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Welcome to easystoriesinenglish, the podcast that will take your English from okay to good
and from good to great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today's episode is something
a bit different. Rather than doing an episode by myself, I sat down to work with Alistair Budge
from the English Learning For Curious Minds podcast. You might remember Alistair from when I
interviewed him before, or when I voiced an episode of pioneers of the continuum, a short series
that Alistair produced. In this episode, Alistair and I workshop a story together. We start with
the concept and brainstorm ideas to create a more interesting story. After our conversation,
Alistair went away to write the story, we edited it together, and next week you'll be able to hear
the recorded version. As part of this project, Alistair also interviewed me for English Learning
For Curious Minds. We talked about my creative process and writing in general, and it's a really
fun conversation. You can watch the conversation on the Leonardo English YouTube channel. This project
allowed me to play a very different role than I'm used to. I'm usually the one in full creative
control, so it was exciting to act as more of an editor. You can read the transcript for this
episode at Easy Stories in English.com slash together, or you can watch the video version on YouTube.
Since it's quite a conversational episode and we talk faster than we do in our usual shows,
I do recommend either reading the transcript or watching the video with subtitles. By the way,
I have another live stream coming up this Friday at 6pm UK time. I had so much fun last time,
and I think you'll enjoy it too. It's a great place to ask questions and do some live story
creation with me. You can find the stream on the Easy Stories in English YouTube channel,
or you can always go to Easy Stories in English.com slash stream to find out when the next live stream is.
So without further ado, here's my conversation with Alistair.
Hi Alistair. Hi Ariel. Are you ready to do a bit of story workshopping together?
Never ready, but let's let's start. Okay, so we talked a bit off camera before we started
recording this. I'm going very broadly for the idea of someone who moved to London from a European
country and they experienced some culture shock, they experienced some difficulties. So I guess
first of all, are we naming this country or are we going to make it ambiguous? Oh, good question.
I mean, there are some universal peculiarities with the UK and London, some things that I'm sure
people from any country would find unusual. I would imagine for the listener to really believe
in the characters, probably easiest if we name where they're from. Because we could always do the
thing where it's like, I come from Hell, Galandia, and we make up a fictional country that we can,
you know, be like, oh, well, in my country, we do this and we just make it very silly.
Yeah, I guess it depends how fantastical we want to make the story. What do you think?
Well, I mean, my preference is always to go like weird and funny. I mean, I also think it's quite
like a common trope or theme in these kind of stories, right? The made up foreign country that
like sounds plausibly European, but isn't real. But also, I think it could also be more interesting
if we do it realistically. I suppose we would have to choose a culture that we both feel pretty
comfortable representing. So I like the fantastical idea. I think if we're choosing a culture that
I have a good enough understanding of that I kind of feel like I know what some of the main
peculiarities would be. For me, that would be probably France or Italy. There's one of those
countries that you feel like you know well enough that you would be confident writing about
how it might be surprising for a French or Italian person to arrive in London.
For me, probably more France than Italy, but also, you know, I Germany, I've quite a few German
relatives, Spain, I guess as well. So sorry, just to clarify, do you have a preference for the
fictional, the real or do you want to do a fictional country and take like cultural aspects from a
real country? Let's make it more fun to do fiction, a completely fictional fantastical, shall we?
And yeah, maybe this this country can have some elements of all those different cultures perhaps.
Yeah, I would say normally my impulse, my first thought would be to go really far the other
direction, like choose something so different, right? Like it's completely made up like,
oh in my country we greet people by like hitting them on the head or something, you know,
make it completely weird. But that can sometimes be offensive. The reason I say that is because I,
when I'm doing stories for beginners with the comedy, you have to do quite like obvious comedy.
So I tend to like really exaggerate. I'm not saying we have to do that. I'm just that's kind of
what I normally go for. So I'll leave the decision to you ultimately. Well, let me come back to you
with an idea then. As you were saying that, I was thinking about some way that we both know,
I would imagine, nothing about at least there are no people who live there. If there was someone
who came from Antarctica, I love that. A small community had been discovered right at the South Pole,
no one would ever found out about it before. And one person that's been sent as a representative of
that place to London, perhaps we're telling, we're telling their story of the strangeness of this city.
Is the South Pole, does it have penguins or is that just the North Pole or is the other way?
I always forget. In fact, there's also penguins in Africa, I believe, because I went to
I went to a zoo just outside Oxford and there were penguins there. I thought that's a slightly
strange place. And the person who was giving a talk was talking about all these other places that
penguins existed, including I think parts of Africa. If I've got that wrong, it's so stupid.
