Director's Notes: Episode 250 - Father Kevin (Patreon)

Generally speaking, I try to set aside about 300-500 words for the post-weather section. If I know it's going to be something big, I'll set aside 900 words. The total episode is generally around 2400-2600 words, so we're talking about a third of the episode after the weather in the most extreme cases.

In this episode, over half the word count comes after the weather. And I can't say exactly why it worked out that way, but usually my litmus test for an episode is just: does this feel right? And this is the structure that feels right.

I had the character of Cecil express one of my own pet peeves. A common misconception about the show is that the weather "fixes" the conflict of the episode. But that has, to my knowledge, never happened in an episode of Night Vale. What happens is that we move from the present tense of the first part of the episode to the past tense of the second half of the episode, allowing us to explain how the situation was resolved without having to have Cecil breathlessly narrating action as it happens. The weather plays an important structural role in the writing, but it does not solve a problem.

Except this time I was curious what would happen if we had no tense shift, if that harrowing present moment had no choice but to continue. And what happened is that half the episode continued post-weather.

We came up with the solution to the boy/Kevin situation very early on this storyline, during the first writers meeting that include Brie as our third full time Night Vale writer. It felt both emotionally right, and fit well with the intricate construction of time that Night Vale has become. The Mother Lauren stuff was a bit more of an improvisation. We knew she was coming to town, but it was a last minute call to turn her into a cosmic god. Good for Lauren. It's a real career move up, you know?  

That's it for us until August. Love from Night Vale.

-Joseph Fink