Double Fear: Well, That- (Episode 7) Transcript
The audio version of this episode can be found here.
Hannah: 40 shady police detectives are asked to contact the daughter.
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 we 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, Jo Cassidy.
Jo: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
Hannah: Oh, we're so excited to have you on. This is gonna be a lot of fun.
Jo: And you're our first published author guests. We're so excited.
Hannah: You are our first published author, and so I'm definitely going to ask you some questions about that.
Jo: Yes.
Hannah: First of all, I'm curious because I know you write mostly YA, young adult fiction What drew you specifically to YA work?
Jo: Mostly because when I was in high school, I didn't actually read a lot. I hated to read, like all the books that were out there just were stupid. I just couldn't relate to them and all the ones they forced us to read in English. And they were just awful. And so I wanted to have books that teens could read that they could relate to and understand and help them get through those years because the teen years kind of suck.
Hannah: What makes a book YA for you? Is it just having a young adult protagonist? Are there other aspects of it that you consciously bring into your work to make it work for that audience?
Jo: Yeah, I mean, the main thing is that the protagonist does have to be a teenager. I mean, obviously, that's the whole point. But like everything else that goes along with it, I try to think of things that they'd actually be dealing with that adults don't deal with, because it's a whole different set of trials and everything you go through in high school at that age. So I try to bring a lot of that in.
Hannah: One of the big trends right now is that a lot of YA is genre fiction, it's sci fi or fantasy. Do you go in that direction at all? Or do you stick more to more realistic stories?
Jo: Mine are actually more realistic. Well, kind of. My latest one was a thriller that's kind of set in the future. But I'm not a big fantasy. I love to read fantasy. I can't write it worth crap because--
Hannah: Making up your own world is hard!
Jo: It is. It's a lot of work. And my brain apparently doesn't go there. So it's all set in our world, all of mine, but some of them have some paranormal aspects to it. But I'm also a believer of ghosts, so I don't know. I just think it's life.
Hannah: I know you talked about not really liking any of the books that you read as a teen, but were there any that did stand out to you? Maybe not something you were reading in school, but something you found on your own, that influenced the work that you're doing today? Or is it all just you?
Jo: So the one that stuck out to me actually in junior high was The Outsiders, and I think it's because that actually was still relatable with the social divide, that I could still understand it. And I loved all the characters. I am a character-driven writer. That's my thing that I love, is to really delve into the characters, and so that's what I loved about that book, was it was so character-oriented. But I wrote my first book when I was 28, so it took a long time for me to get there. I didn't start actually reading reading until I was in my early 20s, and it was Shannon Hale's "The Goose Girl" that got me into reading and made me actually love reading and realize, "Oh, there are books out there that are good."
Hannah: What was the process like of getting your work out to the world? Let's go with the very first one, the first piece of work you actually were able to release. What was that process like?
Jo: Oh man.
Hannah: In as much or as little detail as you need.
Jo: It is such a hard process. The whole entire thing. I think when I first got into it, I was very naive as to what went into it. But it takes a lot with querying and trying to get an agent and trying to get a publisher. I sent out well over 100 queries and nothing was picking up. I had some nibbles, but that's about it. But I finally found a publisher. I skipped the agent route, and found a publisher, and I was actually the very first author they signed. They're brand new. They're called Monster Ivy Publishing. We like to write edgy but clean stories, so the creepy but without pushing it too far. So I sent them my story, and they loved it and got back to me, and I talked to them on the phone, and we knew we were the perfect fit. I signed in February with them and my first book came out that August, so that's awesome. It's actually a very short turnaround. That's not normal.
Hannah: Thank you so much for for being with us on the show and for letting us chat. I just have a couple real quick pieces of housekeeping. First of all, I want to just bring to everybody's attention that on our blog, on somebodywritethis.blogspot.com, we do include transcripts of all the audio episodes that we do. So if you are looking for that, are interested in that, or know somebody who might be interested in that, please pass that on to them. I just want to make sure that you all know that that is a thing that we have. The other thing I wanted to share is another writer submission. We actually got a writer submission from our guest about the episode they were on, for our episode "An Unbreakable Radio Cypher and John Wilkes Booth's Diary in Liverpool," the most ridiculous title of all time. Our guest Doug Van Hollen, actually, that afternoon, after it was released, sent us the beginning of chapter three of his story. So we'll put everything that he sent us up on the blog, but I want to read just a tiny portion of it to give you a sense of where he went with this. So he started with the point where the MI5 agent has landed on the planet and is starting to explore the murder with the help of the gentleman rat. So this is the gentleman rat and the MI5 agent getting ready to investigate this murder together.
[You can find the full text of this story on this blog post.]
Hannah: All right, so that's just a couple of sentences to get you a sense of-- These characters are so-- I love them already reading through this. So we'll put the whole thing up on the blog for you to go read and please continue to send us submissions. We are so happy to use them and to share them. All right, so that all being done, we are going to scoot right on into our topic, into our plot, which as a reminder is, "40 shady police detectives are asked to contact the daughter." So in this one sentence, there are two major questions.
Jennie: And 41 characters.
