Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 67

What Fresh Hell?

The Inimitable Dorothy Parker

Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before.

I remembered an old joke when I was doing some of the course work for my friend Tim Grahl’s online course, The Productive Writer. I’m taking it to recharge the old writing batteries and learn how to lure the Muse out of hiding more often.

Wisely I think, Tim doesn’t start his course with quick fix tactics to get your ass in your writing chair. Instead he starts with getting you to explore why you want to be a writer in the first place.

One of the questions he has you answer in the second day of work is this:

How will your life look different when you reach your dream of being a full-time writer?

After answering it for myself, I remembered this joke:

A much as he hates to go above ground, Satan decides it’s about that time again to do a little marketing. To keep his numbers up.

His first and only stop…Los Angeles’ biggest talent agencies.

He goes to WME, CAA, UTA and meets with all of the heads, and all of those “hot” agents angling to one day be heads too.

He explains that he’s decided to change Hell. He’s going to make it extraordinarily comfortable.  Not such a downer.  He understands that he needs to counter-program the terrible reputation it has.

The thing is, he’s just tired of losing souls to Heaven… And as a reasonable person he’s not averse to change.

But he recognizes that he needs help. That’s the first step, right?  Recognizing that you need help?  So he’s come to meet with these agents to see if they would be interested in checking out his account.  Money’s no object of course.  Whatever it takes to get the true gen about the old homestead out there, he’ll pay.

Before they decide about the job though, would they be interested in taking a tour? Checking out the new digs?

No commitments necessary. Satan just wants their professional opinions about what he’s done with the place and of how he might improve it.

And just before he leaves each meeting, Satan asks that each of the agents not share this information with anyone else. It’s confidential you see.

All the agents vehemently agree that they will do no such thing. They’ll keep the info locked up in their unbreachable neural vaults.  (This piece from The Hollywood Reporter convinced me to add that little bit to the joke)

All of the agents agree to take a “no risk tour” of FRESH HELL.

Satan schedules their appointments back to back so that WME sees that CAA is there and UTA sees that WME is there etc. etc.

They all discover that what Satan has done with Hell is incredible. There are spas and remarkable vistas and incredibly helpful attendants. It’s just stunning. Like The Four Seasons without the big bill at the end.

All of the agents agree that this FRESH HELL will change the face of earth. No longer will people fear the wrath of Hell. The relief that there will be no penalty to pursuing one’s own personal desires above all else will be HUGE!  HUGE!

Satan thanks them but says that as they all can imagine, he has limited space for FRESH HELL and that he’ll need early commitments to fill the slots he has available. And as he’s sure they’ll understand, he just can’t divulge the total numbers available as that will dis-incentivize people to ACT NOW!

The agents nod in understanding.

He then goes on to tell them that he has set aside some very special VIP sections of FRESH HELL for those who’ve helped him with the re-brand and marketing. He would be honored if they chose to spend eternity behind his very special velvet rope.

No pressure, of course, but Satan is due above to meet with Wall Street consiglieres in an hour, so it might be best for them to sign up now while the spots are still available…

All of the agents excitedly commit to the FRESH HELL and they’re thrilled to jump into the re-brand too.

And in an incredible show of just how much they believe in Satan’s new plan, all three of the agencies work together to get things rolling.

All of the biggest movie stars and celebrities publicly commit to FRESH HELL.  They post on Facebook and tweet incessantly about the perks.

Satan’s work is complete in short order.

He’s got enough subscriptions to stay underground for generations. And all of those with coveted reserved spaces rest easy and continue to satisfy their own desires without care for anyone else. Billionaires relax. It’s a beautiful thing if you’re one of the beautiful ones.

Inevitably, though, the day comes when one of the “key agents” passes away. His passing isn’t such a big deal though.  It’s almost pleasant as he’s not concerned with eternity.  He’s tight with the man downstairs.

When he arrives in the FRESH HELL! though…it’s absolutely horrifying.

It’s crazy hot. Lakes of fire…demons harassing him constantly…just well…nothing fresh about it at all!

In fact, it seems very much like the old Hell. Not a masseuse in sight!

The dead agent is no patsy you understand.  And he insists on seeing the man in charge.

After a time his guardian demon, for a giggle, takes the agent to meet with Satan.

After some pleasantries, the agent gets to the point…

“What Gives? What you’ve promised ain’t nothing like what you’ve delivered!”

To which Satan replies,

“Oh…you see when I met with you on Earth you were a prospect… Now you’re a client.”

 

 

 

 

 

Study Stuff That Works

 

I was watching True Grit the other night, the 2010 version with Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn. A couple of weeks earlier I had revisited Paper Moon, one of my all-time faves, with Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal.

Jeff Bridges as Rooster Coburn in “True Grit.”

True Grit and Paper Moon are basically the same movie.

The key is in the Inciting Incident.

Let’s continue, then, our exploration of the Inciting Incident and how it works to infuse a story with power and narrative drive …

 

The story’s climax is embedded in the inciting incident.

 

Last week we talked about the two narrative “poles” that are set up the instant the inciting incident appears.

The first is the incident itself, in which the hero acquires his or her intention–the life-and-death impulsion that will propel him/her through the story.

The second is the as-yet-to-be-revealed resolution of this intention.

Will the hero get what she’s after?

How?

What will we learn as we watch her struggle?

Let’s consider True Grit and Paper Moon and see how the climax of each story is embedded in the inciting incident.

The inciting incident of Paper Moon is when nine-year-old Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal), who has just lost her mother, is sitting across a Kansas cafe table from Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal), a traveling flim-flam man who knew her mom and who bears an uncanny resemblance to Addie herself.

 

ADDIE

You my pa?

 

MOSES

‘Course I ain’t your pa.

 

ADDIE

You met my mama in a bar room.

 

MOSES

Just because a man meets a woman in a bar room,

that don’t mean he’s your pa.

 

See the two poles?

