The truth. I'm Jonathan Mitchell, and this is a special episode of The Truth. Today, I'm talking with writer Hunter Nelson about Forward Darkspeed, the story we released last week. And this conversation goes deep into the themes of the piece, the challenges of writing it, and it's full of spoilers. So if you haven't heard the story yet, I recommend listening to it first. After the break, it's a conversation with Hunter Nelson. If you'd like to hear our show ad-free, go to thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm. I've been working with Hunter Nelson since 2019. Our first project together was The Body Genius. It was a five-part serial about a Hollywood personal trainer who was implicated in a murder. And it's a great, really, really funny story. If you haven't heard it, please go check it out. But he's written seven more stories for the truth since then. Last fall, he wrote a story called Operation Skillshot. And his most recent is Forward Darkspeed. I got very fascinated with the idea of Frank Herbert's son, who took over the Dune books after, I assume after Frank Herbert passed away, and has written a whole lot of Dune books. I haven't read those books, but the idea of that person became really interesting to me, especially when I realized that there were other examples of that. I realized that Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew has written Dracula books and that the writer of Amelia Bedelia, the Amelia Bedelia books, gave those books to her son. Or at least he took them. He took over. He owns them. So he can do whatever he wants with him, I guess. Yes. And I think it usually happens because of rights and estate stuff or something like that. Like that's, it's just the easiest person to end up with the rights. And the idea that people should follow the stories of these characters to another writer just because they're related to them. You know, it was funny to me that there were so many examples, but also like I started feeling for those people. I started really feeling for Frank Herbert's son because you can find a lot of stuff online of people just saying, like, don't bother or, you know, some of us don't consider those books canon. And I had sort of separately been thinking about, you know, what if someone found out that there was like a true way to finish a piece of fiction? And like, it was just sort of a vague feeling I had that the idea of like, what's actually supposed to happen in this story is being transmitted somewhere. And so those ideas got combined. And I think originally I was thinking I wanted to explore a whole community of authors, sons and daughters, because they were the only ones who could relate to each other of like how difficult it is. And no one gives us a fair shake. Yeah. You had a children's book author in this as a friend, sort of a sidekick originally. Yes, there was originally a sidekick who had written a, who was writing their, taking over their mother's books about a mistake prone character. So really a pretty direct Amelia Batelia analog that there was really no room for in the story, but I tried really hard to fit it in. And there was also at some point, we were even considering, is this person also getting the story transmitted from an alien planet? It really pushed plausibility in an already far-fetched story. And I also remembered that when I was younger, before the internet got really big, I found all these weird hints that the Star Wars community had written, sort of like a self-imposed or a legend that they didn't really believe, but they liked to tell themselves about George Lucas finding the Star Wars stories on a scroll somewhere. I'm not sure why they started saying that to each other or why there was, this is something that was discussed online. But I had sort of a vague memory of that. And I was like, it's also fun to think about, you know, moving these worlds we care about so much beyond authorship to where you're no longer thinking about the whims of a creator. And you're thinking about in sense of like what really happened. And also people just want those stories to be real, I think, because it's just a sort of pleasant thought. Well, in this story, the book that she's writing is kind of a sacred text. It's almost like a version of this planet's Bible. Right. But it's also commercial IP. And there sort of like this cultural co going on or something you know where this other planet is taking another culture from another planet and changing it to suit its own needs Right. Yeah, and I think— Do you see it that way? I do see it. I mean, I think, like, it was part of the Zerowin's plan to have it become part of just, like, the business of fiction on Earth. but I think maybe they didn't foresee some of the ways that it could be changed to suit big business or to suit the needs of a franchise going forward or the needs of a blockbuster are different than the needs of just a story that's exploring a theme and trying to do right by that. We're looking at, in this story, a franchise that is kind of at a precarious place where they have to decide how cynical should we be or how are we going to keep this going for decades. They have to consider things like actor involvement and what the fans want. Yeah, I read this book, I think it's called The Secret History of Marvel Comics or something like that. 20 years ago I read it, 15 years ago. It was kind of the first place that I realized that I was really interested in how editorial affects fiction. like how people fighting behind the scenes affects what makes it into the story, how egos of creators make it into the story, and how the bottom line affects the story. And I think that comics are such an interesting example because