Dysfunctional (Episode 4) Transcript
Sorry this is so late, friends! Enjoy the transcript of our latest episode.
Hannah: An American family unwittingly comforts his older brother's wife and children.
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 to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome to the podcast, Ginny.
Ginny: Thank you. Excited to be here.
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. This is a friend of actually both ours and Jennie's. We met years and years and years ago on an online chat site and have stayed in touch for a really long time.
Ginny: So long. It's wild.
Hannah: Ginny is, obviously as most of our guests are, is a writer. I'm going to start with my very basic question. Tell me a little bit about your taste profile as either a writer or a consumer of stories. Are there genres or themes or story types that you really tend to be drawn toward?
Ginny: Yeah, I would say my main genres are fantasy, sci fi and mystery. I tend to like a little bit speculative, a little bit not real world, or stories with a very concrete puzzle and mystery to solve. Or, of course, a combination of both is wonderful.
Hannah: Do you find that you write the same kinds of stuff that you read? Or is there a difference? Is there stuff that you love reading that you're like, "I could never actually write that."
Ginny: I would say the major difference is that I like to write sometimes a little bit darker than I like to read. It's still similar genres, but I will write things that are heavy or depressing and I tend to prefer to read things that are generally fairly upbeat most of the time. Occasionally, I'm in a mood to read something really dark, but I write scarier. I don't like reading or watching scary stuff at all, but I do like writing scary stuff.
Hannah: I'm curious now about the-- Because what I write and I consume often-- I tend to go the opposite. I tend to write light and enjoy reading and watching dark. And so I'm curious as to what it's like going back in and rereading something especially dark that you've written. I don't know. I'm curious about how that how that plays into rereading your own stuff.
Ginny: Sometimes it's like, "Oh, dang, this is intense. This is quite a thing that you did here." But for me, it's kind of like, especially with scary stuff, I've got that stuff inside me and writing it is very like cathartic, and it's getting it out. But I don't want to be drawing more of it in. I don't actually like being scared. But I do find it really satisfying to write something that sort of pulls out some of the fears that are in me, but I don't actually want to generate more by consuming stuff that didn't already come from me.
Jennie: Well, that's interesting because that's exactly why I'm drawn to scary stories myself, is kind of studying our fears and the way we respond to them and the way we recover from them. And, you know, it's like a facet of our humanity.
Ginny: Yeah, that makes sense. That's kind of how my brother, who's also a writer, feels about it. And I definitely consume more scary media than I did like 10 years ago. But still, my tolerance is pretty low.
Hannah: I'm always fascinated by how we deal with our own fears through media, either through separating yourself out from it, or finding a way to experience it in a safe way, or really, like deeply delving into it. And how linked our relationship with our own monsters and the media that we comfort ourselves with the surround ourselves with is really interesting to me. And it looks different for everybody, which is really cool. Thank you so much, Ginny, for joining us. We're so excited to get started on this. Before we jump into brainstorming our plot, we do have one little tiny piece of housekeeping. As we mentioned in our last episode, we are on a quest to expand the number of states listening to us. My last count, I believe we had 13. Last time we said we wanted to get more listeners in Indiana. We, at the time of this recording, have not actually released that podcast yet. So we don't know if we got more listeners in Indiana because of that. But we are going to, regardless, decide on another state. And so if you know anybody who lives in this state and can encourage them to listen to the podcast just once so we can get to mark that on our map and say that we have had a listener from the state, go for it. Jennie chose our state this time. Where are we go in?
Jennie: Aloha! We are going to Hawaii, this is where I grew up. This is my safe place, my home that adopted me when I needed a place that was safe. Love ya, Hawaii. Kahuku High School Red Raider for life. All you people from my hometown, listen to this podcast.
Hannah: We are fortunate enough in that like, while Hawaii might be a little bit more of a difficult state to know people in for a lot of podcasts, Jennie is connected. So we actually have a chance.
