Harsh Young Man's Relationship With His Mother (Episode 3) Transcript
You can find the audio version of the episode here.
Hannah: A punk from the city faints at a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. When she wakes up, she finds herself on a cruise ship.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
(Theme music)
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 to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome, Josiah. Josiah: Hello. Thank you for having me. Jennie: Thank you for being here. Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to have other people on with different perspectives and different ways of seeing things. So when you first reached out to me about this, you talked about how you had done a similar thing as this with music. So I'm curious to hear about how you did that and what that process was Josiah: Yeah. So I used to do this series on Instagram where people would just give me a topic or maybe a line that they wanted to be made into a song, and then I would have about an hour to try and turn that into some form of listenable music. We did about 15 to 20 of them. Some of them are better than others. But yeah, it was, I think, sort of the same way, where you had to pick the genre just right away based on whatever feeling the line or suggestion gave you and then go from there and attempt to make something that theoretically could be placed on someone's album, maybe not mine. Hannah: Yeah. Were there any that came out of that, that you're like, "Oh, actually, this is a thing that I could continue doing something with" or were most of them fun throwaways? Josiah: One of them actually made it onto one of my albums in pieces. I have an album called "Short Songs for Short Nights," which-- Hannah: And I guess we haven't mentioned it yet. What is the name of your band? Josiah: Oh, sorry. Yes. The name of the band is Settling Houses. So we have an album called "Short Songs for Short Nights," and one of those, which is "Short Song About Birds," was done in a very similar fashion to this podcast, which was just write a song about birds and see if you can make it happen. Jennie: That's cool. Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: I like that. Josiah: Yeah. I love the idea of this podcast, and just the idea of forcing yourself to write with chains on your wrists is very, I don't know, really exciting to me. And I always try to, in some ways, I try to punish myself when I'm writing in order to just like put these weird restrictions on myself to get something good hopefully by the end of it. Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge fan of using... You know, when your creative option is everything, it can be difficult to narrow that down. Especially if you give you some kind of a weird direction to go in, it kind of forces you to think of different ways of getting to this final objective, which is very cool. Final question before we jump on in: Are there specific genres or themes or story types that you really tend to be drawn to, either creating your own stories or reading or watching or listening to others? Josiah: I try to be as open as I can, but I do find myself falling toward-- I like a good cardboard sci fi movie. Any sort of overwrought sci fi, I tend to be drawn to. The older I get, unfortunately, the more I also just tend to, like watching Marvel movies, which is a little embarrassing. Hannah: It's all good! Josiah: Three years ago, I would have probably had a much more indie answer than that. But now-- Jennie: "It's so mainstream." Hannah: I'm a believer in "You like what you like." Josiah: That's right. But 23-year-old me would be a little upset at my taste now. Hannah: I find that as I get older, I find that I feel more comfortable liking whatever it is that I want to like and being like, "No, you know what, I enjoy this. I don't care if you think it's dumb." So it's awesome. Cool. Before we jump into our brainstorming of the plot at the top, we have just a couple quick pieces of housekeeping to deal with. First of all, we have a really exciting thing that happened. Somebody sent us a script based on our very first full length episode. Jennie: This is exactly what we want people to do. We want people to take our ideas and write something and show us, and we're so excited that happened with the very first episode. Hannah: Oh, we're so hyped. So, Doug Van Hollen, who we're hoping to have on the show at some point as well, sent us a short script based on "A Taxi." As this episode airs, we'll go ahead and we put the full text up on our blog so that you can read the whole thing, but we do want to also give you just a short, tiny taste of the beginning of it. So we're going to read just the very, very beginning of this script together. Jennie: Ooh, who am I playing? Hannah: I've shared the document with both Jennie and Josiah. Since there are two characters and one person reading stage directions, I'll go ahead and read stage directions. Josiah, would you read the part of Boone, and Jennie, would you read the part of William? Jennie: Yes. Hannah: So this is "A Taxi" by Douglas Van Hollen. "Scene one. Before lights up, the sound of airplane engines fills the theater. Lights up on Boone in a suit, no tie, in handcuffs sitting down in an airplane window seat. Next to him sits William in sunglasses, also in a suit, no tie and no handcuffs." Jennie: "Should be about two hours. You need the bathroom?" Josiah: "No." Hannah: "Silence as the men settle. Various other airplanes sounds." Jennie: "Did, uh, did Mom talk to you before they picked you up for the airport? She said there was, I don't-- some crisis that warranted getting the bailiff out of his office. I didn't know. Anyway, I dropped her off on my way to the airport. Wouldn't give me any-- didn't so much as mumble the whole ride which, you know-- so I figured." Josiah: "Now you want to talk?" Jennie: "Well, I'm talking if that's what you mean." Josiah: "No, that's not what I mean." Jennie: "So what do you--" Josiah: "Man, just forget it." Hannah: "William turns and non verbally interacts with an unseen flight attendant." Josiah: "You know this is about that taxi, don't you?" Hannah: And the taxi has entered the story. So with that, we'll leave it and we'll let you read the rest of it on our blog, listeners. Thank you so much to Doug for sending that in. I'm so hyped to read more of these as we get more of them. The other final thing that we want to do is: We were looking at our listener base that we have so far. We've got people from all over the country listening to us, which is really exciting. Not super unexpected, since we've lived in a lot of different places and are living in different places now, so our friends are scattered. So right now we have listeners in 13 different states, and we thought what might be fun is, every episode we're going to choose a state that our goal is to get a listener in that state before the next one. If we do, I don't know, I'll toss the state into our list of locations so that we can then write a story in that. So we're going to start with an easy one. We're going to start with Indiana. That is right next to where I grew up, I lived there for several years, I have lots of friends in Indiana, I better be able to get some of them to listen to this. So my goal is that next time that we check in... At the time of recording, we have nobody listening in Indiana. We'll see if that changes next time we check in. With that in mind, if you have friends in Indiana, if you know people in Indiana and want to help us achieve this goal, tell them to listen. They only have to listen once for it to be counted on here. So they don't even have to be converted to a regular listener, just tell them to listen to our podcast one time, while they're in Indiana. Jennie: Just once! Hannah: Just once. And we'll if we can lure them over. Alright, so with all that out of the way, let's go ahead and let's return to our plot that we chose. So as a reminder, our plot is, "A punk from the city faints at a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. When she wakes up, she finds herself on a cruise ship." Jennie: As always, I like to start out with who the characters are. Hannah: She's a punk from the city Jennie: Yeah, right. She's a punk. She's a she. And she's a punk. And she's from the city. Hannah: A city in Oklahoma? Jennie: Are there any cities in Oklahoma? Josiah: There's Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is reasonably large. Jennie: That's true. But when you say "the city," I think people usually think like New York. Josiah: That's possible. I don't know. Growing up in a rural town, "the city" could be anywhere that's more than 50,000 people. Hannah: It's true. If you're in Oklahoma, Tulsa could very well be the city. Josiah: Yeah. So we have a lot of options, I think. We could make it some city in Texas if we wanted to. Hannah: Okay, so if she's ending up-- I don't know how big Sequoyah, Oklahoma is. Josiah: What are the rules about googling for research here? Hannah: Oh, we can google as much as we want. Oh, my gosh, Sequoyah has 671 people in it. The community as the setting for the 2000 film Where the Heart Is, which is clearly where this came from. Jennie: Oh! I love that movie. Hannah: Okay, well... Yep, that's about a pregnant 17 year old is abandoned by her baby at a Walmart in a small Oklahoma town. So clearly, "in a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma" was the plot synopsis that I stole for this. Jennie: So this is the same Walmart. Hannah: They will be so excited that there's a second movie set in their town. Josiah: I can't find any evidence that there is a Walmart in Sequoyah, however. Hannah: I was going to say, I can't imagine that there's a Walmart in a place with 671 people. Jennie: Maybe near Sequoyah. Hannah: So! So, folks, maybe it's because the Walmart is not really there. It's some sort of portal. It's a traveling Walmart that pops up in little towns, and then pops people elsewhere. Jennie: Lures people in with their big-box savings. Hannah: Yeah, yeah. And they get all excited because they're like, "Oh, a Walmart! In this tiny town!" Jennie: That's great. Josiah: Yeah, I like that. I think that's a good way to maybe take it. We are immediately dropping into what could be cardboard sci fi. Hannah: Exactly, which is your genre right here. Josiah: Which I support wholeheartedly. Jennie: Cardboard Walmart, cardboard cruise ship. Josiah: Yeah. It could perhaps be an evil cruise ship corporation that is setting up these phantom Walmarts. Hannah: Okay. Josiah: You know, sending them to the cruise ship perhaps. Hannah: Okay, and what do they want from people once they're on the cruise ship, do you think? Josiah: Now that's a good question. Jennie: That is a good question. Hannah: Like, why would a cruise ship corporation-- Is it like a really, really elaborate promotion? They're like, "Try and be on our cruise ship once and you'll want to actually buy one." Jennie: And now that you're here, we're going to charge your credit card. Josiah: Yeah. Okay, that's kind of fun because it isn't like an evil plot, it's just kind of-- Hannah: It's just really bad marketing. Josiah: It's a terrible marketing plot, which is fun. Hannah: So they bring them to the cruise ship for like a day then send them back? Jennie: Yeah, and she finds herself in an empty field in Oklahoma. "There was a Walmart here!" Josiah: Yeah, yeah, right, where she was, the Walmart's not there anymore. Yeah, that's great. Hannah: But it happened on the way out of the Walmart, and so she still has like the stuff that she purchased while she was there. Josiah: Does she have it on the cruise ship? Hannah: Yes, she has it on the cruise ship and that's all she has to be able to escape with or get back with. Jennie: Yes! That's how she survives. Josiah: Okay. So it could be that-- and, you know, shoot it down-- but we could take it-- Okay, so cruise ship company is trying to do this ill advised marketing campaign. Jennie: Well, they obviously aren't a human cruise ship company. Josiah: I suppose it doesn't have to be. But maybe when she gets transported, something has gone terribly wrong on the cruise. Hannah: Oh! But their marketing is still on auto. So