Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 72

The Truth is Out There

 

As writers we want a big theme. A theme with power and scale.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. The truth is out there — on at least six levels.

But, even more, we want a theme with depth, a theme that has level after level of meaning.

The theme in Jurassic World, we said last week, is “Don’t mess with Mother Nature.” Let’s examine how deep that theme goes. How many levels does it work on?

On the surface, on Level #1, what Jurassic’s theme means is “Don’t resurrect and genetically mutate creatures with very large teeth and extremely aggressive carnivorous instincts—and, if you do, pen them up very, very securely.”

Level #2 of the same theme is “Arrogance produces calamity.” Pride goeth before the fall, or, as the ancient Greeks would’ve said, “Hubris produces Nemesis.”

This second level takes the theme significantly beyond dinosaurs and theme parks. It could be speaking of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It could have resonance with global climate change and mankind’s contribution to it.

Level #3 goes even deeper. On the spiritual level, “Don’t mess with Mother Nature” becomes, “There exists a proper relationship between the human and the divine. Heed, O Man, and transgress not.”

Readers and audiences feel these levels, even if they can’t articulate them. Even if they’re completely unconscious of these layers of meaning, the audience senses the depth of the material (yes, even in a dino flick) and this adds to the emotional wallop of the story.

Worldwide, the four Jurassic Park movies have made $3.5 billion. Yeah, the rush of watching dinosaurs on a rampage may account for 90% of that. But depth of theme is contributing too. It helps.

Consider another runaway hit: The X-Files.

What is The X-Files about? We could say it’s about the search for extraterrestrial invaders, or about the relationship between Scully and Mulder. That would be the subject, but it’s not the theme.

The theme is conspiracy—and paranoia spawned by the fear of conspiracy. The ad line says it all:

 

The Truth is Out There.

 

That theme is much bigger than the content of the X-Files show or movies, and it resonates for the viewer at a far deeper level.

Level #1 is personal. It’s Mulder’s (David Duchovny) individual paranoia and belief in conspiracy. His sister vanished when he was a child. He’s convinced she was abducted by aliens, but he can’t get anyone in authority to believe him or to take his conviction seriously.

Level #2 is the political. Aliens have indeed landed (or crashed) on Earth many times. The government has evidence of this but, for its own nefarious reasons, is keeping it secret from the public.

Now we’re getting into juicy paranoia and conspiracy. Let’s go deeper.

Level #3 is the darker political. Beyond its knowledge of UFO crashes and alien apprehensions, the government is covering up all kinds of evil truths and events. Who killed Kennedy? Why did we go to war in Vietnam? What forces lurk behind the Wall Street cabal?

Level #4: Authority in all forms is hiding stuff from us. Our parents. Our schools. Our institutions. The world is not as we have been told it is (it’s worse … and we’re getting screwed by it big-time!)—and no one in authority will break silence to confirm this.

This sounds nuts, I know. But why are survivalists stocking up on beef jerky and .762 ammo? Why did gun-toting ranchers occupy Malheur Reserve in Oregon? In Texas the governor put the State Guard on alert just this past summer, fearing that an army training exercise was really a cover for the Feds to take over the state. On the left, the paranoia runs just as deep. Doesn’t the Trilateral Commission secretly control the universe? Or is that Fox News and the “vast right-wing conspiracy?”

Let’s dig even deeper.

Level #5: Our very conception of reality has been manipulated to render us passive and to control us. You and I are like the characters in 1984 or The Matrix. Unseen overlords have created an artificial environment and convinced us that it is real. They are duping us and exploiting us for their own profit.

Level #6: Life itself, by its very nature, is an illusion. More than that, built in to the nature of consciousness are factors invisible to us whose sole purpose is to make us believe in the reality of this surface illusion. A man has a dream in which he is a butterfly. Is he a man dreaming he’s a butterfly—or a butterfly dreaming he’s a man?

The truth is indeed out there, but we can’t get to it. “Help!”

But wait, there’s more!

The X-Files has a second prominent ad line:

I Want To Believe

Implicit in this line is Level #7: the Truth that is “out there” is indeed being hidden from us by corrupt, evil forces but, brothers and sisters, what if we could actually find out that truth? It could change our lives! Save our lives! You bet we want to believe!

The surface interpretation of Level #7 is, “We want to believe in UFOs and aliens, that they’ve visited the Earth and that we are not alone. Perhaps contact with their advanced intelligence will bring blessings to mankind.”

Beyond that (Level #8) is, “We want to believe that some higher power/consciousness exists and that we can contact it.” We want to believe because that truth, if it were true, would reassure us that our lives were not limited to the vain, petty, self-interested issues that consume our daily worlds. We want to believe in something greater, wiser, more significant—something that will give our lives true meaning.

