Collaborative Storytelling with Erik Saras and Dan Lovley – Write Now 145

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage, you need to pursue your passion, and write. Today, I have with me two wonderful guests, I suppose I should also say, “hi, I’m your host, Sarah Werner.” And now I can say, “hello, today, I have two wonderful guests.” I have with me today via virtual studio, Dan and Erik. So Dan Lovley and Erik Saras from Marsfall, which you may be familiar with. Marsfall launched around the same time that my own space-centered, space-placed? I don’t know, audio drama Girl In Space did years ago, and we have just been wonderful, good close friends ever since. So welcome to the show, Dan and Erik.

Dan Lovley:
Thank you.

Erik Saras:
Thank you. Yes.

Dan Lovley:
Thanks for having us.

Erik Saras:
It’s great to see our space buddy, again.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I know, space friends. Oh, I love it. Well, I want to just start things off by asking… I wrote Girl In Space in a vacuum. I wrote it, essentially, in space, all alone on a ship, a.k.a. my office by myself, but you guys took a collaborative approach to crafting your story. I would love to hear more about that process and how you grew your team and anything you can tell me about what it looked like putting that together.

Erik Saras:
Sure.

Dan Lovley:
Absolutely. Yeah. I feel like it’s taken a lot of different forms, but Erik and I have been working together, coming up with ideas, and collaborating, really, since early 2010s. Before that, it was just tossing ideas back and forth, but not really doing anything with them.

Erik Saras:
Not writing yet.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah, no, no, no. Just ideas that we should have written down and now, who knows? They’re in the aether, but when we started writing, myself, Erik, and our other partner, Sam Boase-Miller, we were all in different states. We had lived pretty close together in New York for some time, but then, when we decided, let’s make the show, I moved to L.A., and Sam moved to Michigan, and Erik moved to New Jersey. So we had to figure out a way to make it work.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Oh good.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
And yeah, we found that, essentially, we would have longer calls where we would brainstorm or come up with ideas and I would say, for a long time, our process was we would… Erik and I, specifically, would build an outline of what we wanted to write about and then, choose a section of it that we wanted to focus on. We’d both go away for half an hour, write, write, write, come back. Talk about what worked, talk about what didn’t, and then, sometimes, switch. So I’d be looking at what Erik wrote and he’d be looking at what I wrote and in many ways it was a little… I felt more vulnerable doing that than I ever have with writing because instantly I was getting feedback. Erik’s my best friend.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
That helps.

Dan Lovley:
So his feedback is always helpful, but also even if it’s mean, I know it’s got to, which I don’t think it is, but it’s coming from a good place, but that made a big difference having someone who I trusted and whose voice I’ve been working with, putting together collaborations, and silly projects, and stuff, really, since high school.

Erik Saras:
I definitely think that’s still the core of our process too and you nailed it, Dan, the trust that’s there and, I think, having known you since high school and, us being best friends, there was a lot of trust that feeling vulnerable, but going to your best friend. I think, it allowed us both to improve our writing a lot faster too, because it was like having two minds tackling the exact same problem. What to do with the blank page and coming from a musical background, for me, and Dan is really well versed in music too. A lot of our outlines, we actually formed by exchanging music with each other and making playlists about characters, which I know is a common thing that writers do, but we ended up kind of… Another story that isn’t Marsfall – We got the entire series outlined just through swapping classic rock and classical music and funk and chorus and all sorts of stuff back and back and forth and over the years. And so that’s the nice thing about having, I think, a writing partner that really gels with the same mindset as you, and then, we’ve had to figure out how to standardize things as we’ve started to work with other people. And Dan mentioned Sam, who’s one of our other partners. And then, Brian Goodheart is our sound engineer. And recently, he’s been way more active in a creative producer role and showrunner for our newest season. So, yeah, starting with Dan, I think, made it easier to branch out and add more people in, for sure.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Oh, I love this. I have, boy, just this branching creature of questions that I want to ask you, but I think I want to back up just a little bit. So just for our listeners who might not be familiar with a writer’s room and even terms like “producer” and “showrunner”, can you give us just a quick definition of these terms that we’ve been using?