But yeah, penguins generally at the South Pole. Okay. Polar bears are the North Pole.
But I think Antarctica is a great choice because we're not going to offend anyone. And then also,
we can have this silly cultural stuff like, oh, well, we live with penguins or whatever,
go a bit silly. We can also, it could be another fun element to add to it. Antarctica is claimed by
something like 12 different countries, I think. So maybe you have a fun thing where you're right at
the South Pole and I don't know this person's recounting how their brother and sister are from
Chile, but they're from Argentina and they've got assistives from Norway or something like that
because they're only a kilometre away from each other. Maybe that's an unnecessary detail to
add. I think these are all really good ideas to brainstorm. I think we can kind of pick from them
as we're going through. Yeah. And actually, what we just went through is a perfect example of
with writing often, not always, but often your first idea is not your best idea, right? Like,
I think often when people have like the first idea for a story, we play it safe. And then you can
always stretch it to the limit. And then if there's a problem, you find an interesting solution. I'm
really, really excited with this idea. Okay. They're coming to the UK. So I think maybe let's brainstorm,
like what is weird about London and the UK for foreigners? I can think of lots of things. Yeah.
I'm trying to think of the kind of two, the two kind of levels of witness we can have because we can
either have, you know, either focus on the fact that anything about any kind of non-antarctican
civilization will be strange for someone who has only ever experienced life in Antarctica,
which presumably is very odd. Or whether we focus on the fact that there are unique things about
London and about British culture that are strange. I think if we're making it completely fantastical
and funny and almost like this person has come from another planet and has no idea about what life
is like in a kind of a developed city, then you could always almost have more fun just talking about
how completely different it is from the cold of Antarctica. And perhaps we can add kind of secondary
level is some of the more British cultural elements that might be weird as well. When you said that,
I thought like, oh, can we invert this? Maybe they're like staying with a family or, you know,
they have some people who are showing them around. And these people have thought like, oh, I'm going
to show them all of the unique British things. Like we're going to eat pickled onions and we're going
to go more astancing. They're very weird British things. But maybe this Antarctica can seize them
and it's like, no, that's normal, you know, like, we have that in my country. But then it's the
normal things. Like you ride on buses? Like what's a bus that they find really weird? So it's like
inverting the expectation. And maybe you could also have, I don't know, you could make fun of the
fact that people in the UK go out wearing very little clothes. There's a lot of, especially love,
Europeans think that when it's cold, people in the UK just don't wear enough clothes. There's
people going out on their nights out wearing just t-shirts or women wearing just little skirts.
Clearly, this person from Antarctica, I imagine we'd think that's very strange because they go out
wearing, I don't know, huge furs. Or maybe they also do that. Maybe they also go out
wearing nothing and they enjoy the cold. When you were saying that, I got a sudden image of like,
someone going clubbing where they're just wearing a big black puffer jacket and maybe they look
like a penguin. So maybe this person like sees some like girls outside of clubs and is like,
oh, they're penguins. Yeah, yeah, they're so stupid. And you could also have, I think it's in,
yeah, in Mary Poppins. We're Mary Poppins and it's called Bert, the chimney sweet. They go,
they hop into the magical land and they go to the fairground and he puts his trousers down to his
ankles and pretends to be a penguin. Can you picture that? They, like he's waddling around,
yeah, and they're following the penguins. Maybe there's something similar we could do with that.
Or this person could find themselves as some kind of formal event and see lots of British people
wearing coattails and think they look a bit like penguins. Maybe in their culture, the penguins
are either like very respected figures like the penguins like royalty or maybe they're like the
enemies of the people. But every time they see a penguin, they're like, I have to fight them.
And of course, you have penguins. You have emperor penguins. Do you have king penguins as well?
I think they're their king penguins too. But you have various different degrees of penguins.
Perhaps this person could find it funny that, I know, you've got a king. We have, you know,
we have tens of thousands of kings that are penguins. So this is what's so fun about brainstorming
a story with other people is like you just get so many ideas. I feel like especially if the
audience for this story will be mainly non-British people, then we have to poke fun at the
royal family because it isn't a very unusual thing. Imagine someone coming from the other side
of the world and being told that there's this one family where the most senior person wears a
crown and they get carried around on a gold chair. I mean, that is just strange. So that's a easy
subject to poke fun at. Is our Antarctica going to meet the king, do you think? I'm not a royalist.
I, any means, so I would probably give a very offensive portrayal of the king.
If that's comfortable for you. Yeah, that's completely comfortable for me. That could tie in
nicely if we're thinking, if we want to include the sort of the meeting of a person in like penguin
tails. I imagine the king's butler or servants on the way might be dressed in that kind of way.
