Writing Makes All the Difference - Beautifully Braiding Scenes, Stand-Ups, and Narration
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These are my levels, check, check. Hey everyone, Rob Rosenthal here. I produce and host Sound School, the backstory to great audio storytelling from PRX and Transom. Let's jump right in. I'm going to turn back the clock a few months. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

We start our journey at the border between Lebanon and Syria, where we find Hassan Soheili on the Lebanese side. He holds prayer beads in his hand as he paces back and forth, back and forth. He tells me, my son is in prison in Syria. I want to go see if he's out. If he's not out, I don't know where he is.

The 57-year-old Aleppo native cuts a regal figure, dressed in a blazer over a long brown tunic. The regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria fell in early December of 2024.

Leila Fadl was there capturing the aftermath for NPR. His son was snatched off the road from Aleppo to Damascus 12 years ago by regime forces. He says he doesn't know why. In story after story, it seemed like Leila was on the ground covering everything, everywhere, all at once. From the border between Syria and Lebanon, where she met the man holding prayer beads, to the site of a horrific chemical weapons attack carried out by the Assad government.

Tawfit and his brother take us to the apartment building where it happened. So he just pointed to the road right in front of the building and he said, I laid here, all of the bodies were right here and in the entryway of this building. In yet another location for another story, here's one of the most gut-wrenching scenes I heard in Leila's reporting. She says,

She spoke to Syrians outside a hospital morgue.

They basically taped up pictures of the dead disfigured bodies they found. And that crowd you hear is here looking at those pictures to try to figure out if any of these people are their loved ones, their missing loved ones. Some of the dead have no eyes. Some are black and blue. There are close-ups of identifying markers, tattoos, birthmarks. I see a young woman at the front of the crowd examining every image closely. I've been here for 2,000 years.

Her name is Sara Abdulhamid Al-Ami, and she's 23. She's looking for four of her brothers, all accused of terrorism, all taken on the way to work. Did you find anything? I didn't find my brothers. I didn't find them. They didn't do anything.

Then she pulls pictures of each one out of her purse. Abdullah, Mohammed, Ibrahim, Ahmed. You know, as Sara pulls out her pictures, everyone around her is pulling their own pictures out of their loved ones. A woman shows me her son on her phone. Another reaches over Alhami's shoulder to show me her child's ID. They grab my arm. They beg for help.

Al-Ami wails in the middle. They killed our children, she screams. I want blood for blood. I want soul for soul. Oh, that's so hard to listen to. And so powerful. The power of audio storytelling, for sure.

On Sound School, I've been on a writing kick lately, pointing out inspiring writing I've heard in audio stories. In one recent episode, I looked at the literary approach of the writers in the podcast Noble. In another, it was the maneuver the writers of the Pig Iron podcast used to avoid cliches like, last time on Pig Iron...

Well, on this episode, I'm shining a light on Leila Fadal's writing in these stories from Syria that were indispensable. Reports that allowed listeners to see what was unfolding.

There aren't any flourishes in Layla's writing. No moments when I think, oh, excellent word choice, or wow, I wish I'd written that line. In fact, there were a couple of moments when I thought her writing sounded more like a print reporter. The 57-year-old Aleppo native cuts a regal figure. See what I mean? If Layla was just talking to us over a cup of tea or something, I don't think she'd say, the 57-year-old Aleppo native cuts a regal figure.

That's more of a print convention. Indeed, Layla was a print reporter for many years before joining NPR back in 2012.

But that's me being nitpicky. The writing that grabbed my ear has more to do with structure, how she assembled the story so seamlessly, moving from narration to scene tape, back to narration, then to a stand-up, and over to an interview, followed up by some translation. Like she braided so many sonic textures, her stories feel musical, which is one of the highest compliments you can give an audio writer. There's God who decides. There's God who decides. I'm going to ask him to bring me the court and take the right.

In a 2017 documentary, Hamada said he wouldn't rest until there was justice. Listen for that musicality as Leila joins protesters who took to the streets after they learned that Mazen Hamada, a Syrian human rights advocate, had been killed by the government. They're chanting, 1-1-1, the Syrian people is won.

We're unified. Our producer, Jad Abdin, translates the chants there. On this day, in an Esed-free Damascus, Hamada is mourned loudly by hundreds in a funeral procession that starts at this hospital and ends at his final resting place. We are the ones who will be saved.

Out of the crowd, a man with a mustache, a red baseball cap, and a wide smile walks up to us. Let me speak to you. His name is Abdullah Fadl, and he translates books. I, myself, spent nine years in prison between 1992 until 2000. I have never dreamed of having such a day. Never. It's unbelievable. Beyond my imagination.

So this procession, what does it mean? This, I know, it's a kind of symbolic funeral. Symbolic in what way? Because people are participating because they want to show that they are one people, they have one aim, one goal. Simply because this guy is a symbol of all the people who died in such a way, not only he himself. You see, you look at the images, most of them are

In the crowd, people hold posters above their heads graced with the images and names of their missing and killed. On the side of the roads, the shops are open, and people watch in tears as Hamada's body is held high above the crowd, draped in the revolutionary flag.

On this day, chants like this one ring through Damascus, cursing the Assad family and calling for a united Syria. The same chants that got people like Hamada killed and tens of thousands disappeared. Leila Fadl, reporting from Syria in 2024. She's one of the hosts of NPR's Morning Edition.

Layla has earned awards for her reporting from the Middle East, a George R. Polk Award in 2007 for foreign reporting when she was working for the McClatchy newspapers, and another in 2013 from the Overseas Press Club. That was for her reporting on the military coup in Egypt for NPR. Clearly, Layla has earned another award. ♪♪

I listen to Morning Edition on NPR just about every day. And because I'm kind of nerdy, when I hear something I like, I download the story because I might feature it on Sound School. That's what happened with Layla's stories. They've been sitting in the hopper for several months and I finally got around to them.

I also collect stories when reporters do something I don't particularly care for. And then there's my small collection of top-of-the-hour headlines where newscasters flub the writing in the most delicious way. The mistakes are laugh-out-loud funny. Want to hear them? Visit transom.org. Look for the page for this episode of Sound School. Also over at Transom, find out what a kite festival, sheep, protest...

and texting with family have in common. And I'll give you a hint, Signal Hill. I'm Rob Rosenthal, beaming to you from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the radio center of the universe. I have support from Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, Jennifer Jarrett, and WCAI. Thanks for listening.