Erik Saras:
Yeah. I think this is a great time to ask because I think I’ve really learned the difference this past six months while working on our newest season. So “writer” is the person who sits down, writes the actual script, will write the dialogue, set the scene, and if you have a co-writer like Dan and I, whether one of us puts in 30, another person puts in 70, whatever, it doesn’t matter. We share 50/50 of the credit. So that’s the job of the writers, the person that put the stuff on the page. “Producer” is a much higher level, big picture thing. They might have general ideas of where the story is going as a creative producer. Might also just be keeping the books balanced, checking the budget. “Producer” is a catchall term. And, for all four of us, myself, Dan, Sam, and Brian, as producers, we’ll do anything from the administration through heavy, heavy story design and catch anything small or humongous that falls between the cracks. And so, then, “showrunner”, I found, sits really in between the two. Dan and myself had called each other “showrunners” for the first couple seasons, but now, with season four, we’ve hired, at least, five additional writers that we’ve been working with and may even expand even more, but we’ve learned that with the showrunner, it’s that producer half that’s organizing the emails, setting up the meetings, running the meetings, having an agenda and then, also, that writer’s half that is doing the really hardcore outlining so that a writer can have a good place to start from when they make their script. And then, the final step of the showrunner is to collect everybody’s scripts, issue notes, and we do a second draft, and when we get that second draft, it’s out of the writer’s hands and then, the showrunners – we might, we don’t, but we might, if we had to rewrite every single word of that script, but we don’t get any of the credit, it’s all about the writer who keeps the credit. And I think that’s a really, really important thing that I’ve seen from some showrunners that I really admire that even one casually is like, “it’s amazing seeing an episode of my show and knowing that I wrote most of the script, even though I have no writing credit” and someone was like, “oh, that must feel so bad.” And they’re like, “I got paid, that’s the job,” so, but yeah, I really feel very fortunate to be a showrunner, but also, that Dan and I still get to write some episodes, as well because it’s nice to shut off all of the other parts and just get into the page and write.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Absolutely. Dan, did you have anything to add… Because that was so succinct and so good.

Erik Saras:
Thanks.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah. So I will add that I learned that I’m not super into show running that I really love just sticking as an actor and a writer and producer, but I think that’s something that we figured out over the past, yeah, six months, year or so, that, Erik’s really well positioned to take on that role. And, I think, we come from different mindsets. I approach writing from the perspective of an actor. And so, part of what I’m looking at is, is this going to sound realistic? Is this going to work effectively to convey this character’s progress in the story? Whereas, and I don’t want to speak for Erik, but I feel like, occasionally, you might be coming at it from an angle more, how is this going to, overall, affect the rest of this season and maybe next season? Whereas, I’m just looking at more of a… I guess, day to day.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
And you’re more big picture, I would say.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. We’re co-managers. He handles the day to day. I handle the big picture.

Dan Lovley:
Exactly.

Erik Saras:
We’re each doing half a job, but no, as we all know, in writing and podcasting or most jobs in the United States, your job is three jobs minimum.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
So, yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Well, and it’s funny, because I was just about to ask how does it feel to have your job so clear cut and parsed out and focused down to just one thing, but it sounds like no matter what you’re doing, you’re still doing all the things, in a way.

Erik Saras:
And especially with overlap of seasons and stuff. I don’t want to speak for you, Dan, but pivoting between doing producer notes on our season that’s about to air, while trying to write the upcoming season.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
You can say you’re switching the hat all you want, but it is a very hard balance to maintain.

Dan Lovley:
It’s a trip.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
It is. How do you feel like this has affected your creativity? And I want to ask about this, well, in a couple different senses, but first of all, in the sense that, for me, being a creator is a huge part of my identity and, for me, my projects are all my little creative babies. And I think what I want to ask and Erik, I know that you have a new baby, so maybe this is just not even the right metaphor…

Erik Saras:
Oh I know where this is going.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
But I want to ask how do you feel your sense of being a creator or creativity has changed in working together on projects?