Number One: Addie, we now know, wants Moses to be her father (she has acquired her intention) and she wants to be with him.

Number Two (which we don’t yet know); Will Moses turn out to be Addie’s pa? Will they stay together? How will this happen if indeed it does?

These questions will pull us powerfully through the story.

I won’t ruin the climax for you if you haven’t seen it or read it yet, but suffice it to say, all questions are answered in a wonderfully warm and satisfying way.

The climax of Paper Moon was embedded in the inciting incident.

True Grit is emotionally almost identical.

In True Grit, fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross (Hallee Steinfeld) in post-Civil War Arkansas has just lost her dad—murdered by the outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) who has fled into Indian territory. Seeking justice, Mattie hires U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track the malefactor down and bring him back to be hung.

The inciting incident is when Rooster agrees to take the job—and allows Mattie to come along.

Why is this the inciting incident (and not, say, the moment when Mattie acquires the intention to hunt down Tom Chaney?) Because True Grit, like Paper Moon, is about a young girl’s quest for a father or a father figure.

The intention that Mattie acquires that propels the story forward (in addition to, and superseding, her intention to bring Tom Chaney to justice) is the intention to find a new dad or surrogate in the form of Rooster, the wild and wooly marshal who possesses “true grit.”

Again, I won’t spoil the ending for you except to say that, as in Paper Moon, child and man find a bonding moment that lasts lifelong.

Again, the climax is embedded in the inciting incident.

Again the questions put forward by the inciting incident—will Mattie and Rooster bond with each other as “dad” and daughter? How? What will it mean?—are what pull us in the audience through the movie.

One sidebar:

Both these books/movies are love stories and as such they follow the convention that the “couple” must break apart before they can be ultimately united in the end.

In Paper Moon the darkest moment comes right before the finish.

 

MOSES

(to Addie)

I told you I don’t want you riding with me no more.

 

True Grit gives us Jeff Bridges in this moment at his growly, boozed-up best.

 

ROOSTER

I’m a foolish old man who’s been drawn into a wild

goose chase by a harpy in trousers and a nincompoop.

You, sister, may go where you will. Our engagement is

terminated. I bow out.

 

When we begin to think of ourselves as professional writers, we set about studying stuff that works. How does Charles Portis (who wrote the book, True Grit) do it? How did the Coen brothers make the movie work? How did Paper Moon, by Joe David Brown, work so well? How did Alvin Sargent and Peter Bogdanovich structure the movie script to be so effective?

I love doing this. It’s great fun dissecting material that really hums.

The next step of course is applying these principles to our own stuff.

Do we have an inciting incident?

What is it?

In that moment, does the hero acquire his or her intention?

What is that intention, i.e. the first “narrative pole?”

What is the second pole, i.e. the story’s climax?

Is the climax embedded in the inciting incident?

These are not academic questions. They are the soul and sinew of storytelling and the architecture of the books and movies you and I are trying to write.

We need to teach ourselves this stuff and learn how to apply it.

Next week: the Inciting Incident must always be on-theme.

 

 

 

 

 

Louis C.K.: Give It A Minute

(Revisiting an old — and favorite — post as summer closes out and I find myself wishing I’d caught a stop on Louis C.K.’s recent tour. . .  ~Callie)

In a recent New York Time interview with Louis C.K., Dave Itzkoff commented, “You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.”

Louis C.K. replied with a question: “So why do I have the platform and the recognition?”

Itzkoff answered, “At this point you’ve put in the time.”

Pause after you read Louis C.K.’s follow-up:

There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

Put in the Time

Almost every author I’ve met has mentioned a desire to be interviewed by Oprah, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and/or Charlie Rose.

I get it. Being interviewed by any of those individuals will garner the authors attention and book sales.

But the reality is that most authors don’t land those interviews right out of the gate. And, while those interviews can spike initial sales, they don’t keep things going on their own. They’re a short-term fix.

In an interview with The Paris Review William Faulkner spoke about what writers need to write. The same applies to doing outreach for your projects, sharing/marketing them:

The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand.

Outreach is Hard Work

Doing outreach/marketing our art is hard work. It’s painful. Reviewers can be nasty and comments left by today’s online community are about as pleasant as a rabid Pit Bull.

It’s hard to look for the good and keep pushing through the crap, piling up faster than ants at a Fourth of July picnic.

But you do it. You don’t say you’re “too busy” that you haven’t “got time or economic freedom.” You figure it out and keep pushing, even if it takes you 50 years.

I Don’t Do Outreach. I Create for Myself.

Last month, the New York Times ran a few articles about artist Arthur Pinajian, “a reclusive artist whom the art world had not known much about. Now, 14 years after his death, he has fans who mention him in the same sentence as Gauguin and Cézanne.”

When Pinajian died, his sister, in whose home “Pinajian had an 8-foot-by-8-foot studio” and who “supported him for much of his life” told a cousin, Peter Najarian, “Oh, just put it all in the garbage. . . . He said himself to just leave it all for the garbagemen.”

Najarian kept the paintings instead.

Read the article for the full story. Bottom line: Though Pinajian had networked earlier in his life, he became a “hermit.” After a point, it seems neither he nor his art left his studio.

If this was his goal, fine.

But the selfish side of me asks, But what about us? We would have loved to have known about your work earlier.

While you didn’t create for money, money it seems is being made off you work—by those who didn’t create it. Do you care?

Perhaps he’d answer that he didn’t care. That money wasn’t the point—and that he doesn’t care if others profit.

Money aside, what about the art? Isn’t the creation itself something that is meant to be shared?

In the same Paris Review interview, Faulkner said:

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us. Proof of that is that there are about three candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn’t have needed anyone since.

The art came for a reason.

And perhaps something inspired Pinajian’s cousin to keep it for the same reason: It wasn’t meant for the trash, but for a wider audience.

The same might be said of John Kennedy Toole’s mother, who held her son’s manuscript tight after he committed suicide, and then pushed until she found a publisher for his book, A Confederacy of Dunces.