Hannah: Who is the daughter? Why are there so many shady police detectives all together? All being asked to do this one thing. So where do we start with this?
Jo: Oh my gosh. I want to know, is it like 40 shady police detectives in the same precinct? Are they spread out like all over the world?
Hannah: Oh, yeah. Maybe it's like a corrupt crime net, a network, crime syndicate across the world and they're contacting 40 police detectives from 40 different cities.
Jennie: To what? Like whoever contacts the daughter first wins the grand prize?
Hannah: Maybe? Is the daughter in hiding? Is the daughter just-- doesn't like to talk to people?
Jo: I just want to know who the daughter is. Is it the daughter of another detective? Is it the daughter of a crime boss?
Jennie: Yeah, did the main boss's daughter run away?
Jo: Or is she taking over?
Jennie: Is the daughter a code word for something that's not even human?
Hannah: Oh, okay, okay.
Jennie: Just a question. I don't know.
Hannah: Just a thing you would have to contact.
Jennie: Right?
Hannah: Because of "contact" I'm leaning toward her being human, but it could be-- Maybe it's not a single person.
Jennie: Oh, maybe it's an organization.
Hannah: Maybe it's a group or an organization or a collective.
Jo: I kind of like that.
Hannah: The Daughter is a great name for a crime collective.
Jo: I know, because it would throw off anyone when they heard it. They'd just think it's one singular person.
Jennie: It almost threw us off but--
Hannah: We found it. Okay, so all these police detectives from around the world are being asked by the big evil crime boss to contact this organization. Why? What do they want from them? This could be a positive contact, like let's get them to connect with us and to help us out.
Jo: Yeah, "we need your help with this big crime going down that we need help."
Jennie: See, this is the question here. Are they asking the detectives to contact the Daughter organization because the syndicate doesn't have a way to contact and needs help, or is this a test for the shady detectives? Like, "Oh, we can contact the Daughter--"
Hannah: Just these 40.
Jennie: "We just want to see if you can do it."
Hannah: Yeah. I feel like there's something that they want from them. So the name "The Daughter" kind of makes me think-- it makes me think young. Maybe it's a group of maybe younger folks. Maybe it's a group that has technological resources that the crime syndicate does not have. Maybe there is like a piece of current crime work, I don't know, a piece of this that they have control over or that they have great resources for that this other crime group does not. And maybe The Daughter really does not play with anybody, does not connect with anybody, very individual, very much like "We do our own thing. We don't get involved in anybody else's mess," but there's something that they want.
Jennie: So the original crime syndicate are boomers, and the Daughter is millennials.
Hannah: Yeah, you could get into some weird interesting, like generational stuff here. Like how does the generational divide play out in the world of crime?
Jennie: And then the whole thing is all an analogy of how the generations communicate.
Hannah: It ends with a happy ending with them both working together to defraud the world. So yeah, I like the idea that there's something. And maybe all the police detectives have to do it. Maybe it's because The Daughter is also spread out and it's one of those situations where if one person went into them, whoever they found wouldn't have the authority or the resources to do anything. Maybe they only function as a collective. Maybe they don't have a leader, per se.
Jennie: Yeah. Okay, so here's my next question. We're dealing with three groups in this. You have the assumed crime syndicate who started this whole thing in motion. You have the group of detectives who are trying to contact The Daughter, then you have The Daughter itself. Who's our main character?
Hannah: I was wondering that too. Does one of the police detectives become isolated? Do we follow it through his story or her story? Maybe one who is constantly unsure of their status within the organization and somebody who, this would be a really big deal if they could be somebody to get this connection going. Maybe they've done something, they've offended somebody, they've thrown something off. They feel like their time is coming to an end if they don't do something about it fast.
Jo: There could be three main characters, one from each group and that could switch perspectives.
Hannah: Oh, yeah.
Jennie: I like that idea.
Jo: You know, chapter by chapter so you're getting a little bit from each group and try to figure it out.
Hannah: And it might be interesting, since The Daughter is sort of this group shrouded in secrecy, it might be interesting if the first couple times we hear from whoever, from the member of The Daughter, we don't understand their connection to anything else. It's just the story of a random normal person living their life, and then like six episodes in, we see how it kind of ties together. Six episodes? Six chapters in, we see how it ties together. Apparently, in my mind was a TV show.
Jennie: We don't know if it's a novel or a TV show or what.
Jo: It could be a good podcast.
Hannah: It could, it could. Yeah, that'd be really fun. Well, I'm going to pause this real quickly, because I think we have a good beginning, but I have to share the title, which is just awful. And I genuinely don't know what my plot generator did to generate this. Like I went back to try to find where this came from, and I can't. So I think it's just writing it on my own.
Jennie: Alright, hit us with it.
Hannah: Our title is "Double Fear: Well, That-" I think my my AI generator wrote this on its own. Because this came from nowhere.
Jo: Wow.
Hannah: I guess you could do something with the double fear. So maybe the police detective finds himself caught in the middle between these two organizations that both have much more power than he does and he finds himself like kind of pressed and so it's like... double fear. It's fear from two sides. And then we have a broken-off sentence. We have somebody starting to say, "Well, that-" something.