they're just these stories that never end that people still care about the canon of. They still really care. You can't sell out who this character is. You can't change who Spider-Man is, or some people argue that. And then it turns out that so many of these choices are being driven by humans that are normal people who are getting drunk, getting greedy, going through a divorce, all these things that affect what stories they tell. There could be some element of Spider-Man that stays there forever that is because of a traumatic event that happened to a writer. Yeah. Was there anything in the script that as you were writing you made you a little scared to write it because it felt close to home? Um, I, uh, actually, you know, I think that the conversations with the execs that she has were sort of the scaredest, I felt. Which is one of the parts I play in this, or the part I play in this piece is one of them. Yeah, Dan. Dan. I've been in collaborations where I'm scared of the person that I'm collaborating with or where I feel like they could change my life or I feel like they could affect where I'm going and I've said what I thought they wanted to hear and then those are the kind of things I think about later where I'm like, why did I say that? That's something I really didn't want to happen in this project or that's something that really kind of goes against what I believe is good for the story or even like something that I want to put in a story. And so whenever I was writing Laika in that position, I did feel sort of like, I don't know why I didn't expect this would happen since it is a story about a writer. But I was like, whoa, this is sort of uncomfortable for me to write her dealing with a question of principles that I've had before. And also with well-meaning collaborators. I think a big thing about this piece is that I don't think those execs are bad people at all. And I don't think that they want anything bad to happen. I think that they are sincerely doing what they think is best and being honest with her. but I still think those conversations, hearing words come out of your mouth that you don't mean, that you don't believe is sort of like a waking nightmare that I share with this character. How do you think about responsibility to an audience? The story is kind of about Laika's responsibility to her audience. And I'm wondering how do you think about that? And especially one that's emotionally invested but not always aligned with where you want to go. Yeah, I mean, I think that every page, every line of what you write for something like this is you're thinking about what do I want to have happen? What do I mean? And what is this going to be like for the audience? So you want to take care of them. You know, you kind of want, you always want a piece to stick with them. And I feel like that gets complicated with long overarching stories that have been going on for years, like Dark Speed in this story or like comics or like Dune. And it just gets so much harder to manage those things What argument is this story trying to make How do you surprise the audience while still giving them what they felt like they came to the table for? And I think it's so easy to feel lost undertaking something like that. What argument do you feel like this story's trying to make? I feel like, I think the non-writer version of this story or like the, the, what you can extrapolate from this that applies to anyone's life is sort of the sense that everything that our parents or grandparents did, uh, seems so inevitable or seems so like it was so clear cut for them. And I think that at least my generation, which I is millennial, uh, and, and I think the generations on either side of me too, have a lot of anxiety about why does it feel so complicated? Like, why are things that just seemed like the straightforward plot of our parents' or grandparents' lives suddenly seem like there's a million angles you can see them from? And this is a character who was sort of teased with the idea of certainty that she was doing the right thing. And I don't think that that's possible. I don't think, you know, we'll ever get some sort of definitive word on whether we made the right choices in life. And I think sort of the magic that happens to her is that she gets basically a guidebook of what to do. And she still finds a way to overthink it and to try to cut herself a break that she thinks she deserves. I want the audience to feel like they sort of made that choice with her and to sort of feel... I mean, we're talking about a fictional alien world, so I don't know if – I'm not trying to convince the audience they need to be more loyal to an alien world. But I do think that this story is about trusting yourself in this journey to live up to who your parents or grandparents wanted you to be. I think it's like you are your own person. You also owe something to the people you love. but ultimately, you know, you should be clear on what your principles are. After the break, Hunter and I are going to turn the tables and he will ask me the questions. Do you feel when you select a story, when you're developing it, that you, are you checking to make sure it's something that you also want to say? That's coming up after the break. And if you'd like to hear our show ad-free, go to thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm. We're talking with writer Hunter Nelson, and now we are going to turn the tables, and he is going to ask me some questions. One thing that I often wonder, and I've never really talked to you about, you know, since, like, I focus on writing the story and telling the story that I want to tell, but I often realize when we're recording it, and then when I'm listening to