How potent is this level? It’s the basis for every religion since animism and sun worship. No wonder people follow the adventures of Scully and Mulder. Their quest is resonating on at least eight levels.

The X-Files, if you’ve ever watched it, is not that great a show. But the theme is so big and it resonates at so many levels that millions of viewers became hopelessly addicted. They couldn’t live without it.

With all due respect to David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson (and hats off to Chris Carter, who created the show), this is the power of theme.

The bigger the theme, the more forceful the story’s impact. And the deeper the theme (that is, the more levels on which it resonates), the more it will get its hooks into the audience and the more powerfully it will bind them to the characters and to the story.

 

 

 

 

Literary and Commercial

Five years ago, Steve, Callie, Jeff and I were in the throws of marketing Steve’s novel THE PROFESSION.  In order to attract more people to Steve’s work, and this website, we decided to launch a series of posts called WHAT IT TAKES, with Callie and I trading off on our theories about what it takes to publish and market a book in today’s brave new publishing world.

As I’m on my annual goof-off at the beach, I thought it would be fun to revisit one of those early posts.  And guess what?  Things haven’t really changed all that much…  There are still two publishing cultures…and you better know which one your world falls under, or you’ll have a very difficult time finding a tribe of readers to follow you. 

If you are a publisher or an editor today in traditional trade book publishing, you have to decide which of the two cultures you want to align yourself with.

The “literary” culture is represented by these publishers: Knopf, FSG, Scribner, Random House, Riverhead, Penguin Press and a number of other houses both independent and corporate owned. These houses are known for the high end literary stuff—Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Powers, Zadie Smith, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, etc.

Young English Lit grad editorial assistant wannabes long to land a job at one of these houses. Working at these shops gives entrée to Paris Review parties and publishing street cred that says “I’m in it for the right reasons…to nurture tomorrow’s great American novelists.” Acquiring a writer who ends up on The New Yorker’s 20 under 40 can get you a promotion. A rave in The New York Review of Books or The Atlantic puts a swagger in your step.

On the other side of the street is the “commercial” culture, often referred to as genre fiction (even though every great story abides by genre conventions). Future editors in the commercial arena are the nerds you see reading The Hobbit, The Da Vinci Code, Jaws, Twilight, Lace or Dune on the beach while the other kids are body surfing. They often come from that wonderful crop of college graduates who don’t know what to do with their lives so decide to find work that pays them to read. They don’t care so much about line by line writing perfection, deep universal truths, or post-modern metafiction pyrotechnics, these editors are just addicted to narrative velocity—stories that grab you by the throat and won’t let you go.

At the top of “commercial” pyramid is Women’s fiction—big bestselling books like The Help, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, etc. Women’s fiction doesn’t mean that male writers are excluded from the category. But rather that the books written by men must have themes, characters, or plotlines that women enjoy. They scale.

Estimates reach as high as 70% of the entire book buying market being women. So in order to really hit a book out of the park, a writer/publisher needs to bring women to the party. The male writers that do count women as devoted readers write stories that often include a love story within their overarching plot. Nicholas Sparks is a terrific example of a male writer embraced by a female audience.

Male writers with female readers also feature strong female characters in their novels. Stieg Larsson’s GIRL… thrillers are an example. So too are works by James Patterson, John Grisham, Pat Conroy, David Baldacci, and Dan Brown. These guys are not seen as “boys’ book” writers. They have BIG crossover appeal.

What constitutes a “boy book?” Boy books are those commercial categories that are purely male themed—military thrillers, sports novels etc.  While it’s true that women dominate the book buying market, men tend to buy what I like to think of as “statement” books. They buy Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor. They buy Robert Ludlum (Ludlum, when he was alive, was a boy book writer before Matt Damon put a sympathetic face to Jason Bourne and made the Bourne books women friendly). They buy Steven Pressfield. These are books that are on display in their home libraries.

It is true that male readers are harder to reach, but once you get their attention and they enjoy what they’ve read, you usually have a dedicated fan who will buy that author’s next book and the book after that book. That’s not always the case with breakout Women’s fiction writers…there is a phenomenon known as “Second Novelitis” that continues to haunt the industry.

If boy books, like Steve’s The Profession, are harder to scale, how might one even try?

It’s worth going deeper into what Random House sales rep David Glenn advised at the end of his interview in Selling Books in the Trenches:

Talent and desire aren’t enough to make the registers ring at retail. For that, you need to have identified your audience and have written your book in such a way as to give them the reason, or “hook,” to buy it…Ultimately, who’s the target, and why?

Identifying the audience (the people who will buy your book) is the domain of book publishing’s two Cultures, “commercial” and “literary.”

I see commercial publishers and editors as the empiricists of the industry. Whether they consciously know it or not, they use data from previous successes to support their editorial selections. They think about markets and genres and make as informed decisions as possible when choosing whether or not to publish a particular novel.