Jo: Fill in the blank.
Hannah: And I don't know what to do with that.
Jennie: I don't either. Oh, but we have to do something. That's the rules of the game. Okay.
Jo: It's very interesting, though. Because like, you see that, you're like, "Well, that what?" And so it gets you to open it. I would read it right away. I'm like, "What are they talking about? Maybe the rest of the sentence is in the book."
Hannah: You open up the book, and the first sentence just carries on from there. Like, "-was the story of."
Jennie: "Well, that was sudden."
Hannah: Yeah. Are those words used in the book? Are those words the beginning of a message?
Jo: Someone's last words before they died, and they're trying to figure out what they were going to say?
Jennie: You know where my mind is going is-- Okay. So if we're talking about The Daughter possibly being like a tech savvy forward kind of group, and also on the younger side, I was thinking-- The first thing that popped in my head when I saw, "Well, that-" my mind finished it with, "-escalated quickly." And so I'm wondering, do we get to now tied memes into this story? Is that how The Daughter communicates? Is that part of their secret code?
Hannah: Are all memes a secret communication?
Jennie: Right! Like other people, they just seem harmless and so they just pass them around because they're funny or clever or whatever, but like what if there's this organization that is communicating via meme?
Hannah: Oh my gosh. I feel like you'll end up with a whole bunch of people who just accidentally become part of this crime organization, which is a risk they're gonna have to take into account. This title! I looked at this title and thought, "Oh, no." So I like the idea of that being some-- Maybe that is, yeah, the intro to their code words, and you're intended to to end it with the meme or with something else. So that means we have a title that first describes what the police detective fears and then describes the code words. Is there a way to tie those together in a way that even though it's still a nonsense title, they can at least be a thematically consistent nonsense title and addressing the same kinds of things?
Jo: I don't know. Man, I am stumped.
Hannah: I think I have to take back "Unbreakable Radio Cypher and John Wilkes Booth's Diary in Liverpool" as the worst title. So maybe... Okay, okay, okay. This is where I'm going. Maybe those code words are-- Okay, those are terrible code words because they could mean anything. Anybody could say them at any point. I say that all the time. So maybe that is the beginning of-- Maybe both sets of organizations have code words or have code phrases that begin with that. And maybe our central police detective finds himself, first of all, afraid of both of them, but also like-- You could have a situation where he's not sure which of the two he's supposed to end with, because he's not sure where allegiance lies. But both of them have code words that begin with "Well, that," and so maybe the code words themselves increase this poor police detective's double fear.
Jennie: That's right. Take the hammer and just wedge it right in there.
Hannah: Yeah, I really want them to connect somehow. We found a way for them to both connect to the main story, sort of.
Jennie: Okay, okay. Here's the other thing my brain is doing. All right, if you make the title British-- just follow me here-- and you say, "Double fear? Well, that!" describing it as well.
Hannah: And then the hyphen is just--?
Jennie: Yeah, the hyphen is just a typo.
Hannah: Nothing like a typo in the cover of our book.
Jennie: Hey, it's happened.
Jo: Oh, it has.
Hannah: Oh, no, wait, okay.
Jennie: Okay, what, what?
Hannah: So this is a series. It's the Double Fear series. Every one has the next like two words of the phrase. So every title gives you more information until you get to the very end.
Jennie: "Double Fear: Escalated."
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. "Double Fear: Was A." And so you have to-- I don't know. I don't think we're gonna be able to do much more with it.
Jennie: "Double Fear: Just Happened."
Hannah: That would be a better title than this. That hyphen is just killing me. I don't like it.
Jennie: Maybe it's a slightly interactive fiction piece where there's a contest. The story doesn't actually finish at the end, and there's a contest and people send in how they think the title should be completed.
Hannah: The next piece. Maybe like a web series.
Jennie: Right, so the next volume or the next episode would be based on audience participation.
Hannah: That is... interesting.
Jennie: I don't know if I've just been insulted or not.
Hannah: No, it is good. It's interesting. I like it. It's different. I'm trying to figure out why, this particular story, I'm trying to figure out what it would gain from being audience-informed. Oh my gosh, do you find out the end that everybody who's been reading this is now a member of The Daughter?
Jennie: "You've just been inducted."
Hannah: Oh my gosh, how much fun would that be?
Jennie: Like now you know our code words.
Hannah: By reading this, you have the information, you're now a member of us.
Jo: "Welcome."
Hannah: That would be so much fun. It's like a goofy little immersive thing, and it could go on for years, and all the comments and all the conversation about it could be worked into it.
Jennie: And it could build itself up into its own thing.
Jo: Because it would never die. It would just keep going.
Hannah: Oh, that would be...
Jennie: I'm getting goosebumps.
Hannah: This terrible title has unlocked this.
Jennie: The sheer potential of our influence over the Internet.
Hannah: Oh, that's very, very cool. Of course, the piece of this now means that if somebody needs to write this, they can't say anything about where it came from because it all depends on not knowing that the audience is The Daughter at the end.
Jennie: Nobody listen to this episode.
