Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 58

Report from the Trenches, #1

 

I’m gonna take a break in this series on Villains and instead open up my skull and share what’s going on in my own work right now.

It ain’t pretty.

Joe and Willy, from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin

I’m offering this post in the hope that an account of my specific struggles at this moment will be helpful to other writers and artists who are dealing with the same mishegoss, i.e. craziness, or have in the past, or will in the future.

Here’s the story:

Eighteen months ago I had an idea for a new fiction piece. I did what I always do at such moments: I put it together in abbreviated (Foolscap) form—theme, concept, hero and villain, Act One/Act Two/Act Three, climax—and sent it to Shawn.

He loved it.

I plunged in.

Cut to fifteen months later. I sent the finished manuscript (Draft #10) to Shawn.

He hated it.

I’m overstating, but not by much.

Shawn sent me back a 15-page, single-spaced file titled “Edit letter to Steve.” That was April 28, about ten weeks ago.

Every writer who is reading this, I feel certain, has had this identical experience. Myself, I’ve been through it probably fifty times over the years, for novels, for screenplays, for everything.

Here was my emotional experience upon reading Shawn’s notes:

I went into shock.

It was a Kubler-Ross experience. Shawn’s notes started out positively. He told me the things he liked about the manuscript. I knew what was coming, though.

When I hit the “bad part,” my brain went into full vapor lock. It was like the scene in the pilot of Breaking Bad when the doctor tells Bryan Cranston he’s got inoperable lung cancer. The physician’s lips are moving but no sound is coming through.

Here’s the e-mail I sent back to Shawn:

 

Pard, I just read your notes and as usually happens, I’m kinda overwhelmed. As you suggest, I’ll have to re-read a bunch of times and chew this all over.

MAJOR, MAJOR THANKS for the effort and skill you put into that memo. Wow.

I’m gonna sit with this for a while.

 

Can you read between the lines of that note? That is major shell shock.

 

I put Shawn’s notes away and didn’t look at them for two weeks.

In some corner of my psyche I knew Shawn was right. I knew the manuscript was a trainwreck and I would have to rethink it from Square One and start again.

I couldn’t face that possibility.

The only response I could muster in the moment was to put Shawn’s notes aside and let my unconscious deal with them.

Meanwhile I put myself to work on other projects, including a bunch of Writing Wednesdays posts. But a part of me was thinking, How dare I write anything ‘instructional’ when, after fifty years of doing this stuff, I still can’t get it right myself?

There’s a name for that kind of thinking.

It’s called Resistance.

I knew it. I knew that this was a serious gut-check moment. I had screwed up. I had failed to do all the things I’d been preaching to others.

After two weeks I took Shawn’s notes out and sat down with them. I told myself, Read them through one time, looking only for stuff you can agree with.

I did.

If Shawn’s notes made eight points, I found I could accept two.

Okay.

That’s a start.

I wrote this to Shawn:

 

Pard, gimme another two weeks to convince myself that your ideas are really mine. Then I’ll get back to you and we can talk.

 

Three days later, I read Shawn’s notes again.

This time I found four things to agree with.

That was progress. For the first time I spied a glimmer of daylight.

Two days later I began thinking of one of Shawn’s ideas as if I had come up with it myself.

Yeah, it’s my idea. Let’s rock it!

(I knew of course that the idea was Shawn’s. But at last, forward motion was occurring. I had passed beyond the Denial Stage.)

I’ll continue this Report From the Trenches next week. I don’t want this post to run too long and get boring.

The two Big Takeaways from today:

First, how lucky any of us is if we have a friend or editor or fellow writer (or even a spouse) who has the talent and the guts to give us true, objective feedback.

I’d be absolutely lost without Shawn.

And second, what a thermonuclear dose of Resistance we experience when faced with the hard truth about something we’ve written that truly sucks.

Our response to this moment, I believe, is what separates the pros from the amateurs. An amateur at this juncture will fold. She’ll balk, she’ll become defensive, she’ll dig in her heels and refuse to alter her work. I can’t tell you how close I came to doing exactly that.

The pro somehow finds the strength to bite the bullet. The process is not photogenic. It’s a bloodbath.

For me, the struggle is far from over. I’ve got weeks and weeks to go before I’m out of the woods and, even then, I may have to repeat this regrouping yet again.

[NOTE TO READER: Shall I continue these “reports from the trenches?” I worry that this stuff is too personal, too specific. Is it boring? Write in, friends, and tell me to stop if this isn’t helpful.

I’ll listen.]

 

 

 

The Professor, The Artist, The Writer, And The Dots

Have you ever experienced a lightning strike when reading a book, listening to a song, or staring at a painting?

That thing that’s been hanging in the background emerges with a clear path ahead of it. You know what to do—how to paint that portrait, how to sing that song, how to frame that book. It’s as if all the ideas in the universe came together at that moment to clear the way for one big idea—an idea that relied on you being in that exact place and time.

This line from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon fueled a “What It Takes” article last year:

“I can always tell people are nice,” the stewardess said approvingly, “if they wrap their gum in paper before they put it in there.”

This week I’ve been going back and forth between Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood and Jeff Goin’s Real Artists Don’t Starve.

Toward the beginning of Norwegian Wood lives a spin on that old “you are what you eat” saying:

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

I typed it into my file of lines—those strands of words that double as defibrillators for my brain. When I stall, a read of those lines gets the noggin’ pumping again.

So it was with that line in my head that I started reading Real Artists Don’t Starve.

The back cover says the book debunks the myth of the starving artist.

While that might be what it is about, the book itself is an example of connecting the dots, which is what Greats do best.

