The Computer: The Useless (Episode 2) Transcript
Our new episode is out! Here is a transcript.
Hannah
Marie is an angel. But when a seasoned cameraman turns sinister, the lorry has an accident.
Jennie
Somebody write this.
Hannah
Hi, and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea, and then brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie
And I'm Jennie.
Hannah
And today we have a very special guest here, our very first guest on the podcast to help us unpack and brainstorm. We have Rebekah Megill. Thank you for being here, Rebekah.
Rebekah
Hello. Thank you.
Hannah
I actually invited Rebekah on this podcast. She was one of the first people I thought of because she is not only somebody who loves to write, but she's actually my siste, and one of the ones that I used to make play this game with when we were younger that I mentioned back in our trailer, where we would get a random character, a random setting and a random plot and then have one page out of a composition notebook to write a story. Rebekah, do you remember any of your stories that you wrote during that exercise?
Rebekah
Not a lot. I don't remember any complete plots. I do remember there was one where the plot was that someone finds someone who loves wishing as much as she does.
Hannah
Who loves wishing?
Rebekah
Yes.
Hannah
I don't remember that one.
Rebekah
I remember struggling with that one.
Hannah
The only one I remember is the one about the scarecrow sacrificing himself for somebody else. And so I remember writing a story about two scarecrows in a field that were like... One of them started dying. And so the first one pulled his straw out and stuffed it into them to keep them alive, and then they came back to life, and they were like, "No, don't do it." And so they started pulling their straw to give back to the first one who was now dying and it ended with them both just pulling all the straw out of their bodies and both being dead. Just a morbid ending. I had completely forgotten about the wishing one. We are of course recording this and releasing this in the month of November, which means that for novelists and writers all over the world, it is National Novel Writing Month. Rebekah, you and I have done this for a long time. Are you doing it again this year?
Rebekah
Yes. Yeah, I do that every year.
Hannah
I was gonna say I thought you'd been pretty consistent. Have you won? How many years do you think that you've one out of the ones that you've done?
Rebekah
I've won approximately half the time. I think it's like seven out of 13 or something.
Jennie
Not bad.
Hannah
That's not bad at all. Did you win last year?
Rebekah
No.
Hannah
Okay, so maybe this is this is the year to get back. Do you know what your plot is this year or are you still working that out?
Rebekah
Yeah, no, it's a... Well, I was gonna say fantasy, but I don't know if it's fantasy or sci fi. It's about a bunch of sentient but uninhabited planets who deal with some sort of alien thing that's slowly killing them, all trying to fight back against it.
Hannah
The same alien thing killing all of them?
Rebekah
Yes.
Hannah
That's really fun.
Rebekah
"That's really fun. Everyone's dying."
Hannah
Well, I guess it's not fun for them. And I guess hopefully I, you know, I'm rooting for them to win, I guess. Unless they're just all jerks, if you wrote the story and just all the planets were terrible. And you're like, yay, I can't wait for them to die.
Rebekah
No, it's not supposed to be the point.
Hannah
My last question just so again, we can have a sense of like, what kinds of things you like to write. So this this year, you're doing maybe fantasy/sci fi. What genres or themes or ideas do you tend to really gravitate toward either in your writing or in your reading?
Rebekah
Well, I do very little that's not fantasy or sci fi, either in writing or reading. Even then I tend to write stories that are very like, character-based, especially about very isolated people, for whatever reason.
Hannah
Do you have a favorite author or a favorite book or something that you've read recently that you really enjoy?
Rebekah
I don't know. Well, currently I'm reading the Ender series. I'm in the middle of Speaker for the Dead. And I'm really enjoying that.
Hannah
Is this the first time you've read it?
Rebekah
The second one. I've read Ender's Game before, but I hadn't continued with the series.
Hannah
Cool. All right. Well, we're glad you're here, Rebekah, to help us work out this plot, which again, to remind our listeners, the plot is: Mariei is an angel. But when a seasoned cameraman turns sinister, the lorry has an accident.
Jennie
Okay, my first question is, is Marie a literal or a metaphorical angel?