Hannah: Go out and tell people not to listen to our podcast.
Jo: Brilliant.
Hannah: Oh, gosh. Okay, all right. I feel like we've unlocked that, which is good. Is there anything that-- Because so much of this now is dependent on audience interaction. You could start with with just building the story and then as more audience interaction came in, you could kind of flesh that out. Are there any pieces of this that we're missing that are big?
Jennie: I think that I wanted-- I loved Jo's idea about having three main characters. So we know about the detective. Who's from the crime syndicate and who's from The Daughter that's going to be playing? I like the idea of the crime syndicate person being like, the contact person for all the detectives between them and the head honcho, or one of the contact people.
Hannah: Yeah, where that person is under extreme pressure to get this group found and either joined up with or shut down very quickly. If the audience is The Daughter, do we need a full Daughter character?
Jennie: I think we need to start with a representative.
Hannah: Yeah, okay.
Jo: And it should be a female so people--
Hannah: We don't have enough female characters in our story. I went the police detective to be female too.
Jennie: Perfect. Shady female police detective.
Hannah: Yeah, the story of the of The Daughter can be seemingly unconnected until a little bit later in the story,
Jennie: Right. So it'll be just like the mystery character, like who is this? Oh, gosh, okay. So you're playing this with audience participation, The Daughter would be a plant. The Daughter character would be a plant. She'd be in the comments.
Hannah: Oh, that would be interesting. So right away we jump into the sort of-- So maybe it's not you find out at the end. Maybe it's like a partway through--
Jennie: And realizing.
Hannah: "This is this, would you like to keep playing with us?" Essentially. Oh, that's kind of fun.
Jo: I like it.
Hannah: Okay, okay, so it's-- Yeah, so we we pull The Daughter from the audience and make that happen. Awesome. I love this. Okay, I think we're going to go ahead and turn this massive online multiplayer game story over to our listeners. And obviously, you know, if you find a different direction to go with it, do that. And if you find anything to do with that title, if you have any ideas we did not touch on, please tell us. As we close out, we'll take a second to each shout out a story that we think our listeners should check out. I've been going through a very strange journey of trying to watch 100 movies from every year, and right now I chose at random because that's how I do it, 1968. And so I've watched like 60. And so the last one that I watched from 1968 was The Bride Wore Black, which is a Truffaut movie, who I haven't watched a lot of his work. And it's clearly-- As I watched it, it's so clearly where Tarantino got a lot of inspiration for Kill Bill. It's this woman whose husband was killed and she's going around finding all the people who are responsible for it and ending their lives one by one. It's just a really fascinating story, and even though she is going around murdering, you end up really connecting with this character and hoping that she's able to finish what she's doing. It's a really good movie and I really enjoyed it a lot and and especially watching it for its influence that its had on later revenge movies, I think is especially fascinating. So I definitely recommend that, The Bride Wore Black. Jennie, what would you like to share this week?
Jennie: I'm going to share a book called The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. This is part of my reading list for the year, which is somewhere around 86 books and weirdly growing rather than shrinking. I need to catch up on my reading. It's one of those really comfortable books about female friendship. It's really easy to read. But the thing that I especially appreciate about it, this group of women getting together in New York City around knitting, but it goes so much deeper than that. There's a big theme in this book of getting past first impressions. You know, somebody shows up and you're like, "Well, she's just a college student. And she's not interested in knitting. I don't know why she's here," but then you get into their stories and these characters learn about each other and learn about their motivations for things, their backgrounds, and they have compassion for each other and extend friendship and everything. I really appreciate that aspect of it because I think that's a thing that is really difficult to find these days in our Internet land, where we make we make snap judgments so easily. And so I like this story with that reminder that people's lives are deeper than we know. And it was just a really nice warm read. I liked it a lot.
Hannah: All right, Jo, if you could recommend a story to our listeners, what would it be?
Jo: Oh, for sure, hands down, one of my favorite TV shows ever is Bates Motel. I absolutely love it. Like I said, I'm a character driven person. The characters in this show, oh my gosh, they just make you cringe. They're done so well. The casting is unbelievable. The relationship between Norma and Norman Bates is freaking crazy and I love it. It leave me speechless when I think about it because it's just so brilliant. I wish I could write that well and characters like that. I love the whole series. Go binge watch, it is what I would say.
Hannah: Awesome. All right, Jo, before we take off is there anything you would like to plug for our listeners? Social media or where we can find your books? What would you like to share with our listeners who might be interested in learning more about you?
Jo: Okay, all my books are on Amazon and everywhere basically that you can get online. But I can be found @authorjocassidy everywhere, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and then my website is authorjocassidy.com. It has links to all my books on there too, for you to find. They're all thrillers, if you like thrillers. I have Good Girl Stay Quiet, which is a psychological thriller, Willow Marsh, which is a paranormal thriller, if you like ghosts and seances, and then my latest one, Harper, is a spy thriller. She works for a company that tries to stop terrorist attacks before they happen. And she's probably my favorite character to date.
Hannah: Fantastic. Well, that is 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 comments or a story 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. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, cross the river before you tease the crocodile.