Jennie: I got my high school friends, I got my college friends.
Hannah: Yeah, so I did the heavy lifting last time. You'll do the heavy lifting this time. But if you can help us out, listeners, if you know anybody in Hawaii, who you think you might enjoy this podcast, send it to them. Let's go ahead. Let's reread our original plot and then we'll talk about it. We'll figure out where it can go. So our plot is an American family unwittingly comforts his older brother's wife and children. So there's some stuff happening here.
Jennie: Okay, so we obviously have a bunch of characters set up here and we know something about them. We know that they're Americans. And we have what looks like two brothers. And the one brother has a family. Doesn't say who's in his family, but it's a family of some kind. And the older brother has a wife and children in his family and they need comforting for some reason.
Ginny: So is the older brother dead or somehow injured?
Jennie: That makes sense that they would need comforting because something happened to the older brother.
Hannah: I'm wondering if we can tie in the "unwittingly"--
Ginny: Yeah, the "unwittingly" is really the sticking point.
Jennie: That is the word.
Hannah: That is, I think, what drew us to this one in the first place because how does one unwittingly comfort? So has something happened to the older brother but only the wife and children know?
Ginny: Oh, that's a thought. So he doesn't know that they even need comfort.
Jennie: Right, maybe it's not something that has happened but it's something in the process of happening, something slow and kind of sneaky like possibly Alzheimer's?
Hannah: Yeah. Or something like-- You could go even like almost a borderline like thriller action route with this, like there's something going on, that he's involved in something and has been captured somewhere or has been or is in-- I don't know, but nobody can know about it. It has to be something that I guess the children could know about, but maybe something that they're keeping secret for their own reasons, like maybe something that they think is shameful, or something that they worry will will affect the way people see them.
Jennie: Ooh, ooh, okay, what if they're unwittingly comforted-- It's not that the family is unwittingly comforting the older brother's wife and children. It's that they are comforting their older brother's wife and children unwittingly,
Ginny: Like they don't know that they're a family member?
Jennie: As in they don't know that they're the family member brother's wife and children. What if?
Ginny: So something like, say, it's the scene of a car accident or something and this guy doesn't even know that these two grieving people are related to him for some reason, but is comforting them after whatever kind of tragedy or disaster happened. Then we'd have to ask--
Jennie: Not knowing the fate of his older brother.
Ginny: Right, so he's being-- The dynamic there can be that he's being all like giving and caring and supportive, and he doesn't even realize yet that he also has suffered a loss.
Hannah: I think the question here is, is the the narrative goal of this to get them to realize that they are connected, or to get them to not? Like, is this something where the goal is "Oh, they should realize their connection so that they could be closer"? Or is the American family somebody or a group of people that should not be in contact? Is the older brother keeping stuff away from them for a reason?
Jennie: Like, what if what if this is the older brothers second wife and children?
Ginny: Like secret second family? Yeah.
Jennie: Right. Right, yeah. Secret ones.
Hannah: Like there's another one that the American family knows about and is part of their family and then he's got like the secret second life somewhere else. So maybe the comfort is even for something that has nothing to do necessarily with the older brother, like maybe something else random happens like--
Jennie: Like road trip, yeah, like the car broke down and they stopped at a house for help but it happens to be their uncle.
Hannah: Yeah, although comforting over a broken down car seems--
Jennie: Well, it's comforting to be nowhere and have a place to stay.
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm curious about the vibe of this, like whether this is friendly family or other this is like serial killer is one of them. Well, here though, let me tell you this because this is-- Okay, so this is the title. Usually I hold off on this a little bit longer, but I actually think this will help inform this. The title of this story is "Dysfunctional."
Ginny: Oh.
Jennie: Aha.
Hannah: Which is why-- I really felt a subconscious push toward--
Jennie: Well, that answers your question right there. What is the dynamic? It is this: dysfunctional.
