What I Learned Turning an Essay Into a Six-Part Audio Series

My story was 170 seconds long.

On LinkedIn, that's nothing. On Instagram, it's an eternity.

Last month, The Fed Up published "From Diplomacy to Voiceover," an audio piece I wrote and recorded about leaving the Foreign Service without a next assignment and finding my way to the sound booth. I wanted to share it on Instagram, where I'm trying to build a new audience.

The first lesson came before I even opened an editing tool: even I knew 170 seconds was too long for a Reel.

So I cut it into six parts. Here's what that taught me.

Cut where the meaning lands, not where the clock says

Splitting a recording sounds mechanical. It isn't.

I went through the transcript and marked the places where a thought came to rest. Part 1 ends on "No post, no orders, no script." Part 3 ends on "And that's how I found voiceover." Each part had to finish on a line that earned the next one.

It's the same instinct I use in narration. You don't pause because a sentence is long. You pause because the meaning needs a beat to land.

The technical lesson came next. In CapCut, I sliced the audio into six pieces and switched off the five I didn't need. The timeline still said 3:01. Switched-off clips still count. The fix was simple once I saw it: duplicate the project six times, and in each copy, delete everything but one part. The original stays intact.

The cover has one job

The cover is the first thing anyone sees, so it has to stop the scroll.

I used my brand photo: headphones on, a gold ring around the frame, and my 10-year-old cat, Magma, giving the camera a world-class side-eye (see above). Then I added the title... and it disappeared. Teal text over a black shirt and a tabby cat is nearly invisible on a phone. I tried gold. That was worse.

The problem wasn't the color. It was the placement. No color reads clearly over everything at once.

The 9:16 lesson

Next I moved the title into a corner. Not ideal, but better. Then I changed the canvas to give myself more room, and chose 16:9.

Wide. Not tall.

On a phone, my video would have shown up as a thin strip in the middle of the screen. 9:16 is the shape of a phone held upright, and that's how people watch Reels. The numbers look almost identical. The result is not.

Once I switched, I had black space above and below the photo. "Part 1 of 6" went on top. "From Diplomacy to Voiceover" went underneath. Then I nudged both lines closer to the circle, so Instagram's grid crop and caption overlay wouldn't cut them off.

What I'm taking from it

Voice actors talk a lot about the read: the pacing, the breath, the intent behind every line. We constantly hone our craft: auditions, workouts, workshops, coaching.

We talk less about the packaging. But a potential listener can't hear what you're saying if they scroll past you. As I learn more about acting and performance, I am also learning about content creation, verticals, and branding.

I'm posting each of the six parts by hand, with calendar reminders on my phone because Instagram also wouldn't let me schedule the series in advance. Some lessons are about craft. And some are about patience.

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The series runs through October 28, with new parts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can follow along on Instagram at @eleeshavo_lgbs, or listen to the full piece on Substack at https://thefedup.substack.com/p/from-diplomacy-to-voiceover.