it's still just like picking people up. Josiah: Yes, yeah. Hannah: Or maybe that's the problem, is that it's picking people up that it shouldn't be and there are too many people there now. Or, yeah, so I like the idea that she has to then use the items that she has picked up at the Walmart to shop with. Now she has to use that to save the show. Jennie: Okay, well, here's here's the next very important question then. What has gone wrong on this cruise ship? Zombies would be cliche. Josiah: It's true. Hannah's first suggestion made me think perhaps it could be automation gone wrong. But we don't have to lean so heavily into the sci fi thing either. But it could be robots or computers malfunctioning, something like that. Hannah: Yeah, like it's the first fully automated, entirely run by robots-- Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: Like there's nobody on board who is actually a human who knows how to deal with this. Josiah: So then... I guess it depends on maybe, morally, do we want the company to be at fault? Or is it a commentary on, you know, technology and, you know, modern... "moderninity." Jennie: "Moderninity!" Hannah: Modernity. Yes, "Moderninity" is our title. Yeah, I think there are definitely different ways that we could go with that and I don't-- Jennie: It could be maybe a more mundane explanation, like maybe some kind of plague. Josiah: Oh, okay. Like a sea plague. Jennie: Right, like an alien plague. Like whoever set up this cruise ship with the automated Walmart portals, you know, wherever they're from, that's the nature of this disease, and so people keep coming onto the ship and then just dying or or turning into plants or something. Hannah: Turning into plants? I love this cruise ship just filled with plants that were once people. Jennie: Ficuses lining the hallways. Hannah: And at first she's like, "This is a very lovely ship. So much greenery!" Jennie: "The foliage is people! The foliage is people!" Josiah: At some point she could pick a leaf off of a tree and then that can come back. Jennie: It says "Ow"? Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: Oh no! Josiah: Or it just is revealed later. Jennie: And starts bleeding or something. Ew. Gross. Josiah: Yeah, that would be awful. Hannah: But if they turn into plants, then that means maybe there's a way to undo it. Maybe there's a way to turn them back into humans. And that poor guy is just like missing a finger or something. Jennie: And she solves the problem with her Walmart stuff and everybody else's Walmart stuff, because everybody else got there via Walmart. Josiah: Sure. This is a movie like Cast Away then, where it's almost entirely funded by Walmart. Hannah: Yes, yes. Yeah, I like that. Jennie: You hear that, Bentonville listeners? We're writing a story about Walmart! Hannah: We are, we are. Josiah: And all of our products are great value. Hannah: I want to throw a wrench into the works. Josiah: Yes, please. Hannah: Because I have a title. And the title is much more reminiscent of a painting than it is of a plot. It also involves a character who has not existed yet. So our title is "Harsh Young Man's Relationship With His Mother." Which is clearly a painting showing an angry man and his mother. So we can tweak this a little bit. Josiah: That is more than a wrench. Hannah: It is. So the question is, is the woman-- Is the punk from the city an older woman and she finds her her son on the cruise ship as well? Is he somehow responsible for this? Is he working for the corporation? Josiah: You said harsh young man? Hannah: A harsh young man. Josiah: Harsh young man, okay. Hannah: Did he go full-on corporate to rebel against his mother the punk? Josiah: Ooh, that's good. Hannah: Like that's kind of fun. Josiah: That is very fun. Hannah: It's still a real crappy title. Like I would not go see that movie. Or maybe I would because I'd be like, "What the heck?" Jennie: You totally would. You'd put that on your list. Hannah: So yeah. Now that the young man is involved and his relationship with his mother is involved, how does this-- We know the external conflict. I feel like there's an internal one now. Jennie: Right? So is he harsh because of his relationship with his mother or is he harsh for other reasons and that affects his relationship with his mother? Hannah: I don't know that it matters to me which way. Right now I'm interested in where do they go with it now? Josiah: His name could be Harsh. Hannah: His name could be Harsh! "Harsh, the young man." The best part of that is that because of the way that my plot generator formulates the plots, it actually was "Harsh the Young Man," so you caught that. Jennie: Harsh the young men. Maybe that's their last name, like Sonia Harsh and her son Tony. Hannah: And maybe at the end it does become like an automation versus let's get back to living our own lives instead of having robots do it for us. Maybe it's like a conflict at the end where he wants to still find a way to save the ship and save the company and keep things going. He's like, "This is just a bug, we'll figure it out." And she's like, "No, we need to destroy everything." Jennie: She's a punk, not a hippie. Hannah: Yeah, but she can find a-- Jennie: What does being a punk even mean these days? Josiah: These days, I don't know that it means much other than-- Jennie: Pink hair. Josiah: Yeah, a certain type of-- Hannah: But definitely against the big corporations that have taken over everything. That could be a punk thing. Josiah: Right, I mean, against the machine, which, that lands pretty squarely if we're talking about several machines. Jennie: So she's only shopping at Walmart ironically. Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: Maybe she's... I don't I don't know what she was doing there. Josiah: Oh man, this title. Hannah: Maybe it was an emergency. It was an emergency. And Sequoyah, Oklahoma had nothing else around it. So she was like, "Oh my gosh, a Walmart. I desperately need something." Josiah: Well, I guess she could have been in the Walmart either in protest or maybe she was on to it. Sort of she's the journalist character in this.