Ginny: So it'd be fun to make it kind of like a black comedy where the reader, the audience, knows about this relationship and everything that's happening as these people try to comfort these other people is deeply ironic because of the connection they don't know about.
Hannah: Yeah, so the American family doesn't know, the brother's wife and children don't know. Is the older brother there and--
Jennie: Playing them both for some reason?
Hannah: Not telling anybody or gone. Like, is the older brother part of the story? Is he around?
Ginny: Probably not at first, assuming that the younger brother knows who he is and what he looks like.
Hannah: Oh, that's true. That's true. That would be a clue. Duh. You are right.
Jennie: Well, yeah, like what if not at first, but then he shows up later. And how does the older brother deal with his two worlds colliding here?
Ginny: Yeah. If it's this two secret families thing then maybe the wife and children, I guess, the could be older, that have just found out that they're a second family and are upset about that, and perhaps all the truth has come out. And the so the American family, the initial family, knows that their brother's been involved in this big scandal and they happen to run into these other people who are dealing with something similar and they're not realizing the connection. They are comforting them and are like, "Oh yeah, we've been through something like that too. It was terrible."
Hannah: Maybe they even meet like as--
Jennie: "Big brother's a douche."
Hannah: But maybe that initial connection is-- Like is that facilitated because of that? Are they both in-- I don't know, are they in some sort of-- I don't have sentences for this. Somebody else should come up with ideas while I try to formulate this. No, I'm trying to figure out if that connection, if the scandal has erupted and it's opened up, if that is the reason that they meet, even if they don't know that their scandal was connected.
Ginny: We could go back to that road trip thing, like say the the wife and family children have, you know... Maybe they're even on a road trip to confront their older brother, I mean, their supposed husband and father. They just found out about this, they're going to go, they found out where he is. And they go, but then they get to the town, but then their car breaks down or something. And then they meet this other nice family that helped them out with their car situation. Maybe he owns the garage or something.
Hannah: So yeah, they find out about him. He takes off and they go to find him, to chase him down. And they go maybe back to the town where he grew up, or back to the area where he grew up, thinking that they'll be able to find him. And so then it's not as ridiculous a coincidence.
Jennie: Instead, they run into Uncle Jesse and his family.
Hannah: Yeah. So I'm assuming at some point they need to they need to figure out their connections.
Jennie: So how does this play? Is this a holiday movie?
Hannah: Like a dark Christmas comedy.
Jennie: Right? Maybe they weren't going to confront so much as like, "Let's surprise dad for Christmas because he has to be there for work," when he's doing it with his first family instead of his second family.
Hannah: Oh my gosh.
Jennie: Right. And then, "Oh, no, we're going to be late, we won't be there for Christmas." And that's why they need comforting.
Hannah: Oh, man. That is the most amazingly uncomfortable holiday.
Ginny: Yeah, this is like peak "I would never watch this." I would be so miserable. But it's really funny and fun to think about.
Hannah: That could be hilarious.
Jennie: It's a Christmas movie called "Dysfunctional." I mean, come on.
Ginny: Yeah, so they're like, "Oh, well, just come stay with us for Christmas. There's always room at our table."
Jennie: Well, you know, I think it's time for a new genre, because so far we have like happy feel good Christmas movies, and we have comedy Christmas movies, and then we have horror Christmas movies. And now we need like family drama, no happy ending Christmas movies.
Hannah: Cringe comedy, everybody's uncomfortable. Which I think for many people is going to more accurately capture the spirit of family holidays anyway.
Jennie: That's so sad.
Hannah: Not for everybody. But I think there are a lot of people who will connect to that.
Ginny: There's a lot of folks who would relate.
Jennie: Representation in media, right? It's all about representation in the media.
Hannah: Absolutely. I like that. I like that. Yeah, that could go really interesting directions and you get all kinds of different connections between the different characters and playing with who finds out when. Oh man.
Ginny: Oh yeah.