Dan Lovley:
That’s a very good question.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
Erik, do you want, do you want to…

Erik Saras:
No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

Dan Lovley:
Well, for me, I feel as though this is something that has really helped me. Before working with Erik, and before writing collaboratively, the biggest issue that I think I have faced is being 100% unwilling to kill my darlings, that I have all these great little ideas that are perfect in my head, but don’t work at all in a script or maybe they don’t work the way I think. And now, in working with Erik, and Sam, and Brian, we’re able to identify that’s a cool idea. Makes no sense here. Save that for season four, save that for the next episode, when we’re going to focus on something different. So it helps. It’s really helped me focus. I don’t feel limited by that. I feel more like I’m able to cut the diamond a little bit more neatly, and make it shine a little bit better instead of having a giant rock that looks gross and dirty. Now, I have slightly smaller, but much, much more polished, beautiful gem.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Oh, that’s beautiful.

Erik Saras:
And going back and forth, when Dan was saying earlier, we pass the scripts back and forth and as we get deeper and deeper into versions of a draft or something, I might cut something that he wrote and then, I’ll get it back and then, he’ll have put it back in and I’ll be like, “Okay. So he really wants this. Does it work?” And then, I might cut it again. And then, if it comes back and it’s in there, I’m like, “All right, fine.” Or similar things like that will happen. And then, of course, then, we hand that off to Sam and immediately he’s like, “This is cut.” So you just have to get used to… “Oh, I see why you guys did this. It’s really cool, but what does it do for the story?” I’m like, I don’t know, man, there’s an explosion. Can we just have the explosion?

Dan Lovley:
Yeah. We really wanted that joke, but it’s just not funny enough.

Erik Saras:
Yeah, it’s just not.

Dan Lovley:
So we need to punch it up or we need to get rid of it.

Erik Saras:
And I think that is a critical part. What’s the phrase that’s like, writing is just rewriting. That’s what it all is.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I learned so much from you just now. And I’m curious too, so I used to build websites for people and do marketing consulting and stuff. And one big question I always had to ask was who ultimately is in charge of saying “no.’ And is everybody else okay with this? And it sounds like that’s something you’ve had to work through, as well, especially, gosh. And, especially, with something so close to your heart.

Erik Saras:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Taking a joke out, putting it back in, realizing it doesn’t work. Is that the executive producer, then, that’s in charge of that ultimate decision? Or do you find that you have discussions about it?

Erik Saras:
I think, probably, discussions because all four of us are equal stakeholders in our company. We’re all equal executive producers, but I don’t know, Dan, I don’t know how to answer that question. How do we end up with a script that we’re all like, “cool.” I don’t know how we…

Dan Lovley:
I feel like, sometimes, like you said, if I had a line that got cut, I might think, “Oh, I wonder why that got cut?” And I might throw it back in because I don’t see an immediate reason why it’s not in there, but if it comes back and it’s gone again, then, we might talk about, “Hey, was there something wrong with that? Or was it just we need to save time here” or whatever it is. But I found it’s pretty amicable. We don’t usually fight each other over the minutia.

Erik Saras:
We leave our ego at the door.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah. We have to.

Erik Saras:
You have to do that. And we always are like, what is the best thing for the story? And what is the most believable response or justification for a character or motivation? If you can’t answer those two things and something feels wrong, then, it needs to be adjusted or it needs to be removed. And now, actually, I do think, in the end, the person who really gets the final say is the four of us when we’re actually listening to the mixes and doing notes because that’s really the final step of, “You know what? I know we wrote this joke. I know we recorded this joke. I know the actress performed it well. It just ain’t funny. Snip the joke or, you know what? We actually need to rewrite this little bit of a scene because it’s just not working.”

Erik Saras:
So that’s the luxury of us being able to go start to finish and just yeah, over the years, just finding a way for the four of us to work together. Because I’m in awe of you, Sarah, the fact that you do everything the four of us do, as one person. And I have to ask you how do you get the final say? Which Sarah gets the final say on when you’re about to release the episode? I’m just really curious.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Thank you for asking that. Oh my gosh, it’s so funny. And you talk about the different Sarah’s because there are, and actually I had a beautiful conversation with Margarite Croft about this.

Erik Saras:
Oh yeah, she’s awesome.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Oh my gosh. I freaking love her. She was saying, as one creator, we are, at times, idea person, we are writer, we are editor, and we are marketer, and it’s yeah. Because you’re constantly putting on those different hats and I don’t always know that the right Sarah makes the right decision. And part of my creative journey has been making my peace, yes, with cutting my darlings, killing my darlings, cutting out things that I realize don’t work. But also realizing that I don’t always realize what works at the time that I’m doing it and it is hard to create in a vacuum. And so I’ve really had to open up as a creator and my beautiful husband and partner, Tim, I’ve shown him drafts. And he’s like, yep, no, this works, this doesn’t, this works, this doesn’t. And I think that you really can’t get away from that. I think that you really do need other, I don’t know, other eyes and ears on your work to help you make those decisions.

