. Entrepreneurs and SMEs began to find me through my website, while others came via my agency network.
The past 10 years have been a constant hustle, trying to sniff out opportunities. I pride myself on my versatility but I do wonder whether we are moving back to the age of the specialist – pharma, fintech, Gen-Z wellness, you name it. The portfolio includes: 5G case studies for Vodafone Business; website copy for Microsoft’s gaming hub, meal-kit company Feast Box and home automation specialists AI; features for The Quietus, Positive News and Lions Rugby; a short film script for Xerox; a monologue about “home” for Broccoli Productions’ Anthems podcast; a deep dive on The Americans for Custard TV.
I keep an eye out for copywriting and editor callouts through newsletters, on Twitter and on sites including If You Could and The Dots. Currently working on the copy for a major website/venue launch in the arts and cultural sector. Feature ideas come once in a blue moon but I do intend to pitch more long-form pieces while continuing to script. That is still the pinnacle for me.
What was the easiest thing about writing scripts?
Ha, that’s an interesting way of putting it. Well, I assume your newsletter readership always has a few podcasts on the go. So I can say we are all consumers as well as potential scriptwriters. It feels like I have been scouring arts and culture for most of my life. And the minute I decided to pursue a career writing about the things I loved, I flicked a switch. In this case, the active listener switch. You pick up on the structure, the way that points are introduced and different chapters are signposted, how to build suspense and tee up certain revelations. We can all learn part of the craft from just listening in … and more widely. Short films follow a similar premise. How does what I hear support, underpin or evoke what’s happening on screen?
What was the hardest thing about writing scripts?
It takes time to learn that vital economy of expression. Everything you write has to move the story forward somehow but you must give your words time to land. Reading is so different to listening in terms of comprehension and cognitive load. Think about it. We can go at our own pace when reading something on screen or in a book. Not so easy to do with a podcast or film. This is an intimate medium and our ears are sensitive. So don’t overwhelm the listener or viewer with information. Typically, conversational podcasts average around 120-150 words per minute. Learn how to harness pacing to dramatic effect. A pause is powerful. Leave room for whoever is hosting or presenting to inhabit your words, or at least the thrust of what you are saying. Sound design and music also have a role to play in setting a scene and conveying a feeling. You are not writing an essay or dictating a thesis.
What was the most surprising thing about scripts?
The most surprising thing has been how podcast scriptwriting has influenced my other writing. I never thought of myself as a fiction writer or someone who could voice a character. But that’s what I am beginning to do more and more. Using words to explore different tones and flesh out others’ lives. I must credit The Ministry of Stories here, a creative writing school in Hoxton where I mentor. The kids there have really helped me to loosen up as a writer and be more imaginative as we tackle anything from Pythonesque comedy to monster monologues, songwriting or putting poetry in unexpected places.
How would you suggest someone get into this world if they were interested in it?
Read books like Out On The Wire, where Jessica Abel and Ira Glass glean audio storytelling insights from master exponents including Moneylab and The Moth. Spotify producer Jessie Aru Phillips is talking a lot of sense here. Riverside FM has a useful guide. Keep an eye on BBC Sounds’ Audio Lab in case they do a session on scripting. Masterclass obviously has you covered, but there are also videos from the New York Times and Austin Film Festival that might be worth a look. Then … just get cracking. Find a topic, event or person you are fascinated by that no one has covered in great depth. Research the hell out of it. Go tell the story—in the form of a conversation.
What was the best track / video or film / book you’ve consumed in the past 12 months?
Track: Here’s my all-time hero with that eternal energy 4 U, rockin’ a rehearsal like it’s the last night on Earth. Closer to 2022, something melancholic that wraps me up in feels. Eg L’Rain’s ‘Find It’, Tirzah’s ‘Send Me’ or Caroline Polachek’s ‘Door’.
Video: Can the Mothership please come back down? Glenn Goins killin’.
Film: I watched Titane the other night and that was mad. Provocative is a word that gets overused but Julia Ducournau’s latest dares you to look away either in disgust or bewilderment. The kind of film that crawls all over you and triggers new sensations. Aneil Karia’s short The Long Goodbye with my bro Riz Ahmed deserves an Oscar.
Book: Luster by Raven Leilani got me excited about language again. I wrote about it here.
Podcast: If you have any interest in basketball, American politics and the cultural mush in the middle, then I can’t recommend Death at the Wing highly enough. Hosted by Adam McKay.
Anything you want to plug?
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The Cancelled podcast about Janet Jackson @ Superbowl 2004 that I scripted (how a viral TV moment and a personal vendetta derailed one artist’s career, boosted another and inflamed the war on indecency)
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A feature-length podcast about Chicago soul genius Charles Stepney that I scripted and co-produced
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A short film about E Pellicci’s, made in homage to caff culture in East London
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Proud of some of the features I have written for print-only Straight No Chaser including my guide to Motown’s fleeting Black Forum records imprint and an interview with I Called Him Morgan director Kasper Collin
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A poem about ageing that made it onto a few billboards around the UK
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The latest Moonbeam Levels radio show (my world in sound over the past few months)
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I am always sending thoughts out into the world like little paper airplanes. Come find me on IG @amarofpatel
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