For example, years ago I was put in charge of acquiring the rights to mystery novels for Dell publishing and later St. Martin’s Paperbacks. I was given a limited budget and told to publish two, and later three, mysteries in mass market paperback per month. That’s right 24 and then 36 titles per year.  How did I do it?

First, I familiarized myself with all of the sub-genres of the mystery genre. There are quite a few…hardboiled private eye, cozy, amateur sleuth, domestic, locked room, historical, and police procedural. (I’ve probably forgotten one or two.) Then I looked at the sales figures for previous mysteries the company had published in each of these subgenres over as many years as I could get data for (back then, mid 1990s, about seven years). What I found was pretty interesting.

For the most part, each of these subgenres was profitable, but inconsistent. One year private eye novels would be on top by a wide margin, and cozies were all red ink. A few years later, cozies were in the black, and private eyes took it on the chin.

Armed with this information I decided that the best course of action to be successful, keep my job, and even get promoted would be to publish a wide net of sub-genre mysteries—the cover your ass approach. So I literally divided the number of subgenres into the number of titles I had to publish each year and came up with a number—8 subgenres, 24 titles needed per year. I’d publish 3 novels in each subgenre each year.

Then I tinkered with the list by again looking at the historical performance of the subgenres. I wasn’t the only editor publishing mysteries. I had competitors at every other major publishing house. What they published would influence the marketplace too.  One year the market would be flooded with cat cozies (yes there is a sub-sub-genre of mystery that features a cat as a lead protagonist) and while the top brand name writers in the sub-genre would still perform in big numbers (Lillian Jackson Braun, Rita Mae Brown, Carole Nelson Douglas…they all had three names for some reason), the unknowns found themselves scrambling. The cat cozy market was just about fixed. If there were too many books offered to that limited market, many would fail.

So I made the leap that each genre of mystery had a fixed number of fans. If I knew that one sub-genre was being abandoned by my competitors (back then it was the hardboiled private eye on the ropes) I’d publish more of those kinds of books into the marketplace and fewer of ones that seemed to be “over published.” The fan base would be starved for more hardboiled mysteries and I would be the only one offering them…sales would increase and I’d get a pat on the back.

So, that year, even if your cat cozy mystery was exceptional, better than even the best one on the market, your agent would have a tough sell to me. But if you had a compelling lead private eye mystery in a unique setting and a head scratching plot, even if you weren’t the best thing since sliced bread, you’d get yourself a contract. And perhaps vice versa the next year. Commercial editors listen to the market as best they can and then try and find the best books to fill a particular void.

While I can’t attest that every commercial editor uses this sort of model to help them choose which books to get behind, I can say that each one of them has some sort of inner empirical strategy they employ.

About two years after I moved out of mystery genre publishing and into the big ticket lead commercial hardcover fiction arena, I read Steve Pressfield’s Gates of Fire on submission. Of course I loved the book. I thought it was extremely well written and the sense of time and place were remarkable. But what was the “hook?” Who was the audience? If I couldn’t answer those questions when my publisher and the sales force asked me, there was no way in Hell I’d be able to acquire the book.

I went back to my mystery model.

I looked at the arena. How many war novels were being published in 1996? THE KILLER ANGELS by Michael Shaara was a huge book and his son Jeffrey’s prequel GODS AND GENERALS was climbing the charts. W.E.B. Griffin’s military novels continued to sell in big numbers year after year. And of course Tim O’Brien and James Webb’s Vietnam novels were evergreens. But few other titles stood out.

I suspected that the military fiction market was under-published. And as the Spartans were the epitome of warrior culture with Thermopylae holding the preeminent place in western military history, Gates of Fire could reach an audience starved for a brilliantly told historical war novel. The men who read Griffin, O’Brien, Webb, Shaara, even Conroy (his early novels The Boo and The Lords of Discipline are “boy book” classics), and every military nonfiction book sold would love this book.

The argument worked. But I was pitching a commercial publisher and a commercial sales force. If I had been pitching Gates of Fire in a “Literary” house back in 1996, and used these same arguments, I may have been granted approval to acquire the novel, but I don’t think the literary house that published it would have targeted the wide swath of readers we did at Doubleday.

Today, I don’t think that’s true.

Back to the two cultures (Commercial and Literary) and why I think they are beginning to merge. Publishers can no longer afford to rely purely on the “literary” category.  The audience for “literary” books has shrunk considerably over the twenty years I’ve been in the business. I think it’s because there is no longer that select New York based media industry intelligentsia that can influence booksellers and book reviewers (both rapidly vanishing) to push a particular novel based on subjective aesthetic literary excellence.