Hannah: Okay. Are there any other pieces that we need that we feel we need to tease out of this? Because I think we have-- This is a really good outer section for this. Like I would watch this. Yeah, all right, I think we're going to leave it up to our listeners then, because although we didn't get as deep into the plot details as we often do, I think this is the kind of thing where you really need to unveil the relationships as you write those characters.
Jennie: Exactly.
Hannah: I don't think we can go further.
Jennie: We need to know more about these characters. We need to know where this is taking place. We need to know is it a holiday movie?
Ginny: I love it as a holiday movie. It's great.
Jennie: Yeah. And then how does it all play out in the end? Is that a happy ending or a sad ending?
Hannah: And can I point out as well-- Listeners will be well aware of this but our podcasters are not. This is due to be released on December 26.
Ginny: Perfect! Happy Boxing Day!
Hannah: So this is extremely timely. Hopefully, none of you were in this situation.
Jennie: We hope you all had a merry Christmas if you celebrate Christmas and if you celebrated--
Hannah: Yeah, happy holiday season without secret families arriving and joining you for holiday dinners. Awesome. So yeah, this one is wide open for you listeners. There's a lot that you can latch on to and play with. I would love, love to read a scene from this.
Ginny: Absolutely.
Hannah: And I hope that some of you pull something together and write something based on this because I would love to read those. And before we close out today, let's each take a second to shout out a story we think our listeners should check out. Last time, I recommended a book series this time. I'm going to recommend a movie. In the spirit of of odd relationship movies, I want to recommend Lars and the Real Girl. This is a movie starring Ryan Gosling about a young man who has a lot of difficulty connecting with people around him and ends up purchasing a sex doll that he pretends is his girlfriend. This sounds like it could go in a really odd and bawdy direction, but it actually ends up being an incredibly beautiful story about empathy and about community and about helping each other out. It is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I highly, highly recommend it. All right, Jennie, what do you have for us this week?
Jennie: This week, I'm actually going to recommend a tabletop game, because games tell stories too, I'm going to recommend Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle. It is a brilliantly constructed tabletop game where you play through the seven years of the story as the four main characters. You can be Harry, Ron, Hermione, or Neville. And it's two to four players. And I'm recommending this not only because it's a fantastic game, but it's a really great and interesting way of re-experiencing the whole Harry Potter saga as if you are one of the characters, and so you kind of get to role play a little bit. And I just think it's fantastic. So if you like board games, get that one. You'll love it.
Hannah: And Ginny, what would you like to share with us today?
Ginny: I have been compiling my end-of-year top five or 10 books that I read this year list. I haven't decided yet if it's five or 10. But I know what will be topping that list, which is a trilogy that I read the whole trilogy of this year so I'm counting it as one book, and it's the Winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden. It came out within the last several years and it's got a lot of fantasy elements. It's about the tension between Christianity and the old magic in old pre-Russia Russia. It's got a fantastic main character and really interesting relationships. The villain characters are all really deep and have their own stuff going on that you-- It's the situation where you kind of feel bad for them but also furious at them. Really love it. It's very, very rich and it's actually got some historical basis in how this-- as Christianity came into Russia, how Russia adapted, or the lands that became Russia adapted to that and their old beliefs. So, highly recommend the whole trilogy. The first book is called The Bear and the Nightingale, and the author is Katherine Arden.
Hannah: And Ginny, anything you want to plug? Where can people find you or your writing if they want to learn more?
Ginny: Yes, I am Twitter @lirelyn, L-I-R-E-L-Y-N. And in my bio there, you can find a link to subscribe to my newsletter where I write and send out three small snippets, flash fiction, micro fiction, prose, poetry, bits of creative writing that I've done, and I send that out once per month.
Hannah: Awesome, fantastic. Well, go ahead and follow Ginny there if you're interested.
Ginny: Sounds good.
Hannah: 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 would love to hear from you.
Hannah: We will be back with another episode in two weeks. So we'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the buffalo belongs to the man with the big stick.