The book starts with a story about Professor Rab Hatfield. Hatfield was in Florence researching Michelangelo. Next thing he knew . . . yada yada yada . . . Hatfield shattered what we thought we knew about the famed artist. Turns out he was a fat cat, full of dough. Hatfield tracked down 500 year old bank records that challenged the myth.

Jeff’s point in this story is that Michelangelo wasn’t broke—and artists today don’t have to be broke either. I agree. I hate the starving artist narrative. Everytime I meet art students, I beg them to take at least one course on contracts and basic accounting. This is the same advice you might give to someone buying a car or a house. You don’t have to be an expert, but you do need to know enough to identify when you’re getting screwed—or on the other hand, when a good deal is staring you in the face.

What got me thinking in the Michaelangelo story, though, wasn’t related to the artist, but to the professor instead.

The information was out there.

The professor wasn’t the first to dig around in the files.

And yet . . . That bit of magic occurred when he was traveling one track and then . . . BOOM! Lightning strikes and operates like a train switch. New track.

From Real Artists Don’t Starve:

“I was really looking for something else!” the professor yelled into the phone from his office in Italy, decades later. “Every time I run across something, it’s because I was looking for something else, which I consider real discovery. It’s when you don’t expect it that you really discover something.”

Instead of staying on track he flung open the door and on the other side made a discovery. Had he kept his blinders on, there’s a good chance Jeff wouldn’t be writing about him, nor would I.

But he did go off track and he did connect the dots.

Many of the articles and books and interviews Jeff cited are new to me. Thus, had I sat down to write this book it would have been completely different. He was a specific person in a specific time with specific background and specific experiences. The result? He connected the dots for the rest of us.

What does this mean for the rest of us, trying to write our own books?

We can’t predict the best time and place for the magic to take place, but . . .

We can open the door.

In order to connect the dots, Professor Hatfield had to open the door. When he started straying off track, which will happen with research, he kept going.

While reading the resource list at the back of Real Artists Don’t Starve, I imagined Jeff doing the same, going down the rabbit hole of research, without getting lost—with the ability to distinguish a door from a dead end.

This is what great artists do. But in order to connect the magnificent great big idea dots, they have to have boatloads of smaller idea dots.

Back to Haruki Murakami’s quote again:

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

If you limit your intake, you’ll limit your output.

The more ideas entering your noggin’ the more it’ll have to chew on—and the more likely it is that you’ll be a recipient of a bit of magic.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

Imagine Georges Seurat sitting in front of his canvas, one dot at a time until “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” emerged. Had he combined the wrong colors . . . Used fewer “dots” . . . Instead, he put the dots together and . . .

Lightning Strike.

Voila!

A masterpiece was born.

Every Villain is a Metaphor for Resistance

 

Darth Vader.

Compared to Resistance, this dude is a pussycat

The Gorgon.

Medusa.

They and every other villain in myth and literature (and real life) are metaphors for Resistance.

Resistance is the universal and ultimate villain.

Consider how this monster was described in The War of Art.

 

1. Resistance is Internal.

 

It is self-generated and self-perpetuated.

 

Resistance is Insidious.

 

Resistance has no conscience. [It] is always lying and always full of shit.

 

Resistance is Implacable.

 

It cannot be reasoned with. It is an engine of destruction … implacable, intractable, indefatigable. Reduce it to a single cell and that cell will continue to attack.

 

Resistance is Impersonal

 

It doesn’t know who you are and it doesn’t care. Resistance is a force of nature.

 

Resistance plays for keeps.

 

Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. It aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being, our genius, our soul. When we fight Resistance, we are in a war to the death.

 

The reader or moviegoer doesn’t have to be aware of the concept of Resistance to feel its echoes in Freddy Krueger and Leatherface and the Zombie Apocalypse, not to mention our friends the Alien, the shark in Jaws, and the Terminator.

The human heart looks in Hannibal Lecter’s eyes and recognizes the ultimate nemesis within its own chambers.

Write a villain that is as evil as Resistance (and shares as many of its specific qualities as possible) and you will be more than halfway to penning something spectacular.

The Magic Pill

[Today’s “What It Takes” is from the vault, coming to you via July 24, 2015]

If there is one question that I get asked again and again and again, it’s this:

Until these guys win the inner war for us, we're useless

Is there a resource available that lists all of the conventions and obligatory scenes of each and every genre?

The short answer to this is “not that I’m aware of.”

I have a theory about why we all want such a Story “cheat sheet” which I’ll get into later.

But I can absolutely understand why ambitious writers at the start of their careers (and those who’ve been mining the Micro worlds of writing for their respective 10,000 hours too) would appreciate such a resource.

After all, understanding and applying the Macro principles of writing (part of which are genres conventions and obligatory scenes) is one of the things that Steve Pressfield and I keep harping on. The thing that took him from “doesn’t work” to “works.” That whole Foolscap Method thing.

Figuring out the Macro movements of Story took Steve from polished line-by-line writer with no income (except when he toiled off and on as a Mad Man to fill his coffers) to a published novelist and nonfiction writer capable of earning enough cash to pay his electric bill.

Isn’t that the goal?  Being an artist with a big enough audience to create stuff as a full time job?  Not a million copy audience.  Just one large enough to keep the wolf from the door?

For Story Nerds, that is absolutely the goal.

It’s a destination that gives me a level of focus when darkness descends and the black dogs of doubt howl.

I still have to edit other people’s work and publish other people’s books and agent other people’s projects to keep my household afloat.

Don’t get me wrong. I love doing that too, but come on?  Why do I bang out thousands of words a week at Storygrid and here?

Because it’s important work even if my writing is a red line item on my bank ledger. Especially because I have to “pay” for it.