Hannah
I don't know. And we're assuming that Marie is not, this is not the seasoned cameraman who is also an angel, that those are two separate characters. So maybe Marie is a literal angel. Maybe this is a spiritual fantasy story, and she's trying to bring the seasoned cameraman back from sinisterdom to redemption?
Jennie
It's a Hallmark movie.
Rebekah
My first thought was maybe to connect the angel and the cameraman, like she plays an angel on TV or in a movie or something.
Jennie
Oh, I like that.
Hannah
Okay, so he's shooting some kind of like a Touched by an Angel kind of thing and she plays the angel.
Jennie
So they know each other professionally. Interested.
Rebekah
And then he turns sinister.
Hannah
I'm assuming that means he caused the truck to, he caused the lorry accident
Rebekah
It does sound like it.
Jennie
It sounds like his sinisterness caused the accident. So the question is why and how does he turn sinister and why does that knock a lawyer-- lorry over. Lawyer? There's no lawyers in this story.
Hannah
I mean mybe there's a lawyer on the lorry, I don't know.
Jennie
It's a lawyer "lawyer". Oh gosh. Say that three times fast.
Hannah
Yeah, I can't say that one.
Jennie
Yeah. A truck has an accident.
Hannah
Yeah, I had to make sure that I was doing the correct British English to American English translation, but a lorry is a large heavy motor vehicle for transporting goods or troops. So it's not typically like a truck that people would like drive in.
Jennie
Yeah, not a pick-up truck. It's like a moving truck.
Hannah
Right. What does the lorry have to do with-- Okay, if they're both on a TV show, is the lorry like transporting the set and equipment to a different location? Are they on their way to a shoot somewhere?
Jennie
That makes the most sense.
Hannah
And then he turns sinister. Just like, boom, he's sinister.
Jennie
I think we need to know more about this camera.man
Hannah
I think we need to know do Marie and the cameraman have a relationship before this? Like do they know each other well? Does she see him turning sinister? Or is this like... The *seasoned* cameraman is interesting too. Like the fact that it's bringing home the point that he's been doing this for a while. So like is he just tired of being behind the camera and...?
Jennie
Right, well, I'm wondering, I think he's a seasoned cameraman, but I think he's new to Marie's show
Hannah
So he was working somewhere else. Maybe he was working somewhere a lot more prestigious, and was moved to this kind of cheesy fantasy "angels are a guardian angel" kind of show and he's bitter now.
Jennie
Right, he's gone down from like Thursday night drama to Tuesday morning soap opera.
Hannah
Or maybe he was even a film cameraman. Maybe he worked with like big name Oscar bait stars and directors. And something happened. Maybe something personally happened that he like, was a jerk to somebody. Or maybe this sinisterness, this has been brewing, that he's been like a worse person or not a very good person and then it took a downturn. Okay, so he's stuck in this job.
Jennie
Okay, so Rebekah, where do you think the cameraman used to work?
Rebekah
I don't know. But I'm wondering, did he work with people who were like, on or driving the lorry? And so it's like revenge against them...?
Hannah
Oh, hold on. Maybe he doesn't work for their show anymore. Maybe he was fired and he he still has friends in the production departments and friends on the crew and so he still has a friend who maybe works with... Maybe the lorry's accident is not like life threatening so much as like, stealing equipment or something or breaking-- I don't know. Maybe it's something like that, almost like a heist.
Jennie
Is it ike a heist or is it or is it like saboage for the show? Like if you sabotage the equipment, or the sets or whatever that's on the lorry?
Hannah
Yeah, I think, yeah, he's revenge sabotaging. So the question, I guess now is if we know kind of like where he is and where he's coming from and what he's doing... Right now we're just telling us that Marie exists. That she plays an angel on this show. So she has to factor more into this somehow.
Jennie
She came up in the plot. So she's obviously an important character.
Hannah
She came up first in the plot, and she's the only one with a name. I'm gonna generate a random name for our camera man, by the way, while figure out what Marie is doing?