Hannah: An American family unwittingly comforts his older brother's wife and children.
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 to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest. Welcome to the podcast, Ginny.
Ginny: Thank you. Excited to be here.
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. This is a friend of actually both ours and Jennie's. We met years and years and years ago on an online chat site and have stayed in touch for a really long time.
Ginny: So long. It's wild.
Hannah: Ginny is, obviously as most of our guests are, is a writer. I'm going to start with my very basic question. Tell me a little bit about your taste profile as either a writer or a consumer of stories. Are there genres or themes or story types that you really tend to be drawn toward?
Ginny: Yeah, I would say my main genres are fantasy, sci fi and mystery. I tend to like a little bit speculative, a little bit not real world, or stories with a very concrete puzzle and mystery to solve. Or, of course, a combination of both is wonderful.
Hannah: Do you find that you write the same kinds of stuff that you read? Or is there a difference? Is there stuff that you love reading that you're like, "I could never actually write that."
Ginny: I would say the major difference is that I like to write sometimes a little bit darker than I like to read. It's still similar genres, but I will write things that are heavy or depressing and I tend to prefer to read things that are generally fairly upbeat most of the time. Occasionally, I'm in a mood to read something really dark, but I write scarier. I don't like reading or watching scary stuff at all, but I do like writing scary stuff.
Hannah: I'm curious now about the-- Because what I write and I consume often-- I tend to go the opposite. I tend to write light and enjoy reading and watching dark. And so I'm curious as to what it's like going back in and rereading something especially dark that you've written. I don't know. I'm curious about how that how that plays into rereading your own stuff.
Ginny: Sometimes it's like, "Oh, dang, this is intense. This is quite a thing that you did here." But for me, it's kind of like, especially with scary stuff, I've got that stuff inside me and writing it is very like cathartic, and it's getting it out. But I don't want to be drawing more of it in. I don't actually like being scared. But I do find it really satisfying to write something that sort of pulls out some of the fears that are in me, but I don't actually want to generate more by consuming stuff that didn't already come from me.
Jennie: Well, that's interesting because that's exactly why I'm drawn to scary stories myself, is kind of studying our fears and the way we respond to them and the way we recover from them. And, you know, it's like a facet of our humanity.
Ginny: Yeah, that makes sense. That's kind of how my brother, who's also a writer, feels about it. And I definitely consume more scary media than I did like 10 years ago. But still, my tolerance is pretty low.
Hannah: I'm always fascinated by how we deal with our own fears through media, either through separating yourself out from it, or finding a way to experience it in a safe way, or really, like deeply delving into it. And how linked our relationship with our own monsters and the media that we comfort ourselves with the surround ourselves with is really interesting to me. And it looks different for everybody, which is really cool. Thank you so much, Ginny, for joining us. We're so excited to get started on this. Before we jump into brainstorming our plot, we do have one little tiny piece of housekeeping. As we mentioned in our last episode, we are on a quest to expand the number of states listening to us. My last count, I believe we had 13. Last time we said we wanted to get more listeners in Indiana. We, at the time of this recording, have not actually released that podcast yet. So we don't know if we got more listeners in Indiana because of that. But we are going to, regardless, decide on another state. And so if you know anybody who lives in this state and can encourage them to listen to the podcast just once so we can get to mark that on our map and say that we have had a listener from the state, go for it. Jennie chose our state this time. Where are we go in?
Jennie: Aloha! We are going to Hawaii, this is where I grew up. This is my safe place, my home that adopted me when I needed a place that was safe. Love ya, Hawaii. Kahuku High School Red Raider for life. All you people from my hometown, listen to this podcast.
Hannah: We are fortunate enough in that like, while Hawaii might be a little bit more of a difficult state to know people in for a lot of podcasts, Jennie is connected. So we actually have a chance.
Jennie: I got my high school friends, I got my college friends.