There was a time when the book publishing industry was obsessed with finding the next great American novelist and while there certainly continues to be a longing for such a thing (Jonathan Franzen, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Safran Foer, etc.), grooming one is expensive. Every publisher wants one of these tasteful literary figures to prop up as proof that their lists are fully rounded, but the fact is they just don’t sell like they used to. As for scale, they will never approach a book like THE DA VINCI CODE.

That doesn’t mean that there is no place for the “literary” anymore. It just means that publishers have had to move the pendulum closer to commercial than literary. Knopf publishes the Stieg Larsson trilogy and has sold millions. They publish certain kinds of commercial fiction because they can pay the bills while they search for the next Roberto Bolano.

What this means is that there is a great demand for novels that can be positioned at the top of the commercial list—thrillers and or dramas that women will want to read. All of the big publishers (with a contracting list of exceptions) are on the hunt for a female friendly literary/commercial commodity.  They don’t care about genre so much as “will it scale?” A crime novel from a National Book Award nominee or a literary novelist taking a crack at a vampire trilogy is the result.

So where does this leave THE PROFESSION?

The quality of Steve’s writing (there are sentences you read again and again just to admire their content and structure) rates with all those bright young things featured in The New Yorker. And the “hook” and the “audience” for THE PROFESSION are off the charts. The book will engage and satisfy readers across many genres.

While perfectly positioned as a military thriller, a book your dad or uncle would love, THE PROFESSION is also in the tradition of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick at his best. Dick was the master of the speculative novel. The movie Bladerunner was based on Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Total Recall was based on Dick’s We Can Remember It for you Wholesale.

THE PROFESSION speculates a future when all of the major armies are privately owned. They fight for pay. How would that impact the professional soldier? How would a warrior ballast the lure of lucre with his/her values? This question so perplexed Pressfield that he wrote THE WARRIOR ETHOS to make it make sense to himself. It’s not a stretch to see the inevitability of more and more powerful military contractors. THE PROFESSION is an early wake up call to their allure and danger.

THE PROFESSION is also a novel with incredible insight into Washington/Beltway maneuvering and maintains a chillingly plausible political thriller plot. How could our system of checks and balances be subverted to clear a path for a modern day Caesar?

THE PROFESSION features strong female characters throughout the novel who are as powerful, if not more powerful, than the lead protagonist and antagonist. These women take no shit and aren’t sexy stick figures for male fantasy. They are crucial players in the drama.

So THE PROFESSION’s hooks are numerous and its potential audience exponential. It could be positioned in any number of ways—military thriller, speculative science fiction, literary, or political thriller. THE PROFESSION bridges the commercial and literary publishing cultures to be that rare “commodity”—a novel that entertains, informs, and stays with you.

To read the first two chapters of The Profession, you can download the PDF or visit Scribd.com.

Chayefsky’s Rule

 

This is our third post in succession about Theme in movies, plays, and books. I’m probably gonna do another six or seven over the coming weeks, so brace yourself. This stuff is important.

Bryce Dallas Howard in “Jurassic World.”

Let’s go back to that seminal quote from Paddy Chayefsky, cited two Wednesdays ago.

 

As soon as I figure out what my play is about, I type it out in one line and Scotch tape it to the front of my typewriter. After that, nothing goes into the play that is not on-theme.

 

Paddy might not approve if he knew I was about to use Jurassic World to illustrate his point. But let’s go for it.

The theme of all the Jurassic Park movies is Don’t Mess With Mother Nature. Let’s examine how the filmmakers of the latest in this series have followed Paddy’s precept.

First, the park-goers.

The crowds at Jurassic World could have been scripted or directed to act in any number of ways. They could have been mature, ecologically-minded, curious, respectful, well-behaved.

But that wouldn’t be on-theme. In fact it would clash with the theme. It wouldn’t fit, and we in the audience would feel that something was “off” and out of tune.

So the filmmakers made the crowds boisterous, boorish, and crude. They made their movements mob-like and unruly. They dressed them like rubes. They established their attitude toward the dinosaurs as one of condescension and exploitation, mixed with a measure of fear and self-titillation that only added to the vulgar, swinish quality of their characterization.

The crowds thought it was cool to mess with Mother Nature. They were having a blast ogling the captive, manufactured-for-spectacle dinosaurs.

In other words, the park-goers represent the counter-theme. They are the villain (or at least part of the villain.)

Then we have park management.

The execs at InGen obviously have no problem messing with Mother Nature. That’s the whole reason for the park. The science dudes want to push the envelope on genetic mutations. The investors want to make money. And the on-site managers hope to advance their careers.

The “nice” park executive is played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She’s at least trying to be responsible. She wants the show to go on. She wants everyone to have a good time. She doesn’t want anybody to be hurt.

She’s in the middle on the Mother Nature theme.

Next: Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) as chief of park security. His job is to secretly weaponize the raptors for war. He’s working for the man in all kinds of dark capacities. In other words, he really believes in messing with Mother Nature.

Finally we get to our hero, raptor wrangler Chris Pratt.

Chris is the only one who actually cares about the dinosaurs. When the Indominus Rex begins running amok, every other character is trying to save his or her butt or save the park or save the mega-dino to exploit further. Only Chris actually relates to the animals as fellow creatures.

Chris Pratt trying to reason with his raptor charges.

Hey, he says, what about them? They didn’t ask for this. They’re just doing what dinosaurs do. You guys uncorked the powers of Mother Nature. What did you expect would happen?

Chris is the hero. He represents the theme.

(And let’s not forget the dinosaurs. They’re the heroes too.)

A movie or a book is like a seduction. It’s like a legal brief, a sales pitch, a TED talk. If it’s going to work, it must be focused. It has to make one point—and make that point with all the concentrated power it can muster.

In the same way that an iPhone possesses unity, or a St. Laurent gown or a Ferarri Testarossa, a story must be structured to deliver one unified punch.

 

“Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?”

“I said he drove very nicely, Mother. Now, please, I asked him to stay close to the white line, and all, and he knew what I meant, and he did … “

 

This is Muriel, the young wife of Seymour Glass in J.D. Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Muriel and Seymour are on vacation at a beach hotel. Muriel is alone in Room 507.

 

“When I think of how you waited for that boy all through the war … ”

“Mother, we’d better hang up. Seymour may come in any minute.”

 

Outside, Seymour is wading into the ocean with another guest at the hotel, four-year-old Sybil Carpenter.

 

” … They lead a very tragic life,” he said. “You know what they do, Sybil?”

She shook her head.

“Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas … “

 

The theme of Bananafish is that war kills.

 

He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover.

He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

 

Dino flick or classic American short story, every element (as Paddy Chayefsky told us) must be on-theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girl Scouts, Pot and Thinking Outside the Obvious

A Girl Scout in Los Angeles made the LA Times this week for setting up shop outside a pot dispensary. She sold 117 boxes within two hours, almost a box a minute.

Let’s pretend for a second that there aren’t adults in favor and adults against this young lady’s location choice — and just look at the location.

It’s an example of thinking outside the obvious.

For decades Girl Scouts have been going door-to-door throughout their neighborhoods and camping out in front of local grocery stores, Walmarts and other “family friendly” locations. These are the obvious locations — sell where other families might shop themselves.

When it was my turn, my sale-to-minute rate was along the lines of one box sold to every 20-to-30 minutes spent knocking on doors. That rate decreased as my age increased. The old lady on the corner had a large heart and an open wallet for the eight year old, but that 13 year old was shit out of luck because other eight year olds had taken her place…

Same low sales rate when selling in front of stores. Store shoppers weren’t there for Girl Scout cookies, and they usually didn’t arrive hungry, so cookies were often a pity or impulse buy — or because the seller was their daughter, granddaughter, neighbor, niece, best-friend’s daughter, niece’s best friend’s daughter, “best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend[‘s]” sister…

So where else to sell the cookies? I’ll leave that specific answer to the parents and Girl Scouts, but it’s a question to think about when selling your book or painting or film or album — or whatever it is you’ve created.

Years ago, I’d hear sales reps discuss “special sales,” which were along the lines of the pot dispensary. They were sales into places that weren’t bookstores, but sold books. Think Wholefoods, Restoration Hardware, Urban Outfitters, etc. — stores that either have a small book section or that use books as props, but also sell them.

I wouldn’t call them “special” anymore as they’re the way and not just a special way these days.

The mistake made with special sales is pitching places that seem obvious to the seller (Girl Scouts selling in front of grocery stores) but aren’t where some prime buyers are shopping (pot dispensary).

For example, I’ve listened to publisher after publisher complain about not getting their military-related/themed books into military base exchanges. To them, the most obvious audience is the active-duty military community. Afterall, if someone is in the military, they must spend all their free-time reading about military-related topics, too, right? And, the obvious place for them to buy these books is within the military exchange stores.

No.

Hit them where they hang out — not just where they work.

It’s the same idea behind seeing a Star Wars-themed book within the Star Wars-themed bedding display in Pottery Barn for Kids. The store itself isn’t the obvious go-to store for Star Wars fans, but… They shop there, too.

A few years ago I spotted a copy of a book from the Art of Manliness team, smack dab in the middle of a window display for a Las Vegas men’s store. It served as both decoration and product. Added to the window dressing and was for sale, too.

When you pull your possible sales list, don’t ignore the obvious. But, if a location and/or audience is obvious to you, it/they’re likely obvious and over-targeted by others, too.