Jennie
Okay, I like the idea that if the seasoned cameraman was fired from her show, I like the idea that maybe they had a relationship. Not like a romantic one. But you know, "oh, you're my cameraman." You know, and so, he'd worked with long enough that he knew how to follow her with the camera, how to anticipate when to zoom in, that kind of thing. Not that I know what a cameraman does.
Hannah
So is she able to like bring him back? Is he on or near the lorry during all this or does he just leave it to his minion friends?
Jennie
He has minions now?
Hannah
His minion friends.
Jennie
Evil cameraman with minions. What's his name? What's his name?
Hannah
His name is Achilles Peterson.
Jennie
Are you serious?
Hannah
Which is an amazing name.
Jennie
Yes, it is.
Hannah
So yeah, Achilles Peterson is...
Jennie
Maybe he just goes by "Les."
Hannah
Maybe, maybe. Okay, so yeah, so they kind of knew each other. Is she on the lorry for some reason? Because it's not what the cast would be transported in. Is she on the lorry but wasn't supposed to be and so he didn't know that she was-- He didn't want her to find out or to get hurt?
Jennie
Maybe. We assume with with a truck that the accident is like vehicular accident with it in motion, but what if it's--
Hannah
Oh, it could be standing still and he just like went out to the truck and like, beat it and opened it and took everything.
Jennie
Okay, well, that's not an accident. That's--
Hannah
No, but neither is what he's doing either. He smashes into it with something else.
Jennie
Right, like a piece of the set or something, you know, from above, or a crane falling down or something. And Marie could have been too close, and then, "Oh, no!" Like he's set it up and then her being too close makes him rethink it.
Hannah
So it makes him rethink it so he's like, "I'm not going to do this anymore"? I was thinking maybe he did it and she got hurt.
Jennie
Oh, maybe.
Hannah
And he was like, "Oh no!" Before we run out, I want to share the title this gave to me as well.
Jennie
Oh yeah, always share the title because that gives us something else to add.
Hannah
Yeah, to figure out. So this is the title. I'm sending it to both of you but I'm reading it out loud. It is "The Computer: The Useless."
Rebekah
Okay.
Hannah
Which does not nicely fit into our story that we have here at all.
Jennie
Is that the title of the show?
Hannah
Maybe, maybe.
Jennie
"Starring Marie Smith is the angel in The Useless."
Hannah
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we wanted to take just half of that if we wanted to call it like, "The Useless," or "The Computer," or take out one of the "the"s and call it "Computer: The Useless" for some reason if that was going to be helpful.
Jennie
Okay, well, here's an interesting twist. What if we go the sci fi route and say the seasoned cameraman was replaced with a robot?
Rebekah
Okay, he is trying to deliberately hurt the robot with the accident.
Jennie
Right.
Hannah
I legit had the thought at one point, "Maybe he's a really snobby camera man. He's upset that they're moving to digital instead of film." That makes total sense, this fits it. Yeah, so they're bringing in robotic cameras, that like the director can just control with an iPad and he's mad.
Jennie
"Stupid robot!"
Hannah
And so Marie comes in and is hurt, and...
Jennie
This is where you the listeners come in, I think. This is where you guys finish things off.
Hannah
I think we have a lot of threads here. And I think we're going to need more time than we have on this podcast to weave them together more smoothly.
Jennie
Well, we always run out of time. So yeah, so we want to know from you guys, how are Marie and Achilles-- What's their history? And we want to know more about this camera robot and what kind of accident was the lorry in?
Hannah
And I want to know if the angel makes a comeback, like if she plays an angel on the show, but also maybe there's like some actual metaphorical angelic stuff happening. Maybe there is some kind of miraculous redemption at the end.
Jennie
Or maybe she dies and comes back as an angel.
Hannah
Or the computer is the angel. Oh, she comes back as an angel to work alongside the computer.
Jennie
That would be great.
Hannah
This would be amazing.
Jennie
It would be like Touched by an Angel meets Short Circuit.
Hannah
Yeah. Rebekah, you like sci fi fantasy. This is both now. Well, that's our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie
And don't forget to follow us on Twitter @writethispod. And if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or thoughts or anything else, email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.
Hannah
Thank you so much for joining us, Rebekah.
Rebekah
Thank you.
