Reader Question Wednesday! - #1

Hello and welcome to our first installment of Reader Question Wednesday! Thanks to everyone who contributed. If you missed out on asking a question, no worries. While we can't guarantee that every Wednesday will be Reader Question Wednesday, this is certainly a tradition that we wish to continue.

Without further ado ...

First, questions answered by me:

We'll start with the all-important Reuben-related questions first. Priorities, and all that.

So, at what age did you actually encounter your first reuben sandwich? Was it love at first bite?

Honestly, I can't remember the first Reuben (and yes, it is capitalized) - but I do remember that I didn't like it. It's an acquired taste. Yes, I am from a large Czech family who eats sauerkraut at every meal, but I didn't enjoy any of the ingredients until I did my study-abroad in the Czech Republic back in college (lo, these many years ago...) I learned to like rye bread and sauerkraut over there (and beer, incidentally) and it just seemed right and proper that I should fall in love with Reubens. My grandfather would be proud.

I cannot believe I just answered a question about the evolution of my love for a sandwich.

If a sandwich consists of turkey, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and brown mustard can it still legitimately be called a reuben? If not, how narrow is the definition of a reuben? Is it the thousand island dressing? The corned beef? The Rye?

No! Impostor! Infidel!

*ahem* I mean, no. A reuben is corned beef, swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and a touch of thousand island dressing between two lightly-grilled pieces of rye (ideally marble) bread. We will accept no imitations. While I still haven't found the perfect "10" - the best one is at Irv's Deli in Fremont, Nebraska. I found my #9 there about 12 years ago. Although Irv calls it "special dressing," not thousand island - so maybe that's the key.

And now, the questions that are not Reuben-related:

So, are you actually creating a backstory "Bible," to flesh out and keep track of the details you know but haven't used yet (i.e., Alex's 2nd grade teacher's name)? Or is this backstory just theoretical?

We don't really have a "Bible," per se -- but we do have copious amounts of shared Google docs with lots of story trivia that are ridiculously disorganized. Occasionally I have to refer to older summaries to remember things like, "How old is Alex again?" and "Did Jason really think that idea would work?" I'm actually quite impressed that we're able to recall quite a few obscure details at will. I think it's a hallmark of the geek brain. "What episode did we discover the identity of the 5th Cylon?" is about the same kind of question as "When did Alex move to Omaha?"

Is this tacit permission to shout out if the backstory's too unwieldy? :)

Sure. Did you actually want us to do anything with that information, though? :)

Did Jason ever bring his two good ideas last week?

He brought one pretty spectacular idea, so I let him off the hook for two. One word: Carnies.


And now, Jason's contributions to Reader Question Wednesday:

Jason, weren't you supposed to finish those tweaks to Episode 2 last month?

Actually, given the recent additions we've made to the story, many of the tweaks I was supposed to make to Episode 2 are now moot. So it's actually a good thing that I didn't do them then, because it would have been wasted effort. Ah, I love the smell of a rationalization in the morning. It's the smell of victory.

So, are you two writing in coffee shops? (I'm at least assuming you're not recording there, though that could be HILARIOUS, frankly.) Or over reubens?

Great question. Our first podcast meeting was at a sandwich joint, and I think we've been back there two or three other times. We've also met at...another sandwich place, and two (I think) coffee shops. The majority of our recent meetings have been at one of our homes, though. We prefer to have the following easily to hand when we're writing together:

• Free outlets for our laptops
• Caffeine
  
• Potato chips (most recently the Lays kettle chips which are oh my god good)
  
• Wi-fi so we can a)Look up interesting things like a hacker name generator, and b)Easily share our updates via Google Docs in realtime.
• Enough space to actually spread out a bit.
  

These limitations aren't huge, but they do narrow the field quite a bit, location-wise. One of the coffee shops we met at was fantastic in every way *except* the last one - we were so crowded there that it just didn't work. Though we did get some funny looks that afternoon when we did our first off-the-cuff dialogue for Episode 1, Scene 1.

Thus far, there have been no reubens in the creative process.

Is there going to be some kind of casting call for your loyal followers to participate in the podcast when it gets around to recording time?

Well, I keep telling River that she can do *all* the voices, but she refuses. So...yes, we will be soliciting voice talent when we get to the recording phase. No word yet on how the casting process will work, but my guess is that bribes will be both accepted and encouraged.

Who is the better lover, Batman or Superman?

Batman.

Why?

I really think Larry Niven covered this ground fairly well in 1971.


Thanks again! We'll announce the next Reader Question Wednesday soon. Meantime, comment or e-mail us to ask a question. It will most likely appear in a future installment.

Backstory and the impending apocalypse

We've all done things we regret. I know I'm making a gross generalization here, but I'm willing to bet that everyone reading this has at least one, if not hundreds of moments in the past that you wish had gone a bit differently. I'm even willing to go out on a limb and say that for many of us, a large percentage of these moments happened before the age of 20. I know that for me, there are lots of things I wish I could hop in the Wayback Machine and go back and at least attempt to make a different choice. Still, many of the moments in my past shaped who I am today -- and without them, I wouldn't be sitting here in Chicago, writing a blog about writing a script for a podcast. And when I put it that way, perhaps I am not the only one who should be regretting those choices. My apologies, dear readers. But I digress...

Chances are you didn't make a choice at age 13 that could potentially impact the very balance of the universe and cause a future apocalypse. (But hey, I'm willing to be wrong. Hope you worked it out if you did - and if not, let us know. It would save us a lot of time trying to figure out which recording equipment to use if the world is going to end in a few days.)

Our main character on the other hand, did make a rather stupid choice when he was a teenager. He has only just become aware of how something as innocuous as writing his name in a place he probably shouldn't has unalterably changed the course of his life, and has the potential to impact millions of other lives. I won't give away too much here - but the story itself is about an ordinary guy who finds himself in an extraordinary situation, and has to come up with some pretty creative solutions to get himself out of a mess he didn't even know he created.

Herein lies one of our more difficult challenges: backstory. There's a lot of it. We have managed to construct a pretty complex plot - which, while admittedly I think it's pretty cool, is damn hard to reconstruct in a way that doesn't sound completely contrived and boring. I mention this because one of the motivations for embarking on this little project was listening to another audio drama podcast currently in production that does the whole backstory thing very, very badly. (Which Jason and I will both completely own as our own opinions, even though I won't name any names.) I remember saying in a very haughty and arrogant voice, "We could totally do a better job than they ever could." And thus, we got on this crazy rollercoaster ride.

And I have to admit, it's no small feat. I find it particularly challenging to tell a story that requires a bit of exposition to make sense, when my only storytelling tool is dialogue. I really don't want any of my characters to be in the middle of an action scene... for instance... a zombie attack... and suddenly stop to say, "You know, this reminds me of that time three years ago when..."

But oh, the danger looms. I actually relish the challenge however, and I'm enjoying the opportunity to hone my writing skills by working hard to make the dialogue count. The last thing I want to do is insult our listener's intelligence with unnecessary and unwieldy monologues about events that have only a passing relevance to the current scene. So far, I think we've managed to avoid the *insert name of bad podcast here* style of writing - but I can see how easy it would be to slip into that mode.

Just something to keep us on our toes.