Erik Saras:
I think so. I think that gets to the best and it’s someone you trust.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yes. Yes. And that’s the thing.

Erik Saras:
I would hope you trust Tim, right?

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I do. Yeah. Yeah, that trust is beautiful. And I think that opens up another really interesting question. I know that, at least, you and Dan and maybe, Erik, you and some of the others have all been friends for a long time, but what about people who are just now thinking about starting a project and building a team and they maybe don’t have their childhood best friend to do this with them. Would you have any advice, I guess, for forming that team? And I know you recently hired some writers, so that might provide some insight, as well. And I also want to highlight before I let you speak again, because I’m very rude. You had mentioned checking your ego at the door and I would love to hear more elaboration on that, as well.

Dan Lovley:
So, in terms of working with other people, I think, when we decided we want to reach out to more writers because just simply we need… We don’t have enough time to do everything we want to do. We’re always trying to do more and more, and more, and…

Sarah Rhea Werner:
We’re all laughing.

Dan Lovley:
We made a decision that we really wanted to work with people who we knew, at least, in some capacity, we’ve been lucky enough to be able to go to podcast conventions and over the years, maybe a little bit less so with COVID, but to really get to know people in the community whose voices we respect and who we think have talent in writing. So that was our first idea. So I would say, to someone just starting out, don’t live on an island, don’t seclude yourself and meet other people because you might not realize your writing partner is just someone you just met. The other thing I would say is, do your research, listen to a lot of shows; if possible, read the transcripts because sometimes the transcript isn’t the same thing that you see on the show. I know for Marsfall, we always have an element of collaboration that we really love when our actors offer insight on their characters. Sometimes that the direction comes back. “No, it’s got to be this way because XYZ,” but other times we’re like, “this is brilliant. We didn’t think of that. Oh my God, you’ve got to keep this.” And I think that’s part of the thing. So I would say, follow the joy, and do the research, in terms of building your team.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. And I think once you have done all that and you start to work with people, I think, gauge how they best can bring your idea to life. So, I don’t talk to every actor the same way. Some of them, I really chew them out. No, I’m nice.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah. Right.

Erik Saras:
I’m nice to all them, of course, when I’m in director mode and Dan directs, as well. So, I think, he knows where I’m going with this, but different people learn different ways. Different people respond to different kinds of suggestions. And I think, unless you’re doing it totally solo, early Girl In Space style, where it’s one person doing everything, but even if you have one other actor and you’re just the writer producer still. Listen to that actor. I’m assuming you’re working with them because you like them and you’re working them and you’re building this new trust. But in the end, you got to have a core, clear vision for what you want because of what Dan said, yeah. A lot of our actors will improvise and lots of times it’s good, but other times it’s like, Nope, we really need you to say the thing.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
That’s such a good point.

Erik Saras:
Dan and I have been friends, Sam got hooked into our little, our friend duo became a trio. And then, we were five episodes into writing first season of Marsfall. And Sam was like, yeah, we’ll just record things on our iPhone. And it’ll be fine. It will all mix together. And then, we learned well that ain’t going to work. So we had to find an engineer. And when I met Brian, came as a recommendation from someone else. I went in and met him and Owen who does all of our sound effects. So I met the two of them together, I had a 45 minute interview meeting with them. And then, we were like, “yeah, let’s work together.” And I walked away and I get on the train to go back home in New York City. And I’m like, “I’ve never actually seen or heard anything that they’ve worked on. It just really vibes with these guys in this fancy studio that they worked at. And I hope their stuff sounds good.” And when I got above ground from the subway, I had an email from Brian that was like, “yeah. So, excited to work with you, but we realized we haven’t read any of your scripts.” Oops. So there is something, I think, where we knew in our heart of hearts, these are people I want to work with. And then, luckily, I was like, yeah, here’s the script. And then, an hour later I got an email from him being like, “this is great, so excited to do it.” And I went on their website and I was like, yeah, I listened to some of your commercial works. The sound design’s going to be great. So…

Sarah Rhea Werner:
That’s a relief.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
We didn’t do enough research or but there…

Dan Lovley:
It worked out.