Jennie: Oh, she was investigating disappearing Walmarts. Josiah: Yeah, she's like, "Hey, this Walmart turned up pretty fast." Jennie: And figured she'd pick up some groceries while she was there. Hannah: Maybe she was looking into specific products that are suspicious in some way. That's not the right word, but... Josiah: I mean, how deep do we want to get into the actual plot details, or do you want other people to to flesh those out and write? Hannah: Yeah, that's true. We are getting close to the point where we're just about ready. Yeah. Are there any other like burning things that we think that we need to settle? Because I think we have a good structure for somebody else to write something amazing. Jennie: Yeah, this is really great. Okay, here's the questions we still need. What is this lady doing in a Walmart when she's against the man? What did she buy that helps her save the cruise ship full of plant people? And what is the relationship with her son like? Hannah: Yes. And how does this play out? I want like a final conflict between the two of them. Jennie: Totally. Hannah: I really like this one. This one is really intriguing. Jennie: So, listeners, if you have the ideas, write it up, be it poem, play, book, song. Hannah: A D&D campaign. I would totally play that one. Jennie: Oh, totally! That would totally make a great D&D campaign. Or even a painting as the title suggests. Hannah: Draw us the harsh young man's relationship-- or Harsh the young man's relationship with his mother. Jennie: We'd be so happy to share it on our podcast and shout you out. Hannah: Before we officially close out today, I do want to take a second to give us each a chance to shout out a story we think our listeners should check out. This could be a longtime favorite or a recent discovery, just anything to continue telling our listeners about good stories that we've been finding. So I'll go ahead and start, and just a quick mini synopsis, just to let people know what we've been checking out. I just finished the Shades of Magic book trilogy by V.E. Schwab. I do not usually like fantasy and I do not usually like series, but I read the first one of these on my husband's recommendation, and then immediately went out and read the next two, because they're just really engaging and a very creative fantasy world that is a lot of fun and uses really, really creative magic ideas. So I highly recommend that. The first book is called A Darker Shade of Magic. I definitely suggest you check that out. Jennie, what would you like to recommend to our listeners this week? Jennie: This week, I'm going to recommend an old favorite of mine, The Wonderful O by James Thurber. It's a novel, but it's very short. Good for children but interesting enough for adults, one of those really great balances. And the story is about these pirates who are looking for the treasure on the island of Ooroo. Now as the locals don't know anything about the treasure and therefore can't tell anything, the pirates take over and start taking away the letter O from them. So first, they can't have signs that have the letter O in them and then they can't speak with the letter O and then they start taking away actual objects that have the letter O. And they hire a lawyer to help figure all these kind of-- Like you can't have a boat but you can have a ship. And it's fascinating wordplay and an amusing little story that's just delightful for all readers. So I recommend that. The Wonderful O by James Thurber. Hannah: Fantastic. Any stories that you would like to recommend, Josiah? Josiah: So, this morning I was actually just finishing up a book called How to Invent Everything by Ryan North. He is the author of the dinosaur comics if you've ever seen those. Yeah. And it's a fantastic book. The story is loose. There is a story there, but I may be stretching your terms here. But it is a really great book about just how the world works, how things were invented, all told in this very loose structure of you being stranded in a time before anything was invented. Jennie: This sounds fascinating. Josiah: And how to build civilization from the ground up to the way you are used to. He goes through everything from animal husbandry to inventing medicine and inventing music. Hannah: That's really cool. That sounds really interesting. Josiah: It's very fantastic, really well written. Very funny at points. He makes it easy to understand these complex concepts really simply and builds you up to the point where you feel as if you perhaps could actually start civilization from scratch. It's great. Hannah: Awesome. Alright, so as we close out, Josiah, anywhere that people can find you, find your music? Josiah: Sure. Yeah, you can hear Settling Houses on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you listen, German site called Deezer. And you can find me @settlinghouses on Instagram, where I'll do some live streams and occasionally do something similar to this with writing a song, and you can be the one to try and suggest something miserable to try and turn into a song. Hannah: If you write a song about this, please let us know. Josiah: Oh, yeah, maybe that's what I should do. Whenever this podcast goes live, maybe I'll tie it in. Hannah: Oh, that would be so much fun. We would link to you for sure. Awesome. Well, that's our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod and if you've been inspired by this episode, and have questions or thoughts or a script or anything else, email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Hannah: We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. See you then. Jennie: And as they say, the eye does not rise above the eyebrow.
