SECTION 1: CLEANED TRANSCRIPT
Kyle Olson:
Whether the weather be fine or whether the weather be not, whether the weather be cold or whether the weather be hot, we’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not. Whether this is your first episode or you are a bellwether bringing others to hear, we’re glad the weather has brought you our way, and we welcome you to Craft and Chaos. And if it’s not the first episode, you’re glad the weather brought you back. This show is a safe harbor from the howling gales of rejection to allow the quiet breeze of inspiration to tickle your ears. My name is Kyle, and I’m wondering why all the crickets have stopped chirping. Looking at the sky, warning the visitors from out of town about the strange winds he’s been noticing — it’s acclaimed author, Ryan Dalton.
Ryan Dalton:
Yes. Be careful. I’m not sure why, but be careful.
Kyle Olson:
Standing on the railing of his lighthouse, pipe clutched tight in teeth, wondering about the strange lights at sea — it’s sonic entrepreneur Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
God, I want a pipe. I deserve a pipe.
Kyle Olson:
And definitely not trying to convince you to join her moon-worshipping doomsday cult — it’s filmmaker Mandy Fabian.
Mandy Fabian:
Give it a shot. What could it hurt?
Pete Wright:
Give it a shot.
Ryan Dalton:
The moon was falsely accused.
Kyle Olson:
I’ve had some strange tides myself. We’re hoping to answer some listener questions today. But when I tried to open the first one, my whole computer crashed. Things are back and running now, so hopefully it’ll get us through this episode.
Pete Wright:
So maybe not.
Mandy Fabian:
Chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos.
Kyle Olson:
Our first topic. I was recently watching one of the many adaptations of popular culture characters — it really doesn’t matter which one, because there’s so many right now. In the process of watching it, I thought, hey, there’s a story I’ve been wanting to do for a while that this character could easily slot into. But then I got caught in this thing, and so this is the topic I wanted to bring to you guys.
Is it better to take a complete new character from scratch — all yours — to tell a story that no one knows, and chances are no one will care about? Or to take a Sherlock Holmes story or a Dracula story, and add to the canon of a famous character? With the latter, you have a chance of being buried in the thousands of stories that have already been told about these characters. So I’m curious: what are your thoughts on OC versus well-known character?
Mandy Fabian:
I typically find the weight of honoring a world or honoring an idea of a character successfully to be a little hefty. It feels like, oh, everyone’s gonna jump on this — unless I’m really passionate and identify with the character. For example, Ursula the Sea Witch — I could probably do something great with her.
That said, I am actually directing a micro-budget feature that is a reimagining of Snow White. I’m not writing it, but I’m directing it. And what I got to do as a director — which was very cool — is we are rethinking the idea that the witch is, boo-hoo, I want to be pretty forever and steal your youth because youth is everything. Instead, the witch is looking to young girls to take her power, and they won’t. So it’s a feminist reimagining. That makes me very excited.
Pete Wright:
That’s awesome. The line for me has always been: if I want to contribute to an existing canon, am I going to start writing fanfiction? And I don’t know why that sounds so derogatory when I say it out loud. Do I have enough to contribute to make something original? Or do I just want to see what happens when these two characters kiss?
Kyle Olson:
I wasn’t even thinking about fanfiction. I was thinking more like what Mandy was talking about — something mainstream, something you’re going to release out into the world, but with somebody we all know. Like Tarzan, or whatever.
Pete Wright:
Well, I look at a property like Enola Holmes on Netflix. What an interesting contribution to the universe of Sherlock Holmes — a complete new take on these characters that is compelling and fun. They’ve done a great job of it.
My bias has always been not toward a character canon, but toward a genre. I love zombies. What can I write that contributes to post-apocalypse, virus, zombification — what can I do to make something original there? Not taking specific characters, but taking worlds. And I think that lives inside the same gestalt, even if it’s not name-checking a classic character.
Ryan Dalton:
Playing in someone else’s sandbox can be super fun, whether you just want to do something fun and silly or whether you feel like you really have something to say. I think that can totally be valid.
I do think in modern media we see a dark side of that, where someone will be brought on to tell a story in a universe or an adaptation and they don’t really care about that universe or those characters. They just see it as a vehicle to push their own ideas. So they do a disservice to what people liked before while bringing nothing new, and thereby attract no new audience. You kill the old audience while attracting no new one — you essentially kill the entire property. I think that largely comes down to the hubris of creators who can’t get anyone to listen to their own stuff, so they hijack an IP and use it.