Erik Saras:
I think there is something to say that skill is one thing, but even more important is knowing that you’re going to work together well. And that’s something you can’t really quantify.

Dan Lovley:
Potentially for years.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
Right.

Dan Lovley:
So you don’t want to get sick of them.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. And even if you are just doing a three month limited series or something. Like six episodes, or anthology style with all sorts of different actors, you want to just make sure that, that time is fun and there’s comfort and trust there because then, it’s going to be so much more efficient and you’re going to get performances and results there. You can’t get it any other way.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Absolutely.

Dan Lovley:
Just to speak to checking your ego at the door.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
This is something that’s not difficult for me at all. As an actor, rejection is just a very natural part of the process so that’s really something I’ve been dealing with since a teenager. And sometimes I get a part and it’s great. And the vast majority of the time, the most of the things either I’m not right for, or maybe I’m too tall or whatever it is, but I just have maybe become a bit used to it. But I think anyone working in a creative field has to be okay with the fact that, to a certain extent, there is some judgment and you have to be okay with the fact that people are going to judge what you have to offer. It’s not always the easiest thing and it’s not always the most comfortable thing.

Erik Saras:
That’s why I snort laughed when Dan said it was easier for him because it ain’t easy for me and I’ve learned to- it’s a skill, I cultivated it. And now it’s a lot easier.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
That’s a good point though too, is that you have to learn a lot of these things as you go.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
I feel like we still are. We’ve been doing this since, what, 2017. We started making Marsfall and…

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
That seems like so long ago now. But I feel like we’ve learned an incredible amount that we never took classes on and we never… We just learned by fumbling through it and figuring it out ourselves, what worked, what really didn’t.

Erik Saras:
And we went to grad school on our own kind of, and it was way cheaper and way more rewarding.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Well, same. Everything I’ve done, I feel like, has been just me experimenting along the way. For both of you or each of you, what has been the biggest surprise that you’ve taken away from this process?

Dan Lovley:
Whew. That’s a good question.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
If there’s just one, there’s 10,000.

Erik Saras:
I know. It’s like you want a big one or do you want a little one? You said, what was the big surprise, right?

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I guess, yeah, we’ll go, let’s go with big.

Erik Saras:
I think, as we, for us, as we’ve grown and have been looking to the future, what’s beyond Marsfall, especially a lot in the recent days because we are trying to wind down the story, but as we’ve expanded, one of the reasons we got that writer’s room is because we had joined up with a network, the Curious Cast Network and they wanted more episodes. So that’s why we had to… In fact, they wanted a whole another season, than we originally planned. We were going to be like six episodes and done with the final season of Marsfall.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
But they’re like, no, we want two seasons at 15 a pop.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Okay.

Erik Saras:
We’re like, okay, this is like how,

Dan Lovley:
So to go from six to 30, I guess.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
And we realized, I think, we bit off way more than we could chew and, but it’s been a really big experiment and so I guess the point of that is the surprise was that, as you get bigger, as more people get involved, you’re going to be thrown these really wild curve balls that are going to push you to have to learn another skill. And so I think that can be surprising and can come with a lot of resistance, but if you’re checking your ego and if you’re hopefully given enough time and space to not develop a health condition while trying to learn the new skill. Yeah. I think you can handle any big surprises like that. I don’t know, Dan, if you have like a specific example.

Dan Lovley:
Well going along with that, I think, for me, the biggest surprise was that when we started, I considered myself an actor. I didn’t write, I didn’t have anything to do with writing the first four episodes of Marsfall. And then, I decided, we talked about it and to take a little bit off your plate, Erik. Yeah, I wanted to…

Erik Saras:
I begged him. I was like write with me, write with me. Please.