Hannah: A punk from the city faints at a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. When she wakes up, she finds herself on a cruise ship.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
(Theme music)
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 to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome, Josiah. Josiah: Hello. Thank you for having me. Jennie: Thank you for being here. Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to have other people on with different perspectives and different ways of seeing things. So when you first reached out to me about this, you talked about how you had done a similar thing as this with music. So I'm curious to hear about how you did that and what that process was Josiah: Yeah. So I used to do this series on Instagram where people would just give me a topic or maybe a line that they wanted to be made into a song, and then I would have about an hour to try and turn that into some form of listenable music. We did about 15 to 20 of them. Some of them are better than others. But yeah, it was, I think, sort of the same way, where you had to pick the genre just right away based on whatever feeling the line or suggestion gave you and then go from there and attempt to make something that theoretically could be placed on someone's album, maybe not mine. Hannah: Yeah. Were there any that came out of that, that you're like, "Oh, actually, this is a thing that I could continue doing something with" or were most of them fun throwaways? Josiah: One of them actually made it onto one of my albums in pieces. I have an album called "Short Songs for Short Nights," which-- Hannah: And I guess we haven't mentioned it yet. What is the name of your band? Josiah: Oh, sorry. Yes. The name of the band is Settling Houses. So we have an album called "Short Songs for Short Nights," and one of those, which is "Short Song About Birds," was done in a very similar fashion to this podcast, which was just write a song about birds and see if you can make it happen. Jennie: That's cool. Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: I like that. Josiah: Yeah. I love the idea of this podcast, and just the idea of forcing yourself to write with chains on your wrists is very, I don't know, really exciting to me. And I always try to, in some ways, I try to punish myself when I'm writing in order to just like put these weird restrictions on myself to get something good hopefully by the end of it. Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge fan of using... You know, when your creative option is everything, it can be difficult to narrow that down. Especially if you give you some kind of a weird direction to go in, it kind of forces you to think of different ways of getting to this final objective, which is very cool. Final question before we jump on in: Are there specific genres or themes or story types that you really tend to be drawn to, either creating your own stories or reading or watching or listening to others? Josiah: I try to be as open as I can, but I do find myself falling toward-- I like a good cardboard sci fi movie. Any sort of overwrought sci fi, I tend to be drawn to. The older I get, unfortunately, the more I also just tend to, like watching Marvel movies, which is a little embarrassing. Hannah: It's all good! Josiah: Three years ago, I would have probably had a much more indie answer than that. But now-- Jennie: "It's so mainstream." Hannah: I'm a believer in "You like what you like." Josiah: That's right. But 23-year-old me would be a little upset at my taste now. Hannah: I find that as I get older, I find that I feel more comfortable liking whatever it is that I want to like and being like, "No, you know what, I enjoy this. I don't care if you think it's dumb." So it's awesome. Cool. Before we jump into our brainstorming of the plot at the top, we have just a couple quick pieces of housekeeping to deal with. First of all, we have a really exciting thing that happened. Somebody sent us a script based on our very first full length episode. Jennie: This is exactly what we want people to do. We want people to take our ideas and write something and show us, and we're so excited that happened with the very first episode. Hannah: Oh, we're so hyped. So, Doug Van Hollen, who we're hoping to have on the show at some point as well, sent us a short script based on "A Taxi." As this episode airs, we'll go ahead and we put the full text up on our blog so that you can read the whole thing, but we do want to also give you just a short, tiny taste of the beginning of it. So we're going to read just the very, very beginning of this script together. Jennie: Ooh, who am I playing? Hannah: I've shared the document with both Jennie and Josiah. Since there are two characters and one person reading stage directions, I'll go ahead and read stage directions. Josiah, would you read the part of Boone, and Jennie, would you read the part of William? Jennie: Yes. Hannah: So this is "A Taxi" by Douglas Van Hollen. "Scene one. Before lights up, the sound of airplane engines fills the theater. Lights up on Boone in a suit, no tie, in handcuffs sitting down in an airplane window seat. Next to him sits William in sunglasses, also in a suit, no tie and no handcuffs." Jennie: "Should be about two hours. You need the bathroom?" Josiah: "No." Hannah: "Silence as the men settle. Various other airplanes sounds." Jennie: "Did, uh, did Mom talk to you before they picked you up for the airport? She said there was, I don't-- some crisis that warranted getting the bailiff out of his office. I didn't know. Anyway, I dropped her off on my way to the airport. Wouldn't give me any-- didn't so much as mumble the whole ride which, you know-- so I figured." Josiah: "Now you want to talk?" Jennie: "Well, I'm talking if that's what you mean." Josiah: "No, that's not what I mean." Jennie: "So what do you--" Josiah: "Man, just forget it." Hannah: "William turns and non verbally interacts with an unseen flight attendant." Josiah: "You know this is about that taxi, don't you?" Hannah: And the taxi has entered the story. So with that, we'll leave it and we'll let you read the rest of it on our blog, listeners. Thank you so much to Doug for sending that in. I'm so hyped to read more of these as we get more of them. The other final thing that we want to do is: We were looking at our listener base that we have so far. We've got people from all over the country listening to us, which is really exciting. Not super unexpected, since we've lived in a lot of different places and are living in different places now, so our friends are scattered. So right now we have listeners in 13 different states, and we thought what might be fun is, every episode we're going to choose a state that our goal is to get a listener in that state before the next one. If we do, I don't know, I'll toss the state into our list of locations so that we can then write a story in that. So we're going to start with an easy one. We're going to start with Indiana. That is right next to where I grew up, I lived there for several years, I have lots of friends in Indiana, I better be able to get some of them to listen to this. So my goal is that next time that we check in... At the time of recording, we have nobody listening in Indiana. We'll see if that changes next time we check in. With that in mind, if you have friends in Indiana, if you know people in Indiana and want to help us achieve this goal, tell them to listen. They only have to listen once for it to be counted on here. So they don't even have to be converted to a regular listener, just tell them to listen to our podcast one time, while they're in Indiana. Jennie: Just once! Hannah: Just once. And we'll if we can lure them over. Alright, so with all that out of the way, let's go ahead and let's return to our plot that we chose. So as a reminder, our plot is, "A punk from the city faints at a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma. When she wakes up, she finds herself on a cruise ship." Jennie: As always, I like to start out with who the characters are. Hannah: She's a punk from the city Jennie: Yeah, right. She's a punk. She's a she. And she's a punk. And she's from the city. Hannah: A city in Oklahoma? Jennie: Are there any cities in Oklahoma? Josiah: There's Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is reasonably large. Jennie: That's true. But when you say "the city," I think people usually think like New York. Josiah: That's possible. I don't know. Growing up in a rural town, "the city" could be anywhere that's more than 50,000 people. Hannah: It's true. If you're in Oklahoma, Tulsa could very well be the city. Josiah: Yeah. So we have a lot of options, I think. We could make it some city in Texas if we wanted to. Hannah: Okay, so if she's ending up-- I don't know how big Sequoyah, Oklahoma is. Josiah: What are the rules about googling for research here? Hannah: Oh, we can google as much as we want. Oh, my gosh, Sequoyah has 671 people in it. The community as the setting for the 2000 film Where the Heart Is, which is clearly where this came from. Jennie: Oh! I love that movie. Hannah: Okay, well... Yep, that's about a pregnant 17 year old is abandoned by her baby at a Walmart in a small Oklahoma town. So clearly, "in a Walmart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma" was the plot synopsis that I stole for this. Jennie: So this is the same Walmart. Hannah: They will be so excited that there's a second movie set in their town. Josiah: I can't find any evidence that there is a Walmart in Sequoyah, however. Hannah: I was going to say, I can't imagine that there's a Walmart in a place with 671 people. Jennie: Maybe near Sequoyah. Hannah: So! So, folks, maybe it's because the Walmart is not really there. It's some sort of portal. It's a traveling Walmart that pops up in little towns, and then pops people elsewhere. Jennie: Lures people in with their big-box savings. Hannah: Yeah, yeah. And they get all excited because they're like, "Oh, a Walmart! In this tiny town!" Jennie: That's great. Josiah: Yeah, I like that. I think that's a good way to maybe take it. We are immediately dropping into what could be cardboard sci fi. Hannah: Exactly, which is your genre right here. Josiah: Which I support wholeheartedly. Jennie: Cardboard Walmart, cardboard cruise ship. Josiah: Yeah. It could perhaps be an evil cruise ship corporation that is setting up these phantom Walmarts. Hannah: Okay. Josiah: You know, sending them to the cruise ship perhaps. Hannah: Okay, and what do they want from people once they're on the cruise ship, do you think? Josiah: Now that's a good question. Jennie: That is a good question. Hannah: Like, why would a cruise ship corporation-- Is it like a really, really elaborate promotion? They're like, "Try and be on our cruise ship once and you'll want to actually buy one." Jennie: And now that you're here, we're going to charge your credit card. Josiah: Yeah. Okay, that's kind of fun because it isn't like an evil plot, it's just kind of-- Hannah: It's just really bad marketing. Josiah: It's a terrible marketing plot, which is fun. Hannah: So they bring them to the cruise ship for like a day then send them back? Jennie: Yeah, and she finds herself in an empty field in Oklahoma. "There was a Walmart here!" Josiah: Yeah, yeah, right, where she was, the Walmart's not there anymore. Yeah, that's great. Hannah: But it happened on the way out of the Walmart, and so she still has like the stuff that she purchased while she was there. Josiah: Does she have it on the cruise ship? Hannah: Yes, she has it on the cruise ship and that's all she has to be able to escape with or get back with. Jennie: Yes! That's how she survives. Josiah: Okay. So it could be that-- and, you know, shoot it down-- but we could take it-- Okay, so cruise ship company is trying to do this ill advised marketing campaign. Jennie: Well, they obviously aren't a human cruise ship company. Josiah: I suppose it doesn't have to be. But maybe when she gets transported, something has gone terribly wrong on the cruise. Hannah: Oh! But their marketing is still on auto. So it's still