If you can do it and bring something interesting and fresh that serves the story, the characters, the universe — and not yourself — then I’m all for it, and I think it can be super fun.
It’s harder to get something original out there and get eyes on it. It’s still worth the pursuit, because we still need new things. We still need new myths. We still need new characters. There is room for both in the universe if people are willing to do it and are brave enough to go for it.
Sometimes I get ideas that I think could work well in an existing universe. Sometimes they’re completely silly and fun to talk about as a ridiculous thing. One time a few years ago I put a pitch out there in the world — not as a real pitch, just because I thought it was funny — for a new Anne of Green Gables called Anna Valhalla, in which she becomes a battle-axe warrior. I didn’t propose it as anything serious; I just thought it was fun to think about.
I do get other ideas that I think could be seriously done. In fact, I can’t say specifically what it is because we’re still seeing what’s going to happen with it — did I mention this before? I did get to pitch something in an existing IP last year.
Kyle Olson:
And you were just as cryptic last time you mentioned it.
Ryan Dalton:
I still have to be cryptic because you guys know how slow publishing moves.
Pete Wright:
I know.
Mandy Fabian:
I think Mr. Rogers has passed away, though. I think it’s okay to talk about it now.
Pete Wright:
The doors and gates are open.
Ryan Dalton:
He’ll be public domain any day. Yeah. It’ll be him versus Winnie the Pooh or something.
Kyle Olson:
Fred Rogers, zombie hunter.
Ryan Dalton:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It’s really interesting that this comes up. When I was in college I wrote a screenplay for a Batman movie that I felt strongly about. It was called Batman: Toy of the Shadow, and it was essentially a two-hander locked-room thriller where the Joker has taken over the systems of Wayne Manor and the Joker and Batman are locked in together. Nothing ever happened with it.
The hangover for me is: is that kind of story possible outside of the Batman lore? It works especially well because it is these characters and their unique relationship to one another. I don’t know. I’m not creative enough or clever enough to figure out how to make a story like that saleable when it’s not Batman and the Joker.
Kyle Olson:
Right, or it just becomes a thinly veiled version of them.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Mandy Fabian:
You know what I would say, though — if anybody is stuck or wanting to write something but they’re putting too much pressure on themselves because their ideas aren’t good enough or whatever, and they just need inspiration, I think that would be a really fun writing prompt. If you’re stuck and you need to take a couple of hours and just do something that feels fun, take Batman and Joker and make them two dads at the adoption agency, or whatever floats your boat. Use existing IP and characters to spark something. What if they lost their superpowers for the day? What if they found out they’re allergic to grapefruit?
Pete Wright:
You know, you said “make them two dads,” and I said yeah with a lot of sincerity in my head — until I was bowled over by the comedy of that beat. Batman and the Joker: Two Dads is going to be with me forever.
Mandy Fabian:
Couples fight.
Pete Wright:
It’s essentially the War of the Roses with Batman and the Joker.
Kyle Olson:
Batman and Joker: Couples Fight.
Pete Wright:
I can see the pitch. This is outstanding work.
Kyle Olson:
As time has evolved, Pete, I think your idea could very easily be a Batman VR game. So call up whoever owns Warner Brothers right now and see if we can do that.
Mandy Fabian:
Oh, hang on, I’ve got him on speed dial. I’ll just text him.
Kyle Olson:
Is it Yakko, Wakko, or Dot?
Mandy Fabian:
Yeah.
Kyle Olson:
All right. I think that gives a lot of different perspectives on that, so people can take from it what they will and hopefully find inspiration — either in a character they don’t know or someone they’re about to know. From that, let’s go to our first ad break.
Pete Wright:
What — that was weird.
Mandy Fabian:
[connection drops]
Kyle Olson:
That was all of it.
Ryan Dalton:
Wow. Did she just dissolve into code?
Kyle Olson:
That was weird.
Pete Wright:
Very strange.
Kyle Olson:
I mean, I hope we didn’t just lose a sponsor. But okay.
Pete Wright:
Oh, you don’t think Creepy Little Girl would give up on us?
Kyle Olson:
I don’t think so.
Mandy Fabian:
No way.
Ryan Dalton:
She’s very dedicated.
Mandy Fabian:
She’s a ride-or-die.
Kyle Olson:
Technical problems. But the chaos lives — we move on. Let’s get into some listener questions.