Huh?  Aren’t I an idiot for writing a bunch of stuff that actually takes currency out of my family’s cookie jar?

Well, that’s the definition of important work.  When you put more into something than it “gives back,” it’s important.

As Steve points out in The War of Art and Turning Pro and Do the Work and in all of his fiction, you need to seek out those places in your life where you are giving more than you seem to be getting.  They’re the places to put your surplus (if not all) of your energy.

You’re here for a reason…that reason is to put more into something than it gives back, right?  It would be cool to leave the earth a better place than when you got here, wouldn’t it?  Well that requires giving more than you get.

So all of you out there who email me pissed off about how you’ve been at it for ten years with double digits of material and claim that you still have bupkis to show for it, spare me.  Send me another email in fifteen years bitching about the same thing and we can have a cup of coffee.

Don’t kid yourself.

Those “wasted years,” those unpublished manuscripts…they are priceless.  Deep down, you know that they are as well as I do.  You don’t write for 3rd Party Validation.  You never have.  You write because you have to.  You’d be in some rehab center or in the ground if you didn’t.

So enough with the “when will Random House bring me into the circle?” and “how do I get people to read my stuff?” questions. You don’t put your ass in the chair every day to get those answers. So stop asking those questions and keep plumbing the mystery.

Think of the poor suckers who have nothing to drive them to such despair…pity them, not yourself.  You’ve got the great universe of Story pushing you.

But what about my theory?  Why do people want the answers to Genre’s big questions all neat and tidy in a single resource?

What a compendium of conventions and obligatory scenes speaks to is the “magic pill” desire in us all.  Hell…I’d love to take a look at that tome myself.  I’d buy the first copy.

But it would do me no good if I don’t know how to use it.

Three years ago I fell in love with a set of bedside tables.  They were of simple design and just perfect.  But the antique dealer (junk shop) wanted like $2000 for the pair.  Crazy, right?

I muttered to myself and left that shop determined to make my own.  But not before taking about fifty photographs of them.  Front/back/side/underneath etc.  Took measurements too.

I then went online and found a great woodworking site that offered to sell me everything I’d need to reproduce those puppies.  I bought the dovetailer.  The precision router.  The micro sander.  I spent far too much money on the tools, but I figured I’d make up for it with all of the great stuff I’d be able to make.

You know how this ends.

I spent a good 300 hours trying to recreate those “simple” nightstands.  And I look at them every day.  They’re in a pile of crap I keep meaning to finish right next to my writing desk.

Weird right? I have the answers to creating the perfect nightstands (the tools and the measurements). But what I don’t have the woodworker’s craft yet. So I can’t use the answers all that well.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting together what everyone is asking for.  Just like there is nothing wrong with created a newfangled dovetailer.  And if I live long enough, I’ll do my best to make as big of a dent as I can in the considerable amount of work it will take to create the resource.  I’ve been working up the conventions for the Redemption/Performance genre over at storygrid the last couple of weeks.

But the answers will only really help those obsessed with the questions—those who’ve put in exponentially more work hours into learning Story’s craft than I have learning how to dovetail.

When we’re sick, we want that pill that’s going to make us better as soon as possible. We want the vile microbes in our bodies to be vanquished with one swallow or one shot.

We don’t want to lie in bed for three days sweating out a fever.

It’s uncomfortable and tedious and disorienting to break our day-to-day routines to just lie there headache-y and sniffling, waiting for our good guy antibodies to wipe out the invading microbial hoards.

No matter.  We can bitch and moan all we want, but our insides have to do the hidden work before we can stand up again and face the external world with purpose and vigor.

The inner war must be fought first before we can effectively face the reality of the external world.  Sure we can mask the symptoms with Sudafed and Nyquil, but none of us is worth a damn on that stuff.

There is no magic pill. Just the inner war.

[Join www.storygrid.com to read more of Shawn’s Stuff]

Elements of a Great Villain

The shark in Jaws first surfaced in Peter Benchley’s novel in 1974. It’s still scaring the crap out of swimmers from Jones Beach to the Banzai Pipeline. The Alien first burst from John Hurt’s chest in 1979. The Terminator landed in 1984. And how about the Furies (Part Three of Aeschylus’s Oresteia) from 458 BCE?

John Hurt having a bad moment in the 1979 “Alien”

What qualities do these Hall of Fame antagonists have in common?

They cannot be reasoned with (Okay, the Furies did have a bit of a soft spot).
They cannot be appealed to on the basis of justice, fair play, or the idea of right and wrong.
They are internally, relentlessly driven to achieve their ends. Nothing can stop them except their own annihilation.
Their intention is the destruction of the hero.

 

MATT HOOPER (RICHARD DREYFUSS)

What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine that is a miracle of evolution. It swims and eats and makes little baby sharks, that’s it.

 

Why is the Thing such a terrifying villain, or the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the nuclear-mutated ants in Them?

 

KYLE REESE (MICHAEL BIEHN)

Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop …ever, until you are dead!

Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn on the run in “The Terminator”

 

So far these examples are all external villains. They exist in physical form. Their province lies outside the hero’s mind.

What about antagonists who reside inside the hero’s head?

Even they, even great societal and internal villains, share the qualities listed above.

Racism in Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, and The Help.

Greed in Wall Street, Margin Call and Bonfire of the Vanities.

 

JOHN TULD (JEREMY IRONS)

What have I told you since the first day you stepped into my office? There are three ways to make a living in this business. Be first, be smarter, or cheat. Now I don’t cheat. And although I like to think we have some pretty smart people in this building, it sure is a helluva lot easier to just be first.

JARED COHEN (SIMON BAKER)

Sell it all. Today.