just like picking people up. Josiah: Yes, yeah. Hannah: Or maybe that's the problem, is that it's picking people up that it shouldn't be and there are too many people there now. Or, yeah, so I like the idea that she has to then use the items that she has picked up at the Walmart to shop with. Now she has to use that to save the show. Jennie: Okay, well, here's here's the next very important question then. What has gone wrong on this cruise ship? Zombies would be cliche. Josiah: It's true. Hannah's first suggestion made me think perhaps it could be automation gone wrong. But we don't have to lean so heavily into the sci fi thing either. But it could be robots or computers malfunctioning, something like that. Hannah: Yeah, like it's the first fully automated, entirely run by robots-- Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: Like there's nobody on board who is actually a human who knows how to deal with this. Josiah: So then... I guess it depends on maybe, morally, do we want the company to be at fault? Or is it a commentary on, you know, technology and, you know, modern... "moderninity." Jennie: "Moderninity!" Hannah: Modernity. Yes, "Moderninity" is our title. Yeah, I think there are definitely different ways that we could go with that and I don't-- Jennie: It could be maybe a more mundane explanation, like maybe some kind of plague. Josiah: Oh, okay. Like a sea plague. Jennie: Right, like an alien plague. Like whoever set up this cruise ship with the automated Walmart portals, you know, wherever they're from, that's the nature of this disease, and so people keep coming onto the ship and then just dying or or turning into plants or something. Hannah: Turning into plants? I love this cruise ship just filled with plants that were once people. Jennie: Ficuses lining the hallways. Hannah: And at first she's like, "This is a very lovely ship. So much greenery!" Jennie: "The foliage is people! The foliage is people!" Josiah: At some point she could pick a leaf off of a tree and then that can come back. Jennie: It says "Ow"? Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: Oh no! Josiah: Or it just is revealed later. Jennie: And starts bleeding or something. Ew. Gross. Josiah: Yeah, that would be awful. Hannah: But if they turn into plants, then that means maybe there's a way to undo it. Maybe there's a way to turn them back into humans. And that poor guy is just like missing a finger or something. Jennie: And she solves the problem with her Walmart stuff and everybody else's Walmart stuff, because everybody else got there via Walmart. Josiah: Sure. This is a movie like Cast Away then, where it's almost entirely funded by Walmart. Hannah: Yes, yes. Yeah, I like that. Jennie: You hear that, Bentonville listeners? We're writing a story about Walmart! Hannah: We are, we are. Josiah: And all of our products are great value. Hannah: I want to throw a wrench into the works. Josiah: Yes, please. Hannah: Because I have a title. And the title is much more reminiscent of a painting than it is of a plot. It also involves a character who has not existed yet. So our title is "Harsh Young Man's Relationship With His Mother." Which is clearly a painting showing an angry man and his mother. So we can tweak this a little bit. Josiah: That is more than a wrench. Hannah: It is. So the question is, is the woman-- Is the punk from the city an older woman and she finds her her son on the cruise ship as well? Is he somehow responsible for this? Is he working for the corporation? Josiah: You said harsh young man? Hannah: A harsh young man. Josiah: Harsh young man, okay. Hannah: Did he go full-on corporate to rebel against his mother the punk? Josiah: Ooh, that's good. Hannah: Like that's kind of fun. Josiah: That is very fun. Hannah: It's still a real crappy title. Like I would not go see that movie. Or maybe I would because I'd be like, "What the heck?" Jennie: You totally would. You'd put that on your list. Hannah: So yeah. Now that the young man is involved and his relationship with his mother is involved, how does this-- We know the external conflict. I feel like there's an internal one now. Jennie: Right? So is he harsh because of his relationship with his mother or is he harsh for other reasons and that affects his relationship with his mother? Hannah: I don't know that it matters to me which way. Right now I'm interested in where do they go with it now? Josiah: His name could be Harsh. Hannah: His name could be Harsh! "Harsh, the young man." The best part of that is that because of the way that my plot generator formulates the plots, it actually was "Harsh the Young Man," so you caught that. Jennie: Harsh the young men. Maybe that's their last name, like Sonia Harsh and her son Tony. Hannah: And maybe at the end it does become like an automation versus let's get back to living our own lives instead of having robots do it for us. Maybe it's like a conflict at the end where he wants to still find a way to save the ship and save the company and keep things going. He's like, "This is just a bug, we'll figure it out." And she's like, "No, we need to destroy everything." Jennie: She's a punk, not a hippie. Hannah: Yeah, but she can find a-- Jennie: What does being a punk even mean these days? Josiah: These days, I don't know that it means much other than-- Jennie: Pink hair. Josiah: Yeah, a certain type of-- Hannah: But definitely against the big corporations that have taken over everything. That could be a punk thing. Josiah: Right, I mean, against the machine, which, that lands pretty squarely if we're talking about several machines. Jennie: So she's only shopping at Walmart ironically. Josiah: Yeah. Hannah: Maybe she's... I don't I don't know what she was doing there. Josiah: Oh man, this title. Hannah: Maybe it was an emergency. It was an emergency. And Sequoyah, Oklahoma had nothing else around it. So she was like, "Oh my gosh, a Walmart. I desperately need something." Josiah: Well, I guess she could have been in the Walmart either in protest or maybe she was on to it. Sort of she's the journalist character in this.