Hannah: 40 shady police detectives are asked to contact the daughter.
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 we 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, Jo Cassidy.
Jo: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
Hannah: Oh, we're so excited to have you on. This is gonna be a lot of fun.
Jo: And you're our first published author guests. We're so excited.
Hannah: You are our first published author, and so I'm definitely going to ask you some questions about that.
Jo: Yes.
Hannah: First of all, I'm curious because I know you write mostly YA, young adult fiction What drew you specifically to YA work?
Jo: Mostly because when I was in high school, I didn't actually read a lot. I hated to read, like all the books that were out there just were stupid. I just couldn't relate to them and all the ones they forced us to read in English. And they were just awful. And so I wanted to have books that teens could read that they could relate to and understand and help them get through those years because the teen years kind of suck.
Hannah: What makes a book YA for you? Is it just having a young adult protagonist? Are there other aspects of it that you consciously bring into your work to make it work for that audience?
Jo: Yeah, I mean, the main thing is that the protagonist does have to be a teenager. I mean, obviously, that's the whole point. But like everything else that goes along with it, I try to think of things that they'd actually be dealing with that adults don't deal with, because it's a whole different set of trials and everything you go through in high school at that age. So I try to bring a lot of that in.
Hannah: One of the big trends right now is that a lot of YA is genre fiction, it's sci fi or fantasy. Do you go in that direction at all? Or do you stick more to more realistic stories?
Jo: Mine are actually more realistic. Well, kind of. My latest one was a thriller that's kind of set in the future. But I'm not a big fantasy. I love to read fantasy. I can't write it worth crap because--
Hannah: Making up your own world is hard!
Jo: It is. It's a lot of work. And my brain apparently doesn't go there. So it's all set in our world, all of mine, but some of them have some paranormal aspects to it. But I'm also a believer of ghosts, so I don't know. I just think it's life.
Hannah: I know you talked about not really liking any of the books that you read as a teen, but were there any that did stand out to you? Maybe not something you were reading in school, but something you found on your own, that influenced the work that you're doing today? Or is it all just you?
Jo: So the one that stuck out to me actually in junior high was The Outsiders, and I think it's because that actually was still relatable with the social divide, that I could still understand it. And I loved all the characters. I am a character-driven writer. That's my thing that I love, is to really delve into the characters, and so that's what I loved about that book, was it was so character-oriented. But I wrote my first book when I was 28, so it took a long time for me to get there. I didn't start actually reading reading until I was in my early 20s, and it was Shannon Hale's "The Goose Girl" that got me into reading and made me actually love reading and realize, "Oh, there are books out there that are good."
Hannah: What was the process like of getting your work out to the world? Let's go with the very first one, the first piece of work you actually were able to release. What was that process like?
Jo: Oh man.
Hannah: In as much or as little detail as you need.
Jo: It is such a hard process. The whole entire thing. I think when I first got into it, I was very naive as to what went into it. But it takes a lot with querying and trying to get an agent and trying to get a publisher. I sent out well over 100 queries and nothing was picking up. I had some nibbles, but that's about it. But I finally found a publisher. I skipped the agent route, and found a publisher, and I was actually the very first author they signed. They're brand new. They're called Monster Ivy Publishing. We like to write edgy but clean stories, so the creepy but without pushing it too far. So I sent them my story, and they loved it and got back to me, and I talked to them on the phone, and we knew we were the perfect fit. I signed in February with them and my first book came out that August, so that's awesome. It's actually a very short turnaround. That's not normal.
Hannah: Thank you so much for for being with us on the show and for letting us chat. I just have a couple real quick pieces of housekeeping. First of all, I want to just bring to everybody's attention that on our blog, on somebodywritethis.blogspot.com, we do include transcripts of all the audio episodes that we do. So if you are looking for that, are interested in that, or know somebody who might be interested in that, please pass that on to them. I just want to make sure that you all know that that is a thing that we have. The other thing I wanted to share is another writer submission. We actually got a writer submission from our guest about the episode they were on, for our episode "An Unbreakable Radio Cypher and John Wilkes Booth's Diary in Liverpool," the most ridiculous title of all time. Our guest Doug Van Hollen, actually, that afternoon, after it was released, sent us the beginning of chapter three of his story. So we'll put everything that he sent us up on the blog, but I want to read just a tiny portion of it to give you a sense of where he went with this. So he started with the point where the MI5 agent has landed on the planet and is starting to explore the murder with the help of the gentleman rat. So this is the gentleman rat and the MI5 agent getting ready to investigate this murder together.
[You can find the full text of this story on this blog post.]
Hannah: All right, so that's just a couple of sentences to get you a sense of-- These characters are so-- I love them already reading through this. So we'll put the whole thing up on the blog for you to go read and please continue to send us submissions. We are so happy to use them and to share them. All right, so that all being done, we are going to scoot right on into our topic, into our plot, which as a reminder is, "40 shady police detectives are asked to contact the daughter." So in this one sentence, there are two major questions.
Jennie: And 41 characters.
