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EXCLUSIVE | 'Black Widow: Bad Blood': Lindsay Smith says it takes 3 days and lots of junk food to write a season

Writer Linsday Smith shares the writing process for Serial Box stories and how the team worked on Natasha's character

'Black Widow: Bad Blood' is just one of the many serialized audiobooks that Serial Box has on offer. Most of the series available on the website are written by a team of writers. In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), writer Lindsay Smith talks about being on the writing team for 'Black Widow: Bad Blood' and what it was like bringing Natasha Romanoff to life. 

Superhero stories do well with imagery, but spy stories depend a little more heavily on exposition, flashbacks and attention to detail. Do you think Black Widow stories fit more comfortably in prose than they do in comics, or on film?

What I really loved about getting to write her in prose was how much we were able to actually get inside her head, so even though we can have these flashy imageries, like these dramatic sequences on the boat and while she's traveling out to Siberia and so on, and it's very visual, we're still seeing her thinking through her actions, comparing them to things she's done in the past, drawing on her previous missions, and then also having a little bit of that reluctance and hesitation. Being able to use both of those things, and then also her internal thoughts has really been a wonderful medium for the story. I love getting to see how she thinks through a fight, or how she rationalizes through clues that she comes across. So, it's a little bit of both.

How does the writing process work with you and the rest of the team?

This is kind of a typical for a Serial Box project — there'll be lead writer and then other team writers, and we all come together for a long weekend where we sit around, we've got a general idea for what we want the season to look like but then everybody comes together, having looked at that idea and then we tear it up and create something new. Basically map out the entire season over the course of about three days while we're all sitting around eating a lot of junk food and brainstorming through the night. Then we come up with the Season beat by beat, episode by episode. It's really kinda magical seeing the way that each writer brings their own strength to the table.

You can feel that enthusiasm from everybody, and the way that, "Wow, I never would have thought of that thing that this other writer came up with." It's wonderful to have that sense of discovery together. You'll see people start kind of naturally gravitating towards one episode or the other too, while we're hashing it out. So that makes it really easy to divvy up who's going to be writing what.

Any other projects that you're working on that you would like to talk about?

My next novel comes out this October from Penguin. It's called the 'Shadow War', and it's World War II historical fantasy. I basically call it stranger things meets inglorious Bastards. There's some alternate universes bleeding into our own, and fighting Nazis lots of fun.

'Black Widow: Bad Blood' is available to purchase at serialbox.com. The next episode airs June 30. You can find Smith at lindsaysmith.net, or on Twitter @lindsaysmithDC.