Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 42

The Villain Doesn’t Change

 

The craziest working arrangement I ever had in the screenwriting biz was when I worked for a producer I’ll call Joan Stark.

Joan insisted that I write in her office. I had to come in every day. Joan gave me a little cubbyhole beside the photocopy machine. I’d work on pages all morning and half the afternoon. Then we’d meet and Joan would go over the day’s work and give me corrections.

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as the heroes in “Thelma and Louise”

Every day she had problems with the same character—the villain.

She kept making me rewrite his scenes. One day I asked why. What mistake was I making?

 

You’re having the villain change. The villain can’t change.

 

I didn’t get it. “Why not?”

 

Because if the villain changed, he’d be the hero.

 

I remember thinking, That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Don’t we want the Bad Guy to be interesting? Shouldn’t he evolve like the Hero?

Answer: No.

The Alien doesn’t change. The shark in Jaws doesn’t change. The Terminator in The Terminator doesn’t change. And when he does in the sequels … OMG, he becomes the hero (or co-hero)—and we have new Terminators (who don’t change) who now become the villains.

I realized I had to start thinking more deeply about this.

Indeed external villains don’t change. Every antagonist in a James Bond movie. Every super-villain lining up against Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men. Every force-of-nature villain (volcanoes, tsunamis, Mayan-predicted worldwide destruction, asteroids-crashing-into-Earth, Tripods invading New Jersey, global climate catastrophes). None of these is capable of change.

Zombies don’t change.

Vampires don’t change.

The Thing doesn’t change.

All these Bad Guys have one single-minded desire.

To eat your brain.

To suck your blood.

To destroy (or dominate) the world.

To give birth to baby Bad Guys.

Societal villains (as opposed to external villains) don’t change.

Racism in To Kill a Mockingbird, The Help, BlacKkKlansman.

Homophobia in Philadelphia, Dallas Buyers’ Club, Moonlight.

The societal villain in Thelma and Louise, written by Callie Khouri, (who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) is male contempt for and domination of women.

The film depicts men as loutish husbands, leering truck drivers, sneak-thieving hitch-hikers, trigger-happy cops and FBI agents, and the arch-villain Harlan Puckett (Timothy Carhart) who commits the initial sexual assault on Thelma (Geena Davis) as a brutish, contemptuous, would-be rapist.

None of these Bad Guys changes.

What’s interesting about Callie Khouri’s character construction is that she does give us one decent man—Arkansas State Police investigator Hal Slocomb (Harvey Keitel). Hal is the only one among the cohort of law enforcement lummoxes pursuing Thelma and Louise who actually has sympathy for the women’s predicament and wants to help them. Hal even strikes up a bit of a telephonic friendship with Louise (Susan Sarandon) as he seeks to keep the police chase from getting out of control and devolving into a bloodbath.

Does this make Hal a villain-who-changes and thus an exception to my producer boss Joan Stark’s rule?

In the movie’s climax, when Thelma and Louise flee from the cops toward Grand Canyon thin air in their ’66 Thunderbird convertible, it’s Hal who rushes forward on foot into the path of all-out police gunfire to try to stop (and save) the ladies.

Does Hal’s act make him a villain who changes?

Yes.

But our employer Joan Stark comes out right in the end.

 

 If the villain changed, he’d be the hero.

 

Hal becomes by his actions not a villain but the protagonist of the “C” or “D” story—the Police Chase Subplot.

He becomes a hero.

The villain never changes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Correction: Nothing Always Works With Everyone

Last Friday I wrote that the list of things below always work.

Hard work has always worked.
Being honest has always worked.
Doing the right thing has always worked.
Keeping promises has always worked.
Being transparent has always worked.
Creating something of value has always worked.
Starting small has always worked.
Communicating in more than 140 characters has always worked.
Picking up the phone or meeting in person, instead of only texting or emailing has always worked.

A correction:

These always work with the first audience, they often work with the second and fourth audiences, and rarely work with the third audience.

Here are the four audiences:

1. People with You

2. People on the Fence

3. People Against You

4. People Who Don’t Know You

People with You

This group is in your corner. If you have a new release, they’ll buy it.

Because we all create duds from time to time, this group is essential when you make a mistake and/or create something not so wonderful. They won’t turn their backs on you. This is your home team. An example? Imagine post-Babe Ruth and pre-2004 Boston Red Sox fans. They kept buying tickets and showing up to games. Yes, they complained, too, but they stayed with the team.

People on the Fence

This is the group that knows your work but only buys it after reviews are released. They might know you’re an extraordinary chef, but that new restaurant you opened? They won’t show up until someone else confirms its worth, whereas People with You are there opening night.