What’s the place where can you sell almost one unit a minute in two hours?

The Difference Between Subject and Theme

What do we mean when we say a book or a movie is “about something?” This question is a lot trickier than it seems.

Did you see the movie The Break-up, starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughan? A facile answer regarding this film would be, “It’s about a break-up.”

Wrong.

The subject is a break-up.

The theme is something else entirely.

The subject of the Jurassic Park movies is dinosaurs.

The subject is dinosaurs. The theme is, “Don’t mess with Mother Nature.”

The theme is, Don’t mess with Mother Nature.

The subject of Out of Africa is Karen Blixen’s experiences in Africa.

The theme is possession. “Is it possible,” the movie asks, “for a person to truly own something—a farm, a lover, her own fate?”

The theme of Out of Africa in statement form is, “It is not possible to own anything, and the harder we try, the more certain we are to lose what we wish to hold.”

A theme does not have to be true in all instances.

We can write one book with Theme X, then follow it up with another with Theme Opposite-of-X.

Sometimes a writer or filmmaker will deal with the same theme over and over. David O. Russell (one of my faves) seems to love the theme, “An individual, no matter how beset by his/her own self-sabotage and the sabotage of their family, can triumph if he/she is passionate enough, brave enough, and creative enough.” The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, Joy.

A theme can be totally unoriginal and still work beautifully. It can be a platitude. It can be a cliche.

“Love conquers all.”

“Might makes right.”

Remember the advertising line for the first Rocky?

 

His whole life was a million to one shot.

 

That statement is not far off from the movie’s theme, which is in truth a word-for-word statement of the American dream:

 

The sorriest bum in the street is capable of greatness if he’s just given the chance.

 

The theme of Casablanca is another cliche. “It’s better to work for the good of the group than for your selfish personal ends.”

There’s nothing wrong with your theme statement being a cliche. In many ways it’s better. Why? Because it means your theme has broad applications. It’s universal. It applies to everybody.

Part of the reason Rocky was a hit was that so many people could identify with its theme.

A theme should have multiple layers. We should be able to interpret it on the personal level, the political level, even the spiritual level. The more levels the theme works on, the more powerful it is.

Casablanca came out in 1941, while the U.S. was in a raging internal debate over whether or not to enter World War II. When in the film Humphrey Bogart declared

I stick my neck out for nobody

and

I’m the only cause I’m fighting for

he was speaking on the personal level. But his words were understood by the audience on the political level as well. He was giving voice to the powerful “American First” sentiment then prevalent in the country.

Bogie was also stating one side of the movie’s theme. The hero, remember, embodies the theme. How he or she acts in the final crunch becomes the movie’s statement of the theme.

In the climax of Casablanca, when Bogie forsakes his own selfish ends (to fly off to safety with his former lover, Ingrid Bergman) and instead puts Ingrid on the plane with her husband, the gallant Resistance fighter Paul Henreid, while he himself remains behind to join the fight against fascism, his actions state the movie’s theme not just personally, but politically.

Level One: Bogie elects to act for the greater good.

Level Two: America should do the same. It should get into the war.

Why is theme so important?

Because it gives a story focus and depth.

We’ve all read a millions sagas about plucky Moms and punchy prize fighters and self-centered gamblers/con men/operators. (In other words, subject). But when the struggles of these characters are given focus by the right theme, and when that theme contains a second or even a third level, then the story’s power is magnified and its emotional wallop is doubled and tripled.

Which leads us to the next aspect of theme—cutting everything that is not on-theme.

We’ll talk about that next week.

 

 

 

Releasing Your Voice/s

Too Cool for School

Over at the Story Grid Podcast, one of our most popular episodes concerns how writers approach Narrative Device.

What exactly is Narrative Device?

Narrative Device is the choice the writer makes about the qualities of the being that will “tell the Story.”

Should the writer write in the first person? I met a man from Istanbul who had a black moustache.

Or should the writer choose third person? When Temple Eliot stepped off the Orient Express, the first to attract her attention was a man with a black moustache.

Or even second person? You are not the kind of person who finds facial hair appealing, so why did the man with the black moustache seize your imagination?

Narrative Device is another way of qualifying the writer’s “voice.” And any writer worth her salt will tell you that once you crack the Narrative Device, the Story almost writes itself.

Consider the following poem by Charles Bukowski:

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I’m too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I’m not going

to let anybody see

you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pour whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he’s

in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I’m too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I’m too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody’s asleep.

I say, I know that you’re there,

so don’t be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he’s singing a little

in there, I haven’t quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it’s nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don’t

weep, do

you?

I’d bet if Bukowski were around today and someone asked him to pick a piece of writing that best reflects his battle hardened true voice, it would be that poem.

