Wishful Thinking

Wishful Thinking is the name of a script I've written and voice acted, purely as a passion project. It's a fantasy story of limitations, imagination, anything you could ever want, and nothing at all. You can listen to the whole thing right here.

No AI was used at any point

About The Journey

Nine years ago, I wrote a short story about an orc and a genie. Reading it back to myself, I knew it was the greatest thing I had ever made. At that point, I did what any writer would do, I scrapped it.

I started fresh with a new vision and wrote a new story. I loved it so much that I started to workshop another character, someone else who meets the genie. I wrote a story about a pirate. Then I wrote a story about a sea monster, then a robot, then a mermaid, then a lizard. I dropped the "genie" label, that's been done to death and it's not what this was anymore.

Once I had an array of different and interesting stories in front of me, I took a year off from writing them. And when I came back, one thing was clear to me.

These stories were awful.

Plot holes, expository dialogue, pointless and derivative narration. These were not stories, they were a student's flawed idea of what stories should be. I was able to recognize what was wrong with my work.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take a great writer to see why a story is flawed. Anyone can see unrealistic characters and predictable outcomes, but it takes a great writer to know how to fix these problems.

I did not know how to fix these problems.

But I wrote anyways, because I loved my characters and I loved the world I had been building. New drafts, new stories, different moments, at one point there was a talking skeleton. "Oh yeah, now we're cooking."

I don't need to tell you that I was not cooking.

Years and years of this repetitive process. Writing something wonderful and seeing it later for the drivel that it was. It took so many different forms, a book, a play, an animated show, I was even in talks with the voices in my head for a video game at one point!

I don't need to tell you that I was not cooking.

I finally had an epiphany that was more than just "I suck". It was a revelation about who I was sucking for. Strike that.

I had spent so long envisioning what I wanted people to take away from my stories, what they would think when they read it, how they might relate to a character. After that I obsessed over the format to deliver it in so I could satisfy the largest audience. That was where my realization came from.

Why is it about them?

So all of a sudden, it wasn't.

My stories were finally about me. They were for me. Suddenly I didn't care if these characters would ever see the light of day, or if another person would ever get to experience the world I was creating. The world made me happy, and that was all that mattered.

So, to hell with the audience, to hell with a story structure, I'm just gonna let these characters go. Yes, I'm well aware of how cheesy this all is, but letting go of control was what finally yielded the best product.

I finally made something kind of good.

Which then prompted a thought, "Wait, if this is actually good then maybe I do wanna share it."

SO I got to work thinking about delivery once again, and realized this script is not formatted for anything. It's just kind of... dialogue. Sure there are some actions in there, but it's approximately 98% talking. I don't have stage directions or headers to tell you whether we're INT, EXT, or HDMI. It was just words on a page, because when I wrote it, I spoke it.

I played the part of these characters every time I sat down to write, and that's how their conversations were born, that's how the story flowed. The story didn't have a place anywhere but my voice, so, that's what you get.

You're getting the authentic performance of my process. My writing, my acting, my emotion.

My story.

I'm no professional. I'm no published writer or established actor, I'm just me. And I made something cool.

You might be reading this with no intention of listening to my project, or you might start it and realize it's not worth three hours of your time. That's okay. This isn't for you, it's for me.

It's far from perfect. Volume fluctuates, voices blend together, there are lines I would've loved to deliver differently... but posting this project is a step in letting go of the perfectionism that's had a strong hold on me for a while.

Love it or hate it, I made this.

As much as this project is for me, I really hope there are people it might speak to, and they feel like it could be for them too.

If you listen to Wishful Thinking, I'd love nothing more than to hear what you think about it.

And tell you Thank You.

- Tyler Cadieux