Hannah: Who is the daughter? Why are there so many shady police detectives all together? All being asked to do this one thing. So where do we start with this?
Jo: Oh my gosh. I want to know, is it like 40 shady police detectives in the same precinct? Are they spread out like all over the world?
Hannah: Oh, yeah. Maybe it's like a corrupt crime net, a network, crime syndicate across the world and they're contacting 40 police detectives from 40 different cities.
Jennie: To what? Like whoever contacts the daughter first wins the grand prize?
Hannah: Maybe? Is the daughter in hiding? Is the daughter just-- doesn't like to talk to people?
Jo: I just want to know who the daughter is. Is it the daughter of another detective? Is it the daughter of a crime boss?
Jennie: Yeah, did the main boss's daughter run away?
Jo: Or is she taking over?
Jennie: Is the daughter a code word for something that's not even human?
Hannah: Oh, okay, okay.
Jennie: Just a question. I don't know.
Hannah: Just a thing you would have to contact.
Jennie: Right?
Hannah: Because of "contact" I'm leaning toward her being human, but it could be-- Maybe it's not a single person.
Jennie: Oh, maybe it's an organization.
Hannah: Maybe it's a group or an organization or a collective.
Jo: I kind of like that.
Hannah: The Daughter is a great name for a crime collective.
Jo: I know, because it would throw off anyone when they heard it. They'd just think it's one singular person.
Jennie: It almost threw us off but--
Hannah: We found it. Okay, so all these police detectives from around the world are being asked by the big evil crime boss to contact this organization. Why? What do they want from them? This could be a positive contact, like let's get them to connect with us and to help us out.
Jo: Yeah, "we need your help with this big crime going down that we need help."
Jennie: See, this is the question here. Are they asking the detectives to contact the Daughter organization because the syndicate doesn't have a way to contact and needs help, or is this a test for the shady detectives? Like, "Oh, we can contact the Daughter--"
Hannah: Just these 40.
Jennie: "We just want to see if you can do it."
Hannah: Yeah. I feel like there's something that they want from them. So the name "The Daughter" kind of makes me think-- it makes me think young. Maybe it's a group of maybe younger folks. Maybe it's a group that has technological resources that the crime syndicate does not have. Maybe there is like a piece of current crime work, I don't know, a piece of this that they have control over or that they have great resources for that this other crime group does not. And maybe The Daughter really does not play with anybody, does not connect with anybody, very individual, very much like "We do our own thing. We don't get involved in anybody else's mess," but there's something that they want.
Jennie: So the original crime syndicate are boomers, and the Daughter is millennials.
Hannah: Yeah, you could get into some weird interesting, like generational stuff here. Like how does the generational divide play out in the world of crime?
Jennie: And then the whole thing is all an analogy of how the generations communicate.
Hannah: It ends with a happy ending with them both working together to defraud the world. So yeah, I like the idea that there's something. And maybe all the police detectives have to do it. Maybe it's because The Daughter is also spread out and it's one of those situations where if one person went into them, whoever they found wouldn't have the authority or the resources to do anything. Maybe they only function as a collective. Maybe they don't have a leader, per se.
Jennie: Yeah. Okay, so here's my next question. We're dealing with three groups in this. You have the assumed crime syndicate who started this whole thing in motion. You have the group of detectives who are trying to contact The Daughter, then you have The Daughter itself. Who's our main character?
Hannah: I was wondering that too. Does one of the police detectives become isolated? Do we follow it through his story or her story? Maybe one who is constantly unsure of their status within the organization and somebody who, this would be a really big deal if they could be somebody to get this connection going. Maybe they've done something, they've offended somebody, they've thrown something off. They feel like their time is coming to an end if they don't do something about it fast.
Jo: There could be three main characters, one from each group and that could switch perspectives.
Hannah: Oh, yeah.
Jennie: I like that idea.
Jo: You know, chapter by chapter so you're getting a little bit from each group and try to figure it out.
Hannah: And it might be interesting, since The Daughter is sort of this group shrouded in secrecy, it might be interesting if the first couple times we hear from whoever, from the member of The Daughter, we don't understand their connection to anything else. It's just the story of a random normal person living their life, and then like six episodes in, we see how it kind of ties together. Six episodes? Six chapters in, we see how it ties together. Apparently, in my mind was a TV show.
Jennie: We don't know if it's a novel or a TV show or what.
Jo: It could be a good podcast.
Hannah: It could, it could. Yeah, that'd be really fun. Well, I'm going to pause this real quickly, because I think we have a good beginning, but I have to share the title, which is just awful. And I genuinely don't know what my plot generator did to generate this. Like I went back to try to find where this came from, and I can't. So I think it's just writing it on my own.
Jennie: Alright, hit us with it.
Hannah: Our title is "Double Fear: Well, That-" I think my my AI generator wrote this on its own. Because this came from nowhere.
Jo: Wow.
Hannah: I guess you could do something with the double fear. So maybe the police detective finds himself caught in the middle between these two organizations that both have much more power than he does and he finds himself like kind of pressed and so it's like... double fear. It's fear from two sides. And then we have a broken-off sentence. We have somebody starting to say, "Well, that-" something.