At the end of a second New York Times article about Pinajian appears,:

“He thought he was going to be the next Picasso,” Mr. Aramian said. “They believed he would become famous and this would all pay off for them one day, but it just never happened. So he became frustrated and withdrew from everything and just painted.”

I wonder about what he was or wasn’t doing to share his work earlier. And I wonder why the art community of that time didn’t recognize his talent. And whether the best came after he closed himself off.

One thing I know: His work was meant to be shared. I wish it had happened while he was alive. And, I wish I knew why it is easier for some and harder for others—why the one-hit wonders break out and the long-term artists are recognized after they’ve died—if at all.

For writers, the Internet has opened opportunities that don’t translate into other mediums. Viewing a wall-sized Monet isn’t the same on a laptop as it is in person. I’m not living in that world, but I imagine it a harder place to build a following, to break into. But, the benefits of an established platform remain the same.

Back to the Platform and Louis C.K.

What about those artists who do make it big, yet stay out of the spotlight? They don’t do interviews. They don’t muck around with press tours. They write. That’s it.

How did they do it?

Good writing and at some point either they—or someone else—built a platform. And now? That platform is on auto-pilot; it hit a point of self-sustainability.

And that brings us back to Louis C.K.

You have to put in the time. In addition to creating/building, you have to build the platform.

Some people win the lottery, but most of us hammer away for decades. That’s not a bad thing. It takes patience. It takes commitment.

As Faulkner said, “People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand.”

Follow Louis C.K.’s advice and “Give it a minute.”

At least a minute…

What Makes a Reader Keep Turning Pages?

We were talking last week about the storytelling concept of the Inciting Incident. We said that this week we’d get into the two “narrative poles” that spring into being the instant this scene is introduced.

Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven.” Will he remain true to his beloved wife’s wish that he become a good man?

What we’re talking about here is the architecture of a story.

Architecture is not the same as genius. It’s not the unique brilliance that you the writer bring to your dialogue. It’s not the one-of-a-kind twists and spins that you alone can insert into your narrative. It’s not the dazzling characters or relationships that you and only you can deliver.

It’s more important than that.

It’s the structure of the bridge you’re building.

It’s the foundation of the skyscraper.

It’s the design of the rocket ship.

What we’re talking about is the architectural superstructure onto which you the writer will hang all your scenes and sequences and characters and relationships.

Okay. How does the Inciting Incident fit into this concept of Story Architecture?

Have you watched any of Aaron Sorkin’s MasterClass on Screenwriting? (I highly recommend it.) Mr. Sorkin’s central storytelling concept is the idea of Intention and Obstacle.

The protagonist has an intention. Obstacles try to stop him or her from achieving this. What he/she does to overcome these obstacles is what produces drama.

(There, I just saved you ninety bucks.)

The Inciting Incident is the moment when the hero acquires his or her intention.

Jason Bourne realizes he is a very specific someone—a spy? a killer?—but he has lost all memory; he must find out who he is. Nine-year-old Addie Loggins in Paper Moon decides she wants to be with her Pa and she is convinced that Moses Pray is that person. Rocky decides he’s gonna fight the champ. Mark Watney decides he’s going to escape death on Mars.

These moments are Pole Number One of our story’s architecture.

Pole Number Two is the Object itself.

Between the two, immediately springing to life, is the Big Narrative Question, the issue that will keep the reader turning pages and hold him or her riveted to your story.

Will Jason Bourne find out who he is? How will he do it? Who, in fact, is he?

Will Addie Loggins find a home with her pa, Moses Pray?

Will Rocky stand up to the champ?

Will Mark Watney return safely to Earth?

The Inciting Incident sets up both poles:

The moment when the hero acquires a burning, life-and-death intention.
The yet-to-be-revealed success or failure of this intention.

Aaron Sorkin tells us that a story’s drama is created by the obstacles that the hero must overcome to reach his or her objective.

The desire to find out how he or she does this is what keeps us, the audience, glued to our seats.

It’s what keeps us, the readers, turning pages.

Will Shane succeed in hanging up his guns and settling down in the valley?

Will Jake Gittes find out who played him for a sucker with the phony Mrs. Mulwray?

Will gunfighter William Munny remain true to his dead wife’s wish for him to become a good man?

The inciting incident is Pole Number One of this story architecture. The instant it appears, it sets up Pole Number Two, which we the audience can feel, ahead at the story’s climax, and which electrifies us.

A great inciting incident gives us gooseflesh. We think to ourselves, “Wow, this story is cooking! I can’t wait to see how it turns out.”

A great incident sets up a Narrative Question that we the readers can’t resist.

A great inciting incident establishes an almost electromagnetic tension between the two poles, one at the start of the story (which we the readers now know) and one at the end, which is yet to be revealed.

We keep turning pages to get to that second pole.

Next week: the climax is embedded in the Inciting Incident.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Editor’s Editor

Legendary editor/publisher Robert Gottlieb has written his memoir, appropriately titled AVID READER: A Life.  It will be available on September 13 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy.  Here’s the link to get yours.

Vanity Fair has published an excerpt which made me long for the career that just never came to be for me. 

Imagine having a standing invitation to walk through a magical garden and to let yourself into your neighbor’s home, and then encouraged to climb her back stair case and into her bedroom….to work through some pages of her book project (Seriously!) before heading off to your glamorous job as publisher of the most venerable book publishing house in the world? 

I’ll not spoil who Gottlieb’s neighbor was…

If there is a word that connotes nostalgia for someone else’s pas t, do let me know.  For now, I shall coin the phrase “Gottliebensehnsucht” to express my emotional state after finishing the narrative morsel from VF.

For fun, I’m re-running “The Editor’s Editor” (with some minor editorial tweaks) from 2013 in salute of one of the last Mohicans from the golden age of book publishing.

When I was a futzing wannabe actor back in the…gulp…late 1980s, I spent a summer at Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts.