Hannah
We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. See you then.
Jennie
Bye.
Hannah
Marie is an angel. But when a seasoned cameraman turns sinister, the lorry has an accident.
Jennie
Somebody write this.
Hannah
Hi, and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea, and then brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie
And I'm Jennie.
Hannah
And today we have a very special guest here, our very first guest on the podcast to help us unpack and brainstorm. We have Rebekah Megill. Thank you for being here, Rebekah.
Rebekah
Hello. Thank you.
Hannah
I actually invited Rebekah on this podcast. She was one of the first people I thought of because she is not only somebody who loves to write, but she's actually my siste, and one of the ones that I used to make play this game with when we were younger that I mentioned back in our trailer, where we would get a random character, a random setting and a random plot and then have one page out of a composition notebook to write a story. Rebekah, do you remember any of your stories that you wrote during that exercise?
Rebekah
Not a lot. I don't remember any complete plots. I do remember there was one where the plot was that someone finds someone who loves wishing as much as she does.
Hannah
Who loves wishing?
Rebekah
Yes.
Hannah
I don't remember that one.
Rebekah
I remember struggling with that one.
Hannah
The only one I remember is the one about the scarecrow sacrificing himself for somebody else. And so I remember writing a story about two scarecrows in a field that were like... One of them started dying. And so the first one pulled his straw out and stuffed it into them to keep them alive, and then they came back to life, and they were like, "No, don't do it." And so they started pulling their straw to give back to the first one who was now dying and it ended with them both just pulling all the straw out of their bodies and both being dead. Just a morbid ending. I had completely forgotten about the wishing one. We are of course recording this and releasing this in the month of November, which means that for novelists and writers all over the world, it is National Novel Writing Month. Rebekah, you and I have done this for a long time. Are you doing it again this year?
Rebekah
Yes. Yeah, I do that every year.
Hannah
I was gonna say I thought you'd been pretty consistent. Have you won? How many years do you think that you've one out of the ones that you've done?
Rebekah
I've won approximately half the time. I think it's like seven out of 13 or something.
Jennie
Not bad.
Hannah
That's not bad at all. Did you win last year?
Rebekah
No.
Hannah
Okay, so maybe this is this is the year to get back. Do you know what your plot is this year or are you still working that out?
Rebekah
Yeah, no, it's a... Well, I was gonna say fantasy, but I don't know if it's fantasy or sci fi. It's about a bunch of sentient but uninhabited planets who deal with some sort of alien thing that's slowly killing them, all trying to fight back against it.
Hannah
The same alien thing killing all of them?
Rebekah
Yes.
Hannah
That's really fun.
Rebekah
"That's really fun. Everyone's dying."
Hannah
Well, I guess it's not fun for them. And I guess hopefully I, you know, I'm rooting for them to win, I guess. Unless they're just all jerks, if you wrote the story and just all the planets were terrible. And you're like, yay, I can't wait for them to die.
Rebekah
No, it's not supposed to be the point.
Hannah
My last question just so again, we can have a sense of like, what kinds of things you like to write. So this this year, you're doing maybe fantasy/sci fi. What genres or themes or ideas do you tend to really gravitate toward either in your writing or in your reading?
Rebekah
Well, I do very little that's not fantasy or sci fi, either in writing or reading. Even then I tend to write stories that are very like, character-based, especially about very isolated people, for whatever reason.
Hannah
Do you have a favorite author or a favorite book or something that you've read recently that you really enjoy?
Rebekah
I don't know. Well, currently I'm reading the Ender series. I'm in the middle of Speaker for the Dead. And I'm really enjoying that.
Hannah
Is this the first time you've read it?
Rebekah
The second one. I've read Ender's Game before, but I hadn't continued with the series.
Hannah
Cool. All right. Well, we're glad you're here, Rebekah, to help us work out this plot, which again, to remind our listeners, the plot is: Mariei is an angel. But when a seasoned cameraman turns sinister, the lorry has an accident.
Jennie
Okay, my first question is, is Marie a literal or a metaphorical angel?