the final thing, that Jonathan's telling this story, too. and do you feel when you select a story when you're developing it that you are you checking to make sure it's something that you also want to say or that is it more just like you want to keep it interesting for yourself how do you how do you situate yourself as the author of these stories I want it to make sense to me and I want to I want to believe it I want to believe that characters would behave this way in this situation and that this is a, I want to be both surprised. There's sort of this thing that is talked about in screenwriting often is you want it to be surprising yet inevitable. So I guess what I'm measuring for when I listen to stories is like, is this happening because the writer needed it to or because the characters needed it to? and try to follow the characters and make sure that it's true to what feels like plausible and believable and honest. So I wondered when we were reading drafts of this in the writer's room, how early you start thinking about the spaces that these scenes take place in. Like, are you, you know, even when we're just reading and rewriting, deciding, you know, what these rooms look like and how we might be able to create that space. No, my philosophy about it is that I feel like I want the story to be able to go wherever it needs to go and then make that as strong as possible Like my philosophy about it in terms of the telling of the story is that I want to get out of the way of the story I want the story to be as close to the listener as possible And every choice you make when you're putting the story together, you know, from, like, line edits in a script to casting it to feedback to the actors while they're performing, it's all designed to get out of the way of the story so that the story has the clearest path to the listener. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's very interesting. So it's like an impedance issue and that things get impeded not usually by one big thing but by lots of little things being a little bit off. Yeah, I feel like sometimes it just all kind of comes together. Yeah. I mean, like this story, a lot of the sound design was in how we recorded it. Like they had these phone calls with the agents, and that was all just about micing it in a particular way that I don't usually mic scenes. And every scene was mic'd in actually a different way. You know, you had the opening sequence where she's on a microphone and the fans are speaking from an audience perspective and conveying that in audio required a certain kind of mic setup. But then the very next scene, she's on the phone, and these guys are on speakerphone, you know, so that's a different kind of sound. And then they're in a restaurant, and that required a completely different mic setup. And then they go to the house, and they're moving around a lot. There's a lot of movement and a little bit more verite quality to that sound. And so each of these different spaces had it was, the way I thought of it was primarily identified through how I was using microphones. Yeah, I think through writing a bunch of these truth pieces, especially maybe in the last several, I feel like I've started thinking about scenes, the scenes that I include as just having different sound identities, especially when there's not a narrator and it's just like, we're going to be cutting from scene to scene and the story needs to keep moving forward. I'm like, well, these, these all need to have. Yeah. Location becomes like a light motif. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's sort of like a chorus or a certain section of a piece of music or something. That's how I think of it. It's like, like there's, there's forms that repeat certain, you know, ABA, you know, Sonata form that all this kind of stuff is about repeating certain motifs. and that's what a scene setting can be as a motif that helps create a sense of continuity and momentum. Yeah, I think that's a really cool thing about this form of storytelling. Maybe that sounds a little pretentious, I don't know. Not at all, we should be more pretentious. We need to get more pretentious. What's the value of pretension? Pretension gives us all something to fall short of heroically. Like, it's really great to talk a big game because then it scares you into- Living up to it. Doing something pretty good. You kind of, you land short, but you had to push so hard that you're going to go further than you would have. It gives you ambition. You can't be shamelessly pretentious. You have to be pretentious plus shameful so that you remember the big game you talked and panic that you're not living up to it. That's the way that life should be lived. Well, I was probably at my peak pretension when I was in college, in grad school. And I think that if I hadn't gone through that period, I don't think I would have been as interesting. You know, it was like a battle or some kind of cave I had to walk through in order to get to, like, have the perspective on it that actually was a little bit more interesting. Yes, everyone should be a little bit over the top in their 20s, I think. It's important. We'll have a brand new story for you next week. The next one is by Mary McDonnell And it's about a group of teenagers who pull over at a lonely roadside turnout To search for a rumored supernatural void known as The Spot We'll have that for you next Thursday And please let us know if you like hearing these interviews with the writers in between stories If you like them, we'll do more And as always, if you'd like to listen to our show ad-free Go to thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm I'm Jonathan Mitchell, and you have been hearing The truth.