Jo: Fill in the blank.
Hannah: And I don't know what to do with that.
Jennie: I don't either. Oh, but we have to do something. That's the rules of the game. Okay.
Jo: It's very interesting, though. Because like, you see that, you're like, "Well, that what?" And so it gets you to open it. I would read it right away. I'm like, "What are they talking about? Maybe the rest of the sentence is in the book."
Hannah: You open up the book, and the first sentence just carries on from there. Like, "-was the story of."
Jennie: "Well, that was sudden."
Hannah: Yeah. Are those words used in the book? Are those words the beginning of a message?
Jo: Someone's last words before they died, and they're trying to figure out what they were going to say?
Jennie: You know where my mind is going is-- Okay. So if we're talking about The Daughter possibly being like a tech savvy forward kind of group, and also on the younger side, I was thinking-- The first thing that popped in my head when I saw, "Well, that-" my mind finished it with, "-escalated quickly." And so I'm wondering, do we get to now tied memes into this story? Is that how The Daughter communicates? Is that part of their secret code?
Hannah: Are all memes a secret communication?
Jennie: Right! Like other people, they just seem harmless and so they just pass them around because they're funny or clever or whatever, but like what if there's this organization that is communicating via meme?
Hannah: Oh my gosh. I feel like you'll end up with a whole bunch of people who just accidentally become part of this crime organization, which is a risk they're gonna have to take into account. This title! I looked at this title and thought, "Oh, no." So I like the idea of that being some-- Maybe that is, yeah, the intro to their code words, and you're intended to to end it with the meme or with something else. So that means we have a title that first describes what the police detective fears and then describes the code words. Is there a way to tie those together in a way that even though it's still a nonsense title, they can at least be a thematically consistent nonsense title and addressing the same kinds of things?
Jo: I don't know. Man, I am stumped.
Hannah: I think I have to take back "Unbreakable Radio Cypher and John Wilkes Booth's Diary in Liverpool" as the worst title. So maybe... Okay, okay, okay. This is where I'm going. Maybe those code words are-- Okay, those are terrible code words because they could mean anything. Anybody could say them at any point. I say that all the time. So maybe that is the beginning of-- Maybe both sets of organizations have code words or have code phrases that begin with that. And maybe our central police detective finds himself, first of all, afraid of both of them, but also like-- You could have a situation where he's not sure which of the two he's supposed to end with, because he's not sure where allegiance lies. But both of them have code words that begin with "Well, that," and so maybe the code words themselves increase this poor police detective's double fear.
Jennie: That's right. Take the hammer and just wedge it right in there.
Hannah: Yeah, I really want them to connect somehow. We found a way for them to both connect to the main story, sort of.
Jennie: Okay, okay. Here's the other thing my brain is doing. All right, if you make the title British-- just follow me here-- and you say, "Double fear? Well, that!" describing it as well.
Hannah: And then the hyphen is just--?
Jennie: Yeah, the hyphen is just a typo.
Hannah: Nothing like a typo in the cover of our book.
Jennie: Hey, it's happened.
Jo: Oh, it has.
Hannah: Oh, no, wait, okay.
Jennie: Okay, what, what?
Hannah: So this is a series. It's the Double Fear series. Every one has the next like two words of the phrase. So every title gives you more information until you get to the very end.
Jennie: "Double Fear: Escalated."
Hannah: Yeah, yeah. "Double Fear: Was A." And so you have to-- I don't know. I don't think we're gonna be able to do much more with it.
Jennie: "Double Fear: Just Happened."
Hannah: That would be a better title than this. That hyphen is just killing me. I don't like it.
Jennie: Maybe it's a slightly interactive fiction piece where there's a contest. The story doesn't actually finish at the end, and there's a contest and people send in how they think the title should be completed.
Hannah: The next piece. Maybe like a web series.
Jennie: Right, so the next volume or the next episode would be based on audience participation.
Hannah: That is... interesting.
Jennie: I don't know if I've just been insulted or not.
Hannah: No, it is good. It's interesting. I like it. It's different. I'm trying to figure out why, this particular story, I'm trying to figure out what it would gain from being audience-informed. Oh my gosh, do you find out the end that everybody who's been reading this is now a member of The Daughter?
Jennie: "You've just been inducted."
Hannah: Oh my gosh, how much fun would that be?
Jennie: Like now you know our code words.
Hannah: By reading this, you have the information, you're now a member of us.
Jo: "Welcome."
Hannah: That would be so much fun. It's like a goofy little immersive thing, and it could go on for years, and all the comments and all the conversation about it could be worked into it.
Jennie: And it could build itself up into its own thing.
Jo: Because it would never die. It would just keep going.
Hannah: Oh, that would be...
Jennie: I'm getting goosebumps.
Hannah: This terrible title has unlocked this.
Jennie: The sheer potential of our influence over the Internet.
Hannah: Oh, that's very, very cool. Of course, the piece of this now means that if somebody needs to write this, they can't say anything about where it came from because it all depends on not knowing that the audience is The Daughter at the end.
Jennie: Nobody listen to this episode.