Hannah
I don't know. And we're assuming that Marie is not, this is not the seasoned cameraman who is also an angel, that those are two separate characters. So maybe Marie is a literal angel. Maybe this is a spiritual fantasy story, and she's trying to bring the seasoned cameraman back from sinisterdom to redemption?
Jennie
It's a Hallmark movie.
Rebekah
My first thought was maybe to connect the angel and the cameraman, like she plays an angel on TV or in a movie or something.
Jennie
Oh, I like that.
Hannah
Okay, so he's shooting some kind of like a Touched by an Angel kind of thing and she plays the angel.
Jennie
So they know each other professionally. Interested.
Rebekah
And then he turns sinister.
Hannah
I'm assuming that means he caused the truck to, he caused the lorry accident
Rebekah
It does sound like it.
Jennie
It sounds like his sinisterness caused the accident. So the question is why and how does he turn sinister and why does that knock a lawyer-- lorry over. Lawyer? There's no lawyers in this story.
Hannah
I mean mybe there's a lawyer on the lorry, I don't know.
Jennie
It's a lawyer "lawyer". Oh gosh. Say that three times fast.
Hannah
Yeah, I can't say that one.
Jennie
Yeah. A truck has an accident.
Hannah
Yeah, I had to make sure that I was doing the correct British English to American English translation, but a lorry is a large heavy motor vehicle for transporting goods or troops. So it's not typically like a truck that people would like drive in.
Jennie
Yeah, not a pick-up truck. It's like a moving truck.
Hannah
Right. What does the lorry have to do with-- Okay, if they're both on a TV show, is the lorry like transporting the set and equipment to a different location? Are they on their way to a shoot somewhere?
Jennie
That makes the most sense.
Hannah
And then he turns sinister. Just like, boom, he's sinister.
Jennie
I think we need to know more about this camera.man
Hannah
I think we need to know do Marie and the cameraman have a relationship before this? Like do they know each other well? Does she see him turning sinister? Or is this like... The *seasoned* cameraman is interesting too. Like the fact that it's bringing home the point that he's been doing this for a while. So like is he just tired of being behind the camera and...?
Jennie
Right, well, I'm wondering, I think he's a seasoned cameraman, but I think he's new to Marie's show
Hannah
So he was working somewhere else. Maybe he was working somewhere a lot more prestigious, and was moved to this kind of cheesy fantasy "angels are a guardian angel" kind of show and he's bitter now.
Jennie
Right, he's gone down from like Thursday night drama to Tuesday morning soap opera.
Hannah
Or maybe he was even a film cameraman. Maybe he worked with like big name Oscar bait stars and directors. And something happened. Maybe something personally happened that he like, was a jerk to somebody. Or maybe this sinisterness, this has been brewing, that he's been like a worse person or not a very good person and then it took a downturn. Okay, so he's stuck in this job.
Jennie
Okay, so Rebekah, where do you think the cameraman used to work?
Rebekah
I don't know. But I'm wondering, did he work with people who were like, on or driving the lorry? And so it's like revenge against them...?
Hannah
Oh, hold on. Maybe he doesn't work for their show anymore. Maybe he was fired and he he still has friends in the production departments and friends on the crew and so he still has a friend who maybe works with... Maybe the lorry's accident is not like life threatening so much as like, stealing equipment or something or breaking-- I don't know. Maybe it's something like that, almost like a heist.
Jennie
Is it ike a heist or is it or is it like saboage for the show? Like if you sabotage the equipment, or the sets or whatever that's on the lorry?
Hannah
Yeah, I think, yeah, he's revenge sabotaging. So the question, I guess now is if we know kind of like where he is and where he's coming from and what he's doing... Right now we're just telling us that Marie exists. That she plays an angel on this show. So she has to factor more into this somehow.
Jennie
She came up in the plot. So she's obviously an important character.
Hannah
She came up first in the plot, and she's the only one with a name. I'm gonna generate a random name for our camera man, by the way, while figure out what Marie is doing?
Jennie
Okay, I like the idea that if the seasoned cameraman was fired from her show, I like the idea that maybe they had a relationship. Not like a romantic one. But you know, "oh, you're my cameraman." You know, and so, he'd worked with long enough that he knew how to follow her with the camera, how to anticipate when to zoom in, that kind of thing. Not that I know what a cameraman does.