Jeremy Irons tells it like it is in “Margin Call”

 

Ahab’s rage for vengeance in Moby Dick is an internal villain. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel remorse, or pity, or fear. And it will not stop until it has killed its enemy or its host.

The insanity of war in Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Jay Gatsby’s belief that he can recreate the past.

All these villains are relentless, indefatigable forces that heed no warnings, respond to no appeals, and will not stop until they themselves are destroyed.

A villain can be human. A villain should be human. He or she should have quirks and weaknesses and internal contradictions, like all of us.

But for you and me as writers, if we’re going to get down on paper a really memorable Bad Dude or Dudette, we’d better make sure that that villain passes muster on Points One to Four above.

 

Thank You General Sam

(In 2010 we ran the interview below with General Samuel Vaughan Wilson. In the years that followed, I found myself sitting on General Sam’s front porch, listening to his stories and wandering through the fields and woods surrounding his home. His obituary in the Washington Post this past week shared highlights of his military and intel career. While I spent days listening to stories from those periods of his life, to me he will always be more teacher than soldier or “spymaster.” He believed in, and devoted his life to, his country, and then gave every lesson he learned to the generations that followed. I was never surprised to find people, particularly previous students from Hampden-Sydney College dropping in unannounced. He taught through story, something we talk about here all the time. In his case he had some extraordinary stories to tell, all with lessons of leadership and hard work, and doing what’s right over what’s easy. He also cared. He gave so much of his life to others. I’m blessed to have been gifted even a minute of that life. I miss him, but I see him clear as day in my memory. He’ll always be on his front porch, sitting in his rocker, with his beloved German Shepherd Max at his side.  His work isn’t done – it’s simply in the care of others. Thank you General Sam. ~Callie) 

General Sam Wilson has accomplished more in his lifetime than many of us dare to dream about. He served as a reconnaissance officer with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma, during WWII; as a CIA spy-ring operator in Berlin, uncovering Soviet secrets; as a director of instruction at the U.S. Army Special Warfare School; as a civilian working with USAID in Vietnam and then in the personal rank of minister at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon; and then back in the military, as a Special Forces Group Commander, followed by an assignment as the Assistant Commandant at the U.S. Army’s JFK Institute for Military Assistance (now the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School); then Assistant Division Commander for Operations in the 82nd Airborne Division; as chief defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow; as a director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; as Deputy to the Director Central Intelligence for the Intelligence Community; as one of the founders of the U.S. Special Operations forces and one of the creators of the Army’s Delta Force; and as a teacher and ultimately president of Hampden-Sydney College.

SP: One of the questions that I’ve been asked as a writer, and which I’ve asked others is: Where do your ideas come from? Often, people say that their ideas come via experiences leading them to a certain point, or a Muse or other source. When I read about your career—that you joined the military at 16, and that you were teaching counter-insurgency by 19, I wondered about where your ideas came from. A hallmark of your career, indeed your life, is outside-the-box thinking. How did a 16 year-old, three years later, find himself creating and teaching strategies with which today’s senior leaders still struggle?

SW: The most important influence on my thinking processes came from my parents during my growing up period. I was born and raised on a 150 acre farm—tobacco, corn, wheat—in Southside Virginia (hard by the Saylers Creek Battleground, where the Army of Northern fought its last fight.) My parents were readers, and they imbued us Wilson children with a deep love of books. My mother had been a public school teacher, and she saw to it that I—along with my older sister and three brothers—took the business of learning seriously, including what we learned in Sunday school and church, where she was my first Sunday school teacher. She taught us Wilson children discipline, self-control and how to think logically.

My father, on the other hand, fired our imaginations with his stories, songs and poetry, and helped us see things in life and in our environment in general that we otherwise would surely have missed. From an early age, we worked with him in the fields and woods, and around the farmyard, and he kept our morale up and our spirits high with his jingles and stories, many of them made up on the spot right out of the thin air. In a draft for my memoirs, titled Galahad II: A Country Boy Goes to War, I wrote:

“His mastery of ad-lib storytelling was legendary around the community. Boys from the neighborhood would frequently drop in for free haircuts—he was an expert barber. As often as not, they would be accompanied by buddies who had come along for the tale telling that came with the shearing. The whole group would sit there open-mouthed, mesmerized by the colorful nature tales of foxes, ‘possums, coon dogs, stories of hunting and fishing, of goblins and ‘hants, watermelon heists, red-tailed hawks, and river owls calling at night along the Appomattox. He gave distinct personalities to birds and animals and made them come alive. He could create more tension and drama than anyone I have ever listened to out of such subjects as a creaking door in an abandoned old farm house or strange footprints on a river sandbar in the pre-dawn mist. We would sit entranced for hours on the front porch on moonlit summer nights or by a glowing fireside during the cold of winter, listening as he spun yarn after yarn, making up his stories as he went along…”

There is no question but that my own ability, such as it is, to see things that are not there and then picture them for others to see is greatly aided by the heritage of my father.

SP: I watched the introduction you did for the film Merrill’s Marauders. At one point, in the trailer, you say:

“This was a job they said we couldn’t do. They called it impossible.”

Later, there’s a scene in the trailer, where “Stock” says:

“My man can’t make it. It’s not that they don’t want to fight, it’s that they can’t fight. They just can’t physically fight anymore.”

What inspired you and kept you motivated through your almost 40 years in the Army—much of which required accomplishing the impossible, and stretching your physical and mental limits?