Robert Gottlieb

Not only did I meet my wife there, but I was smitten by the presence of another figure. One of the actresses on the main stage (I was strictly apprentice showcase material and free “strike the set” labor) rented a house for the Summer Stock season. Her daughter Lizzie ran in my coterie of friends.

Lizzie would invite us over to her house after the evening shows to hang out with the big time performers–Christopher Reeve and his fellow actor and offstage romance Dana Morosini, Olympia Dukakis, Daniel Davis, Kate Burton, Jamey Sheridan, Louis Zorich, Marisa Tomei, James Naughton… Plus her father had come up from New York too and a lot of people backstage angled to get an invite.

The house was right out of “New England Country Home” central casting. All weathered shingle and worn stone on an acre or so of freshly mowed lawn. Friendly patches of fireflies led the way to a converted barn out back by a stream where the stoners snuck out to share a joint. An intoxicating atmosphere for a twenty-four year old guy running away from what he was supposed to do. I’d spent my last dime to get there but I’m still getting dividends from the investment.

Lizzie’s mother, Maria Tucci, was fresh from playing Serafina in The Rose Tattoo, stuffed us with spaghetti and great Italian red wine while her dad held court on the back porch. Everyone seemed to hush when he spoke, like ballplayers do when Josh Hamilton takes batting practice. He used big words—many of which I didn’t know but could figure out from the context of his riffing, the only proper way to employ them. Someone asked him what he thought about the latest literary sensations, Less than Zero and Bright Lights, Big City en vogue at the time. Somehow he was able to cut a literary movement to the bone with just a quick rejoinder … “Raymond Carver-lite …”  But not without conveying a deep respect and fondness for the writers. “Just wonderful!”

I learned that he was the former head of Alfred A. Knopf, the most prestigious and literary of book publishing houses, and was the guy S.I. Newhouse had brought in to replace the legendary William Shawn as editor of The New Yorker. Robert Gottlieb had that untamable hair/big glasses/New York Intellectual/Annie Hall era Woody Allen thing going for him. He always looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, having slept in the wrinkled oxford/khaki combo of the distracted academic. And man was he smart. What was even more appealing about him…he was unpretentious.

Lizzie introduced me to him and he made about a microsecond’s worth of eye contact and then went back to regaling the crowd. I can promise you that he has not a clue of who I am today or that we even met all those years ago. Or even on several other occasions.

That’s to his credit. Vapid social niceties mean nothing when you’re living the dream. I had no right to wake him, even if he’d presented the opportunity.

One time, my future wife and I were hanging out at his townhouse eating more of his wife’s glorious food. Maria Tucci has fed armies of broke artists. And then Lizzie gave us a tour. The library was just incredible with first edition after first edition overflowing from the shelves—Chaim Potok, Joseph Heller, Charles Portis, Jessica Mitford, Salman Rushdie, Elia Kazan, Margaret Drabble, John Cheever, John Lennon, Edna O’Brien, Len Deighton, John Le Carre, Lauren Bacall, Bruno Bettelheim, B.F. Skinner…dizzying. Gottlieb had edited them all and scores more. And what was really cool is that one of the bookshelves pulled out and a bathroom appeared. No need to leave the cocoon to relieve oneself. Brilliant!

When we made it upstairs, we walked directly into the master bedroom. There lying in the bed, which I couldn’t tell if it was made up or not as it was literally covered with manuscripts—at about 2:00 p.m. on a working day—was Gottlieb.

Lizzie, who had a familiarity and easy way with her father and mother that were absolutely foreign to me, introduced us again. He failed to look up from one of the pages until he’d zoomed to the end. And then he simply said, “Yes…yes, of course, of course…Williamstown yes.”

Then I noticed something very peculiar. Lining the walls were tens and tens of old plastic women’s handbags. It was really just…odd.  Indelibly impressionable. He mistook my perplexed manner as someone in want of an explanation.

“I find myself compelled to buy these… So I do.”

Back to the papers he went.

Years later, at Lizzie’s wedding at his country home—another impossibly beautiful and somewhat eccentric location—I thought I’d try and pull him aside and cozy up to him. By this time, I’d been in book publishing a few years. No doubt attracted to it because of Gottlieb and his unapologetic devotion to it. My inner Sammy Glick was pressing me to make the most of the connection.

Imagine having Robert Gottlieb as your Rabbi! Maybe he could talk to Sonny Mehta and get me inside Knopf!

I approached him but before I could fumble out some lame sycophantic come on…

“Yes…yes, of course, of course…Williamstown yes.” And off he went.

I haven’t met Robert Gottlieb since then, but I did read a memoir by another book publishing legend, Michael Korda, that gave me more insight into how he came to be so assured. Korda wrote a wonderful book called ANOTHER LIFE, which is catnip to anyone interested in the good bad old days of publishing. Korda is as charming as Gottlieb, but in a completely different sort of way. More the Gentleman Editor as opposed to the “Incapable of Thinking of Anything Else” kind.

Korda and Gottlieb worked together at Simon & Schuster where Gottlieb had risen from editorial assistant to editor-in-chief in record time. Korda was sort of Roger Maris to Gottlieb’s Mickey Mantle. While Korda is a member of a distinguished family, Gottlieb is more in the son of humble origins category. One of those guys who my grandmother would call “too smart for his own good.”

Anyway, the legend is that Gottlieb had gone to Columbia and then on to Cambridge to study “Literature” with a capital L. When the Ivory Tower expelled him, or more accurately he could no longer afford to live in its endless unproductive contemplations, he was back in New York. Adrift. He’d taken a job at Macy’s selling greeting cards to keep the wolf from the door. He wasn’t very good at it. And like I did a few years after I’d met him, Gottlieb figured he should find a job where he didn’t have to hide his reading material from his floor supervisor. He pursued a job as an editorial assistant at Simon & Schuster for far less pay than pushing Hallmark.