Maybe we could also talk about fish and chips because I imagine someone living it in the Antarctic
eats lots of fish, but probably doesn't, probably has never had mushy peas and mushy peas might look
a little bit like I don't know penguin poo or something like that. So right, well maybe they see
all these vegetables and they're like, oh green food, it must be rotten and they weren't eaten
either or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah, perhaps there's something to do with
the seasons and when it's night and day, it's clearly in Antarctica, it's unusual. Or maybe that's
just a distraction that doesn't really have anything to do with the UK. Well, it raises a good question
of the time frame of the story because I'm guessing it's going to, it's not going to be over a whole
year. I mean, if it happens in summer, they could be like, oh my god, it's so hot. Like why is this
country so hot? I'm melting all the time. Yeah, I imagine we could do, maybe this is even just
a few days of this person. If we want to really convey these kind of experiences this person
goes through in detail, I guess we have to have it take place in a week or something like that a
few days. So I can think of a few ways to structure it. One is that they move because they're like,
oh, you know, the the economy, the Antarctica economy has really taken a downturn recently.
I guess maybe salmon prices have shut up or something. We can come up with some joke for why
the economy is doing so badly. So they've moved to the UK for economic opportunities, but they find
the culture so weird that they're like, I'm going home. Or another option is they've been sent
as some kind of ambassador to Antarctica. And they're there to like open diplomatic relationships with
the British crown and the parliament. Maybe they start off with a huge level of respect and then
after their visit, they come home. But like their week, we can send in the penguin armies and
destroy them any day now. Yeah, I like the kind of Antarctica economy is in trouble, but I guess
that might be difficult to reconcile with the fact that this person didn't know about the
outside world before. Maybe I don't know if I'm getting too caught up in this, but this idea of
Antarctica being artificially divided into all these different countries. The UK, I believe,
still claims part of it. So maybe this person could find out somehow that they are actually a
British citizen and that they have a right to claim a British passport. Therefore they hear
this person wants to free Antarctica from the British and they've come to try and speak to the king.
Oh, I like that. Yeah. It's kind of like a poker hunter story.
And is it this person that we're thinking this person is a human?
Yeah. So I was just thinking as you were saying, like, if this society has been hidden, I guess
it could be like the indigenous societies in the Amazon where they've just remained separate from
like, I guess, our society. Or it could be something really silly, like, there's a secret
underground world that the penguins have built. And every now and then the researchers who comes
the Antarctica, they drop a baby down a glacier and the baby gets raised by penguins. So they know
they have these parents who were these glaciologists from the UK who came to Antarctica and they're
going to find their parents. Yeah. Maybe I'm trying to think if there's a way we can include like
the expedition to the South Pole where there was the Norwegians,
Ahnson, who won and the Brits who didn't make it there and supposedly died. But I think they
haven't one of the bodies hasn't been found or something. So clearly you know a lot about the
actual real history, which I don't, which is cool. So I think it makes sense to follow the history
in some degree because you're interested in that. But I think that makes it very high concept,
right? Like it's kind of a complex concept. So for the jokes to work, you have to kind of set that
foundation of knowledge because otherwise people are going to, it's not going to be very funny because
it's like most people don't know the stuff. But I think the only problem with that is that could
make the story quite complicated and that's going to make it longer and kind of more challenging
on a language level. You're right. Okay. So maybe we strip back that stuff and kind of lean more
into the fantastical element so that it's more universal. Well, the thing is really, I mean,
I'm torn because it's clear, it's really exciting because I, I'm really lazy when it comes to
research. So it's really nice to have someone who like knows the stuff, but I'm like, oh, it could,
could potentially make a really interesting story and give it some kind of depth in terms of
themes and stuff. But then then it's kind of ballooning in complexity. Yeah. I think for this scope,
maybe we keep it smaller. Well, maybe you'll be inspired to write a novel afterwards.
Okay. Excellent. So the things that we know, we know for sure that we want to include,
but somewhere from Antarctica, who is a human, we figure out exactly why, why they're there and
how cut off they are from outside worlds afterwards. They're coming to the UK that there is some
kind of meeting with the king. We probably want to have a couple more cultural strange things.
Yeah. Something around food. I think the idea about the vegetables is a really nice inclusion.
People know that fish and chips is a food that is associated with, yeah, with Britain. I think
that seems to surprise lots of foreigners non-stop, not just Europeans coming to the UK, is flat
beer, like ale with no, with no fizz. So maybe you could have some kind of, some joke that this person
goes to a pub and orders a pint of ale. It kind of spits it out onto the floor because they don't
think it's fizzy. Yeah. And they could be like, oh, well, in Antarctica, we make alcohol from like
rossian fish heads. So like it did here. It just needs a bit of a tangy taste, you know? Yeah.