Hannah
So is she able to like bring him back? Is he on or near the lorry during all this or does he just leave it to his minion friends?
Jennie
He has minions now?
Hannah
His minion friends.
Jennie
Evil cameraman with minions. What's his name? What's his name?
Hannah
His name is Achilles Peterson.
Jennie
Are you serious?
Hannah
Which is an amazing name.
Jennie
Yes, it is.
Hannah
So yeah, Achilles Peterson is...
Jennie
Maybe he just goes by "Les."
Hannah
Maybe, maybe. Okay, so yeah, so they kind of knew each other. Is she on the lorry for some reason? Because it's not what the cast would be transported in. Is she on the lorry but wasn't supposed to be and so he didn't know that she was-- He didn't want her to find out or to get hurt?
Jennie
Maybe. We assume with with a truck that the accident is like vehicular accident with it in motion, but what if it's--
Hannah
Oh, it could be standing still and he just like went out to the truck and like, beat it and opened it and took everything.
Jennie
Okay, well, that's not an accident. That's--
Hannah
No, but neither is what he's doing either. He smashes into it with something else.
Jennie
Right, like a piece of the set or something, you know, from above, or a crane falling down or something. And Marie could have been too close, and then, "Oh, no!" Like he's set it up and then her being too close makes him rethink it.
Hannah
So it makes him rethink it so he's like, "I'm not going to do this anymore"? I was thinking maybe he did it and she got hurt.
Jennie
Oh, maybe.
Hannah
And he was like, "Oh no!" Before we run out, I want to share the title this gave to me as well.
Jennie
Oh yeah, always share the title because that gives us something else to add.
Hannah
Yeah, to figure out. So this is the title. I'm sending it to both of you but I'm reading it out loud. It is "The Computer: The Useless."
Rebekah
Okay.
Hannah
Which does not nicely fit into our story that we have here at all.
Jennie
Is that the title of the show?
Hannah
Maybe, maybe.
Jennie
"Starring Marie Smith is the angel in The Useless."
Hannah
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we wanted to take just half of that if we wanted to call it like, "The Useless," or "The Computer," or take out one of the "the"s and call it "Computer: The Useless" for some reason if that was going to be helpful.
Jennie
Okay, well, here's an interesting twist. What if we go the sci fi route and say the seasoned cameraman was replaced with a robot?
Rebekah
Okay, he is trying to deliberately hurt the robot with the accident.
Jennie
Right.
Hannah
I legit had the thought at one point, "Maybe he's a really snobby camera man. He's upset that they're moving to digital instead of film." That makes total sense, this fits it. Yeah, so they're bringing in robotic cameras, that like the director can just control with an iPad and he's mad.
Jennie
"Stupid robot!"
Hannah
And so Marie comes in and is hurt, and...
Jennie
This is where you the listeners come in, I think. This is where you guys finish things off.
Hannah
I think we have a lot of threads here. And I think we're going to need more time than we have on this podcast to weave them together more smoothly.
Jennie
Well, we always run out of time. So yeah, so we want to know from you guys, how are Marie and Achilles-- What's their history? And we want to know more about this camera robot and what kind of accident was the lorry in?
Hannah
And I want to know if the angel makes a comeback, like if she plays an angel on the show, but also maybe there's like some actual metaphorical angelic stuff happening. Maybe there is some kind of miraculous redemption at the end.
Jennie
Or maybe she dies and comes back as an angel.
Hannah
Or the computer is the angel. Oh, she comes back as an angel to work alongside the computer.
Jennie
That would be great.
Hannah
This would be amazing.
Jennie
It would be like Touched by an Angel meets Short Circuit.
Hannah
Yeah. Rebekah, you like sci fi fantasy. This is both now. Well, that's our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie
And don't forget to follow us on Twitter @writethispod. And if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or thoughts or anything else, email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you.
Hannah
Thank you so much for joining us, Rebekah.
Rebekah
Thank you.
Hannah
We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. See you then.
Jennie
Bye.
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