In the Paris Review back in 1994 (he’s the only editor interviewed in their legendary author interview series), Gottlieb confessed:

“It has liberated me, being happy being what I am. There are editors who always feel guilty that they aren’t writers. I can write perfectly well—anyone who’s been educated can write perfectly well. But I dislike writing: it’s very, very hard and I just don’t like the activity. Whereas reading is like breathing.”

I’m grateful that Gottlieb picked up the pen despite his distaste for it. Aspiring editors and book publishing professionals need his story to remind us of what a dazzling business it can be.

Setup and Inciting Incident

 

The inciting incident happens when the hero acquires an intention. Until then it’s all set-up.

It’s not just action that propels the Bourne movies, it’s great Inciting Incidents

Luke Skywalker acquires the intention to fight for the rebel alliance, to become a Jedi knight like his father, to discover his destiny.

Mark Watney, alive and alone on Mars, acquires the intention to survive.

Liam Neeson in Taken is called to find and rescue his daughter.

Rocky to fight the champ.

Addie Loggins in Paper Moon to link with her father.

At these moments, the story starts. Set-up is over. Drama has begun.

One of the great inciting incidents in recent years is that in The Bourne Identity, the first of the five Jason Bourne flicks. Do you remember it?

The story starts with a man (Matt Damon as Jason Bourne) floating on his back in the Mediterranean, unconscious, at night, a serious distance offshore. The crew of a fishing boat spots him and takes him aboard. (This is all set-up so far.)

The fishermen discover two bullets lodged in the Kevlar vest/wetsuit that Matt Damon is wearing (still setup). The crewman/medic also extracts from beneath Matt’s flesh a small pellet-like device which, when held at the right angle, projects the name of a Swiss bank and a number that apparently belongs to a (no doubt secret) account. Damon at this point is still unconscious. When the comes-to, however, it is with a violent start; he furiously and apparently reflexively, i.e. without conscious thought, attacks the crewman/medic who has just saved him, before being calmed down and realizing he’s not among enemies.

“Who are you?” says the crewman.

“I don’t know,” replies Matt, in obvious anguish as this realization strikes him, clearly for the first time.

This is the inciting incident of The Bourne Identity. In this moment, our hero acquires the intention that will drive the story forward all the way to the climax: the imperative to find out who he is and how he came to be in this predicament.

The Bourne stories, like all amnesia tales, are interesting in that a lot of the set-up, instead of coming before the inciting incident, comes after. It’s the set-up that the Man With No Memory is trying to find out.

Here’s Blake Snyder on the subject of set-up from Save the Cat! (one of my favorite books on storytelling)

 

[The set-up] is where we see the world as it is before the adventure starts. It is a full-fledged documentation of the hero’s world labeled “before.” If the events that follow did not occur, it would pretty much stay this way. But there is a sense in the set-up that a storm’s about to hit, because for things to stay as they are … is death. Things must change

 

The set-up in Hamlet is an unusually lengthy one. First we meet Hamlet, the melancholy prince of Denmark. We meet Ophelia, clearly his potential lady-love. We learn that Hamlet’s father the king (also named Hamlet) has recently died from a snake bite and that his mother Gertrude the queen has almost immediately remarried—to his father’s brother Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle. This uncle now sits upon the throne. Hamlet is totally bummed by this (and indeed suspects foul play) but he has no reason or evidence yet, nor plans to take action. In other words, we’re still in the set-up.

Suddenly Hamlet’s friend Horatio comes to him and tells him that his father’s ghost has been seen walking the battlements late at night. The watchmen have alerted Horatio, who now summons Hamlet to walk out tonight and see for himself. Hamlet, electrified, agrees. Sure enough, the old man’s spirit appears and speaks to his son. (We’re already, by the way, at Scene Five of Act One.)

 

GHOST OF HAMLET’S FATHER

‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me;

so that the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my

death rankly abused; but know, thou noble youth, the serpent

that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.

 

HAMLET

O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

 

This (and the remainder of the ghost’s speech, which concludes with “Remember me!”) is the inciting incident of Hamlet. In this exchange, our hero acquires his intention: to avenge his father’s murder, to prove that his uncle did in fact commit the evil deed, to bring him to justice (not to mention the queen, his mother, who is a willing accomplice and conspirator in the murder) and to restore order to the court and to Denmark.

At this instant, the story starts.

Everything that has come before is only set-up.

Let me take back the word “only.” Set-up is critical. A great set-up lays the groundwork for the drama or comedy that follows as surely as the foundation of the Eiffel Tower supports the structure’s ascent to glory.

In the set-up all the moving parts of the story need to be established in their places—the characters, the world of the story, the theme, the problem that needs fixing.

We need to see the evil of Darth Vader, the good of Princess Leia, the peril that the Empire presents to the rebel alliance; we need to meet young Luke, bored to death in the remotest corner of the galaxy, and to understand that, humble as his present straits may be, he is the son of a Jedi knight and thus possesses an heroic destiny, if only he can find the opportunity and the courage to seize it.

These foundational elements need to be set in place before the story can begin. But they must be introduced economically, because our readers, our audience can get bored having this stuff spooned out to them. Remember, they will not be galvanized by the drama until the inciting incident occurs.

It can be tricky sometimes to identify the inciting incident, not just in books or movies, but in our own stuff. I’ve scratched my head over this many, many times.

But you and I as writers must craft that moment and we must know it absolutely.

The good news is that the right inciting incident (Chinatown, Silver Linings Playbook, Jurassic World) propels the narrative forward with such velocity that, if we as writers can only hang on through Act Two, we’re more than halfway to making our story really work.

Next week: the twin poles of inciting incident and climax and how they produce narrative drive.

 

 

How to Pitch: Get in the Game

In The Science of Hitting, Ted Williams wrote about the importance of keeping his players alert.

The dugout, for example, has always been a place in baseball where guys tended to doze. The very fact they’re not playing works against them, so I try to keep them in the game. “What the hell pitch was that? What’s the count?”