Should we find something that is just completely the same that might seem very strange to a European,
let's say, or to a non-Britz about the UK, but actually is completely the same in Antarctica.
I'm trying to think of what that would be. I mean, it could always be like norms around
politeness, right? Because they know a lot of people be like, oh, British people are so polite,
or complaining about the weather. Yeah. And they're like, yeah, so annoying when you're like
wrestling with a polar bear, and then a blizzard happens and you get trapped in the wilderness.
Oh, happens to me all the time. Yeah. Do we want to include any kind of language element? Or like,
are we just assuming that this person from Antarctica speaks English perfectly? We could be really,
really cheesy. And like on the flight, he's like listening to our podcasts. But I think that's
a bit too. I feel like it goes in the category of just far too self-promotional. Maybe some of the
penguins visit from Africa that speak very good English, and they teach the other penguins,
and this person English, I don't know. Yeah. I don't want to, as you say, don't want to try and
make this too complicated and require too much background knowledge. But maybe you could say
something like, oh, no, there was an Englishman. Some Englishman who came here in 1917, and they
left a phrase book. And so for someone who does know the story, then I, oh, wow, that's this people.
And if you don't know the story, it doesn't matter because, yeah, because that's okay. But if that
happened, I think they would have to speak like a really old-fashioned English, they would be like,
how do you do all of that? Yeah, yeah, very good. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Which might be difficult
for learners if they're like less youth to that old-fashioned English. But if we explain it,
I think it could be quite funny. Yeah. Maybe you could have it. If we're also thinking that after
this workshop, we'll go in and write the story, and then we'll also perform it. Maybe one of us
is the host that other person is the character. Doing that could be a fun structure. So there's
kind of two characters, I guess. There's the British character, and there's the Antarctic character.
Or were you thinking that it's a whole story where we say, like, oh, and then this person did this
rather than telling it in the first person? I generally avoid first person narratives at lower
levels because it tends to be more complex language because it's more like introspection and personal
thoughts. I guess we haven't decided language level. I'd also say in this, if you're doing like this
kind of like city comedy, third person works really well because it's just like a typical format.
So the way we could always do it is if we did it in third person, one of us narrates the story,
and then we do different voices for different characters. Okay. That's good. But actually,
that's a good question of, do you want to aim at a particular language level? Or what you feel like?
I don't know. I know when I did my interview of you, you said you always have a level in mind
when writing it. I think it's the hardest bit for me seems to be kind of coming up with the idea
for the story and working out what should happen rather than the level. I'm happy to go for whatever
level you feel. I'm not sure if already when kind of workshopping these ideas, you're thinking
that's great for a beginner level or an intermediate or advanced or... I would say probably it's
going to be like intermediate above just in terms of the complexity of the story and like some of the
vocabulary we're bringing in. Okay. But yeah, because otherwise if you're doing beginner, you might
even have to explain like what penguin means and then that's just explaining so many words.
Okay. Yeah. So I think that probably works kind of intermediate to advanced. So if we did first
person, I mean it could work if we're doing this slightly higher level. First person comedy tends to
be funny because there's a mismatch between how the characters see themselves and how the audience
sees them like dramatic irony. I mean, I feel like that's not quite the kind of humor we're going
for here. Yeah. No. I see what you mean. Okay. It sounds good. So I'm just looking at my notes. We
need to finalize the reason that they are going to meet the king. I think maybe there does need to
be some kind of diplomatic or official reason that they are going to try and meet the king. Maybe it's
to maybe it's to free... I don't know, maybe it's to return the phrase book. Maybe it's to go and do
something that they had someone's been waiting a hundred years to do. Maybe they've found out
there are penguins trapped in London Zoo and they want them to free the penguins. Yeah. That's
probably... That's a good one especially at a kind of intermediate level I think because that's
something that anyone can understand. Which idea interests you the most? You know, I like this
idea that we're kind of involving the penguins a lot because people clearly know penguins
equals Antarctica. People know what a penguin is. Penguins look quite funny. I think you can make
the nice parallel between kind of emperor penguin. Oh, we have we have emperor penguins that we
worship. You clearly have a king that you worship and it's nice to see that there's the man who serves
him also dresses up as a penguin. So he goes to see the king. He wants to talk to the king about
this penguin who's trapped at London Zoo trying to bring him back and maybe the king insists that
while he's here in London, he spends I don't know 24 hours or something understanding everything
that the country has to offer. So he's taken around and he's taken to have traditional dish of
fish and chips and peas and then he remarks about them. Maybe he's talking about how they also
fish in Antarctica and they also eat it off old newspapers. Maybe I don't know. Maybe there's a
lot of complaining about the weather. I like this idea that he's he's speaking English from the
early 20th century because of this phrase. How do you want to kind of wrap things up? Does he go back
with the penguin? Just before that, I mean, we've got like a lot of that is food and drink,
quite there's like fish and chips, the pub. So it'd be good to have like one or two things that are
very much based around behaviour, I guess. So maybe something about queuing. Yeah. So you know how
penguins like a huddle up for war. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's like trying to make the war like a
huddle up and they're like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. And maybe you've seen people queuing and
move it. It could be something also about like hatching eggs or the next penguins. The march of the
penguins, right? They all like going that long march. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You
think that we're going to give bars or something? March of the penguins, yeah. I'm just going to check.