Jennie: Oh, she was investigating disappearing Walmarts. Josiah: Yeah, she's like, "Hey, this Walmart turned up pretty fast." Jennie: And figured she'd pick up some groceries while she was there. Hannah: Maybe she was looking into specific products that are suspicious in some way. That's not the right word, but... Josiah: I mean, how deep do we want to get into the actual plot details, or do you want other people to to flesh those out and write? Hannah: Yeah, that's true. We are getting close to the point where we're just about ready. Yeah. Are there any other like burning things that we think that we need to settle? Because I think we have a good structure for somebody else to write something amazing. Jennie: Yeah, this is really great. Okay, here's the questions we still need. What is this lady doing in a Walmart when she's against the man? What did she buy that helps her save the cruise ship full of plant people? And what is the relationship with her son like? Hannah: Yes. And how does this play out? I want like a final conflict between the two of them. Jennie: Totally. Hannah: I really like this one. This one is really intriguing. Jennie: So, listeners, if you have the ideas, write it up, be it poem, play, book, song. Hannah: A D&D campaign. I would totally play that one. Jennie: Oh, totally! That would totally make a great D&D campaign. Or even a painting as the title suggests. Hannah: Draw us the harsh young man's relationship-- or Harsh the young man's relationship with his mother. Jennie: We'd be so happy to share it on our podcast and shout you out. Hannah: Before we officially close out today, I do want to take a second to give us each a chance to shout out a story we think our listeners should check out. This could be a longtime favorite or a recent discovery, just anything to continue telling our listeners about good stories that we've been finding. So I'll go ahead and start, and just a quick mini synopsis, just to let people know what we've been checking out. I just finished the Shades of Magic book trilogy by V.E. Schwab. I do not usually like fantasy and I do not usually like series, but I read the first one of these on my husband's recommendation, and then immediately went out and read the next two, because they're just really engaging and a very creative fantasy world that is a lot of fun and uses really, really creative magic ideas. So I highly recommend that. The first book is called A Darker Shade of Magic. I definitely suggest you check that out. Jennie, what would you like to recommend to our listeners this week? Jennie: This week, I'm going to recommend an old favorite of mine, The Wonderful O by James Thurber. It's a novel, but it's very short. Good for children but interesting enough for adults, one of those really great balances. And the story is about these pirates who are looking for the treasure on the island of Ooroo. Now as the locals don't know anything about the treasure and therefore can't tell anything, the pirates take over and start taking away the letter O from them. So first, they can't have signs that have the letter O in them and then they can't speak with the letter O and then they start taking away actual objects that have the letter O. And they hire a lawyer to help figure all these kind of-- Like you can't have a boat but you can have a ship. And it's fascinating wordplay and an amusing little story that's just delightful for all readers. So I recommend that. The Wonderful O by James Thurber. Hannah: Fantastic. Any stories that you would like to recommend, Josiah? Josiah: So, this morning I was actually just finishing up a book called How to Invent Everything by Ryan North. He is the author of the dinosaur comics if you've ever seen those. Yeah. And it's a fantastic book. The story is loose. There is a story there, but I may be stretching your terms here. But it is a really great book about just how the world works, how things were invented, all told in this very loose structure of you being stranded in a time before anything was invented. Jennie: This sounds fascinating. Josiah: And how to build civilization from the ground up to the way you are used to. He goes through everything from animal husbandry to inventing medicine and inventing music. Hannah: That's really cool. That sounds really interesting. Josiah: It's very fantastic, really well written. Very funny at points. He makes it easy to understand these complex concepts really simply and builds you up to the point where you feel as if you perhaps could actually start civilization from scratch. It's great. Hannah: Awesome. Alright, so as we close out, Josiah, anywhere that people can find you, find your music? Josiah: Sure. Yeah, you can hear Settling Houses on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere you listen, German site called Deezer. And you can find me @settlinghouses on Instagram, where I'll do some live streams and occasionally do something similar to this with writing a song, and you can be the one to try and suggest something miserable to try and turn into a song. Hannah: If you write a song about this, please let us know. Josiah: Oh, yeah, maybe that's what I should do. Whenever this podcast goes live, maybe I'll tie it in. Hannah: Oh, that would be so much fun. We would link to you for sure. Awesome. Well, that's our episode. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod and if you've been inspired by this episode, and have questions or thoughts or a script or anything else, email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Hannah: We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. See you then. Jennie: And as they say, the eye does not rise above the eyebrow.
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