[Creepy Little Girl sponsor interlude]
Ryan Dalton:
Presenting in front of kids is a sliding scale depending on what grade they’re in. Sixth grade, they’re still kind of super eager. There’s not a lot of guile to them. They just want to have fun. Seventh grade, they’re starting to want to be cool a little bit. Eighth grade — they are over it. Completely. It’s like flipping a light switch.
The first crowd I talked to was, to this day, one of the biggest I’ve ever addressed. I thought it was going to be in the library. They said, no, it’s going to be in the auditorium. And I said, okay, who am I presenting to? They said everyone. The entire school.
Fortunately, I went in fairly confident because I had been taught some really good techniques for continuing to engage and switching up how you engage every several minutes. I had a pretty solid program, and it went really well.
The best thing about it — and about almost all of the visits — was when you open the floor for questions. There is no predicting what kind of questions you will get. That was my favorite part. Only about ten percent of them were ever about books and writing. They want to know what your favorite food is. With that first big crowd, they asked me what my favorite food was, and I said ramen. I got a full-room cheer. I was like, hey — you’re telling me I’m cool? All right.
Some groups are obsessed with your background, your childhood. Others are obsessed with your relationship status. Someone said, “Are you married?” I said no. The next question was, “Why not?”
Kyle Olson:
Wow.
Ryan Dalton:
And I mean, at some point I was like — all right, kid, come up here, we’re gonna talk.
My favorite one actually came after probably the hardest visit I’ve done — a lot of eighth graders, so I had to work triple hard to keep them engaged and having fun. Afterwards I’m signing, and this one kid — fifth or sixth grade — said, “Can you also write your phone number in the book?” I looked at him. I said, “Why?” And he said, “It’s for my teacher.” The librarian standing nearby just started laughing. And I said, “Are you trying to set me up with your teacher?” And he said yeah.
Pete Wright:
Oh my god. Important lesson as a creative: always have a burner phone.
Ryan Dalton:
He must have really liked his teacher to want to get her a date. But all that to say — it’s fun most of the time. There were a couple of visits that were more challenging, but most of the time the kids are great.
Kyle Olson:
Have you ever gotten a question where you had an answer but had to stop yourself from actually giving it?
Ryan Dalton:
Inevitably someone’s going to ask how much money you make. I always just say “enough.” There was one class that couldn’t quite let it go, so they started throwing out numbers. “Do you have this much money? How about this much?”
Kyle Olson:
Higher, lower, higher.
Ryan Dalton:
They were getting closer and closer to the amount of money I actually have. At some point I had to cut it off. I said, look — most people who write don’t have nearly the amount of money you think they would. But they meant well. They were just curious.
Pete Wright:
Oh no.
Kyle Olson:
Are you feeling fear?
Pete Wright:
It was terrifying because it was our first. Firsts suck. It’s exhilarating and very exciting, but here’s what we ran into — I’ll tell the story of the signing, because the signing was awesome.
They do signings in time blocks. We had our table for an hour on a given day, set up with three other authors who had released books at the same time. We were sitting next to one of the legendary authors in the space who was actually signing for his twenty-seventh book while we were there signing for our first. It was the greatest honor he could have done for us: he did not show up. He ghosted his own table.
As a result, all of the pictures we have of the signing show us with a gloriously, beautifully long line — people were buying the book and were not distracted by this luminary who ghosted the table. So that was fantastic.
Then we ran into this: people were much more attuned to what we had written than we were. We wrote the thing and submitted to the publisher months before the book came out. By the time people showed up at the table, they had read it the week before leading up to the convention. They were much more up to speed on the book than we were. We’d get questions like, “Tell me more about that time you were at the restaurant.” And we were like — that is a distant memory. I want you to tell me about it. Why don’t you tell me more? Because I’m not on the same page as you. I’m deeply gratified you’re here, and I recognize right now, as I look into your eyes, I’m letting you down — because it feels like I’m a different guy than the guy who wrote that book. That was absolutely terrifying to me. But we got through it.
Kyle Olson:
When you were going out for the first time, had you mentally prepared yourself for the possibility that you might be standing there for an hour with no one?
Pete Wright:
Yes, for sure. As it happens, there were three tables. One was ghosted. There was a mid-tier person there to sign their second book, and we were friends — we’d done hugs and caught up at the conference. We said, okay, the deal is if nobody shows, we’re just gonna combine our tables and have a little kibbutz for an hour and it’ll be fine. We knew our social-emotional needs would be met. We wouldn’t be alone. We could sign each other’s books and we’d be fine.
