Directors Notes: 253 - Instructions for Folding

Earlier this year, Jeffrey, Brie and I sat down for a writers meeting to discuss some general plans for the first part of the Night Vale year. We don’t like to lock ourselves into a plot just yet, instead we like to come up with some general concepts that we want to look at for the year, and then see where we’re at after we’ve written a few episodes. This more organic approach to story building allows us to see what is interesting to us as writers before we start building out a more structured storyline for the rest of the year.

While we were having this meeting and assigning the first few episodes, I told Brie and Jeffrey that I had an episode planned. “It’s called ‘instructions for folding’,” I said, “and I have no idea what it’s about and I’m very excited to write it.”

This is that episode.

Some episodes come to me as an image, or a story, or I just start writing and see what happens. But some episodes come to me as a phrase. In this case, I got the phrase “instructions for folding” caught in my head and when that happens, the phrase will not come out of my head until I shake it loose by writing it.

Stray thoughts:

• The fact about figs is very much true. Look it up. Figs are dead wasps. And now you know that.

• Ryan LeFleur and his De Tours tech start-up is a great example of the kind of story that can build organically in Night Vale. Brie wrote an episode about it without any plans for a continuance, but then Jeffrey’s next episode mentioned it, and so I decided to keep that story going, and now suddenly we have an ongoing new plot. Where is that plot going? Not sure yet. The three of us need to sit down soon for our fall check-in and start making some decisions about stuff like that.

• Disparition sent out an isolated mp3 of Cecil screaming “We’re all doomed!” which I’ll share with you all in a few days in case you want a new ringtone.

We have some fun stuff coming up in the next couple months of episodes, including wily cattle rustlers, an imaginary corn maze, and a special word with our own professor of archelogy Harrison Kip. All that and more, only in Night Vale!

-Joseph Fink

Listen here.