Hannah: Yeah, so I did the heavy lifting last time. You'll do the heavy lifting this time. But if you can help us out, listeners, if you know anybody in Hawaii, who you think you might enjoy this podcast, send it to them. Let's go ahead. Let's reread our original plot and then we'll talk about it. We'll figure out where it can go. So our plot is an American family unwittingly comforts his older brother's wife and children. So there's some stuff happening here.
Jennie: Okay, so we obviously have a bunch of characters set up here and we know something about them. We know that they're Americans. And we have what looks like two brothers. And the one brother has a family. Doesn't say who's in his family, but it's a family of some kind. And the older brother has a wife and children in his family and they need comforting for some reason.
Ginny: So is the older brother dead or somehow injured?
Jennie: That makes sense that they would need comforting because something happened to the older brother.
Hannah: I'm wondering if we can tie in the "unwittingly"--
Ginny: Yeah, the "unwittingly" is really the sticking point.
Jennie: That is the word.
Hannah: That is, I think, what drew us to this one in the first place because how does one unwittingly comfort? So has something happened to the older brother but only the wife and children know?
Ginny: Oh, that's a thought. So he doesn't know that they even need comfort.
Jennie: Right, maybe it's not something that has happened but it's something in the process of happening, something slow and kind of sneaky like possibly Alzheimer's?
Hannah: Yeah. Or something like-- You could go even like almost a borderline like thriller action route with this, like there's something going on, that he's involved in something and has been captured somewhere or has been or is in-- I don't know, but nobody can know about it. It has to be something that I guess the children could know about, but maybe something that they're keeping secret for their own reasons, like maybe something that they think is shameful, or something that they worry will will affect the way people see them.
Jennie: Ooh, ooh, okay, what if they're unwittingly comforted-- It's not that the family is unwittingly comforting the older brother's wife and children. It's that they are comforting their older brother's wife and children unwittingly,
Ginny: Like they don't know that they're a family member?
Jennie: As in they don't know that they're the family member brother's wife and children. What if?
Ginny: So something like, say, it's the scene of a car accident or something and this guy doesn't even know that these two grieving people are related to him for some reason, but is comforting them after whatever kind of tragedy or disaster happened. Then we'd have to ask--
Jennie: Not knowing the fate of his older brother.
Ginny: Right, so he's being-- The dynamic there can be that he's being all like giving and caring and supportive, and he doesn't even realize yet that he also has suffered a loss.
Hannah: I think the question here is, is the the narrative goal of this to get them to realize that they are connected, or to get them to not? Like, is this something where the goal is "Oh, they should realize their connection so that they could be closer"? Or is the American family somebody or a group of people that should not be in contact? Is the older brother keeping stuff away from them for a reason?
Jennie: Like, what if what if this is the older brothers second wife and children?
Ginny: Like secret second family? Yeah.
Jennie: Right. Right, yeah. Secret ones.
Hannah: Like there's another one that the American family knows about and is part of their family and then he's got like the secret second life somewhere else. So maybe the comfort is even for something that has nothing to do necessarily with the older brother, like maybe something else random happens like--
Jennie: Like road trip, yeah, like the car broke down and they stopped at a house for help but it happens to be their uncle.
Hannah: Yeah, although comforting over a broken down car seems--
Jennie: Well, it's comforting to be nowhere and have a place to stay.
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm curious about the vibe of this, like whether this is friendly family or other this is like serial killer is one of them. Well, here though, let me tell you this because this is-- Okay, so this is the title. Usually I hold off on this a little bit longer, but I actually think this will help inform this. The title of this story is "Dysfunctional."
Ginny: Oh.
Jennie: Aha.
Hannah: Which is why-- I really felt a subconscious push toward--
Jennie: Well, that answers your question right there. What is the dynamic? It is this: dysfunctional.
Ginny: So it'd be fun to make it kind of like a black comedy where the reader, the audience, knows about this relationship and everything that's happening as these people try to comfort these other people is deeply ironic because of the connection they don't know about.
