For my second sketch, Voicemail to Myself, I was curious about the way audio fiction can blur the line between fiction and reality by subverting the familiar format of audio diaries or voice memos. Inspired by examples on Canvas like Alice Isn’t Dead and Within the Wires, I made a piece that starts out as a realistic, personal diary entry but becomes increasingly sinister and unreliable. I wanted to use the confessional intimacy of audio diaries to engage the listener—and then betray that trust with surreal, unsettling cues.
As McHugh (2017) argues, audio storytelling offers a unique space where “listening closely becomes a way of knowing,” and I wanted to play with that idea. Like the narrator in Within the Wires, my character speaks directly to a listener—in this case, themselves—but the message ever more descends into something less understandable and more disturbing. It raises the question: is this really a diary, or something else?
The sketch utilises unscripted-sounding voiceover recordings that are post-edited to be informal and off-the-cuff but with layered design elements—hidden sound effects, glitches, background hums—to indicate something happening in the background. Alice Isn’t Dead, where normal travel logs become a mystery about something terrible in the background, was an influence. That show helped me understand that silence, distortion, and pacing are good tension makers, so I tried to use those in my structure.
I also borrowed from The Remains, which unfolds as a narrative in the format of phone calls and voicemails. I liked how that piece constructed absence into presence—how the silences in between recordings made me listen closer. I tried to echo that by interspersing long pauses, vague references, and shifting tones that make the listener fill in the blanks.
Ultimately, Voicemail to Myself is a work of creating mood and ambiguity. It plays with tropes of nonfiction—like diary entries and voice memos—but makes them into something other. Through sound design, narrative emptiness, and shifting perspectives, I wanted to invite listeners into a personal space. then make them question what they were hearing.
References
Pixabay. (2020). Sound effect by freesound_community [Audio]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com
Evstafeva, D. (2023). Sound effect [Audio]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com
Otto. (2020). Sound effect [Audio]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com
Cxdy. (2023). Royalty-free drum kit sounds [Audio sample]. https://www.cxdykits.com/
Prodbyrexes. (2022). Free drum kit sound effects [Audio sample].