I’d see a guy check the scoreboard. “What you looking there for? You oughta know without looking. Get in the game.”

You’ve got to keep sharp on the bench, because you’re liable to be in there anytime.

I saw this play out last month, after a friend resigned from her job. It was an unexpected move, even for her, but one she had to make. The next day she found herself without a job, without a resume in place, without any idea of how to move forward.

She reminded me of the artists I’ve met, who have a creation, a project — a something — in need of marketing, but never seem prepared. In her case, she had knowledge/expertise to market to another company, but she didn’t have anything ready to go when she absolutely needed it.

Why?

She didn’t recognize there was a bench in her life — and because she didn’t recognize the bench, she didn’t focus on the game playing out around her.

In baseball there’s a location shift, from a player being on the field to a player being on the bench in the dugout.

For an artist, that occurs when she leaves her studio or when he steps away from his desk. At that point, they are on the bench. If they are eating, they are on the bench. If they are napping, they are on the bench. If they are watching TV or reading or catching a film, they are on the bench. While the bench is a place to rest, it isn’t a place to atrophy.

What does this mean for pitching?

While it might feel like your life revolves around creating, it doesn’t. You have benches in your life and you’ve got to use them to pay attention to what is/isn’t working in the games being played around you.

Pay attention to where other authors are popping up. Radio? TV? Print? Online?

Pay attention to what is being discussed — and if that interview or article gets picked up by other outlets. If yes, which ones?

Most important: Pay attention to the other players and network. We’ve spoken about the importance of the direct-connections for years, which includes maintaining a database, yet I continue to meet authors who don’t even have their friends’ addresses entered into a Word file.

The artists and entrepreneurs and baseball players who succeed are the ones who recognize the bench and use it as a time to reflect on the game. They’ve got their book and their marketing plan and everything else ready to roll — AND, they have an understanding of the business and the rules.

It’s similar to a cook being able to plate every element of a course at one time.

The cook has a plan that enables him to have everything ready to go. He has that plan because he’s used his bench to study, to practice, to pay attention to the game around him.

Use your bench to get in the game — and to stay in the game.

How Does A Story Start?

I had been struggling as a screenwriter for about a year when I first heard the concept of the Inciting Incident. Here’s the context from Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t:

Tatum O’Neal and Ryan O’Neal in PAPER MOON. “Just because a man meets a woman in a bar room don’t make him your pa!”

I took Robert McKee’s class. It was called Screenplay Structure then. The class was three days—half of Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday. It cost $199, I think. [Check out the 2016 version at www.mckeestory.com.] The class was full of other aspiring screenwriters as well as actors and actresses, studio execs and development guys and gals.

We were all desperate to find out what made a screenplay work.

McKee delivered.

About an hour into Friday evening’s session, he introduced the concept of the Inciting Incident.

The Inciting Incident is the event that makes the story start.

It may come anywhere, McKee said, between Minute One and Minute Twenty-five. But it must happen somewhere within Act One.

It had never occurred to me that a story needed to start.

I thought it started all by itself.

And I certainly had never realized that the writer had to consciously craft that specific moment.

 

What exactly is an Inciting Incident—as opposed to the story’s “Set-up?”

The inciting incident of The Martian is when Mark Watney (Matt Damon), presumed dead and left behind on Mars, sends a transmission from the abandoned red-planet base that lets the world know he is still alive.

The inciting incident of Taken is when Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) speaks to his daughter’s kidnappers over the phone.

                                    BRYAN

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want.

If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have

money. What I do have is a very particular set of skills …

skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you

let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. But if you

don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

 

When the kidnapper answers “Good luck” and hangs up, the story has shifted into gear.

The inciting incident of Star Wars is when Luke retrieves from R2D2’s memory the “mayday” hologram from Princess Leia, who has been captured by Darth Vader and the forces of the Empire.

                                    PRINCESS LEIA

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

The inciting incident of Paper Moon is when nine-year-old orphan Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal) is taken up in rural 1930s Kansas by traveling flim-flam man Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) and promised to be delivered by him to her only known relative, her aunt Billie, in St. Joseph, Missouri. Moses seems to bear an uncanny physical resemblance to the all-alone-in-the-world Addie.

 

ADDIE

You my pa?

MOSES

‘Course I ain’t your pa.

ADDIE

You met my mama in a bar room.

MOSES

Just because a man meets a woman in bar room

don’t make him your pa.

 

The inciting incident of Casablanca is the moment when old flame Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) steps through the door of Rick Blaine’s (Humphrey Bogart) Cafe Americaine.

 

                                    RICK

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,

she walks into mine.

 

The inciting incident is not the Setup. The setup comes (usually) earlier.

The inciting incident is the moment when the story’s drive-wheels, which have been idly spinning so far, suddenly bite into the surface of the road and, finding traction, begin to propel the story forward.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to explore the idea of the Inciting Incident. We’ll investigate it from these angles:

The difference between the setup and the inciting incident.

The “pole to pole” mechanism that makes the inciting incident generate narrative drive.

The idea that the story’s climax is embedded within the inciting incident.

The imperative that the inciting incident be on-theme.

The connection between the inciting incident and “the call” in the hero’s journey.

And finally, why you and I as writers must know our inciting incident (and understand everything we’re going to ask it to do for us) before we type the first word of our first draft.

[P.S. For Robert McKee fans (and I’m one of ’em), don’t miss his new book Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen, just published a couple of weeks ago. A must-read.]

 

 

Is “Good Enough” Good Enough?

Madison Bumgarner, a man with impeccable IF

As many of you already know, over at The Story Grid Podcast, I’ve been serving as newbie fiction writer Tim Grahl’s developmental editor.

We’ve been at it for about nine months now and while Tim had to discard just about everything from his first draft, we’re making steady baby-step progress as he pivots into a new narrative direction.

It has been enormously gratifying to witness how the fundamental story principles that took me so long to understand are beginning to embed themselves into someone deliberately learning the craft.