But we didn’t have to worry about it. It was a busy session the whole hour. It was great.
Ryan Dalton:
You just have to be zen about it. I’ve had signings where I had a hundred people waiting. I’ve had signings where nobody showed up. You can’t predict it. You just gotta ride the wave and have a sense of humor about it all.
There’s a cartoon I saved years ago that I pull up occasionally. On one side of a table there’s a sign that says “Meet the Author,” and there’s a guy sitting there looking glum with nobody there. Next to him at the table, a sign says “Meet a Puppy,” and the line is out the door.
Pete Wright:
Oh my God, that’s so good.
Ryan Dalton:
You can’t live or die by the length of the line. You just gotta enjoy whatever it is. I remember once at a con, I was sitting next to Marissa Meyer, who is a pretty big YA author, and she had a constant line the entire hour — she never got through it. At some point I leaned over to her and said, “I’m real sorry that no one showed up for you, Marissa.” And she got a kick out of it.
Kyle Olson:
If you teach me to do your autograph, I can probably take some of these people off your hands.
Ryan Dalton:
So yeah — it’s just part of the game.
Mandy Fabian:
I had a film festival screening where I was very shocked, because it was the Twin Cities Film Festival, and it’s a big festival. Everything was well-done, it was in a great space, they had filmmaker lounges and panels — it was a cool festival. And then when I got to my screening, there were like four people. That had not happened to me yet.
They were all my people. It was like, my aunt — the few people I knew in Minnesota that I’d reached out to. Basically nobody I didn’t know had come, nobody I hadn’t expressly invited. And that was really kind of like, oh. Wait. What?
And then the weird part is when they want to do the Q&A. I’m like, I feel like we all just want to go to lunch.
Kyle Olson:
Question: does everyone want to go to lunch?
Mandy Fabian:
Let’s not do this.
Pete Wright:
Oh my God. Really opening a vein.
Mandy Fabian:
Well, okay, so are you talking about when I auditioned for Saturday Night Live?
Kyle Olson:
That’s the vibe, yeah.
Mandy Fabian:
I don’t think I actually had an accident that day. But I definitely did when I had written a one-woman show with characters and I was required to go on stage that night. I was shaking — I was so nervous. I was like, how am I going to remember all my lines and go on stage? And I had an adult version of an accident. My whole body just went.
When that happened, I was like, oh well. I mean, it’s all uphill from here. It cannot get worse than that. And I was remarkably calm for Saturday Night Live because of that. I had summoned that calm from the universe.
I literally told people I had an audition for Saturday Night Live when I did not have one. Said it for months, then booked a ticket, went to New York, did not get an audition, flew back. Everybody said, “How was your audition?” I was like, “Oh, they postponed it.”
And then I got a call that I was being flown across the country to test for Saturday Night Live. So when I went to do that, I was like, I’m a witch. This does not happen. There’s no way I’m not getting this job.
They put me in Amy Poehler’s dressing room — and Amy was the person they were trying to replace. I was like, this is done, folks. Should we just put my name up now?
And when I did not get the job, I had a nervous breakdown. I could not believe it. I had to pivot in a real way. That was scary.
I tried to do stand-up also one time, and it’s surprising that Patrick is still married to me, to be honest. It was so bad. And you know how you’re always a little insecure about being on stage — if it doesn’t go great, you’re like, ugh, even if it does go great I’m always the person thinking, yeah, but I was out of tune on that one, or I played the wrong chord. This is the one time I was like, no — I was terrible and they hated me. I was really bad. Not one thing I said was funny.
He said, “Maybe stand-up isn’t your… maybe you don’t do stand-up anymore.”
Pete Wright:
Good. That’s a good plan.
Ryan Dalton:
I support you in that.
Kyle Olson:
Hey, you can give up on your dreams. It’s fine.
Ryan Dalton:
Focus on core competencies. Yeah. There’s a lot of creative stuff I have interest in doing or think would be fun, but I have never once had the desire to do stand-up. If I were gonna be on stage, I’d prefer sketch or improv or something.
Mandy Fabian:
I admire it so much, but it’s not for me.
Ryan Dalton:
I think it’s one of the purest art forms if you do it right. To stand up there with nothing and conjure a really good show — that is an incredible talent and art. It’s just not one I ever thought I’d want to tackle.