Best way to get this group off the fence is to run through that list above. Will it get all the fence straddlers on board? No, but it’ll get some of them there, which means you’re growing the People with You category.

Example: Earlier this year I bought flowers from www.FiftyFlowers.com. I was in the market for cherry blossoms to send to my godmother, who always misses the cherry blossoms during her visits to Washington, D.C. I ran into a wall finding live blossoms for sale. Lots of the fake silk variety. Fifty Flowers, which I ran across during my search, had the real deal. I bought the flowers and then received an email from my godmother, with a picture of a plastic trashcan full of cherry blossom branches. She wasn’t throwing them away. She simply lacked something large enough to contain all of the cherry tree branches, so she cleaned out the bin, added water, and then waited for them to bloom—and then, since there were so many, she shared them with friends and at the school where she volunteers in Los Angeles, where cherry trees aren’t something the kids had seen in person either. She even tried transplanting one at the school. Didn’t work, but the kids got behind the effort, so this one gift to her just kept on giving. The customer service was extraordinary, which led me to buy lilies for my aunt this past week. Once they arrived, she couldn’t stop talking about them. Beautiful. Fresh. Gorgeous packaging. AND: A human called her to share how to care for the flowers, so they would last a long time. Will I buy from them again? Yes. I was on the fence, but the quality and kindness and personal care made me decide to step into their corner.

People Against You

Doesn’t matter what you do with this group.

They don’t like you and they don’t want to like you. It’s personal. There’s something about you that gets under their skin.

Around the time the first Harry Potter book was released as a movie, I was on a listserv for writers. One of the writers spoke out about J.K. Rowling. She said that Rowling had created unrealistic expectations for other children’s book writers. Rowling’s success was a fluke and she was bad for all other writers in that genre because she raised expectations, so that if your book didn’t have movie potential, it wouldn’t be published. She didn’t say it, but she was jealous and instead of seeing Rowling as someone who energized the children’s/young adult genre, she saw her as a negative. I don’t think Rowling could have done anything to change this writer’s mind.

However, my friend and mentor Bob Danzig once shared a story with me about kindness flipping a volatile situation on its head. At the time, Bob was the publisher of the Albany Times Union. One of the paper’s employees, who was also head of one of the printers unions, was a vocal critic of management and tensions were high. At an annual event for the paper, Bob was introduced to this man’s wife. A few weeks later, Bob and the wife ran into each other at the local grocery store and she burst into tears when she saw him. Her husband injured his back and feared that he’d never return to work. She told Bob that her husband could use a special chair, which made sitting up a few hours a day doable, but he couldn’t work full time. Bob called the man’s doctor and arranged to have one of the chairs installed in the newspaper’s composing room, where the employee could work as a copy editor a few hours a day. However, there was still the issue of the union. The union president didn’t want to change the agreement to allow for an individual—even an individual who had been on his side—to work non-approved union hours, and said he’d call for a strike if the employee did less than a full shift. Bob called the employee’s wife and arranged with her for her husband to arrive at work and meet Bob. When he arrived in his wheelchair, Bob pushed him up to the front of doors, where the other union members could see them. Instead of walking off, they clapped—and Bob and the once-critical employee became friends.

There’s a lot more to the story, and I know I didn’t nail every detail, but that’s the gist of it.

I’m guessing that the employee and others in the union saw Bob as a fat cat management type, which made it easier to be critical of him—easier to create an us against them scenario. However, once he got to know Bob, he learned that Bob grew up in the foster care system and was in his fifth foster home by the time he was 12, and that Bob graduated high school at age 16 (during a transfer from one home to another, they made a mistake about the grade he was in, so he was placed in a grade higher, and Bob just went along with it, since his focus was on survival and not school), and then after he graduated, he worked every day to support himself and then eventually a family. Nothing was ever given to him. He earned his role as publisher the hard way. He worked for it. Started as office boy and then spent two more decades rising. No nepotism or anything of the like. He knew Pain and knew the power of Kindness and Communication. Life changing.

This personal touch is often the only thing that will change the minds of those against you. There’s usually a personal reason behind their opinion of you. Has nothing to do with you, but with their perception of you.

People Who Don’t Know You

This group is just as they sound. They don’t know you exist—or they’ve heard of you, but don’t know anything other than your name. Once they’re turned onto your work, they love you or they hate you or they land on the fence.

For years I heard the names Haruki Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguro. Did’t take action—not even when Chris Guillebeau personally recommended Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to me. Then I picked up Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Remains of the Day and found myself hooked on both. Didn’t read anything from any other authors for a long time.