Dan Lovley:
Well, I had written, I’d written things since high school and college, but I’d never done anything with them because I was so afraid that someone would say it’s garbage or not love it the same way I do.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
And I found that I had the ability to write and to be okay with it being out there in the public and that feeling also translated a little bit to directing. That was something that I was very nervous doing just because I feel like, I don’t know, I have a lot of acting training, but I feel as though that’s very me focused, it’s all about my character and figuring it out, how he fits into the greater story and who am I to say, I understand every single character in a story, as well as the actor. So that was hard for me to take on that role in certain places because it felt, I don’t know, I’ve been hearing a lot about imposter syndrome lately, but I just, I felt like that was something that, “I’m not a director, I’m just an actor and kind of a writer,” but that translated to, okay, I’m doing this, I’m writing. And now directing more often makes me a writer, makes me a director. I feel a lot more comfortable wearing those hats, whereas, before it was terrifying and it’s very liberating now.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
What helped ease you into that? Was it just the act of just moving forward with it and just jumping in and doing it?

Dan Lovley:
I think a little bit. Yeah. I’ve always loved writing and it was just, yeah, it was a bit of a leap that I had to take, but personally I’ve always enjoyed doing something that I’m a little bit afraid of. You know that feeling you get when you write an email to like a boss or someone and it’s long and you’ve read it three times. I just, I don’t know, maybe it’s masochistic of me. I really love just that sense of clicking send and it’s out of my hands. I can’t do anything about it. Now it’s in the universe. I guess, because I feel like leading up to that, it’s just so like, “ugh, is it good enough? I don’t know.” And then just being okay with whatever it is and putting it out there, I’ve found that people are so kind and friendly and forgiving and that it’s much less intimidating than I thought it was, I guess.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Wow. Wow.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. I think that’s… I really like that too, Dan, at the very end, you said, because I think to remind, circling back to any new people entering this, the reviews you’ll get from the loudest people are the people that hate your stuff. And I catch this with myself. I don’t write bad reviews to people, but there are so many things that I like that I don’t take the time to write a review being like I like it. And so you always have to keep in mind that the majority of people will be neutral to indifferent toward your work, than a lot of people are not going to like it. And then, 10% are going to be really into it. But you’re doing it for yourself in your core. And the reward that you’re giving to the people like it and the indifference and heck- I would rather have a bigger chunk of people that didn’t like it that were indifferent to it. I’m like, “good. It made you feel something.”

Dan Lovley:
Someone felt something based on your art. They listened, they don’t like it, but okay. Thats their prerogative.

Erik Saras:
And I can say, “your critique is invalid.” So…

Dan Lovley:
When you’re producing art for free, it’s like, you…

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
Can leave some criticism at the door. You can criticize all you want, but I’m making this for you. You don’t have to pay anything. So…

Erik Saras:
Yeah. And I know I’ve even texted you, Sarah, I think, a couple years ago when I got a review that was really negative to the writing, specifically. And it was the first one that cut through. And it taught me that you can’t put up walls and put up a shell because it will break at some point. And that break really hurts. So I think it’s just like, you’re rolling with it, like the tide, it’s just the waves. And sometimes you ride the wave, sometimes the wave smashes you in the sand, but still the ocean, it’s a beautiful process to be giving to something and having feedback come in and just knowing that it’s out there shared with people.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah. I’m thinking back to all of the one star reviews and feeling like the ocean wave has just smashed your face into the sand- But at the same time you’re an incredibly good and valid and wonderful writer and creator and nobody gets to take that away from you.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
And you’re learning, you’re all constantly learning.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
It’s so easy to critique, but to produce, to make something, it’s so much harder and it takes so much more vulnerability and courage that I find myself very often, if I’m going to critique a movie or a show, I want to look not just was I entertained from start to finish, but how much work went into this and is it something that took a lot of effort to make? And if so, that’s valid. It might not be my favorite thing, but maybe I don’t need to be rude about it on the Internet also.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. And even with a bad movie, I might be like, “shame on you, writer or director,” but at the end, I’m like at least a bunch of people got paid to make this.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
There you go.

Erik Saras:
So they’re like, yeah. I’m like hooray for the crew workers and the editors and hopefully all getting their union rights.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I hope so.

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
My gosh, I have 10 billion questions to ask you, but I also want and need to be respectful of your time.

Erik Saras:
Sure.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Okay. But I do want to touch on a few more things.

Erik Saras:
Sure.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I know that earlier when I asked “oh, who has the final say on what works and what doesn’t,” you talked a little bit about your overall vision for the show. Where does that vision come from and how do you stay true to it? Do you have it documented somewhere? And what does that look like for you?