Hannah: Yeah, so the American family doesn't know, the brother's wife and children don't know. Is the older brother there and--
Jennie: Playing them both for some reason?
Hannah: Not telling anybody or gone. Like, is the older brother part of the story? Is he around?
Ginny: Probably not at first, assuming that the younger brother knows who he is and what he looks like.
Hannah: Oh, that's true. That's true. That would be a clue. Duh. You are right.
Jennie: Well, yeah, like what if not at first, but then he shows up later. And how does the older brother deal with his two worlds colliding here?
Ginny: Yeah. If it's this two secret families thing then maybe the wife and children, I guess, the could be older, that have just found out that they're a second family and are upset about that, and perhaps all the truth has come out. And the so the American family, the initial family, knows that their brother's been involved in this big scandal and they happen to run into these other people who are dealing with something similar and they're not realizing the connection. They are comforting them and are like, "Oh yeah, we've been through something like that too. It was terrible."
Hannah: Maybe they even meet like as--
Jennie: "Big brother's a douche."
Hannah: But maybe that initial connection is-- Like is that facilitated because of that? Are they both in-- I don't know, are they in some sort of-- I don't have sentences for this. Somebody else should come up with ideas while I try to formulate this. No, I'm trying to figure out if that connection, if the scandal has erupted and it's opened up, if that is the reason that they meet, even if they don't know that their scandal was connected.
Ginny: We could go back to that road trip thing, like say the the wife and family children have, you know... Maybe they're even on a road trip to confront their older brother, I mean, their supposed husband and father. They just found out about this, they're going to go, they found out where he is. And they go, but then they get to the town, but then their car breaks down or something. And then they meet this other nice family that helped them out with their car situation. Maybe he owns the garage or something.
Hannah: So yeah, they find out about him. He takes off and they go to find him, to chase him down. And they go maybe back to the town where he grew up, or back to the area where he grew up, thinking that they'll be able to find him. And so then it's not as ridiculous a coincidence.
Jennie: Instead, they run into Uncle Jesse and his family.
Hannah: Yeah. So I'm assuming at some point they need to they need to figure out their connections.
Jennie: So how does this play? Is this a holiday movie?
Hannah: Like a dark Christmas comedy.
Jennie: Right? Maybe they weren't going to confront so much as like, "Let's surprise dad for Christmas because he has to be there for work," when he's doing it with his first family instead of his second family.
Hannah: Oh my gosh.
Jennie: Right. And then, "Oh, no, we're going to be late, we won't be there for Christmas." And that's why they need comforting.
Hannah: Oh, man. That is the most amazingly uncomfortable holiday.
Ginny: Yeah, this is like peak "I would never watch this." I would be so miserable. But it's really funny and fun to think about.
Hannah: That could be hilarious.
Jennie: It's a Christmas movie called "Dysfunctional." I mean, come on.
Ginny: Yeah, so they're like, "Oh, well, just come stay with us for Christmas. There's always room at our table."
Jennie: Well, you know, I think it's time for a new genre, because so far we have like happy feel good Christmas movies, and we have comedy Christmas movies, and then we have horror Christmas movies. And now we need like family drama, no happy ending Christmas movies.
Hannah: Cringe comedy, everybody's uncomfortable. Which I think for many people is going to more accurately capture the spirit of family holidays anyway.
Jennie: That's so sad.
Hannah: Not for everybody. But I think there are a lot of people who will connect to that.
Ginny: There's a lot of folks who would relate.
Jennie: Representation in media, right? It's all about representation in the media.
Hannah: Absolutely. I like that. I like that. Yeah, that could go really interesting directions and you get all kinds of different connections between the different characters and playing with who finds out when. Oh man.
Ginny: Oh yeah.