Emperor penguins are the ones with like the big yellow thing. I'd say that.
Uh, yes, I think they've got maybe even some yellow kind of V. Oh no, I'm getting confused.
There's one that has this like big kind of, yeah, like these ones. Oh, okay, yeah, I'm not sure
because I'm just thinking it looks a bit like Boris Johnson.
Oh, there's something about this. Yeah, just reminds me of Boris Johnson. I guess we'd have to,
if we're not including any kind of visual aids, we'd have to rely on some quite advanced penguin
knowledge. True. So apparently this is called a macaroni penguin. Yeah, yeah. Can you just check
that? Yeah, King penguins as well. Yes, they look similar to Emperor penguins, actually. Maybe the
the character when he's talking to the king, he can say, I was interesting that your kings,
your country's ruled by King and ours. In fact, the king answers to the emperor, something like that.
Yeah, or like, um, oh, interesting. So you're a kingdom, but have you ever had an empire?
And the king's aid is like, don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. Yeah. Yeah.
What other cultural things can we try and include? Because he's speaking this very like old fashion
1917 phrase book. Maybe he thinks like British people, you know, when I learned English from my
phrase book, I was told that everyone was very polite and that there were gentlemen and ladies.
And when I came to the UK, you know, where's the culture gone? Everyone is so rude. You know,
it's it's kind of a conservative idea, but you do hear people like Americans, for example, who are
like, oh, the UK used to be so like proud and like British and now like everything is changing,
you know, so it could be something like that. Maybe someone says, like, oh, you're right,
mate. And he's like, I am not your mate. I beg your pardon. Yeah. I beg your pardon. Exactly.
You're right, mate. Yeah. And then maybe you can say, excuse me, do you mean are you okay,
my good fellow or something like that? And he's like trying to shake hands and say, how do you do?
Yeah. And he's, I don't know, he's wearing a maybe he's even wearing a top hat or something like that.
We've almost got the reason to go and meet go to the UK. He's meeting the king need to flesh out
exactly why he's doing that. We've got some cultural scenarios that can be unusual for him.
Do you think that's sort of that's enough for the short story and then we find a reason to end it?
Does he go back with Penguin or stay in the UK or what do you think? If I was writing it based on
that, the ending would very much depend on the tone that the story takes. And I wouldn't really
know that until I started writing, I think. Should we leave this as a surprise for anyone
disney? Why not? Well, also, you know, because you're going to write the first draft and then we're
going to look at it together, but you're right. I think let's leave the ending and open for the
audience. Okay. Excellent. Alright, I think we have lots of really good stuff that we can start
putting together. Thank you. Yeah, I have to say it's it's so lovely to brainstorm a story and
then know that I don't have to write the first draft. It's like, oh, I get to do the fun part and
then you have to do the hard part. But obviously we're going to work on it together. So I'm really
excited. Well, I think we've, it's really interesting to see how much we develop this just in the
course of 40 minutes or so going from, could this be a French person coming over to work in the UK?
Actually, no, it's someone from Antarctica coming over to meet the King and they might be speaking
in Old English and blah blah blah blah. That's it's fun. Think it's crossed. Well, thank you,
Ariel. I'm going to open up a Google Docs now and get started. Bye.
Unfortunately, my video cut off at the end there. I did actually say goodbye to Alistair.
Listen out for our story, a visitor from Chili Bottom next week and make sure to go over and listen
to my interview with Alistair on the Leonardo English YouTube channel. And just a reminder that
there's a live stream this Friday as well at 6pm British summertime. You can set a reminder for
the stream at easystoriesinenglish.com slash stream. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider
writing a positive review for the podcast on Apple podcasts or like and subscribe if you're on
YouTube. Otherwise, see you soon.