Erik Saras:
Yeah, it’s quite a process. We use Google Drive and I think Google Drive is as good as you can use it. So we’ve just found a way to use it really well. It started off, it was my nugget of an idea. And then, Sam and I were riffing on it during our lunch breaks at our hellish office job. And by “hellish,” I just mean really boring, but…

Sarah Rhea Werner:
One kind of hell. Yeah.

Erik Saras:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then, we roped Dan in pretty quick. And now that Brian has gotten more involved on the story level with the latest season, that documentation is critical to… We’re texting all the time, emailing, leaving comments on docs and stuff, but I think, at this stage, where we’re going with the story, we all get the freedom to throw out ideas and make a case for why something is important and that might not gel with one or two or even all three of other people. But I think it’s about making your case. And I think if any, one of us have really thought it through, and were passionate about it, that the rest of us are going to roll with it until it works or it doesn’t work. And it’s just like the killing the darlings thing a little big end too. Even the ideas at the very, very basic level of just shouting stuff into the void and seeing, what sticks on the page, you have to bring that mentality too when working with a group of people because going back to earlier, I’m a fairly bossy person. So I like to direct. And I think because of that, I have skills that help me be a showrunner, but I don’t boss the three of them around. We have to really be equal to each other and just always ask that question “is it good for the story? Is it good for the characters?” And hopefully someone will write it down.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah. I’d say like any new, any new projects, things we’ve been working on outside of Marsfall and really new seasons and episodes of Marsfall in later days, we’ve really tried to look at much bigger overarching questions; things that have to do with how can this apply to humanity at large? Is this something that is really only specific to this one character in this one show or is this a question that can be applied to any audience member listening? And it’s not always going to be everybody, but I think there are a lot of… I’m a teacher. So this is what I would call an “essential question.”

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Ooh.

Dan Lovley:
Where it’s a rhetorical question that’s not necessarily going to be answered, but it’s the overall thing for this unit. For the next three months, we’re focusing on answering this question by doing a thousand things. So yeah, it’s more metaphysical and more big picture, but if we can’t answer that, then, we need to go back and figure out, okay, then, what are we really trying to say? Is it just we think it’s fun to be on Mars. Okay. That’s cool. But that doesn’t really necessarily…

Erik Saras:
What’s the “why?”

Dan Lovley:
Yeah. Why are we here? What are we really trying to say about the future of people and interactions with people and space and A.I. And all sorts of stuff?

Erik Saras:
And tapping into your core beliefs, whether you’re an individual or a team of four or more. I think if it’s not gelling with your core beliefs, you’re not going to be able to write something and fully create it.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah. The passion won’t be there.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. You need that passion.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I agree with that. And I wanted to ask some questions about, oh, so when a network comes in and says, “hey, we need you to do this thing that you didn’t plan on,” but I also don’t want you to throw the network under the bus. And so I don’t know if there’s a gentle way you can talk about what that felt like and what that is like.

Erik Saras:
Yeah, we would never throw anyone… They’re not worthy if being thrown under the bus. I think when you start working with someone, that’s a network, we also have a manager that we’ve started working with the last year and a half, basically, someone from the outside, that’s more “the business.” I think you go in with expectations and you just have to be flexible with expectations. We’ve had to work with our network about adjusting some deadlines to get them the quantity they want at the quality we wanted.

Dan Lovley:
Yeah.

Erik Saras:
And they 100% were like, “yeah, guys, let’s delay the release a little bit, if you want to do these rewrites, we respect the art.” And that hit me hard. I expect my actors, our writers, obviously, my producing partners to say that, but for the network to do that, the team over at Curious Cast has just been really accommodating.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love that.

Erik Saras:
Yeah. And for us, the four of us, at Marsfall, our long term goals, it’s not just to make Marsfall. We want to make other things and hopefully 2022 is going to be a big year from us making that dream a bigger reality. And I think to do that, we are going to have to learn how to play nice with the money that’s out there, with the distribution.

Dan Lovley:
Without compromising our values.

