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Necessary Fictions
Your brain told you this was going to be a short project. It also told you the outline was basically done, that sleep is optional, and that this time things would be different. Your brain, it turns out, has the self-awareness of a raccoon who just knocked over a trash can — and you keep listening to it anyway, because without it you never start anything. That's the premise of this week's Craft and Chaos, and it only gets more uncomfortably accurate from there.
Pete Wright, Mandy Fabian, Kyle Olson, and Ryan Dalton each confess the lies that get them to work — the necessary fictions every creative runs on, whether or not they'll admit it. Some of those lies are aspirational. Some are borrowed from Terry Pratchett. One of them is genuinely bleak. They also name the imaginary audience living in their heads while they create, which turns out to be a surprisingly revealing question when four people actually answer it honestly.
The back half introduces "Guilty or Not Guilty," where each host confesses a creative rule they violate and then — badly — argues against themselves before the rest of the crew delivers a verdict. The arguments get personal. The analogies get gross. And someone uses the phrase "creative polyamory" in a way that makes everybody uncomfortable. If you have ever told yourself a beautiful, necessary lie in order to make something — and you have — this one's going to land.
Links & Notes
- Jess Plus None
- Charlie Kaufman • BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture Series
- AO3 (Archive of Our Own)
Connect with the Show
Submit your questions at craftandchaos.fun — click any episode page and hit the submit button. New episodes drop every two weeks.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos
View all episodes
By TruStory FMYour brain told you this was going to be a short project. It also told you the outline was basically done, that sleep is optional, and that this time things would be different. Your brain, it turns out, has the self-awareness of a raccoon who just knocked over a trash can — and you keep listening to it anyway, because without it you never start anything. That's the premise of this week's Craft and Chaos, and it only gets more uncomfortably accurate from there.
Pete Wright, Mandy Fabian, Kyle Olson, and Ryan Dalton each confess the lies that get them to work — the necessary fictions every creative runs on, whether or not they'll admit it. Some of those lies are aspirational. Some are borrowed from Terry Pratchett. One of them is genuinely bleak. They also name the imaginary audience living in their heads while they create, which turns out to be a surprisingly revealing question when four people actually answer it honestly.
The back half introduces "Guilty or Not Guilty," where each host confesses a creative rule they violate and then — badly — argues against themselves before the rest of the crew delivers a verdict. The arguments get personal. The analogies get gross. And someone uses the phrase "creative polyamory" in a way that makes everybody uncomfortable. If you have ever told yourself a beautiful, necessary lie in order to make something — and you have — this one's going to land.
Links & Notes
- Jess Plus None
- Charlie Kaufman • BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture Series
- AO3 (Archive of Our Own)
Connect with the Show
Submit your questions at craftandchaos.fun — click any episode page and hit the submit button. New episodes drop every two weeks.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos