Love Letters - A Chat about Ten Week Turnabout with the Author
A (G)Chat with Becca, editor of Ten Week Turnabout and co-creator of ConSensual
I got the chance to chat with Becca about blowing up form, directing audio sex scenes with your sister, and what it means to be a Riot Grl in Romance. Check the raw, uncut (typos and misnomers abound!) G-Chat below.
And, if you haven’t already, check out our episode on the multi-media experience coming out soon! And their show as well.
Soft, suggestive spoilers about halfway through…
Becca
Good morning!
Morgan
Good morning!
I'm chatting with Becca, right?
Yes, this is Becca! Let the record show that, not knowing if this was a video chat or not, I did put on mascara for the first time in perhaps a month.
Noted. And appreciated!
So Becca, so far "Consensal" the podcast is releasing chapter by chapter radio drama episodes of "Ten Week Turnabout". Is there going to be a podcast after the final chapter is released? Or is this a limited engagement?
Once the entirety of season one is released, we'll release ten Week Turnabout as a novella on Kindle, but we've actually already written the novella for season two! Ingrid's best friend Cleo gets her love story in the second season.
The hope is to keep going and growing!
So did the novella or the concept for the radio drama come first?
The radio drama! Well, really it all started in the desire to create romance for a generation of young, feminist readers.The format of a serial fiction romance podcast with a corresponding multimedia element is something I started drafting out about a year and a half ago, and then I started chatting with some of my other romance writer friends, who had all sorts of ideas for plot lines that would work in this format. Thus, Ten Week Turnabout was born!
We did write it as a novella first, only because that's the form we're used to working in. Then my business partner, Rachel, used her theatrical genius to convert it into a script.
YES. I want to get into the ethos behind this project. But I have questions about the form, first, have to get it out of my system. Because I am RIVETED listening to this play out, it is so much more three-dimensional than just an audiobook. Were you a longtime fan of audiodramas? What inspired the choice to create this sort of layered, experiential, performative, lots of adjectives, audiobook?
So I'm actually a huge audiobook listener, but it drives me crazy listening to dual perspective audiobooks where the person puts on an effected voice to read the lines of the other characters. It's so annoying and pulls me out of the story! But we didn't want to lose the audiobook feel altogether. We still wanted to keep those chunks of description instead of keeping it solely to dialogue. Rachel did a brilliant job of crafting the script so that it was a healthy balance of both. It was also totally her idea to give the characters Instagram accounts. While this whole mess was my idea in the first place, it'd be nothing without her. She's a genius and will never admit it.
It's also noteworthy that while my background is in writing and marketing, Rachel's is in writing and theater.. And I think it's a very theatrical experience, overall. Which is wonderful, especially now, when live theater is...nonexistent. Frickin' corona.
We'll blur out the "she's a genius" part to maintain your integrity.
Ha! Thank you..
It's corny to say, but we say it all the time: this wouldn't be possible without every single person. I'm the wizard of oz for most of this, the man behind the curtain pulling all the strings. But without Rachel to direct it, without our sound engineers and voice actors and of course Amelia who wrote the novella, we'd be nowhere.
It is very theatrical. I love that there are four cast members to tell the story. Having someone "do a voice" is much harder to get into than this.
Ugh, right? Especially in a sex scene!
Are y'all present when the actors are recording providing direction?
Like, I do not want somebody else pretending to be the person they're having sex with! It's weird!
Yes! We recorded the whole thing over the course of a month, and we were all crammed together in a little studio with Rachel directing our actors. That said, we're not sure it'll be the same for season two, given the pandemic. Which is a bummer! We'll lose that cast-like feeling. But we gotta do what we gotta do.
I've also been trying to reframe "settling" for something during the pandemic as "an opportunity for creativity".
What was it like directing the steamier dialogs?
Okay, love that optimism, I need to channel more of that.
Okay, so something that not a lot of people might know is that the voice of Ingrid is actually my sister.
So when I say it was awkward...it was like, really awkward.
!!!!!!!!
But when we did our first read through as a cast, I stopped everybody when we got to the first sexy part in chapter four and said 'Okay, so pause, everyone. This is going to be weird, right? Like, especially weird for Allison and I because she is my sister. But if we can't laugh at the word 'cock' we're never going to get through this. So buckle in.'
Just acknowledging it and letting everyone be like 'okay, this is a little awkward, but here goes nothing.' It helped a lot.
Allison and Travis, who play Ingrid and Noah, would also 'tap in' and 'tap out' of scenes by, like, high fiving from behind their microphones. Just to acknowledge that they were starting a scene, they were performing now, this isn't real. Anything we could do to create that space of performance to make it less awkward.
The fact that high fiving prior to a sex scene made it LESS awkward really illustrates how awkward it could have been.
HAHAHA
I'm cracking up.
I do love that, though. Those little tips and tricks. One of the things we talk about a lot with romance, is that when things get too heavy, you can close the book. It is interesting how that same kind of principle can be applied to performing a romance novel.
Were there any romance novels that you felt influenced this work in any aspect?
Not so much romance novels as Hallmark movies. We wanted to take the traditional Hallmark movie structure and turn it on its head. Instead of the big city woman learning to love her small town roots when she returns to middle America, it's the opposite. She hates where she grew up, and then where she grew up follows her to the big city.
Love that. Isabeau and I talked about that as she is a Hallmark Holiday fan. What did you want to keep from those movies and what did you want to shed? Or maybe just address.
I'm obsessed with Hallmark movies. My mom and I treat Hallmark Christmas movies as more important than the rest of the holiday season, to be honest.
But if I have to see one more cold city woman learn to love a small town because a Christmas tree farmer shows her how to slow down, I'm going to hurl.
hahahahahah
Actually, no I'm not. I'm going to keep watching those movies because i love them unabashedly.
But the city isn't a bad, evil place! You can find love in the city too! And you're allowed to be a powerful business woman who prioritizes your career. That doesn't make women unlikable. It makes them powerful.
Ingrid learns a level of respect for where she grew up in Indiana, but that wasn't nearly as important to us as Noah seeing that New York isn't the hellhole he thinks it is.
As someone who moved to a Big City from a small town I felt all of that so deeply. Noah and Ingrid really represent the two poles of feeling that I think each person carries with them when they go through that sort of transition.
Precisely!
It was nice to see them fall in love because it feels like a reconciliation of identity. (spoiler alert, but not really, because HEA, of course).
Precisely. Again, spoiler here that you can leave out, but it was super important to us that Ingrid didn't leave New York and move back to Indiana. That's what would happen in a Hallmark movie. But that's never what we would do. I would never leave Chicago and my career and my friends here for a man. Hell no. He can make it work with me.
The literal meeting halfway. *chefs kiss*
So that kind of gets into the very specific kind of audience you are writing for. Cue Bikini Kill. Cue L7.
RIOT GRRRRRLS.
YES
What does being a riot girl or that identity mean to you?
God I love Bikini Kill so much
That movement is so alive today, that punk rock feminist movement. But there's not enough of it in romance. Yes, there is romance that celebrates consent, and there's romance that shows strong womxn, but there are still way too many patriarchal values in the romance industry that we're trying to work against.
I think some of it is that romance writers like to work in a friendly version of feminism. But it isn't always friendly and palatable. Sometimes it's rough around the edges women. It's more voices for queer people and rape culture, which means straightforward consent every. damn. time.
We're just going to get into it more and more with future seasons, showing more queer people, gender nonconforming people, fat women who aren't apologetic or embarrassed about their fatness. It's powerful. I'm so excited.
I was really intrigued when I read that you wrote romance for riot girls, because I think romance does have a "friendly feminism" status quo. And I also think that riot girl ideas don't obviously coalesce with romance novel-try.
But as I was reading your novella, I remembered this interview with Liz Phair about when she was creating Guyville.
And the vibe in the Chicago alt-scene was very masculine, hence Guyville. And being punk rock was about being outrageous--like Black Market White Baby Dealer.
And then one day she realized that the fact she wanted a boyfriend was as shocking to everyone else in punk as that other stuff.
And she decided to write honestly about those desires.
Oh my god, YES!
Like, listen. I don't need a man. But I have one, and it's fun and fulfilling. Give me a love story that doesn't make me compromise my punk rock attitude. Show me a woman who doesn't compromise, doesn't make herself smaller.
Riot grrrls need love too
ALSO. We see Cleo dip her toe into non-monogamy. And the problem is that her partner sucks, not that non-monogamy sucks. That was super refreshing.
Yes!! That was really important for us to get across. Not that non-monogamy is wrong, but that he's doing it wrong.
She doesn't write non-monogamy off completely, she writes him off.
Because he doesn't actually have the enthusiastic consent of his partner to be doing that stuff. He's just disappearing into the club and blowing her off to fuck two other women in public without being safe about it.
It's important to be that we have more positive portrayals of nonmonogamy and of queer people in future seasons. But Bo just sucks.
Being the change you want to see in romance!
I don't want to take up too much more of your time, you are a person with ambitious projects. I do want to ask if there is anything you haven't had the chance to talk about in promoting "Ten Day Turnabout" that you really really want to?
The floor is yours, Becca.
Should you want that floor.
Can I dance on the floor?
I'm trying to think if we missed anything.
Yes, it is also available for tumbling.
Okay I'm taking an aerial class right now and there are people who can like do handstands and shit and I'm really jealous of them so maybe I'll be tumbling by season two
For now I'm just sore all the time so I do less tumbling and more writing. Which I should go do more of now. But thank you for chatting with me!
Yes, thank you for chatting with me!
Obsessed with the fact that there are other feminist romance readers in this city. Now if we could get a vaccine so I could meet you IRL.
Yes, soooommeedaaaay we'll have to meet up.
Really excited to see where this goes. Read the book already and still get excited for new episodes because it is like you've created two distinct, fresh objects to enjoy. Can't wait for Cleo's story, so please hop to it.