SW: On motivation:

In addition to their providing a sound moral and philosophical foundation on the things that count—including love of country, I also had some appreciation from my parents—and from my own reading—for what was going on in the world of the 1930’s, and had some glimmer as to what the stakes were for the United States in the arena of U.S. foreign policy and national security. By the time I was 16, I was fired up and ready to go slay dragons. In my 1994 commencement speech at Hampden-Sydney College, I said:

“And so, let an old soldier of 3 1/2 wars, and over fifty years of public service, who has seen many men die —some, unfortunately, at his own hand, who has roamed the five continents and the seven seas, strolled in the market places from Marrakech to Baghdad to Samarkand and Ulan Bator, browsed in the book stalls of Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Peking and Tokyo, watched the sun rise out of the South China Sea and set in the Indian Ocean, the moon come up over the snows of the Himalayas and the lightning play in the peaks of the Andes, who has missed setting foot in or at least seeing only two places—Albania and the South Pole—tell you this:

“It is now your world, it is not mine anymore. And it’s a beautiful, blue jewel . . . a shining sphere. Love it, cherish it, protect it and keep it.”

And from my 1997 commencement speech at Hampden-Sydney College:

“I reach for language these old oaks have heard before and know very well. Let an old soldier who has run with the wolves and flown with the eagles tell you this: ‘Love your country. Don’t ever, ever stop loving your country. In the whole wide world we’ve got the best system there is for a man to work out his own destiny. But the system is not on automatic pilot. We have to work to make it work. Don’t forget that . . . We count on you as young men of awesome promise to do what is necessary and what is right to keep us strong and keep us free.”

On hanging in there when the going gets tough:

I felt that I could never falter or let up in front of the troops. I would sooner perish.

All my life (until now) I have always been the youngest and the least formally educated in whatever outfit I belonged to. Result: I was almost always running scared (even when I may have lapped the field—without really knowing it.) For me failure was never an option. In the draft of my memoirs, I also wrote:

“What calls forward this little vignette I have no idea. I haven’t thought of it in years. For some reason I was musing at breakfast this morning, almost in my subconscious mind, about the midnight ride to Merrill. That led to memories of Pride-and-Joy, which led in turn to recollections of Big Red.

“I recall that Big Red was almost as fast as Pride-and-Joy. When we raced the horses in the corral back in India, in the fall of 1943, to pick out the fastest one, Big Red came in second. (Lt Col Still never knew his horse placed third; Sergeant Knapp never told him, thank goodness, or Still would have taken Pride-and-Joy away from me.)

“Pride-and-Joy had a smooth, fluid motion when he ran; the sensation was one of floating along, even in full stride. But Big Red seemed to exert himself mightily, thundering along with great wheezing gasps, almost jarring the ground with the impact of his hooves. The ride was so rough that at times it was hard to stay in the saddle, especially since Big Red would go kind of crazy when you let him run full out. It would become almost impossible to rein him in.

“We were about midway of the march from Assam into North Burma over the Ledo Road. It was a mid-morning in January 1944, pushing on towards noon. The column had fallen out for a rest break, and as usual I was taking advantage of the chance to unlimber the horses a bit. This time it was Big Red’s turn, and as he began to gallop down the road along the column of resting soldiers, I decided to let him have his head.

“And he ran away with me.

“I guess nobody but me knew that I was in trouble, barely hanging on and about to be tossed at any second. We came careening around a bend in the road, and right in front of me was the command group with General Merrill, standing there with his clipboard. I can still see the pleased grin on his face as he took off his helmet and waved it as I came thundering by. Little did he know that I was running scared, not knowing how the thing was going to turn out.

“Running scared. That’s an ironic and typical commentary on the life of one SVW, hanging grimly on with a silly grin disguising his terror and wondering how he got himself into such mess.

“Running scared…Big Red becomes a metaphor for my entire life.”

In almost all my varied assignments (the majority of which I volunteered for), I was blessed with a mission, a goal that I could believe in deeply. And more often than not I had this funny feeling that I had something to offer. That made it easier, sometimes even fun, to hang on and work very hard for a successful outcome.

SP: I read the following quote from you and was reminded of the many of us who think they need to be James Bond to accomplish something special:

“Ninety percent of intelligence comes from open sources. The other ten percent, the clandestine work, is just the more dramatic. The real intelligence hero is Sherlock Holmes not James Bond.”

And in an interview with Dr. J.W. Partin, when speaking about your time training with Major General Wingate in India, you said:

” . . . we began to pick up some things from the British and their way of doing things. They were much leaner, more conservative in what they carried and in what kinds of external support they expected. In fact, we were sort of, by nature, a little spoiled. They tried to do more with less, so that was a good lesson for us.”

As you rose within the military and then became a leader helping those coming up in the ranks, how did you drive home the notion that more can be done with less—Sherlock Holmes v. James Bond—whether related to clandestine work or freshman studies in college? What did you do yourself, and what did you encourage other to do, to live the importance of being able to do more with less?

SW: Growing up on a Southside Virginia farm where we lived on things that came out of the soil, directly or indirectly, I learned early on that one not only can survive but actually thrive on very little. This lesson was confirmed emphatically in the North Burma campaign of 1944, when I came to realize that I could get by if three simple needs or conditions could be met: if I had enough to eat to keep going, if I could have a place and a chance to rest and recoup my energy, and if I could gain respite from enemy guns, especially artillery fire. I figured that if I had these three things, I could make it the rest of the way on my own. Later, I had occasion to check these observations with some of Wingate’s Chindits, and I found them in full agreement.

From another angle, as a soldier starting out in a rifle company in 1940, I was almost amazed at how little in the way of trappings and paraphernalia I really had to have in order to do my job effectively, how relatively easy it was to simplify things and get down to basics. When we would break camp in the early mornings while on maneuvers, and I would sling my pack and march away, all I owned or needed was on my back, and there was nothing left behind to show where I had slept the night before. A wonderful liberating feeling.