Erik Saras:
Without compromising values. Yeah. And this is by no means to say that someone starting out needs a network or needs major financial backing or needs a manager. We didn’t have any of that. We’re trying out different things. And this is what we’re committing to because in the end we always are deciding our company vision is we’re going to gamble on the four of us. No one else. So what’s the best gamble for us because the one thing we know is that we can make good art. Not to sound arrogant.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
No, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. And I almost want that to be our closing sentiment here.

Erik Saras:
Cool.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
My gosh. Okay. I want to ask one final question.

Erik Saras:
Sure.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Out of my list that has continued to grow during our conversation, but you mentioned, “hey, if you’re just getting started, you maybe don’t need a manager and all of that.” What would you say getting started in telling a collaborative story? What is it that you just need at the very most basic?

Dan Lovley:
Definitely a vision. And if you’re working with other people, a shared vision about what you want to say. If you have a message, what is that message specifically? Not, “I want to talk about friendship.” Okay, but, “what are you saying about friendship?”

Erik Saras:
Yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Yeah.

Dan Lovley:
Again, this is me being a teacher. It’s not a theme statement. It’s just a word. You need a whole sentence, but really what are you saying, if you ha… You have a voice, so use it to say something that you believe in and I think in creating a show, if it’s a podcast with, I don’t know, 10 episodes per season, you have that much time to be able to say X about what you believe and if you have another season great, but it’s really important to know what you want to communicate with the world. And I think it’s important to realize that you might be saying something similar to someone else, but that doesn’t mean what you have to say is invalid. It’s your perspective. So you’re bringing a new light on it, unless you’re literally doing a shot for shot or remake or take for take remake in audio. And even then that’s still got your own vision to it. So I think it’s so important to know what you want to say. And if you’re not sure what you want to say, figure it out, have brainstorming sessions, talk to people and journal, write down things that you feel. And if that changes, note that and see where it’s going. If you can find a trajectory that can help to give you a better idea of what you want your show to be.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love it.

Erik Saras:
And like very broad terms, I say as half joke, but there’s only a handful of stories. So I think a lot of people too can be intimidated. Oh, I’m just doing the same story. Well, it’s okay. If you’re listening to this right now and you’re like, I have this great story about these colonists that go to Mars and they have an A.I., But Marsfall did it, I guarantee you on my bookshelf, your bookshelf, your Netflix queue, my Netflix queue. We have the same things in there. We’re drawing from the same resources. But what do you want to tell about those colonists and their machine? And that’s what gets at the core of it. The structure of following story beats and making cool characters, that’s all templates, but when you bring your unique flavor to it and commit to that, that’s going to make it special for you. And for a lot of your listeners.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
I love it. Both of you: Erik, Dan, thank you for being here. Every time I talk with you, I’m just so happy. I learn a little bit, I laugh a little bit. It’s just such a good time. And I just appreciate both of you so much. Where can people find you online? Where can they listen to your shows and just see more of what you’re up to?

Erik Saras:
Sure. I’d say the one stop shop is marsfallpodcast.com. You can find all of our episodes there. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram @Marsfallpod, and you can find Marsfall – we have three seasons out right now, and a couple miniseries all on our main RSS feed – So you can find us by looking up “Marsfall.” And we do have a Patreon that has some behind the scenes content interviews. A lot of music talks from Sam. You could also get the entire music soundtrack. I can’t believe we didn’t even get into music because music and writing… But yeah, you can also find Marsfall on Patreon by going to Patreon and searching for “Marsfall.”

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Perfect.

Erik Saras:
Did I say “Marsfall” enough times?

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Marsfall, Marsfall, Marsfall.

Erik Saras:
Thank you.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
No, I just want to thank you both for being here, for sharing your knowledge and your expertise. One of my favorite things is when other creators are so generous with what they’ve learned and I know it takes a lot. It takes a lot of experimentation and risk taking and just personal time and energy to move forward and to create. And you have done that so beautifully. And I really appreciate you sharing that with our listeners today. So links to Marsfall, Marsfall, Marsfall will be in the show notes for today’s episodes. So if you want to find those show notes they’re out at sarahwerner.com and then just go on to this latest episode. And gosh, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. Thank you for being here. And I’m just delighted that we got to talk with you today.

Dan Lovley:
Thank you so much. This is a blast.

Erik Saras:
Yeah, it really was. So good to see you, Sarah.

Sarah Rhea Werner:
Well, you too.