Kyle Olson:
All right, enough. While you were making all of my other fellow hosts face their fears, I found one of yours, Creepy Little Girl. So listen close when I say — Boni Puela Cobitum Era De Bent.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Mandy Fabian:
Nicely done, Kyle.
Kyle Olson:
Thank you. I hope I didn’t lose us a sponsor, but at some point a fan becomes a fanatic.
Pete Wright:
Well, you just de-conjured her.
Mandy Fabian:
Yeah, it’s like an interdimensional timeout.
Ryan Dalton:
Probably the strongest longtime-listener-first-time-caller thing I’ve ever seen, though.
Pete Wright:
It was really epic.
Kyle Olson:
I think we should skip another ad break, because I’m afraid of what might happen. Let’s roll into the next topic.
Since we’ve been visited by the dead, let’s talk about projects that are in their graves. I wanted you all to think about projects you’ve abandoned — or maybe just set aside, knowing you’re going to come back to them one day. I talked about the drawer of shame at one point, but I don’t really believe in the drawer of shame. I kind of believe that everything eventually has its time. So I’m curious about what you have that still has an open loop in your head.
Pete Wright:
I’m going to start, because you just name-checked me about my drawer of shame — and especially because the project I’m talking about comes from it.
I wrote a book over the pandemic, and it’s about ninety percent finished. I just haven’t locked an ending. It’s a zombie story. It starts with a little kid on top of the Empire State Building throwing nickels off of it, and it ends in a zombie apocalypse. How can you go wrong?
I had been noodling on this thing in the back of my mind for so long. I thought it just needed to be told, but I couldn’t unlock it without figuring out a way in. And then I pulled it out in Ulysses — the app — and I thought… okay, I’m going to offend some sensibilities here, and I want to pre-apologize. I carry the shame.
I took the book and I gave it to Claude, the AI. I gave the whole thing to Claude and said: I don’t know how to write a contemporary musical. I’ve been in musical theater, but I don’t know the architecture of it. I just want to write something fun, and I need help structuring this story into the book of a musical. What would you do?
And you guys — I haven’t been so excited about a new project in a long time. This is so fun and so funny. It’s a comedy apocalypse musical, and I am working right now on the book myself with structured support from Claude. It was an amazing creative partner. All the words are mine — I’m just saying the words are mine. But it taught me things I did not know, and I feel like I am better equipped. It’s like the most incredible creative tool I have ever used. It is helping me see around corners I didn’t know existed.
I am exhilarated. The “I Want” song, you guys — it’s gonna be a banger.
Kyle Olson:
Okay, well, wow. Pete coming out on the side of pro-AI was not where I expected this conversation to go.
Mandy Fabian:
I love it.
Kyle Olson:
Who’s got another body they want to exhume?
Ryan Dalton:
I can talk about one. I’ll talk about one that I doubt I’m going to end up going back to — though I still would like to.
Count of Monte Cristo is my all-time favorite book. There was a point where I thought: I wonder if I could do a modern-day middle-grade adaptation. I had never seen one like that.
Pete Wright:
Some sequences are hard to soften from that book.
Kyle Olson:
Like having your fifteen-year-old protagonist in prison.
Ryan Dalton:
Yeah. The question that gave me the most trouble was: where is the line? What from that story could someone in middle school realistically go through and realistically do? At what point does it become so fantastical that nobody’s going to buy in?
I had other projects going on at the same time that took more attention, and that one got left behind. I never quite figured out the line of — okay, this is as far as you go, and beyond that it’s too dark or too ridiculous for thirteen-year-olds. It could be one of those instances where lightning strikes someday. It has not happened yet, and it’s been a few years. So I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to it.
Pete Wright:
What’s the longest you’ve ever gone with one of those dead soldier projects? Like, the longest you’ve gone from “I wrote this thing” to years passing and then — oh my God, I just figured it out?
Kyle Olson:
About fifteen years.
Pete Wright:
Fifteen years. And you finished it?
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I finished it.
I like to think of those projects as messages from the past — that’s future-me’s problem. You have something you don’t know how to deal with, but you’re going to get the skills to handle it, and then you’ll go back and go, oh, there it was. That’s exactly what happened. I’d written something, thought it was the best thing, then crickets. When I went back and looked at it, I was like, oh kid, I see what you were doing. I got to go in as a script doctor and say, here’s what you missed — and then go back and put all the pieces together. It was all there; I just didn’t have the skills to put it all together yet.
