Director's Notes: 168 - Secret Blotter

This episode is by regular Night Vale guest writer, Brie Williams. We love working with Brie. She's nice, her prose sings, and she responds well to edits and suggestions. That's a magic combination in a writer.

I especially love her ability to tell poetic stories in banal forms. One of her first works for us was Guidelines for Disposal, which turned a list of waste management rules into a heart-wrenching dream journey. This episode takes a similarly bland civic form and uses it to tell a story of monsters and time travel.

Below are some notes from Brie.

-Joseph Fink

This episode is very simple. It contains no metaphors, no subtext, no deep themes. It is one thing and one thing only: a love letter to small town police blotters, Night Vale style. Small town blotters are an obsession of mine, something that brings me pure uncomplicated joy (and in these challenging times, pure uncomplicated joy is a rare gift). I grew up avidly reading my own hometown’s blotter, which is probably where my obsession originated. It’s not that I find law enforcement activity particularly entertaining in general, but there’s a certain soothing poetry to small town police reports in particular. For example:

Three chainsaws and a cooler were stolen from a truck.

Two dogs were running around the Shopko.

Someone saw smoke or fog.

I mean, isn’t that beautiful? Is it just me? Do I have any fellow blotter-heads out there?

I’m a big fan of Joseph and Jeffrey’s “Start With This” podcast, which explores topics and provides exercises designed to help inspire writers and other creators to make work. If I were to contribute a writing prompt, it would be something like, randomly select an entry from a small town police blotter and create its backstory. For example (all examples used in this note are real, btw):

A hotel owner has some new information on the theft of a shower curtain a few years back.

Or:

A cat was stuck in a wheat mill.

Or:

Someone reported that there was a man with a suitcase talking to himself in a mirror.

There are just so many incredible prompts to be had, so many unique situations and characters to contemplate. There are eight million stories in the naked city, as the iconic film noir narration goes.

The idea of doing a Night Vale Secret Police blotter has been a desire of mine for a long time now. Something about the mundane coziness of a regular blotter and the supernatural potential of Night Vale just felt like a special cocktail waiting to be mixed. I’m happy to finally be able to share it with you. Writing this episode brought me pure uncomplicated joy and I hope listening to it brings you the same. 

-Brie Williams

May 2020