Did they reach out to me? No. Any personal kindness? No.

I liked their work and then I researched them and enjoyed reading interviews with them.

Go back to the Fifty Flowers example above for an example of personal contact with an unknown. I took a chance on buying the first time—and then they provided extraordinary service and I returned. And, I’ll go back again—and I’ll recommend them—all because 1) they provided something of value and 2) extraordinary customer service. They made it personal. There was no pre-printed card presented with the flowers. They picked up the phone and spoke with my aunt. Told her who the flowers were from and how to care for them, and, knowing my aunt, I imagine they were on the phone answering a few other questions, too.

Kindness. Personal contact.

How to Reach Your Audiences

You don’t need an expensive marketing campaign to do this. No need to purchase the next big platform or program or anything else.

Go to CVS or Staples or Michaels or the Dollar Store and pick up some stationary.

All you need is some thank you cards and/or a phone—and time. Lots of time. This won’t happen overnight, but the connections you make have the potential to be with you forever.

Get personal.

It won’t work with everyone, but it will always work with a specific group of everyones.

And those people it won’t work with? Why are you focusing on them anyway?

Think about history.

Civil Rights changes, as one example, didn’t occur because all the opponents’ minds were changed. They happened because the people for Civil Rights and the people on the fence came together, and pulled in people who weren’t previously in the know. They suffocated the fire of the opponents. Didn’t change their minds, but they were able to create change.

Focus on the people who love/like you. Let them be the evangelists. Reach out to those on the fence and work on connecting with those who aren’t familiar with you. Those groups alone should keep you busy for the rest of your career.

So, no, there isn’t anything that works 100% with every single person on Earth.

However . . .

There are truths that work 100% of the time with the audiences who should be your focus.

The “B” Story Rides to the Rescue of the “A” Story

We touched briefly in last week’s post upon the idea that the “B” story “rides to the rescue” of the “A” story, usually at the start of Act Three.

Let’s examine this principle in more detail.

Faye Dunaway and Robert Redford in “Three Days of the Condor”

If the “A” story is the primary tale, i.e., the narrative in the foreground, then the “B” story is often the love story—that is, a secondary narrative that runs parallel to the primary story and intertwines with it as the greater tale unfolds.

In Three Days of the Condor for example (and its latter-day clone, The Bourne Identity), the “A” story is the tale of the man on the run—Robert Redford in Condor, Matt Damon in Bourne. The big narrative question is “Will the hero unravel the mystery and save himself before the Secret Nefarious Forces pursuing him catch up and kill him?”

That’s the “A” story.

The “B” story is the romance that develops along the way as each protagonist (Redford in New York City and Damon all over Europe) kidnaps or recruits a woman off the street and, despite or perhaps because of his other troubles, becomes romantically involved with her.

In both movies, “A” and “B” stories intertwine as the female lead (Faye Dunaway in Condor, Franka Potente in Bourne) becomes swept up in the male hero’s drama and not only comes to care for him emotionally, but becomes an active partner and accomplice in his flight/adventure.

In both stories, there’s an early scene where the female comes emotionally unpeeled when the hero is violently attacked out of nowhere by a mysterious and obviously highly-trained antagonist who’s trying to murder him—and the protagonist, after successfully defending himself, compels his shaken female abductee/recruit to “snap out of it” and “get it together.” Both ladies do.

Not long after, in both films, hero and love interest literally become lovers.

Right after that, again in both movies, a scene unspools in which the female, now acting as the hero’s willing partner, enters the environment of the villain (in Bourne, a hotel in Paris; in Condor, the New York WTC offices of the CIA) to “recon the area” in preparation for the hero entering on his own.

We’re coming now to the All Is Lost moment.

Matt Damon and Franka Potente in “The Bourne Identity”

This is the point in the story, usually just before the Act Two curtain, when the hero finds himself ultimately alone. He has learned enough of the story’s secrets to know he must now enter the lair of the villain and face this devil down or die.

At this point, in both Condor and Bourne, the hero sends the female away, to protect her. (I can think of other stories—The Terminator, Avatar—where the love interest stays and fights alongside the hero.)

The key point, however, is that the love interest, whether male or female, has by his or her love, assistance, wise counsel, and belief in the hero, armed him or her with confidence and prepared him or her for the ultimate clash with the villain in the climax.

The classic fusion of A and B [writes Blake Snyder in Save the Cat!] is the hero getting the clue from “the girl” that makes him realize how to solve both—beating the bad guys andwinning the heart of his beloved.

In both Condor and Bourne, the hero wishes he could stay with the “B” story love interest. Both Redford and Damon send their lovers away reluctantly. The lovers, for their part, don’t particularly want to go either. They resist. In both stories, we sense, the lovers will never forget these men in whose company they have shared such dangers and with whom they have grown so close.

At the same time each hero knows (though he may not articulate this overtly) that he has been strengthened and prepared by the passage he has undergone with his unexpected lover in the “B” story and by her equally unexpected faith in him and belief in him. He now has the strength to “do what must be done” in the climax of the “A” story.

The “B” story has ridden to the rescue of the “A” story.

The Road Not Taken

I can see Robert Frost’s yellow wood.

In my mind, it’s always Fall and always the golden hour before sunset. A thick layer of leaves blankets the ground and yet every tree is full, as if not a leaf has fallen.

This image has been bubbling up uninvited these past few months. One minute I’m working and the next I’m leaning back in my chair as my mind wanders through a mashup of Van Gogh yellow and Klimt gold and a wee bit of Hudson River Valley, all bathed in amber.

“The road not taken” is the phrase spoken by the unknown voice for the image, kin to “if you build it they will come” for cornfields. Always the same thing. My mind wanders, fighting Frost’s “nothing gold can stay” and thinking about that very golden road.

The teacher who introduced me to “The Road Not Taken” taught that it was about being an individual and taking risks, and marching to a different drummer—and I drank the Koolaid and believed her. Never occurred to me to ask if “all the difference” made by the road taken was really a good thing.

Go back to the poem, and both paths are equally trodden. The one taken wasn’t better or worse. It was different. Nothing in the poem indicates that the other road would have been a bad one to take, yet . . . There’s this notion that not taking it was the right decision.

I’ve been thinking about the roads we travel to share our work and how hundreds of years ago the road was clear, less cluttered vs now, with so many distractions. Is one better than the other? Both are equally trodden, but with different versions of the same problems.

Think about two roads.

One road is post Gutenberg, but also pre-mass communication, before the phone and TV and computer and everything else we have today.

The other road reflects today, with smart phones and smart TVs and smart shoes and all other sorts of smartily smart things.

Road one is rather clear. As time ticks, maybe a billboard starts to pop up. Maybe a car passes and a rest stop appears on the horizon, and other people start to travel the road, and those people share one by one.

The other road is cluttered and noisy. All people on that road do is share and talk and jabber. It’s like navigating through the fog, but on a clear day, with fog replaced by people and images and tweets.

Road one dictates that there are fewer interactions, but when they occur, there’s meaning and they’re remembered.

Road two dictates millions of interactions, but when they occur, they’re insignificant and forgotten. You have to work harder to give and receive meaning.

The road I keep going back to is road one. Less communication. Less clutter.

That road worked for a long time, yet there’s this push to go down a different road. Don’t do what’s been done in the past. Keep looking to the future, to the road yet to be taken.

Why?

Maybe instead of traveling toward the next big thing, the better choice is u-turning toward the past and tapping into what has always worked.

Hard work has always worked.

Being honest has always worked.

Doing the right thing has always worked.

Keeping promises has always worked.

Being transparent has always worked.

Creating something of value has always worked.

Starting small has always worked.

Communicating in more than 140 characters has always worked.

Picking up the phone or meeting in person, instead of only texting or emailing has always worked.

For 2019, I’m looking toward a road of doing less of what’s on the cluttered road and more of the clear road, the old road, the one that worked for years. I want to travel both roads, worn really about the same. I don’t want to sigh somewhere ages and ages hence.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And then cut through the woods and traveled the other road, too,

And that has made all the difference.

“A” Story and “B” Story

 

In the movie biz there’s a terminology: “A” Story and “B” Story. (There’s also a “C,” “D,” and “E” story.)

This is an interesting concept that has carry-overs for us in the fiction world. Nonfiction too.

Matt Damon and Franka Potente enact the “B” Story in “The Bourne Identity”

The “A” story is the main story, the story in the foreground.

In Moby Dick the “A” story is Ahab’s pursuit of the whale. In The Bourne Identity, it’s Jason Bourne’s search for who he really is. In To Kill a Mockingbird it’s Atticus Finch’s endeavor to save Tom Robinson.

The “B” story is the secondary story, the story in the background.

In many dramas, the “B” story is the love story.

In The Bourne Identity for example, the “B” story is the romance that develops between Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente) as Bourne flees from the bad guys and pursues his quest to find his lost identity.

The “B” story, when it’s a love story, doesn’t have to be between literal lovers. It can be between friends or family members. It can be between a child and a dog, an elf and a human. It can be between Hobbits.

