Exploring the Two Main Types of Audio Features

An audio feature is not a news bulletin, and it is not a full-length radio documentary either. It sits somewhere in between – a crafted, non-fiction audio programme that uses creative tools to explore a subject in depth. Within this form, producers broadly work with two distinct types: the narrative feature and the dramatized feature. Each has a different structure, a different relationship with its source material, and a different way of using the human voice. Understanding how they differ – and why each exists – is essential for anyone serious about audio journalism and production.

What is an audio feature?
Narrative features: the power of a single thread
Why avoid dialogue in a narrative feature?
Dramatized features: where journalism meets the stage
The role of invented dialogue
The role of drama voices
How the two types complement each other

What is an audio feature?

Before separating the two types, it helps to establish what an audio feature actually is. According to its classical definition, a radio feature (or audio feature) covers a topic in depth from one or more perspectives, often bringing together interviews, commentary, and what producers call “sound pictures.” It is distinct from a documentary in that it allows the producer considerably more creative freedom – including the imaginative treatment of facts and abstract concepts. As scholar Patrick Conley described it, a radio feature is an elaborate broadcast that can contain everything from original sound and author texts to music and noise, typically running between 30 and 60 minutes. Today, that tradition has migrated into podcasting, but the two core structural types remain the same.

Narrative features: the power of a single thread

In a narrative feature, a single, unbroken thread of narration runs through the entire programme. There is no invented dialogue, no scripted exchange between characters. Instead, the narrator connects material drawn from multiple sources – books, memoirs, dispatches, reports, and library recordings – into what producers call a word picture: a coherent, sonic portrait of a subject that exists entirely through the listener’s ear.

The biographical feature is the most recognisable example of this genre. Imagine a programme about a poet like Rabindranath Tagore. The producer would not write a scene where Tagore speaks in invented dialogue. Instead, the narrator weaves together readings from Tagore’s own letters, extracts from contemporaries’ memoirs, archival recordings of his voice, and commentary – all held together by one continuous narrative voice. The listener builds a picture of the person entirely through assembled, verified source material.

This sourcing discipline is central to the narrative feature. Researchers in audio storytelling note that incorporating sound archives, personal life stories, and layered audio techniques significantly enhances a narrative’s depth and emotional resonance. In a narrative feature, all of that material feeds a single, authorial voice – not a cast of characters.

Why avoid dialogue in a narrative feature?

The deliberate avoidance of dialogue is not a limitation – it is a structural choice. Dialogue implies a live or reconstructed exchange, which would shift the feature toward dramatization. The narrative feature stays squarely on the factual side: everything the listener hears is drawn from real, existing records. This makes it the more academically rigorous of the two types, though it demands that the producer have access to substantial recorded or printed material. Without that material, a pure narrative feature is simply not possible.

Dramatized features: where journalism meets the stage

The dramatized feature takes a fundamentally different approach. It has all the structural characteristics of a radio drama – characters, scenes, scripted exchanges, sound effects – but it deals strictly with facts, not fiction. This is its defining and most important distinction: radio has long been recognised for its creative freedom in drama and documentary, and the dramatized feature occupies the space where those two modes overlap.

So why would a journalist or producer choose to dramatize facts rather than simply narrate them? The answer, almost always, is practical necessity. As noted by BBC producer Elwyn Evans, this format is particularly useful when outdoor broadcasting (OB) recording is difficult or impossible. An outside broadcast – the live or location-based capture of events – requires equipment, access, and timing that are not always available. Historical events, private conversations, situations in restricted zones, or moments that happened before recording technology existed: none of these can be captured with a microphone. The dramatized feature solves this problem.

Consider a programme about the first meetings between Indian and British officials during the colonial era. There are no recordings of those conversations. A narrative feature could describe them, but a dramatized feature can reconstruct them – using actors, scripted dialogue based on historical records, and authentic sound design – so that listeners effectively “overhear” history as it unfolds. The dialogue is invented, but it is grounded in documented fact. That is the critical ethical boundary the form maintains.

The role of invented dialogue

In news journalism, putting words in someone’s mouth is a serious breach of ethics. In a dramatized feature, it is an accepted and necessary technique – but it comes with strict conditions. Dialogue in audio drama is the primary instrument for conveying character, emotion, action, and context, since there is no visual dimension to support the story. In the dramatized feature, this same principle applies, but the dialogue must be anchored in factual research. A producer writing a scene between two historical scientists arguing about a discovery would base that argument on the actual letters, journals, or documented accounts those scientists left behind. The dialogue makes dry facts emotionally accessible. It allows the listener to engage with the material as an experience rather than just as information.

This is precisely why researchers studying audio storytelling formats describe the best dramatized features as employing “scripts, actors and improvisation to create a hybrid of radio drama and documentary” – but emphasise that they are definitively not fiction. The drama is used as a vehicle to convey facts that cannot otherwise be heard.

The role of drama voices

One of the most technically important distinctions between the two types of features concerns how voices are used in the script. In a narrative feature, there may be multiple voices reading different portions of the text, but they are fundamentally performing the same function: delivering narration and sourced material. They are not playing characters.

In a dramatized feature, voice use changes entirely. A drama voice is not simply a narrator reading a passage – each voice establishes and maintains a separate identity. Listeners must be able to distinguish characters by the distinctiveness of each voice, their manner of speaking, their emotional register. This is fundamental to how the feature works. If two voices sound similar or switch roles without clear differentiation, the listener loses the thread of who is speaking and why.

This is the key difference between a dramatized feature script and what is sometimes called a talk script. A talk script divided among two or three voices is still essentially a shared narration – the voices are reading information, not embodying characters. In a dramatized feature, the script lays emphasis on dialogue, and that dialogue carries the weight of giving each voice a separate, recognisable dramatic identity. The beginning and end of the script carry particular responsibility: a strong opening must draw the listener in immediately, while a strong closing should leave them reflecting on the subject long after the programme ends.

How the two types complement each other

Narrative and dramatized features are not competitors – they are tools suited to different situations and source conditions. Audio storytelling researchers note that the strengths of the sonic medium – its intimacy, immediacy, and narrative arc – are expressed differently depending on whether a producer is working with existing recorded material or reconstructing events through dramatic means. The narrative feature is the more restrained form: everything the listener hears is real, documented, verified. The dramatized feature is the more imaginative form: it uses the tools of the stage to reveal emotional truths that the historical or factual record alone cannot convey.

Both forms, however, are bound by the same fundamental commitment: they deal with facts. As audio scholars have argued, the genre’s power lies in its ability to both inform and move an audience – using the intimacy of the human voice to connect listeners not just to information, but to the human experience behind it. Whether that connection is made through a carefully assembled narration or through scripted drama, the ethical anchor remains the same: the facts come first.

With the explosion of podcasting, both types have found new life beyond traditional radio. Studies of serial and narrative podcasting show that audiences are increasingly drawn to long-form, crafted audio journalism – exactly the territory that narrative and dramatized features have always occupied. The formats have evolved, but their structural logic remains as relevant as ever for any producer who wants to go deeper than a news report and tell a story that genuinely resonates.

What do you think? If you were producing an audio feature on a historical event with no surviving recordings, would you rely on a narrative approach using documented sources, or would you lean into dramatization to bring the moment to life – and where do you think that ethical line sits between creative reconstruction and journalistic responsibility?

References

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Table of Contents

What is an audio feature? 🔗

Narrative features: the power of a single thread 🔗

Why avoid dialogue in a narrative feature? 🔗

Dramatized features: where journalism meets the stage 🔗

The role of invented dialogue 🔗

The role of drama voices 🔗

How the two types complement each other 🔗