That conviction, arrived at early on, has been with me ever since. You can do more with less, and you really don’t need most of the things you think you do. Seeing how the British-Indian Army put this principle into practice was a revelation… And you get these points across to the troops by personal example.

The primary lesson in the Holmes-Bond analogy is not so much “doing more with less” as it is knowing in depth what your intelligence priorities are and then knowing what (and how) to look for the answers. Sometimes the critical key to unlock the whole conundrum is right there under your nose. Remember Poe’s The Purloined Letter? You have to know what to look for and how to recognize it when you see it.

SP: Two weeks ago, I did an interview with General Hal Moore. I asked him the following, and wanted to ask the same of you:

As a writer, I’ve found myself doing the same, but on an individual basis. For me, it might be that an idea comes along, and I don’t think about it or analyze it. I just act. I often attribute this to the Muse, who inspires writers. But in the military, lives are at stake. While a writer might battle over a main character’s actions, you battle in real time, pulling everything together while you are in the moment. From where do you pull this strength? And how would you advise today’s service members in particular about acting in the moment, and not overthinking and analyzing—just doing?

SW: If you have studied and trained and know your job and its requirements thoroughly, then in a fast-moving crisis when you don’t have time to think, your instincts take over and you act practically without conscious thought.

You are going along a jungle trail in North Burma when suddenly a voice in your head says, “Duck Sam, Duck Sam, Duck!” And a Jap Nambu light machine gun cuts the empty air where you had been standing. Premonition? Hardly. The almost unnoticed odor of fish heads and rice and the slight discoloration in the leaves of the branches camouflaging the enemy machine gun telegraphed danger to you without your being fully conscious of it. Trust your instincts.

SP: I asked Joe Galloway the following questions last week:

You’ve been a leader within the journalism and military community, and you’ve known legendary leaders in the military community as they’ve risen—such as General Norman Schwarzkopf, whom you met in Vietnam, and then went on to cover, and embed with during Desert Storm. Most recently, General McChrystal has been in the news, with people questioning his leadership skills. What’s your advice to our next generation of leaders, both civilian and military? What is it that has worked for you and for others?

You have a tradition of outstanding leadership yourself, and you’ve worked with, and have helped nurture future leaders. What’s your advice for military leaders in particular today?

SW: It is not easy for me to answer this question. I have been giving lectures on leadership and teaching leadership courses off and on ever since the fall of 1945, when I was involved in establishing a post-war course on the subject at Fort Benning’s infantry school. In this light, I have great difficulty responding to you in a couple of short paragraphs. Among the suggestions I might offer would be included the following:

Always strive to develop and communicate a clear-cut statement of the mission.

Stress the sharing of information, especially down the chain of command, as well as laterally.

Once you are satisfied that your subordinates know their jobs, give them their marching orders and get out of the way, while supporting them in every way you can.

Remember, take care of the troops and the troops will take care of you.

Don’t let your superiors get caught by surprise.

Study the lives of successful leaders, but at the same time don’t neglect to learn from the mistakes of those who failed.

There is so much more to be said, but this gets us started.

SP: We’ve all seen our ideas adapted by others for their own use. And during that process, our definitions are dropped/altered by those handling them. You coined the term “counter-insurgency.” I read a column that Joe Galloway wrote about you in 2004, in which he recalled:

“Samuel Vaughan Wilson stares intently at the television news from Iraq. American infantrymen are kicking in a Sunni Muslim family’s front door, yelling and screaming and manhandling the father. Wilson grimaces. “This isn’t counter-insurgency,” he says. “This is not the right way to do this.”

And in the summary of Rand’s 1962 Counterinsurgency Symposium, there is a point where it states:

“Col. Wilson emphasized the distinction—thus far inadequately stressed in our service schools—between two entirely different situations in which the Communists initiate guerilla war. In the first they will seize on existing resentment (people’s hatred of an oppressor, or their desire to recover lost privileges or property) and capture an independent movement already under way. The second is the culmination of years of communist planning an organization, as in the case of Central Vietnam . . .”

You wrote the Army’s first manual on how to do counterinsurgency. How have you felt about how something you worked on for so many years has evolved, and has been changed by others? Do you think counterinsurgency is being done right today? Or is what we’re seeing today something different, which should be titled with a different term?

SW: While serving as the director of instruction of the U.S. Army Special Warfare School (Fort Bragg), during 1959-61, and with the capable assistance of several bright, forward-looking officers, I worked to develop a program of instruction (not a manual) on counter-insurgency operations. As the subject was relatively new, this in a sense was a foundational effort, which attracted unusual attention at the time from policy levels in Washington. While trying to figure out what to call our undertaking, we settled on counter-insurgency (coin, for short), as noted above. Three years later, in the summer of 1964, I was assigned to South Vietnam where I had the opportunity to try putting into practice some of the principles we had identified at Fort Bragg. In a word, they worked. Others have been applying lessons learned since then to update, modify and improve basic coin doctrine. In this sense, General Petraeus and his warrior intellectuals have taken COIN to new levels, and I have no doubt that someone else will carry it further along in the future. To your question as to my feelings on how a subject into which I poured so much time and energy continues to evolve, I have no sense of proprietorship; this process simply reflects the dynamic nature of doctrinal development in the military world.

The Villain Doesn’t Think He’s the Villain

 

You and I as writers, when we want to create a really dastardly Bad Guy, may find ourselves conjuring a mustache-twirling, Simon Legree-esque, Filthy McNasty ogre, tying an innocent damsel to a railroad track.

“Me, the Bad Guy? You gotta be kidding!”

But remember, the villain doesn’t see himself as the villain.

From his point of view, he’s the good guy.

To him, the real villain in the story is the hero.