In Moby Dick, the love story is between Ishmael and Queequeg the harpooneer. Remember Chapter Three at the Spouter Inn in New Bedford, where Ishmael is compelled by the scarcity of beds to share a (chaste) bunk with Queequeg? In the final scene of the saga, after Moby Dick has attacked and sunk the Pequod, Ishmael alone survives, using as a life raft the watertight coffin that Queequeg had had made for himself by the ship’s carpenter when he had a premonition of his coming death

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the “B” love story is between Scout (or, we might say, Scout and Jem together) and Boo Radley. Again, this is not a literal love story but a tale of the heart just the same.

Blake Snyder in his indispensable book on screenwriting, Save the Cat!, declares that the “B” story often rides to the rescue of the “A” story.

This happens at the start of Act Three, when “A” and “B” story merge in what I call the Epiphanal Moment. (More on this later.)

For sure, the “B” story resonates with and often completes the “A” story.

In The Imitation Game, the “B” story is between Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), both mathematicians working to crack the German “Enigma” code for the Brits during WWII. In the climax, when Turing is destroyed physically and emotionally by his own homophobic and spectacularly ingrateful government, it is Joan’s love for and dedication to his memory that saves the tale and completes it.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley in “The Imitation Game”

One of the tests I apply to my own stories is to ask of myself, as I’m working:

 

What is the “A” story?

What’s the “B” story?

Do they resonate with one another? Are they both on-theme?

Does the “B” story complete or save or resolve the “A” story?

 

And this crucual question:

 

Do I even have a “B” story?

 

The amazing thing, I’ve discovered, is that a “B” story seems to arise all by itself without me even thinking about it.

Maybe the overall narrative simply cries out for it and I find myself supplying it without any planning or pre-intention.

It’s an illuminating exercise for all of us, when we read books or watch movies that we consider to be truly working, to ask ourselves, “What’s the ‘A’ story here? What’s the ‘B’ story? How do they interact? How does one enhance the other?”

We’ll continue this investigation next week … and thereafter.

Do You Believe?

For the 14th year in a row, my kids and I drove to Pentagon City Mall for a picture with Santa.

Now 15 and 11, they know the fat guy in the red suit is an echo of their childhood. Still there, and still nice, and still happiness-and-laughter inducing, but not the same as before the veil was lifted.

How could it be the same? Once you know, there’s no going back.

Maybe it wasn’t Santa for you, but maybe there was someone or something that you believed in so strongly, and then you got to Oz and realized the wizard was just Oscar Diggs from Omaha, Nebraska.

For my kids, Santa could really be a guy named Harold, who works at the tax office next to Pizza Hut the rest of the year.

We’d still show up because it’s tradition.

The kids don’t believe in Santa, but they believe in the experience.

It’s not even about Santa at this point. It’s about us and reliving the memories (and about pretzels at Aunt Annie’s on the way back to the car).

This year, though . . .

There was a long line. It didn’t move for a good half hour.

The camera broke.

The time for Santa to head back to Ms. Claus arrived and the line was still out and around the Santa display.

The teenager in charge asked each person still in line if he or she would come back the next morning. We all said no. Kids had school the next morning and we’d invested a few hours at that point.

He decided to pile on. “Santa’s been complaining about not getting out on time and we’re trying to close.” Little ears around him heard this. Santa complaining? Really?

When a parent asked if Santa would still see everyone in line, he replied, “I guess I could try to make the line move faster.”

After we made it through the picture line, his stellar salesmanship continued. I requested half a dozen frames and then he looked at my son and asked, “She your mom? If she was my mom I wouldn’t let her buy those frames. Why are you letting her buy all those frames?” My son smiled. Didn’t know what to say.

Yes the frames are overpriced. Same with the pictures.

Yet, I show up every year—and I spend a lot of money because those pictures and frames get sent to two sets of grandparents, a great-grandmother, a few other relatives, and I want one for myself, too. For them—and for me—those pictures are echos of our own childhoods, and the childhoods of their own kids and grandkids, and great-grandkids. They mean something. The same Harold has been Santa for the last 14 years. He stayed the same, but the kids went from babies to teenagers in their pictures with him—and I remember every single one of those pictures, picking their outfits, running combs through their hair, if it was raining or a clear drive. I hold tight to every day.

And the teenage salesman unknowingly tried to stop it.

He didn’t understand or believe in the experience he was selling.

It was a product not an experience—and it wasn’t a product he wanted himself.

That’s okay.

Santa isn’t everyone’s thing.