The legend of Bukowski reeks of spilled beer, cigarillo smoke and the acrid sweat of obliterative rage. But in this poem, Bukowski the artist stripped away the BS and revealed the marshmallow human being underneath.

He did that by nailing the Narrative Device, in this case writing a confessional Story as the cynical performance artist known as the “writer Charles Bukowski.”

The storyteller of the poem is the authentic Bukowski, the guy who got up in darkness every morning before his shift at the post office to write. The other Bukowski, was a persona, one he no doubt enjoyed and hid behind to protect his bluebird from external third party assault, something that as a child he was all too familiar with.

Bukowski’s inner triumph (creating as existential necessity, not “look at me” exhibitionism) is the job we as writers and artists have signed up for. To shuck our “writerly” BS, examine our internal landscapes to such a degree that we recognize our multiple personae and find ways to give them the external stage, the page. Let them tell our stories for us. That’s why they’re in us.

To let those birds out even though their songs torment us.

Narrative Device is just the technical term for discovering how to get the hell out of the way and letting those bluebirds sing.

What is Your Novel About?

 

I was talking to a friend who runs a successful Hollywood literary agency. She represents screenwriters. Before she opened her doors, she said, she spent a year doing nothing but reading scripts, searching for promising young writers. She read well over 500 screenplays.

Paddy Chayefsky, the only three-time solo Oscar winner for Best Screenplay

“How many,” she asked me, “do you think were worth representing?”

Before I could reply, she answered.

“None.”

I believe her.

I’ve read a boatload of screenplays and novel manuscripts myself. Many have interesting, even brilliant premises. Fascinating characters abound; there’s lots of clever dialogue, surprising plot twists, mind-blowing set-pieces. And a lot of what I (and my agent friend) have read is really good writing.

But almost none of it works.

Why?

What’s missing?

“The scripts,” my friend said, “were almost never about anything.”

Theme.

She was talking about theme.

This is a subject I’ve become rabid about. I’m not even sure why. For years I myself wrote without the slightest clue of what theme was. I couldn’t have defined it if you had hung me by my thumbs over a seething volcano. I had no idea that it was important. I didn’t even know what it was.

I was just like all those failing writers. In fact I was failing myself.

Robert McKee tells the following story (forgive me; I’ve cited it before).

As a young writer-director he got the chance to interview the great playwright and screenwriter Paddy (“Network,” “Marty” “The Hospital”) Chayefsky, the only three-time solo Oscar winner for Best Screenplay.

 

As soon as I figure out what the theme of my play is [said Chayefsky], I type it in a single line and Scotch-tape it to the front of my typewriter. After that, nothing goes onto the page that isn’t 100% on-theme.

 

For me, that quote was a life-changer. The light bulb went off. I finally got it.

I’m going to take the next few weeks on this blog and address nothing but theme.

Maybe you’ll hate this subject. Maybe I’ll bore you to death. Maybe you’ll say to yourself, “I dunno why this dude keeps going off on this. It’s all so obvious.”

Clearly it isn’t obvious, or my literary agent friend wouldn’t have read five hundred scripts and come up with zero that she cared to represent.

Okay.

What is “theme?”

Why is it so important?

How can five hundred writers bang out scripts—scripts that in many other respects are excellent, or at least interesting—that are about nothing?

Let’s start with a corollary to that question.

“What happens when a script is about nothing? (And I don’t mean like Seinfeld, which is decidedly not about nothing.) What does a novel with no theme feel like?”

It feels empty.

It feels hollow.

When you set it down, your expression is a blank stare. You feel like you’ve just consumed a meal that provided zero nutrition. You wonder, “Why did the writer even write this at all?”

Here’s a related concept that also helped me tremendously when I began to grasp it:

 

Every major character must represent something that is greater than himself or herself.

 

Jay Gatsby represents something.

Daisy Buchanan represents something.

The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock represents something.

Atticus Finch represents something.

Don Corleone represents something.

Huckleberry Finn represents something.

The 500 protagonists in my literary agent friend’s screenplays represented (I’m guessing) nothing but themselves. X was X. X did not stand for Y or Z. That’s why the scripts felt so hollow. That why they left the reader feeling starved and cheated.

Here’s a third related principle:

 

The protagonist represents the theme.

 

Am I boring you yet? If this is tedious to you, if you feel your eyes glazing over as they might in some soporific graduate seminar, may I suggest that you release all hope or ambition of succeeding (or even having fun) as a writer.

This stuff is seminal.

You have to know it.

Forgive me for ranting. Like I said, this subject makes me insane.

Back to characters, back to theme.

A story, any story, has to be about something. It must have a theme.

The hero of the story represents the theme.

The villain represents the counter-theme.

In the climax, hero and villain clash to the death (at least figurative death) on-theme.

