Director's Notes: Return of the Obelisk (Patreon)

(as always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

Levity and Gravity.

I talk about those two things a lot when I talk about my own writing. Last episode (171 - Go to the Mirror?) we steered back toward horror with the things Cecil Palmer saw in the mirror. The episode was dark, opaque, and troubling. 

This episode, we swung back to comedy. There are some horror elements, to be sure, but it's lighthearted, weird jokes mostly. And it was a ton of fun to write. I mean, both episodes were a ton of fun, but there's a satisfying THUNK when you land a punchline or hit on something funny. When writing drama or thriller or horror, that THUNK just isn't there. It's more of a SCREEEEE. And I think I've always felt more comfortable in humor than in anything else. 

But humor only gets you so far. If you're the "funny one" in a social circle, that's awesome. I don't know what my tagline is in my social groups, but I feel like "the funny one" is a title I've held before. But the problem with being the person full of jokes, japes and quips arrives when you realize you have something more serious to talk about. You have to steer yourself away from reducing someone else's deeper issues or even your own. Your levity needs gravity, in other words. Otherwise, "the funny one" is not so useful for a serious discussion.

I'm also guilty of being called "too serious" among my friends/family. Everything is important. Everything has emotional heft to it, and there is no time for laughs. This persona is stifling on its own. This gravity needs levity.

This is probably all pretty obvious to you. You have friends. You know the drill. You know when to laugh and when to get to business. But in writing a story (or in the case of Night Vale, a serial), it's also important to remember levity and gravity. By broadening the range of emotional weight across 170+ episodes, we hopefully broaden the experience of listening. 

Night Vale is a fictional escape. It is nebulous and unknowable. Yet it is somehow universal. It needs heartbreak and strife, but it also needs a bumbling citizenry who doesn't know how to ask the important questions of a sudden obelisk. Somewhere in this story about a people and a government failing to take on a challenge is a solid metaphor for our real life, I'm sure. 

- Jeffrey Cranor
August 15, 2020