I think a lot of those things are just waiting for you to level up enough to handle them. It’s like in role-playing games where you pick up a level-fifteen weapon when you’re not a level fifteen. When you get to level fifteen, suddenly it opens up. I think of some of these stories the same way.
Ryan Dalton:
Good point.
Pete Wright:
That’s a good metaphor.
Mandy Fabian:
Point of order — would the council please approach the bench? Are we talking about something unfinished, or something you finished but never shared with anybody?
Kyle Olson:
I guess both. It was a play I had written and was so pleased with, thought it was done, and then it went absolutely nowhere. When I revisited it, I saw what it really was — that was first draft. Now it’s the final draft. And that’s the version that has gotten attention.
Mandy Fabian:
Yeah, because my drawer of shame — I have a really hard time with breakups. I can’t let go of any of them. There are very few things I’ve done that I look at and think, it’s garbage. The danger for me of going back to those things is I still believe in them. I’m like, nah, we just gotta make it work. We’ll live apart. I still love something about all of them.
There’s a movie I wrote and have rewritten maybe five times because I keep thinking this movie has to exist. It’s so quirky and a little weird. I don’t think it’s everybody’s cup of tea. I’m actually scared to give it to people, because I don’t want them to say no — I love it so much. But the few times I’ve tried, nothing has happened with it. I have a sneaking suspicion I might be the only person who feels that way. But I am so in love with it.
Every three months I get this — that’s it, I’m making Bromance. Is there anybody I know in Chicago? I need a producer. I’ll shoot it on my iPhone. I’ll get actors I like. I’ll shoot it in three days. I don’t care. I get very like that with some of the projects, because whatever I wrote, I loved it. I thought it was special.
But that’s why I asked about unfinished versus finished but unshared. The unfinished ones — unless the idea is just no longer viable, which is another thing. You write things and then they feel dated.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. That brings up two things. Sorry Pete, but — the only novel I’ve written was for NaNoWriMo. I wrote it in 2011. If it had come out in 2011, it would have been amazing. But at this point it’s absolutely incomprehensible. It was so set at that moment in time. I figure if I wait another ten or twenty years, I can call it a nostalgic book looking back at 2011 and people will be like, oh wow, how’d you do this research? But right now I would never give it to anybody. I can’t imagine what I would have to do to make it something real. One of my plot points involved Foursquare.
Kyle Olson:
Does anybody remember Foursquare?
Ryan Dalton:
Wow.
Mandy Fabian:
Yeah. One of my favorite films — one of the best things I’ve ever written — features a sixty-five or seventy-year-old woman who was bad with her phone. At the time I wrote it, that was actually pretty common. You didn’t have to be ninety-five to be unfamiliar with smartphones. Now there’s no way. Everybody in their seventies can use a phone and does.
Kyle Olson:
And the one I was actually going to bring up for this segment was a screenplay I got halfway through before I realized I had made my villain too strong and couldn’t figure out how to beat him.
Ryan Dalton:
So you wrote Season 4 of Sherlock, is what you’re saying.
Kyle Olson:
Kind of. Yeah. I just couldn’t see a way for my protagonists to get out of this. It just sat a long time. And actually Ryan helped me — I laid out the problem for him and he said, oh, you could do X, Y, and Z, and that loops back to this. And I was like, oh, I could do that. He gave me the solution, but I’ve never gone back and actually implemented it to see if it works. That loop is still open in my mind.
When I first came up with the concept, I thought, this is too good an idea — somebody must have done this already. I did research and found that one of the great horror masters had done a short story using the same concept. That actually made me feel so much better. It wasn’t lying there undone because no one had figured it out. The characters are still waiting for me to give them the solution.
Pete Wright:
And the villain is super cocky right now because he’s just sitting there winning.
Kyle Olson:
Yeah. There’s just nothing you can do.
Pete Wright:
Hashtag winning.
Mandy Fabian:
But do you think you will go back, or are you sort of letting it lie?
Kyle Olson:
I do think I’ll go back. I like to close loops. I don’t like to have stuff undone. But my main problem — and this could be a whole episode in itself — is I have difficulty writing when no one’s asking for things. I can write that screenplay, finish it, and it’ll just sit in the drawer with everything else. I have a difficult time doing something that I can’t see ever going anywhere.
That’s the villain in my own head I’m still trying to fight through.
Ryan Dalton:
What can be very satisfying is when you have a seed of an idea — something half-baked, just a concept — and you write it down in the idea notebook. Years down the road you’re working on something else and you realize, oh, that little seed would be perfect in this. You reach back and resurrect it and put it in this new thing. And it fits beautifully.
That’s when you really experience what people mean when they say ideas never die. They’re just waiting for their time. That’s a beautiful thing — when you’re like, I figured this out ten years ago and didn’t even realize it.
Kyle Olson:
We’ve actually had that happen with Pete. I’d always had this idea in my head for a one-act where the voices in someone’s head are literally people on stage. Someone wants to go talk to a person, and all the other voices are physically there going, yeah, that’s a bad idea. No, no, he can do it. That sort of thing. It was always a nebulous idea.
And then Pete’s son needed a one-act for his school thing. I was like, this is the time. Simple staging, dialogue-based, no special effects, no major costume things — you could do this in twelve minutes and it’d be good. So I wrote it. It’s called Static in My Attic. And it exists. It’s out there, and it may actually be showing up somewhere else someday.
Pete Wright:
Awesome.
Kyle Olson:
The idea had always been there. The opportunity came, and I had it ready.
Ryan Dalton:
Nice.
Pete Wright:
That’s so funny you say that. My son is in college now — he’s been making shorts since his junior year in high school, and he’s now in the film program at the University of Oregon. He finished his latest film, which is about twenty minutes — the longest thing he’s made. He wrote and directed it, but he had a DP and an editor and someone to score it. He said, “Dad, I learned what color timing is, and it’s been colored.”
It’s just one of those things — watching a young person acquire the skills to make every next thing a little bit better. He said his problem is he already knows what he wants to do differently for the next film — and it’s a prequel to this one, and it’s going to look much better than “this piece of junk.”
The film is actually premiering tonight. He rented a theater and invited the cast and crew and anyone else who wants to come in Eugene. He said, “We only need an hour — we’ll have some snacks, talk, watch the movie, and go home.”
It is just an act of joy to watch him collect skills to make the next thing a little bit better than the last. I can always re-internalize that message: the thing I’m working on now is going to help me make the next thing a little bit better.
Kyle Olson:
My daughter is graduating soon. She’s editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, and she’s a really good writer. And I’m like, you’re not a journalist. And she’s like, what are you talking about? I’m like, you’re an essayist. There’s a lot of you in everything you write, and that’s not what journalism is. But you should be like David Sedaris. You should be like Sarah Vowell. That is the path. Her voice is so strong. I want to guide her into the thing she could be really good at, as opposed to the thing where she would sort of disappear.
Pete Wright:
Oh man. Not your job, Dad. Stay the heck away. That is a third rail if I’ve ever heard one.
Kyle Olson:
She doesn’t listen to this show. She doesn’t listen to any podcast. Just watches some of the ads. That’s all the connection she has.
Ryan Dalton:
You know what you do? Tell her that being an essayist is too dangerous and you never want to hear about her going near it again.
Mandy Fabian:
That’s right.
Kyle Olson:
Outstanding. All right. Anybody else have any zombies they want to bring back?
Pete Wright:
Always. There’s always more zombies.
Ryan Dalton:
I definitely have some, but I may end up bringing them back for real, so I’ll keep those to myself for now.
Pete Wright:
This is actually giving me an assignment, and I’m saying it out loud: I wrote a short story in high school that I always knew was too short but had legs. I got great comments on it from my creative writing instructor, and then I put it in the drawer. I kind of want to find it and see if I can do something with it today. I’m going to do that this week.
Kyle Olson:
Okay, yes — we can do a dramatic reading of it.
Pete Wright:
That’s what I’m going to do between now and next time. I’m calling myself out.
Kyle Olson:
A world premiere here on Craft and Chaos. I mean, “We Have No Bananas” can’t be the only thing we premiere on this show.
Pete Wright:
I do like to say, surely not everyone is kung fu fighting.
Kyle Olson:
Nobody? Well, there you go. This has been Craft and Chaos. If you would like to ask us a question, you can do so over at craftandchaos.fun. We’ll be sure the inbox is entirely ghost-free by the time you get there.
If you’d like to help keep Creepy Little Girl at bay, there’s a ritual you can perform: place five stars down on this show in the review section of your podcatcher of choice, and you’ll keep us all safe.
Now go make weird art.