But it’s a frustrating process too. And that’s no knock on Tim. It’s just the nature of mentoring creative work.

It’s frustrating in the same way it is when you try and teach someone a skill that abides an M + TEn = IF equation.

M stands for mechanics, i.e. the working parts of a thing…for Story it’s II, PC, CR, CL, RE (Inciting Incident, Progressive Complication, Crisis, Climax and Resolution)

TE stands for trial and error

n stands for however many trials and errors an individualized system/organism needs to reach a cathartic success moment.  n could equal from one to infinity.

IF stands for “integrated feeling,” the reproducible biofeedback trigger of the aforementioned cathartic success moment when the body and mind aligns with the universe to produce a moment of purity.

When a golfer picks up his tee knowing her ball is dead center in the fairway or a basketball player knows the 3 pointer is nothing but net milliseconds after the ball leaves his fingertips, the IF is in play.  They experience an integrated feel of the moment, so they don’t have to sweat the result.  They “know” the result before it actually happens. That is called magic and every single one of us has felt that magic at one time or another in one place or another in our lives.

Being a developmental editor is an M + TEn = IF mentoring process…like teaching your son or daughter the best way to throw a baseball with accuracy and speed.

The most reliable mechanical motion is an adaptable (long arm, medium arm, short arm) windmill overhand throw released from the ear.

When I see kids throwing from a three quarter release or a from-the-shoelaces sidearm, it drives me nutso. Even if you forget about the damage it does to young arms (but why would you?), there are just so many ways that a sidearm merry-go-round throw can go wrong.

But an overhand throw perfectly (even imperfectly) executed, is as reliable as an old Maytag washer. No matter if it’s a long arm motion from the outfield, medium from shortstop or a short one from second base.

The reason why it’s difficult to get kids to throw overhand is that young boys and girls just don’t have a lot of trunk strength. And coordinating a full body motion presents a particular challenge to little beings still growing into themselves.

And then there is the deception of visual cues.

Something that on first glance seems to be all about the hand and arm (Come on dad, all I have to do is move my arm… let go of the ball and it flies in the air)…isn’t. Now changing an “obvious” perception into a deep understanding that throwing is all about using the big muscles of the body, not the little ligaments, tests one’s resolve.

Warnings like—if you rely on the little ligaments, stress them too much, they get irreparably damaged. And once they’re damaged, you end up walking away from the game. It will just hurt too much to play—don’t mean much to a kid who can fall off the garage roof, cry, recover and then do it all again five minutes later.

I talk until I’m hoarse, but you can’t really explain a proper overhand throw to someone who hasn’t successfully generated one yet. You just have to keep focused and keep catching their thrown balls until they do.

Now once they do throw a textbook overhand fastball, they can “feel” what you’re talking about and you’re a genius. There’s a Eureka! moment and dad isn’t as big of a grind as they thought he was.

My oldest has worked through the process and he’s now a bigger blowhard about overhand throwing than I am. Together we’re driving the youngest in our family crazy. My daughter is a natural athlete and her n was like 4. But that presents it’s own problems too…when things come too easily, you devalue them.

Again, until the kid executes the overhand himself…feels it…it will be torturous trying to explain it to him. Especially since he’s figured out a way to piece together a herky-jerky motion that for the most part “works.” That is, the ball gets near enough to the target to be playable. It’s not perfect, but it’s not crazy wild either…good enough.

Isn’t good enough okay, dad?

Well, it is, you admit. Until…it isn’t.

The thing is that short-term “good enoughs” diabolically undermine long-term mastery. They’re Resistance’s single celled bacteria, infecting you without you even knowing it.

Which brings me to why there are so few developmental editors working today.

It’s because working with a newbie writer is like teaching a new baseball player how to throw his own brand of fastball.

Let’s back up a minute. What do I mean by a developmental editor?

Well, editors come in four traditional varieties.

Copyeditors…these are people who learn all of the rules of grammar/spelling etc. They mark up a story using industry standard shorthand and correct all of the technical errors. Without copyeditors the world would be a mess. Our ability to clearly communicate with one another would erode. We’d live in Emoji-land…essentially hell. Copyeditors are simply indispensable and we all need to bow down to them.
Acquisition Editors…these people discern what literary properties can be best packaged and sold as commodities. They buy and then pass on the rest of the editorial work to someone else. Publishers are great examples of acquisition editors. They’ll buy a book from a big agent. And then hand it to a senior editor to “clean up.” If the book works, it was all because of the publisher’s great nose. If it tanks, the senior editor screwed it up with her wonky meddling…
Line by Line/Style Editors…these are editors who plod sentence by sentence through a manuscript to make sure that the voice and style are consistent. These are the disciples of Strunk and White. They take the purple out of the prose.  They’re the micro.
Story Editors…these are people who point out story glitches. They take a global point of view and explain to the writer which of his plot points aren’t working and/or when and if the writer is nailing or flubbling the obligatory scenes/conventions and/or expectations of the targeted readership. They’re the macro.

These four kinds of editors make up 99.99 percent of the profession.

The variety the Big Five publishers care most about is, of course, the acquisition editor. The reason being that you can easily evaluate how effective an acquisition editor is by his financial track record. An editor who picks winners will rise in the hierarchy even if they can’t do any of the other stuff.

And sadly, no matter how talented an editor is as a line-by-line connoisseur or story tinkerer, if his personal Profit/Loss report is in the red…he just won’t make it in New York. We remember Maxwell Perkins because of the commercial success of his writers as much as we do his editorial genius. In fact if his crew of writers were just well reviewed Nobel prize winners without tens of millions of copies sold…Perkins would be as anonymous as every other editor you never heard of.

Quick, who edited Nadine Gordimer?

So what’s a developmental editor and why are they so rare a breed?

These are people who work with writers from idea to final draft. They provide story advice and guidance throughout the writing process.