Hannah: Go out and tell people not to listen to our podcast.
Jo: Brilliant.
Hannah: Oh, gosh. Okay, all right. I feel like we've unlocked that, which is good. Is there anything that-- Because so much of this now is dependent on audience interaction. You could start with with just building the story and then as more audience interaction came in, you could kind of flesh that out. Are there any pieces of this that we're missing that are big?
Jennie: I think that I wanted-- I loved Jo's idea about having three main characters. So we know about the detective. Who's from the crime syndicate and who's from The Daughter that's going to be playing? I like the idea of the crime syndicate person being like, the contact person for all the detectives between them and the head honcho, or one of the contact people.
Hannah: Yeah, where that person is under extreme pressure to get this group found and either joined up with or shut down very quickly. If the audience is The Daughter, do we need a full Daughter character?
Jennie: I think we need to start with a representative.
Hannah: Yeah, okay.
Jo: And it should be a female so people--
Hannah: We don't have enough female characters in our story. I went the police detective to be female too.
Jennie: Perfect. Shady female police detective.
Hannah: Yeah, the story of the of The Daughter can be seemingly unconnected until a little bit later in the story,
Jennie: Right. So it'll be just like the mystery character, like who is this? Oh, gosh, okay. So you're playing this with audience participation, The Daughter would be a plant. The Daughter character would be a plant. She'd be in the comments.
Hannah: Oh, that would be interesting. So right away we jump into the sort of-- So maybe it's not you find out at the end. Maybe it's like a partway through--
Jennie: And realizing.
Hannah: "This is this, would you like to keep playing with us?" Essentially. Oh, that's kind of fun.
Jo: I like it.
Hannah: Okay, okay, so it's-- Yeah, so we we pull The Daughter from the audience and make that happen. Awesome. I love this. Okay, I think we're going to go ahead and turn this massive online multiplayer game story over to our listeners. And obviously, you know, if you find a different direction to go with it, do that. And if you find anything to do with that title, if you have any ideas we did not touch on, please tell us. As we close out, we'll take a second to each shout out a story that we think our listeners should check out. I've been going through a very strange journey of trying to watch 100 movies from every year, and right now I chose at random because that's how I do it, 1968. And so I've watched like 60. And so the last one that I watched from 1968 was The Bride Wore Black, which is a Truffaut movie, who I haven't watched a lot of his work. And it's clearly-- As I watched it, it's so clearly where Tarantino got a lot of inspiration for Kill Bill. It's this woman whose husband was killed and she's going around finding all the people who are responsible for it and ending their lives one by one. It's just a really fascinating story, and even though she is going around murdering, you end up really connecting with this character and hoping that she's able to finish what she's doing. It's a really good movie and I really enjoyed it a lot and and especially watching it for its influence that its had on later revenge movies, I think is especially fascinating. So I definitely recommend that, The Bride Wore Black. Jennie, what would you like to share this week?
Jennie: I'm going to share a book called The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. This is part of my reading list for the year, which is somewhere around 86 books and weirdly growing rather than shrinking. I need to catch up on my reading. It's one of those really comfortable books about female friendship. It's really easy to read. But the thing that I especially appreciate about it, this group of women getting together in New York City around knitting, but it goes so much deeper than that. There's a big theme in this book of getting past first impressions. You know, somebody shows up and you're like, "Well, she's just a college student. And she's not interested in knitting. I don't know why she's here," but then you get into their stories and these characters learn about each other and learn about their motivations for things, their backgrounds, and they have compassion for each other and extend friendship and everything. I really appreciate that aspect of it because I think that's a thing that is really difficult to find these days in our Internet land, where we make we make snap judgments so easily. And so I like this story with that reminder that people's lives are deeper than we know. And it was just a really nice warm read. I liked it a lot.
Hannah: All right, Jo, if you could recommend a story to our listeners, what would it be?
Jo: Oh, for sure, hands down, one of my favorite TV shows ever is Bates Motel. I absolutely love it. Like I said, I'm a character driven person. The characters in this show, oh my gosh, they just make you cringe. They're done so well. The casting is unbelievable. The relationship between Norma and Norman Bates is freaking crazy and I love it. It leave me speechless when I think about it because it's just so brilliant. I wish I could write that well and characters like that. I love the whole series. Go binge watch, it is what I would say.
Hannah: Awesome. All right, Jo, before we take off is there anything you would like to plug for our listeners? Social media or where we can find your books? What would you like to share with our listeners who might be interested in learning more about you?
Jo: Okay, all my books are on Amazon and everywhere basically that you can get online. But I can be found @authorjocassidy everywhere, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and then my website is authorjocassidy.com. It has links to all my books on there too, for you to find. They're all thrillers, if you like thrillers. I have Good Girl Stay Quiet, which is a psychological thriller, Willow Marsh, which is a paranormal thriller, if you like ghosts and seances, and then my latest one, Harper, is a spy thriller. She works for a company that tries to stop terrorist attacks before they happen. And she's probably my favorite character to date.
Hannah: Fantastic. Well, that is 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 comments or a story 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. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, cross the river before you tease the crocodile.
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