But if you don’t believe in Santa, or at least in the experience, you probably shouldn’t sign up to be one of Santa’s helpers.

I put a few hundred dollars down and he tried to get my son to stop me—even though I wanted to pay the money. Harold is worth every penny, and my hope has always been that some of that money gets put in his his wallet end of season. The more I buy the better he does, so yeah, I’m okay with spending more on this experience.

Years ago, one of my jobs included sales conference duty, at which books were pitched to the sales reps, who were then tasked with pitching the books to B&N and Borders and Books-A-Million and all the other now non-existent bookstores.

I hated going. I was never convinced that the sales reps believed. It was just their job. The books were products to be pushed or ignored. The reps got excited by co-op dollars and large advertising budgets, but the books alone? Many went unread by the reps. They didn’t understand the power of all the books. Yes, some of the books were real stinkers, but many were extraordinary – and they were more than words on pages with nice wrappers. They were experiences. Both fiction and nonfiction could transport the reader to different worlds and leave them better off for the experience. They just needed someone to believe in them.

That’s what Black Irish Books has always been about. Believing.

Believe in yourself.

Believe in your power to create.

Believe in your creation.

Earlier this month Black Irish Books launched a subscription series titled Black Irish Jabs, which are bite-sized books by Steve, delivered almost once a month for the next year, which pack a powerful punch..

The series feeds into the power of believing and creating—and we believe in its power ourselves.

You have to believe in what you’re selling to make a go in this world, to achieve any sort of success.

So, if you find yourself working a seasonal job as Santa’s helper, if you don’t believe in what’s being sold, find another job, or at least don’t ruin the experience for paying customers.

But, if you do believe . . . If you happen to see a lady with the oldest kids in line to see Santa, and she wants to put a few hundred down on overpriced frames and pictures, let her do it. Show her the best frame you’ve got and show her the picture snow globe too. She might not be one to spend money like that the rest of the year, but this means something to her family. Help her. Make the sale. She’s been at this for 14 years and will back again next year.

Let her have her experience.

Believe in what you do.

Our Characters and Ourselves

I’ve been thinking about an obscure point of storytelling, and I wonder if this isn’t something that a lot of us have been aware of but maybe haven’t thought about too deeply.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster in “Hell or High Water”

(I’m gonna get a little writer-wonky in this post, so please bear with me.)

We know as fiction writers that our story (Act One) starts in “the Ordinary World.”

Then something happens (the Inciting Incident) that propels our hero out of her or his everyday life and into “the Extraordinary World.”

Dorothy is whisked away from Kansas, Luke bolts from the planet Tatooine, Wonder Woman leaves the island of the Amazons.

What happens then?

Usually we conceive of Act Two, the Extraordinary World, as a sequence of obstacles that our protagonist must overcome. It’s her hero’s journey. It’s her struggle to restore some form of equilibrium to her world.

Maybe I’m the last one to catch onto this, but lately I’ve been thinking of this passage in a different light.

The light of “knowing.”

What happens to our hero first, as she is propelled into the Extraordinary World, is that people see her immediately in a wholly different way. Not the way others perceived her or related to her before.

Think of Dorothy or Luke or Diana. Or Michael Corleone after he kills Sollozzo and police captain McCluskey. Or Toby Howard (Chris Pine) in Hell or High Water after he and his brother Tanner (Ben Foster) start pulling off bank robberies.

In the Extraordinary World, these characters are perceived at once and by everyone in an entirely different way.

And they react to this.

They react positively.

They become empowered by it.

Each of our heroes realizes that he or she is someone else, or at least seems to every other character to be someone else.

A strong case could be made that this is the point of the whole story, of every story.

Our narrative—any narrative—is about the hero’s journey from one self-conception (an obsolete, no-longer-working version) to another (brand-new, scary-but-absolutely-necessary) version.

Confronting the challenges of the Extraordinary World, our hero comes to know herself in a way she never did before. She discovers a new self, a just-now-being-born self, and she comes to embrace it as the answer to her dilemma.

This happens in real life too.

We fall in love.

We take a new job.

We move to a new country.

At once, everyone we meet sees us with different eyes.

We perceive this ourselves. We react to our new challenges not as our old selves but as this newly-hatched, revised-and-updated version of ourselves.

Of course this happens to us as artists every time we embark on a new project. We’re writers. Our Muse is calling us to shed an old skin and grow a new one.

Each new book, play, or screenplay is a new hero’s journey, a fresh crossing of the threshold into an ever-different Extraordinary World.

I’m working on something new now, and I’m trying to apply this (new-for-me) insight to it.