Hannah: Okay. Are there any other pieces that we need that we feel we need to tease out of this? Because I think we have-- This is a really good outer section for this. Like I would watch this. Yeah, all right, I think we're going to leave it up to our listeners then, because although we didn't get as deep into the plot details as we often do, I think this is the kind of thing where you really need to unveil the relationships as you write those characters.
Jennie: Exactly.
Hannah: I don't think we can go further.
Jennie: We need to know more about these characters. We need to know where this is taking place. We need to know is it a holiday movie?
Ginny: I love it as a holiday movie. It's great.
Jennie: Yeah. And then how does it all play out in the end? Is that a happy ending or a sad ending?
Hannah: And can I point out as well-- Listeners will be well aware of this but our podcasters are not. This is due to be released on December 26.
Ginny: Perfect! Happy Boxing Day!
Hannah: So this is extremely timely. Hopefully, none of you were in this situation.
Jennie: We hope you all had a merry Christmas if you celebrate Christmas and if you celebrated--
Hannah: Yeah, happy holiday season without secret families arriving and joining you for holiday dinners. Awesome. So yeah, this one is wide open for you listeners. There's a lot that you can latch on to and play with. I would love, love to read a scene from this.
Ginny: Absolutely.
Hannah: And I hope that some of you pull something together and write something based on this because I would love to read those. And before we close out today, let's each take a second to shout out a story we think our listeners should check out. Last time, I recommended a book series this time. I'm going to recommend a movie. In the spirit of of odd relationship movies, I want to recommend Lars and the Real Girl. This is a movie starring Ryan Gosling about a young man who has a lot of difficulty connecting with people around him and ends up purchasing a sex doll that he pretends is his girlfriend. This sounds like it could go in a really odd and bawdy direction, but it actually ends up being an incredibly beautiful story about empathy and about community and about helping each other out. It is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I highly, highly recommend it. All right, Jennie, what do you have for us this week?
Jennie: This week, I'm actually going to recommend a tabletop game, because games tell stories too, I'm going to recommend Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle. It is a brilliantly constructed tabletop game where you play through the seven years of the story as the four main characters. You can be Harry, Ron, Hermione, or Neville. And it's two to four players. And I'm recommending this not only because it's a fantastic game, but it's a really great and interesting way of re-experiencing the whole Harry Potter saga as if you are one of the characters, and so you kind of get to role play a little bit. And I just think it's fantastic. So if you like board games, get that one. You'll love it.
Hannah: And Ginny, what would you like to share with us today?
Ginny: I have been compiling my end-of-year top five or 10 books that I read this year list. I haven't decided yet if it's five or 10. But I know what will be topping that list, which is a trilogy that I read the whole trilogy of this year so I'm counting it as one book, and it's the Winternight trilogy by Katherine Arden. It came out within the last several years and it's got a lot of fantasy elements. It's about the tension between Christianity and the old magic in old pre-Russia Russia. It's got a fantastic main character and really interesting relationships. The villain characters are all really deep and have their own stuff going on that you-- It's the situation where you kind of feel bad for them but also furious at them. Really love it. It's very, very rich and it's actually got some historical basis in how this-- as Christianity came into Russia, how Russia adapted, or the lands that became Russia adapted to that and their old beliefs. So, highly recommend the whole trilogy. The first book is called The Bear and the Nightingale, and the author is Katherine Arden.
Hannah: And Ginny, anything you want to plug? Where can people find you or your writing if they want to learn more?
Ginny: Yes, I am Twitter @lirelyn, L-I-R-E-L-Y-N. And in my bio there, you can find a link to subscribe to my newsletter where I write and send out three small snippets, flash fiction, micro fiction, prose, poetry, bits of creative writing that I've done, and I send that out once per month.
Hannah: Awesome, fantastic. Well, go ahead and follow Ginny there if you're interested.
Ginny: Sounds good.
Hannah: 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 would love to hear from you.
Hannah: We will be back with another episode in two weeks. So we'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the buffalo belongs to the man with the big stick.
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