Before They Were Night Vale: First Sentences (Patreon)

Welcome to "Before They Were Night Vale", our feature in which Night Vale creators Jeffrey and Joseph share writing from before their Welcome to Night Vale collaboration, along with commentary. Come explore their early writing, both good and bad.  

The first piece that Jeffrey and I ever wrote together was a play called "What The Time Traveler Will Tell Us". It was a strange bit of theater, performed in the upstairs black box in St Mark's Church in the East Village for an audience of 15-50 each night for five nights. 

This is the first scene from that play. In looking for it, I also found a first draft of this scene that is substantially different. Among other things, it included actual openings to books that I love. 

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“Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story.” from Laughter in the Dark  

and    

“Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade, but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar.”  from The Third Policeman)

I still love first sentences. If you look at any book I'm involved in, you can be sure I spent a good deal of time thinking about just what impact the first sentence had.

-Joseph Fink

What The Time Traveler Will Tell Us

by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink

Scene 1

JF seated at desk. On the desk there is a glass of water and some books. Also a mic, which he does not a use, a handbell, and a desk lamp. Projection screen shows JF seated at same desk, at the same spot on the stage. The desk in the projection is empty.

Real JF: I love first sentences.

The first sentence of a story is an art form separate from the story that it precedes. There are wonderful stories with mediocre first sentences, and forgettable stories with first sentences that I cannot forget. I've prepared some examples.

He gestures to the pile of books.

Here they are.

Real JF takes a drink of water. 

You know, [He coughs a little on the water as he starts to speak.] the memory of what someone says is different than what they said, always. Even if remembered correctly. Even if written word for word, it still is different. Everything I'm saying now is only a memory of what I said once.

Projected JF starts giving the same speech, starting with "I love first sentences". This first line is loud enough to hear distinctly, but the rest is pretty quiet so we can pay attention to Real JF. Projected JF says everything Real JF does and mimes all of Real JF's actions, but without props. 

I'm reciting the memory exactly as it is written in the script. But it is memory now, as separate from words that once were as the opening of a story is separate from the story it opens.

Real JF drinks from water. 

And sometimes memory is right and sometimes it's wrong. Just as sometimes a story lives up to its first sentence, and sometimes, well, we must all be a little forgiving.

He stops and watches the projection for a moment, then continues. Projected JF will do the same when he gets here, watching the projection that is presumably to his left, and on and on into quantum eternity.

Because look, there's this point… Well. You know, we'll get to that later. First, I want to tell you a story. The first sentence is "Once upon a future time in a possible quantum world, we will meet a time traveler. " I will tell you this story now.

Real JF drinks from water so deeply it spills down his shirt. Projected JF continues talking, volume raising a little bit so he's more clear.

Projected JF: First, I want to tell you a story. "I like you," she said. "And I'm not a good person to like," I said. Before she said that, she got me so drunk that I nearly passed out, nearly puked in a bar toilet, holding the door shut because it didn't lock. This is how beautiful stories begin. This is how every love story goes, really. The important thing is that she said that and held my hand a certain way and in the weeks afterward other events unfolded that were related. She said what she said on the corner of 16th and 7th, and then we kissed. Earlier we had seen police horses and rubbed their noses.

Beat.

I mean, we asked first. We didn't just start grabbing at a police horse's face without permission.

Beat.

We asked the policeman, not the horse.

He mimes drinking water very deeply. His shirt becomes wet. The screen fades out, as do the lights. Blackout.