When my hero crosses the threshold into the Extraordinary World (I’m asking myself as I evaluate what I’m writing), do the other characters in the story perceive him and relate to him differently than they would have, had they encountered him in the Ordinary World? Does he see this? How does it affect him? Is he in fact different? How? Why?

Who is his old self?

Who is his new one?

I’m asking this of myself as well, as I too cross into my own Extraordinary World.

Will a new me appear? Has it already?

Who is he?

How is he different?

In the end, our stories and our real lives are about our heroes (and we ourselves) incorporating this new knowing, this novel self-knowledge, and growing and changing with it.

First Things First

A jab is a quick, sharp punch.

It’s the setup for other punches—that seemingly small thing that serves you well in the ring.

“It is their most important weapon. Fighters throughout time have spilled blood and sweat attempting to perfect it—to make it fast, to make it sharp, Every punch, heavier than the last.

“Is is the single most significant punch in boxing, both offensively and defensively . . . Its importance is undeniable. Every fight, every fighter, the very fabric of the sport, starts and ends with the jab.”

—Robert Aaron Contreras, via Bleacher Report

Master the jab first, all other punches second.

That’s the philosophy of the Black Irish Books JABs by Steve.

Small. Pocket-size small.

Basics. Do-this-first type of basics.

Powerful. Knock-you-out powerful.

JABs are books that are small in size, powerful in messaging, and which teach the basics.

If you signed up for the print version of the JABs subscription, you should receive your first two books any day, if you haven’t received them already.

They are truth.

Bare-bones.

No fluff.

Straight to the point.

Titles and subjects of the first two are How Does A Story Start? and What Is A Story About?

The third brings with it a two-word title: Why Write?

We hope you’ll join the subscription.

At whatever point you join, you’ll receive all the previously released books up to that point. For example, if you join in March, you’ll receive a box with the two December releases, the February release, and the March release. (No new release in January.)

You’ll be sent a coupon code for a free digital subscription, to share with a friend, too.

Our hope is that Black Irish Books’ JABs will become the most important punch in your arsenal, too.

Welcome, JABs Subscribers!

Thanks and welcome to everybody who leapt off the cliff with us and signed up to receive a year’s worth of Black Irish JABs. The response has been beyond our hopes. Thank you!

Click here to order a year of JABs 

To anyone still teetering on the fence, lemme take today’s post to give you the old-fashioned hard sell. (Then I’ll stop, I promise.)

On second thought, let me just list the titles and premises of some of this year’s coming JABs:

JAB #1 (December): How Does a Story Start?

This one’s about the Inciting Incident of a novel or a movie. It talks about the hero acquiring in this moment his or her intention (the drive that will carry him or her through the story), about making the internal external, about the two “narrative poles” that are established here and how they keep the reader turning pages. Etc, etc.

JABS #7 and 8 (June and July): Bad Guys, Part One and Bad Guys, Part Two.

An in-depth look at villains. Why does our story need them, how to make them memorable, what characteristics do all the great villains possess?

I cite these three as a way of describing what JABs are and how they can help every writer—rookie or seasoned pro.

I know they helped the hell out of me, just writing them and getting my thoughts straight by doing so.

JAB #4 (March), The Professional Mindset.

This mini-book doesn’t talk about craft at all. It’s exclusively about you and me as professionals. What is the optimal mindset for a writer or an artist? How do we manage our emotions, contain our expectations for ourselves and others? How do we keep from being our own worst enemies?

JAB #5 (April), Learning to Say No.

Another aspect of professionalism. Becoming tough-minded, kicking the habit of being a “nice guy” or girl. How to stop saying yes to time-thieves, even well-intentioned and deserving ones.

JAB #9 (September), Dudeology.

An in-depth dive, for fun and profit, into The Big Lebowski. What does genre mean, how did the Coen brothers use it (and subvert it to devastating effect) in this greatest of slacker comedies? What does the Dude have in common with Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and J.J. Gittes? Why, in the end, does he abide?

I know it’s daunting to plunk down a serious chunk of change on a subscription. But by the end of the year you’ll have twelve of these mini-books, a regular library of wisdom from the writing trenches . . . with more coming in Season Two. And if don’t wanna continue, bail then with no hard feelings.

Have I convinced you? If so, here’s the link to sign up now.

One last sales point:

Each subscription comes with a gift code so you can give a digital subscription of the JABs (eBook and audiobook) to a friend.

I love these little books and I hope you will too.

Thanks again to everyone who leapt into the pool with us.

Back, next week, to our regular posts.

