Dissection - Daniel Alarcón's Writing Maneuvers
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I've been listening to the latest from Serial. Have you heard it? It's the series about Keiko. He's a killer whale that scientists and activists tried to return to the sea after years of captivity. This was back in the 1990s. The series is called The Good Whale, and it's hosted by Danielle Alarcon.

So I was listening to Danielle tell the story, and about halfway through the first episode, I was sort of knocked out of my listening groove when Danielle said this. I haven't introduced you to Dick Donner yet, but I did mention his wife, Lauren Schuller Donner. What did he just do? I haven't introduced you to Dick Donner yet, but I did mention his wife, Lauren Schuller Donner. I don't think I've ever heard anyone bring someone on stage like that.

I mean, sure, I've heard narrators back-announce a character after we've heard them speak. That's not unusual. What caught my ear was the casual nature of this introduction. Almost like he saw on a listener's face, who's he talking about? So Danielle responded directly to that listener. I haven't introduced you to Dick Donner yet. After that, I kept an ear out for other writing maneuvers in The Good Will, and I heard them peppered throughout.

So since I think it's a good idea to learn from the masters, and I do think Danielle Alicorn is a masterful writer, I thought I'd point to a few of his writing moves so that we can all steal directly from him. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Sound School, the podcast from PRX and Transom, featuring the backstory to great audio storytelling. I'm Rob Rosenthal.

Before we dive into Danielle's writing, I have news. Transom is offering a workshop on Catalina Island in March of 2025.

I taught the Transom workshops on Catalina for many years. Well, now David Weinberg is taking the helm, and David taught with me several times on Catalina. He's a longtime reporter, lots of experience. I've featured his work on Sound School, like his reporting for KCRW's Below the 10 series, as well as his podcast, The Superhero Complex. The application deadline for the workshop is January 17th. Everything you need to know is at transom.org.

Okay, back to Danielle. Of course, I didn't mean we should literally steal from him, but I do think there's value in listening to a respected reporter's work with a finely tuned ear. It's a way to build muscle, in this case, writing muscle. So with that in mind, let's start at the beginning, where Danielle starts the good whale. Our story begins in the early 90s with an orca named Keiko.

He's just entering his teenage years, living at an amusement park in Mexico City called Reino Aventura, or Adventure Kingdom. He's not from there, but for the last seven years, a tank in this polluted, landlocked megacity more than 7,000 feet above sea level has been his home. Before that, it was a marine park in Canada, where he was bullied by the other orcas. Before that, it was a tank in a big concrete building in Iceland, where he was kept for about three years unable to see the sky.

And even before that, it was North Atlantic, where he was captured and separated from his mom and the rest of his whale pod, probably when he was around, too. Let me stop right there. I promised myself, actually, that I wouldn't hit the pause button too often, but there is too much in Daniel's writing to point out.

First, the classic Once Upon a Time beginning. Our story begins in the early 90s with an orca named Keiko. Now, to be honest, Danielle doesn't sound very enthused, and I wonder if a better opening line, something less tropey, would have helped.

And continuing to be critical, just for a second, I thought this was too much description for one sentence. For the last seven years, a tank in this polluted, landlocked megacity more than 7,000 feet above sea level has been his home. But here's the part I really liked. The repetition coupled with a backwards sequence of events. Before that, it was a marine park in Canada where he was bullied by the other orcas.

Before that, it was a tank in a big concrete building in Iceland, where he was kept for about three years, unable to see the sky. And even before that, it was the North Atlantic, where he was captured and separated from his mom and the rest of his whale pod, probably when he was around two. That's a nice move, right? In this next clip, I like his light touch with the pronoun I. It sounds conversational, relatable.

I don't think I really understood how traumatic this could have been until I learned that male killer whales are essentially mama's boys. And not just when they're young, but basically their entire lives. Even as adults, they might swim by their mother's side. They depend on her. A mother orca might catch a fish, bite it in two, and give half to her son. This kind of closeness is documented in male orcas well into their 20s or 30s.

And Keiko was deprived of the chance to have that. At age two, Keiko would probably still have been swimming in his mother's slipstream, still mastering the language of his pod. He wouldn't have yet learned how to hunt on his own. Despite weighing more than a thousand pounds, in developmental terms, Keiko would have been just a baby. Ripped from his mother, from everything he'd ever known, and from a life that may have been largely spent by her side.

I'm going to fast forward here. Danielle goes on to say that despite the lack of freedom and the decrepit conditions, Keiko's trainers cared for him a great deal. In the offseason, when there were no weekday shows at Reino Aventura, Renata and the other trainers swam and played with Keiko for hours. Most of the people who worked with Keiko were young, none older than 30, and they made Keiko the center of their lives.

They fed him by hand, gave him belly rubs all the time. They even set up a special hose just for him. He loved to be sprayed. And as far as anyone could tell, Keiko genuinely seemed to like it.

Notice what he just said. It's subtle, as far as anyone could tell. And as far as anyone could tell, Keiko genuinely seemed to like it. There's a theme sprinkled throughout The Good Will, anthropomorphism, attributing human traits to animals. Anthropomorphism is typically a no-no in science. Reporters, on the other hand, they're often tempted to anthropomorphize because human behavior is a handy analogy for describing animal behavior.

Danielle cleverly puts that tension to work for him, and rather than stopping the story and zooming out for a few minutes to explain the pitfalls of anthropomorphism, he just adroitly weaves it into the storytelling, simply nods to it for half a minute or so, and then moves on. And the way he moves on? Oh my God, I think I'm going to study his maneuver for years to come because it's so damn seamless and graceful.

Notice how Danielle segues out of his nod to anthropomorphism and into the moment of orientation, the purpose and intent of the series. Listen and take notes. We had this little boat and there was a rope tied to the front, like a long rope. But we would put it in the water and like three girls would get, you know, hop in it and he would pull us up.

There's nothing about that last sentence of Renata's that could be fact-checked. Not a word. We don't know if Keiko was having a blast. We can't know.

Maybe he was dragging the trainers around because he was bored or because he loved these friendly people who fed him every day. Maybe what his humans interpreted as Keiko having fun was really just habit or even defeat. Like, why not let the people ride? They seem to like it.

We can't really know what animals are thinking, so we do our best with the information we have, making educated guesses about the inner lives of the creatures we love. And that's what this story is really about. An imperfect attempt to understand what might be best for an animal who can't speak for himself. The intention to make things right for him, to make things better for him.

Everything I'm going to tell you in the next six episodes was set in motion by these good intentions. And by everything, I mean an unprecedented global campaign, a high-profile, high-stakes science experiment, and a debate about what exactly we, humans, owe the natural world.

At the center of it all is Keiko, who would become, almost by accident, a symbol for all whales, for the health of the oceans, for the very concept of wildness, but who was also an individual orca with a name and specific history and trauma and character. A character with fears and limitations that no human could ever hope to interpret with any certainty. Not

Not that they wouldn't try. In fact, lots of well-intentioned people would claim they knew exactly what was best for this whale. And they would be arguing and fighting over those interpretations for years. From Serial Productions and the New York Times, this is The Good Whale. I'm Daniel Alarcon. That is so satisfying. I really...

I really like what he did there. I still don't quite understand how he did it. Somehow in my mind, I picture him as a writer jumping from boulder to boulder. And when he gets to the end, we have this magnificent view from high atop a mountain. But he's so good at it, you don't really see the hopping from boulder to boulder. I know this is a weird analogy, but that's where my head went.

One thing I want to note is Danielle's tone. There's a lot about Keiko's story that's crazy. Moments where a listener might be tempted to say out loud, they did what?

But Daniel didn't play to that. He signals the drama to come, for sure, but he doesn't do it in a this-story-is-insane sort of way. The drama's not cranked to 11. That's actually kind of classic Daniel Alarcón. You can hear it in his writing and delivery for Radio Ambulante. That's the Spanish-language podcast that he co-founded and hosts. Daniel's understated and sure-handed in the program.

Okay, moving ahead in The Good Whale to about 10 minutes into the nearly 50-minute episode, Danielle's been dropping a lot of info in the first part of the show. And so he gathers up the breadcrumbs and recaps everything in an efficient single paragraph. An editor might say, eh, take it out. Doesn't move the story forward.

But as far as I'm concerned, it lasts only 20 seconds. And I think it's a solid conversational bit of writing that makes sure listeners are following along. So that's Keiko, occasional TV star, quasi-saint, telepathic confidant, and best friend to countless Mexican children. And this was his life. Constant attention from his trainers, games with his favorite dolphin buddies, performances for thousands of adoring fans. But it was all about to change. ♪

But it was all about to change. I get it. It's a dash of foreshadowing. But I don't know. I feel like I've heard that line too many times. Is it a radio writing crime? No. My issue is it's not doing a lot of work. You could lose it, and I'm not sure anything much would change.

My preference would be to write with specificity, meaning if you're going to end a chapter in a story and you feel like you need to drop a fly in the ointment, write a sentence that does some work. Be clear. Clarity serves the listener. What would that be in this case? Well, I'm not really sure, but Danielle could have said something like, then came movie stardom, or, but then Keiko was given a new name, Willie, as in Free Willie.

I guess as I say those things out loud, I'm kind of cringing. They feel cheesy and clearly I can't write like Danielle. But look, my point is foreshadow with specific detail. And just to be clear, Keiko is the actual whale in Free Willy. It's a movie from the 90s that was incredibly popular. One of those, if you don't cry, you're not alive films. The movie poster is what most people remember. It's the image that was absorbed into the culture, a still from the film's climax.

Willie, in mid-flight, against an orange sunset, jumping over a breakwater. The ocean beckons. The boy stands just below Willie, beneath an arc of sea spray, a triumphant arm pointing to the sky. The tagline reads, How far would you go for a friend? As this clip continues, I'd like you to listen for Danielle to say the words, Strip away for a moment. When it came to who would play Willie, it wasn't like Warner Brothers had a ton of killer whales to choose from.