To beat my metaphor to death, they teach fresh writing arms how to throw original overhand fastball narratives.

DEs explain what to do in a particular scene and then they watch the writer execute the scene (like watching a little leaguer throwing from second base to first base). DEs then evaluate the scene (throw) and advise the writer about how an adjustment could help him lock in to his own private natural narrative motion (his own voice).

DEs explain the mechanics and show the writer how the pros have done it before, but until the writer puts it together himself in his own unique way…all the DE can do is look at his practice, evaluate his result and tell him “that’s not it…try this instead…nope, still not it…try it this way…a little better…but not quite there yet…etc. etc. etc.”

M + TEn = IF

The thing is that new writers, like little leaguers, often use herky-jerky motions to move their narrative balls.

Yes, the obvious cues (clichés) they’ve picked up by copying other writers without putting their own unique spin on a scene can oftentimes work. But while the scene may be “good enough,” the writer who hopes to string a slew of those things together to make an entire book work…is not preparing himself for the best chance of success.

It’s the equivalent of relying on ligaments instead of the big body muscles to create a reliable strike.

Can you throw junk for nine full innings and win? A teeny tiny group of people in the Majors can. Most, though, can’t. They need perfectly executed fastballs.

So the DE’s job is difficult.

The writer just wants to get the ball near the plate, good enough, and he’ll piece together something any which way to deliver something that works.

If the DE does not have the wherewithal and dedication to insist that the writer cut the shortcuts and develop his big muscles (his craft) and he goes along with the good enoughs, the writer’s writing ligaments will be permanently damaged. So damaged that the act of writing will begin to hurt so much that he’ll eventually just quit doing it.

I think pro writers understand what I’m trying to describe here.

They know the difference between their fastballs that snap right on the inside corner of the strike zone, knee level, and their off-speed junk that they use to knock a reader off balance. So much so that they’ll be the first one’s to tell you about the scenes they three quartered or side-armed just to mix it up or just to get the damn thing finished.

Keep in mind, that I’m not criticizing off-speed junk. You need to be able to throw that stuff too.

But the hard part is learning how to unleash one’s own private overhand fastball. That’s what the best developmental editors teach writers…how to discover and then unleash their best stuff.

Again and again and again.

And once a writer has that integrated feeling, she doesn’t need a DE anymore…

What is the Theme of Your Life?

 

 

Here’s an exercise to drive you crazy:

Tony Robbins from the Netflix documentary, “I Am Not Your Guru”

Ask yourself, “What is the theme of my life?”

I suggest this for two reasons. First, because it’s so hard for us as writers to grasp the idea of “theme.” What the hell is it anyway? How is it different from “subject?” From “concept?” An exercise like this (aside from being fairly mind-bending) is a great way to get a sense of exactly what “theme” means.

My second reason is because I was watching the documentary about Tony Robbins last night, “I Am Not Your Guru.” I only got to watch the first quarter of it, so I may have grokked its message prematurely and incorrectly. But my early assessment is that a lot of what Tony Robbins does in his “Date With Destiny” 6-day events is to force the attendees (often one-on-one and very much in-their-face) to at least consider the question, “What is the theme of your life?”

“Who are you?”

“What is your destiny?”

“Why were you put on Earth?” “Is there something that you, and only you, are equipped to do? What is that—and why the hell aren’t you doing it?”

At this point, lemme let Tony Robbins off the hook and continue only in my own voice, turning to what only I myself believe.

The hardest aspect for most of us to grasp about such questions as “What is the theme of your life?” and “What is your destiny?” is simply the seemingly egomaniacal idea that our lives do have a theme and that we ourselves do have a destiny.

Do you believe that? You? Me? One of seven billion egos/bodies/carbon units on the planet? Us? Isn’t that pretty exalted? Pretty megalomaniacal?

Or let’s put it another way: what is the theme of your life as a writer? The theme in your work?

It’s one of my bedrock beliefs that we discover who we are, not just by our actions (though that’s a big part of it) but, if we’re artists, by the works we produce. What films has Matt Damon made? What poems did Sylvia Plath write? What albums has Beyonce recorded? Is there a theme to the collected works of Bob Dylan?

What about you and me? Have we written (or even partially-written) more than one work? What do these works have in common? Is there a thread running through them?

If a graduate student in Literature were to examine our writings, even our uncompleted works and works in progress, what theme would he or she identify within them?

If you’re a reader of this blog, you know that I believe in previous lives. I believe that you and I did not arrive in this dimension “in utter nakedness,” as Wordsworth once wrote, but as already highly-individuated and evolved souls.

Yes, I believe in destiny.

Destiny = theme.

Do we have a purpose, you and I? Yes. Were we put here for a reason? Yes. What is that reason? That’s our job: to find out. To find out and to act upon that finding-out.

If we’re artists we find out what our destiny/theme is by doing our work, even if we have no idea why we’re doing it, why a specific idea seized us, why we were compelled to write about the stuff we’re compelled to write about. Write it first, then step back and ask, “What the hell was that about?” What does it tell me about my own preoccupations, my passions, my obsessions?

That’s our theme.

That’s our destiny.

If you watch the Tony Robbins documentary, you’ll see that he uses extreme methods of theater, of confrontation, of personal proximity, touch, voice, profanity. Why? I think it’s because most of his event attendees are so young. They haven’t been on the planet long enough, or had enough experiences to provide them with a graspable reflection of who they are, what they want, what their destiny might be. So Tony has to shake them up. He has to rattle their cages, not just to wake them up so that they’re receptive to something, but to seed the belief that they do have a destiny, they do have a theme, their life is about something.

For you and me as artists, time and the work itself will tell us our theme. What do we love? What subjects capture us? And how does our treatment of these subjects change and evolve over time? Do we “solve” one issue and move on to the next? How is Issue #12 related to Issue #1? Did Sarah Vaughn’s last album display an evolution from her first?

What was her theme? What is mine?

What is yours?