Consider this all-time-great Villain Speech, written by Aaron Sorkin and delivered to such memorable effect by Jack Nicholson as Marine colonel Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men. When you read these lines (which are clearly intended to make the audience think, “Boy, is this dude evil!”), see them, if you can, as honorable and noble, not to mention absolutely true to hardball-world reality:

COL. JESSUP

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

From Jessup’s point of view, Tom Cruise is the villain. Just look at him. An impeccably-groomed, headquarters-based lawyer who sleeps on clean sheets every night, who is not only living in a dream world with his high-minded ideas about how wars are fought and freedom is defended but who actually dares to accuse me, who stands in harm’s way, of a crime—and then paints me as the bad guy!

Or how about this villain:

GORDON GEKKO

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.

We’re going to talk in detail about Villain Speeches in another post. Suffice it to say, for now, that a great villain has his or her own point of view, and that point of view should be just as valid, if not more valid, than the point of view of the hero.

What makes a great villain is that, though what he does is truly grisly and horrifying, possibly even planet-threatening, he’s doing it, from his point of view, for the most normal, and even honorable, reasons in the world.

The shark in Jaws is just trying to find his next meal. What’s wrong with that?

The Alien is only trying to procreate and self-actualize, to grow from a baby Alien into a grownup Alien.What’s so horrible about that?

And the Terminator? If you stopped him and accused him of wrongdoing as he’s blowing away one Sara Conner after another, he’d turn to you with an expression of shock and bewilderment.

 

TERMINATOR

I’m just doing my job!

 

 

 

Story Grid Foolscapping The Tipping Point

Here is our progress so far on our Foolscap Global Story Grid for The Tipping Point.

You remember what the Foolscap Global Story Grid is right?  It’s the Big Big 30,000 foot view of an entire project from beginning to middle to end along all of the must haves it needs to satisfy its target audience.

We’ve just begun to fill out the “Obligatory Scenes and Conventions” we’ll need to abide.  Remember that the reason why we list the OS and Cs is to have a list to source and identify exactly where the writer made the critical choices necessary to meet readers’ expectations. As OS and Cs are the most difficult elements to innovate in a story, analyzing how the master storytellers were able to do so will be an invaluable tool for us.

Seeing the way Picasso boiled line drawing a bull into its most essential strokes inspires artists.

Picasso’s bulls

Seeing the way Malcolm Gladwell somehow delivers a “hero at the mercy of the villain scene” in his external genre Action Adventure component in The Tipping Point will be equally thrilling.

Let’s review the OS and Cs that Gladwell faced for his Big Idea Nonfiction project.

1. Hero/Victim/Villain

The first one we’ve listed is the crucial convention of the Action Adventure story, the necessity of having a cast that includes at least one hero, at least one victim, and at least one villain.  We’re clear that we have that convention covered.  Here’s the post that explored that necessity.

2. Destination/Promise

What we also need in an Action Adventure Story is a clear Destination. What I mean by that is we need to be given a quest at the very start of the story that has a clear purpose. I always use L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as the epitome of the Action Adventure Story and its destination is, of course, The Emerald City, the center of Oz where the Wizard resides.

In the case of the Big Idea Nonfiction Story, the destination is not just understanding the Big Idea itself, but applying that understanding to get a clearer view of the world.  The Destination/Promise is applicable knowledge.

3. Path/Methodology

The third thing we need in an Action Adventure Story is a clear path to the destination, a yellow brick road. By following the path we will reach the promised land.

In the case of Big Idea Nonfiction, the path is inherent in the methodology of the investigator/narrator. And that methodology is the logical progression of the storyteller’s adherence to the universally accepted form of discovery—the Scientific method.

4. Sidekick/s

The sidekick/s in an Action Adventure Story are the equivalent of the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. These characters exemplify a component of the global hypothesis. For example, in The Tipping Point Gladwell introduces the reader to everyday people like Roger Horchow, Lois Weisberg, and Mark Alpert to represent building blocks of his theory.

5. Set Pieces/Weigh Stations

The Action Adventure Set Pieces are mini-stories within the global story. Essentially these are sequences with a central dilemma that must be solved before the global story can move forward. If Dorothy does not throw water on the Wicked Witch of the West after she’s been abducted by the witch’s winged monkeys, we’d never learn the truth about the Wizard of Oz.

Similarly in a Big Idea work of Nonfiction, if we are not convinced by Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion that products/ideas tip in much the same way as viruses overwhelm a host, we’d never understand the importance of “stickiness.”

It’s important to remember that the storyteller needs to escalate the stakes of each of the Set Pieces/Weigh Stations as the global journey/story progresses. Just as L. Frank Baum had to figure out exactly where in the hierarchy of danger the winged monkeys fell, so does Gladwell have to prioritize the set pieces/weigh stations of his global story. Gladwell doesn’t begin The Tipping Point with the set piece/weigh station about suicides in Micronesia. He builds to them with lighter fare about Hush Puppies and less specific examples about overall crime rates in New York.  It’s not the evidence presented in a Big Idea Book that makes it compelling, it’s the order in which the writer chooses to deliver the evidence…

6. Hero at the Mercy of the Villain Scene

The “hero at the mercy of the villain” scene is the core event of every action story including Action Adventure. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz moment is when the Wicked Witch of the West has Dorothy on the ropes. She’s gonna get our heroine’s shoes and then all will be lost. That’s when Dorothy melts the witch with the water.

Malcolm Gladwell clearly states that he’s written an Intellectual Adventure Story so we need to figure out exactly where and when he gives us the “hero at the mercy of the villain” scene. I have some ideas about that but I need to take my time and really parse it out in the Story Grid Spreadsheet of The Tipping Point before I’ll share them.