A producer on the film told us her team approached a few different marine parks, but people weren't excited about the message of the movie and wanted changes to the script. Finally, they landed on Reino Aventura, who signed off, as we mentioned, without even reading it. And Keiko, it turns out, was perfect for the part. See, for the film to work, the producers needed something very specific, a kind of sad-looking whale living in less than ideal conditions. They needed a whale kids would feel sorry for, a whale children would want to save.

And the fact is, while Keiko might have been happy, he wasn't actually that healthy. He was a couple thousand pounds underweight. Not because he was underfed, but probably because the warm water affected his appetite. He had a skin rash too, something called papillomavirus, which looked bad, even though the veterinarian at Reino Aventura said it wasn't that serious. But most striking of all was his tank. It was small, disturbingly small. One of the film's producers joked it was smaller than some swimming pools in Beverly Hills.

The water he swam in wasn't even seawater, just fresh water with salt added. Renata says they checked the salt levels frequently and they weren't under any illusions that Keiko's living conditions were ideal. She told me Reino Aventura looked into building a larger pool, but just couldn't make it work financially.

So strip away for a moment almost everything I've told you. Forget the love and the games and the trainers and the fans and see instead what the camera sees. Keiko, a smaller than average killer whale with a droopy dorsal fin, swimming alone in a tiny, shallow pool. He was exactly what the movie required.

I thought this was another rock-solid writing move. It's another one of those things that isn't necessary. You could cut out the sentence with, so strip away for a moment, as well as forget the love and the games and the trainers and the fans. You could just describe the whale with the droopy dorsal fin.

But strip away for a moment works because it's cinematic. By stripping things away, he's asking us to see things almost like we're looking through a camera, zooming in to focus on the image he wants listeners to see. And bonus points, what he wrote is a callback to the summation I just underlined a minute ago. It's like Danielle built that up, the love, the games, et cetera, in order to take it down. I really like that. It's a good move.

Danielle has written a lot of fiction, two novels and two collections of short stories. I have to believe that background informs how he writes for audio. But to my ear, there's nothing especially literary about his writing. And by that, I mean, it still sounds very much like writing for audio, despite what might be literary like flourishes here and there.

That said, one thing I noticed about the writing, there's not a lot of tape. This is not a tape-driven story. There's a lot of Danielle. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, not at all. But a colleague and I were talking about this series and this approach, a lot of narration. It makes the piece feel like a New Yorker magazine article. And I wonder if that was a conscious choice. And if so, why?

So there are many more examples I could highlight, but let me bring this dissection of Danielle's writing to an end with a slew of short clips, one after another, kind of like the end of a fireworks display. Each of these short clips highlights little moments of colorful writing that make listening to Danielle's storytelling so satisfying. A wild orca can swim over 100 miles a day. Keiko was basically the aquatic equivalent of a couch potato.

Not only did Keiko not know how to hunt for food, he didn't know how to eat live fish. Think about that. If you put a live fish in his mouth, this killer whale wouldn't eat it. Once Dave committed to getting Keiko out of Mexico, the next step was logistics. And what I'm about to say is pretty obvious, but it's worth saying anyway. Moving an orca is not easy.

For months, they'd worked on it with him. First, he'd swim into a small, shallow pool and then into a custom-made sling, swimming in and out of it, weeks spent just getting comfortable with this process. He had to be comfortable because once he was in that sling, he'd stay wrapped in it for at least 14 hours. The challenge would be to keep him calm. He had to trust his humans, not fight or flail. Trust.

The UPS plane carrying Keiko to his new home leaves at around 5 in the morning, more than three hours behind schedule, just before a beautiful Mexican sunrise. Only Keiko's veterinarians fly with him. Renata and Dave fly alongside in another aircraft, close enough to see Keiko's plane from their window.

Keiko no longer belonged to Reino Aventura, much less to Mexico. He belonged to the story being told about him, the uncertain, real-life sequel to the movie that had made him a star, only more far-fetched and with no happy ending assured.

It's kind of funny because it was part of the movie narrative. They were like, how far would you go for a whale? He went as far as, you know, getting him, raising up his arm and saying some magical words and having Willie jump over the breakwater into freedom. I mean, simplistic? Yes. But that's what our narrative was too. How far could Keiko go? ♪

For the moment, no one knew. That's on the next episode of The Good Whale. Danielle Alarcon. He wrote The Good Whale. He also reported the story with Katie Mingle for Serial and The New York Times.

I've included one more clip from The Good Whale over at the post for this episode at Transom. It's a clip featuring Danielle's brief overview of the history of whaling. And I have some thoughts about his language, its strong language, pointed language, about human culpability in the slaughter of whales. And while you're there, be sure to look for info about the Transom Workshop for New Producers, March 23rd through the 30th on Catalina Island.

This is Sound School from PRX and Transom. My thanks to many people, including Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, Jennifer Jarrett, and the good people at WCAI. I'm Rob Rosenthal in Woods Hole, the radio center of the universe. Thanks for listening.