 

Print on Demand Wins

Steve announced the release of Black Irish Books’ first subscription-based product earlier this week.

Fitting in with Black Irish’s boxing glove logo, the subscription features “JABs” from Steve—mini-books that pack a punch—starting with two books from Steve this month, and then one a month starting in February.

We’re excited about this new offering, but also exciting is the production model.

This marks the first time Black Irish Books has launched a product available only via Black Irish Books (No Amazon or B&N or anyone else)—and the first time it has done a print on demand (POD) project without going through Amazon.

When Black Irish Books launched, it was doing print runs of 10,000 copies at a time. This kept the per book production costs low. However, it brought up the cost of warehousing. Those books have to live somewhere—and until they take up residence on someone else’s shelf, savings from large print runs are lost to warehousing costs.

In a perfect world, those 10,000 books sell out right away—except that with every year more individual sales go to Amazon. We haven’t flown through books on the BI site as quickly as needed to offset the warehousing costs—and then the printer stopped handling distribution, which led to relocating all those books to a new warehouse.

As we ran through print runs for individual titles, Shawn set up the books for POD on demand via Amazon’s Create Space, instead of going back to print for another 10,000 copies. This is why some books on Black Irish’s site aren’t available in print on the BI site. It was proving less expensive to go through Amazon than to go through the process of reprints and paying for reprints and warehousing.

Amazon provided a solution to allow for distribution without high warehousing costs. However, the per book cost is more with Amazon and we don’t have connections with customers.

The Amazon model makes bulk discounts challenging, too.

While Amazon’s share of individual titles increased, Black Irish’s share of bulk orders has increased. When BI first launched, we received pushback from bookstores that wanted to 1) order through wholesalers instead of BI; 2) wanted BI to cover shipping costs to them; and 3) didn’t want to adhere to BI’s policy of no returns and prepayment. The prepayment and no returns were big sticking point since bookstores were used to being able to order books without having to pay for them right away—and then having the ability to return them at no penalty. Not great for a publisher since no sale is ever final. The bookstores—especially the university bookstores—came around. The 55% discount off orders of 10 or more copies of the same title beats the 40% discount most publishers offer (which usually goes into play at a quantity much higher than ten copies)—even if they have to cover shipping themselves. BI now has return bulk customers, placing orders of hundreds of copies every few months and/or thousands at a time.

However . . . It’s challenging to make a profit off bulk pricing when the books are printed one by by one, vs via the 10,000 print run model.

There’s also the fact that there’s an entire customer base at Amazon, with whom BI has no contact. We don’t know their names, addresses purchases, etc. Nothing.

How to keep costs lower and have a connection with customers?

Find a competitively-priced print on demand printer that can handle distribution and warehousing as needed.

We found just that—a printer that beats the per book POD pricing of Amazon.

This affords BI the option of providing exclusive print projects, without having to give Amazon or anyone else a slice of the pie, and helps keep warehousing costs down and direct connections with customers up.

Ever since Penguin Press provided quality books at affordable soft cover pricing, instead of the traditional hardcover premium pricing, publishers have been challenged to innovate in more of the same ways.

Ebooks, many thought, would be the wave of the future, and eliminate the need for books, but that’s not been the case. Enough of us still prefer print books.

With POD, though it has been around a while, it wasn’t accessible (or even available to) everyone—and it’s been looked down upon, partly because self-publishing wasn’t respected and the thinking that there must be something wrong with books that go straight to paperback.

This is the same thinking that brought us “it-must-be-bad-because-it-skipped-the-theater-and-went-direct-to-DVD thinking. And yet . . . Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House” is one of the best productions I’ve watched this year—created and distributed by Netflix, direct to consumer instead of the traditional theatrical release, and cut into bite-sized viewings instead of film length. Todd Jacobs, a film guy and former high school classmate of mine, called “Haunting” the future of film. I agree.

Same with POD.

This idea that a book has to be hardcover is dated and unnecessary—and prevents a wide-range of individuals from having the means to purchase and/or manufacture it.

The softcover opens the market. The POD version rocks the market—and the printer that does POD and distribution is the future.

For publishers—traditional, indie, and the guy next door—POD kills warehousing fees. POD with distribution kills the need to rely on Amazon. POD with distribution and competitive pricing is a win win for everyone. Author makes money. Printer makes money. Customer and authors/publisher have an opportunity to engage.

All good—and exciting!

(If you’re interested in learning more history about the paperback, and in being inspired by publishing innovators, check out Smithsonian Magazine’s article “How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature” and Mental Floss’ article “How Paperbacks Transformed the Way Americans Read.”