Those are my big six OS and Cs for Action Adventure. So I’m going to note them on my Foolscap for The Tipping Point.

I’m also going to add three more must-haves to cover the necessities for the Internal Genre, Worldview Revelation, in the Big Idea Nonfiction book. They are:

7. A Blatant Statement of the Controlling Idea

Unlike fiction’s controlling idea/theme which is delivered in subtext, for Big Idea Nonfiction, the controlling idea must clearly be stated. In as few words as possible.  As soon as possible. The statement of the big idea is the inciting incident of the entire Big Idea Book. It’s the must-have throwdown raison d’etre of the book–after years of diligent hard work, here is what I’ve discovered. Now follow me and I’ll walk you through exactly how I pieced this life changing information together and then I’ll tell you how to apply this information in your own life.

8. Ethos/Logos/Pathos

As I wrote about here, the Big Idea Nonfiction book must use all three forms of argument to build/prove its case.

9. Ironic Payoff

Lastly, the Big Idea Nonfiction book must “turn.” What I mean by that is that while the promise of the book (proving the idea and then giving the readers the necessary tools to apply the idea) must be paid off, it also must do so with a surprising twist.

The pursuit of the idea and applying it potently reveals a deeper truth, one that the storyteller delivers to the reader at the ending payoff.

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the irony is that the Wizard is impotent. It is the power within each of the characters who seek his approval/permission that truly grants them their wishes. Not the Wizard’s magic.

So it is in The Tipping Point… To tip a product or a behavior is not all it’s cracked up to be. In the end, the book reveals that scale requires compromising sacrifice and that it also has a very dark side. So while empowering, to know how to tip something is also potentially catastrophic. There is as much darkness inherent in The Tipping Point as there is light.  It is a viral phenomenon in every sense of that word.

 

Give a Star a Star Speech

 

Actors will admit it, if you ask: the first time they read a script, some part of them is scanning it for a great speech they can deliver.

“Do ya feel lucky, punk?”

A star speech.

A speech that says, “This is my movie (or my book).”

It’s our job as writers, yours and mine, to give that star a star speech.

A star speech can be long.

I believe in the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good Scotch … I believe that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”

It can be a soliloquy.

To be or not to be, etc. etc.

A star speech can also be short.

“Go ahead, make my day.”

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

A star speech doesn’t even have to be spoken by the star.

“You run away once, you got yourself one set of chains. You run away twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain’t gonna need no third set, ’cause you gonna get your mind right.”

“I’ll have what she’s having.”

Estelle Reiner referring to Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally”

But a star speech has to be memorable. It has to articulate the star’s point of view/philosophy/dilemma. It has to be a line or lines that only the central character of the book or movie (or a supporting character referring to that central character) can legitimately deliver.

“What a dump.”

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”

I know, I know. It ain’t easy to deliver lines like these on demand. I’ll bet the writers on Sudden Impact filled page after yellow page with candidates, answering Clint Eastwood’s directive, “Gimme a line people are gonna remember.” (Or, who knows, maybe Make my day appeared in the script organically.)

In any event, we want that line.

Our star wants it.

The audience/readers want it.

“She’s my sister. She’s my daughter … ”

 

 

The Value of Words

Numbers are concrete.

Unless they’re being manipulated by a slug, I don’t look at “2” and wonder if it is really “4.”

I know that the absolute value of 2—whether it has a negative sign in front of it or not—is still 2, because numbers are ultimately about distance. Both 2 and -2 take up two spaces on the number line, whether I’m moving forward or backward.

Imagine words being absolute numbers.

The “2” version of your words convey the exact same meaning, whether presented in the positive or negative. One absolute value, void of interpretations.

Below is an example from a recent e-mail, where the words and message exist on different planes.

What was written:

My client likes you book. He’s a big deal in the film industry and I want to give him a signed copy. Can you sign and overnight it to this address xxx xxx xxx?

What was likely meant:

I’m trying to kiss my client’s ass and I need your help.

How it could be translated:

I’m trying to kiss my client’s ass and I want you to bend over backwards to help, even though I’ve never met you, have had no contact with you, and will not offer to pay to send you the book or pay for shipping because you are an author and must have copies that your publisher sends you for free just sitting around your house, and because you’re a recognized author, you must have a ton of extra money and time to deal with my self-serving request.

With words, there’s a lot of wiggle room. They are not absolute. Baggage makes them so.

Every time a new message arrives, the lens through which we view it switches out, like an optometrist’s test kit.

If we’re on the writing end, we have to know that the intended interpretation could be missed.

What to do?

Let’s rework the e-mail above.

What should have been written:

I have a client who admires your work.

I’ve enjoyed working with him and want to do something special to thank him.

I know this is a lot to ask, but would you consider signing a book to him?

If yes, I’d make it as easy as possible for you. I’ll buy a copy of the book and send it to you with a FedEx return label, so all you have to do is call for a pick-up.

Thanks for considering the above,

Best,

What you would have meant:

I have a client I like—and I want to send him a thank you present that I know would make him happy. I know you don’t know me, but I’ll make it as easy as possible if you are able to help.

How it would have been translated:

I’m a nice guy. I have a nice client. I want to do something nice for that nice client. I need your help. If you help, I promise I’ll make it as easy as possible for you.

Get your words as close to their meaning.

Say what you mean and drop everything in between.

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION:

In the last few months, Steve has received a few e-mails from individuals asking him to review their books, which include links to where Steve can pre-order the books on Amazon.

No offer to send a free book.

No offer to pay for shipping.

Just a request that he spend his time and money on a complete stranger.

If you use extra words to say what you mean, make sure they are dripping in Kindness and Consideration.