If you want to create a fiction podcast, but think you don’t have the means, check this out.

Let me tell you how I occupied myself for about 10 weeks during quarantine. I spent almost every waking hour writing and producing a fiction podcast.

The original idea for the story included a bunch of characters, but because of the quarantine and the fact that I don’t have the funds to go around hiring a bunch of voice actors, I reworked the story to include just a few characters. And though I’m no actor, I filled the main role just out of necessity. See? Here I am acting and shit…

The emotion! The pathos!

Of course, that was before I learned that I should really be recording in a more soundproof place, so I moved into here…

A closet. Not even enough room to turn around. Claustrophobia, party of one.

To fill out the cast, I asked two of my old college buddies (who had their own recording equipment) and my wife. I gave them each their episode scripts and, in the case of my friends, they recorded their parts in their own home and sent me a few takes of each scene.

I don’t have a photo of any of them recording, but… uh… here’s a shot of my wife standing proudly next to a puzzle she worked really hard to complete…

Oh, and as for the microphone, we already had a nice one, but any microphone will do in a pinch. Hell, I know some people even use the mic on their earbuds to record. Sure, it’s not ideal, but it works.

Then, having almost no knowledge of how to work the software, I edited it, did sound design and mixed it. I used Pro Tools, but there are a ton of free options for recording and mixing a podcast, like Audacity. And some podcast hosting companies, like Anchor, even offer that stuff for free. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

Anyway, my wife knew how to use Pro Tools, so she showed me the basics. And my friend Tyler does audio for a living, so whenever I got stuck on something, he would walk me through the fix. You can’t swing a stick without hitting someone who knows something about recording, especially now when every-fucking-body has a podcast. So, ask around if you don’t know the technical stuff.

I should also note I got nearly all of the sound effects from freesound.org, which is a fantastic resource for this sort of thing. It’s a pretty massive searchable library of totally free effects generated by pro and amateur users. And the site has royalty-free music options, too, but I spent about $20 at melodyloops.com for main theme music I thought perfectly captured the mood of my story.

I also used royalty-free images to generate some promotional graphics both for the series and individual episodes. Graphics like this one…

…and this one…

I used Photoshop to make them, but there are free online photo editors that have the same functionality. Pixlr is a good one.

When the audio files were ready, I looked around at where to put them. Now, there are a shit-ton of sites and services that will host your files and populate your podcast to all of the major platforms. So, see what works best for you. I used the aforementioned Anchor because it’s super easy to use and — you guessed it — free.

Then, once the whole thing was rockin’ and rollin’, I started putting the word out any way I could and a few of those efforts were successful…

Now, this post is about how to make a podcast, not how to be successful at it. But, I’ll say this about self-promotion: Just tweeting shit out doesn’t do anything. You have to research where people who might listen to your podcast go online, what lingo they use, etc. I mean, it’s basically Marketing 101, but a lot of people think posting shit on social media is magic. It’s not.

So, yeah, I tweeted stuff, but I also wrote up a press release and emailed it out to a bunch of websites and reporters. And I made a video trailer using royalty-free stock footage and free video editing software.

So, my final tally to make and publish a 6-episode immersive fiction podcast was exactly $20. (And that was for the theme music.) And I was able to do this because I didn’t let a lack of funds or lack of technical know-how stop me. And because — and this is key — I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. If not for my wife and my friends… I won’t say I wouldn’t have been able to do it, but it definitely would have sucked ass.

Okay? Now you know you can quite literally make a podcast for free. So, go do it.

And lastly, if you dig crime and/or horror fiction, maybe check out my podcast Barren. And if you like it, leave a review.

If you don’t like it, fuck off.