In the next few weeks we’ll get into this subject in excruciating detail. But let me sign off this post with a single thought.

It is very, very hard to figure out your theme.

It’s back-breaking, brain-busting labor.

Resistance becomes monumental.

Even Paddy Chayefsky had to struggle. (Note how he says, “Once I figure out the theme … ” Meaning he did not know it at the start. He was operating on instinct.)

Theme is hard work.

But you and I have to do it. There’s no getting around it—unless we want to be one of those five hundred in our literary agent’s reject pile.

[P.S. Thanks to Juan Taylor, who suggested this subject and urged that I try a few posts addressing it.]

 

 

 

Finding Atticus

After Atticus pulled Calpurnia away from Aunt Alexandra and the Maycomb missionary circle ladies, Aunt Alexandra asked Miss Maudie when it would stop. (Chapter 24, To Kill A Mockingbird)

“I can’t say I approve of everything he does Maudie, but he’s my brother, and I just want to know when this will ever end.” Her voice rose: “It tears him to pieces. He doesn’t show it much, but it tears him to pieces. I’ve seen him when — what else do they want from him, Maudie, what else?”

“What does who want, Alexandra?” Miss Maudie asked.

“I mean this town. They’re perfectly willing to let him do what they’re afraid to do themselves – it might lose ‘em a nickel. They’re perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what they’re afraid to do, they’re —“

“Be quiet, they’ll hear you,” said Miss Maudie. “Have you ever thought of it this way, Alexandra? Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we’re paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.”

It wasn’t just that Maycomb trusted Atticus to do right, they expected him to DO, period. They knew he was a man of action, that he’d do something – and that they’d be alright with whatever that something was because they knew well what to expect of Atticus.

Atticus didn’t put on airs, pretend to be something he wasn’t. Just as Miss Maudie liked to comment, he’s “the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”

I’ve not read Go Set A Watchman, so I can’t comment on the Atticus of that story, but the Mockingbird version seemed even-handed, fair and loving to his kids, and skilled without wearing his accomplishments for all to see, like a Saran Wrap wallet. Instead, his accomplishments were tucked away, his skills held close, available to be pulled out for use within his life, rather than as the forces driving his life.

In a time with such a “me” focus, it’s reassuring to think of someone who is a doer, without talking about being a doer; someone who goes to court, instead of changing their Facebook profile picture in a show of solidarity with someone who is in court; someone who is willing to take risks because it is the right thing to do; someone who ignores a troll who spits in his face because he understands the troll’s motivations; someone who won’t be heckled or stopped by hate; someone who continues to evolve, not perfect, but open to change.

It’s a shame that someone is fiction.

Think Bradbury and Bowie will send him down from Mars to us?

A nice thing to think about.

(*I read Mockingbird in one sitting while stuck in the airport during last week’s East Coast snowstorm. Almost 30 years after my first reading. If your Mockingbird gap is as large, go back to revisit it. Experience and time, and the lack of a high school English teacher forcing her theories, made for one of the best reads I’ve had in a long time. Finding Atticus was like revisiting an old friend. He reminded me of the importance of doing the hard work — and of the equally important work of the Calpurnia’s, Miss Maudie’s, Scout’s and Jem’s. Different roles. All important.)

Choreographing a Fight Scene

The first movie I ever got sole writing credit on was one of the worst pictures ever made. I’m not kidding. I won’t even tell you the title because if I do you’ll lose all respect for me.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” No, this is not the movie I’m talking about. But this shoot-out DOES illustrate the principle.

But …

But I learned one enormous lesson on that movie.

We were shooting a gunfight scene. The scene took place in a warehouse. It involved the hero and his girlfriend and about a dozen bad guys. Dudes were dropping from the rafters, plunging through skylights; cars were blowing up, the warehouse was going up in flames, not to mention gunfire was ripping in all directions, coming from half a dozen different kinds of weapons—.45s, nine-millimeters, shotguns, machine guns.

In the script, all it said was “X shoots it out with a dozen bad guys.”

But in actually filming the scene, the stunt coordinator and the Second Unit director had to block out and choreograph every gunshot, every fall, every explosion, every vehicle crash. It was an amazingly complicated operation, with absolutely nothing left to chance.

Here’s what the Second Unit director told me:

 

Any time you film a guy firing a gun, you MUST also film where the bullet hits and what effect it produces. Otherwise the scene becomes totally confusing to the audience. And it looks fake.

 

I had never thought about that before. But I could see at once that the director was absolutely right.

I thought about fist fight scenes, even sword fights. Don’t you hate it when one guy slashes with a samurai sword and you don’t see where the blade goes or what it hits? Or those horrible fakey kung-fu fights that just look like a blur of kicks and punches and you can’t tell who’s winning or losing?

I thought about dance scenes. How bogus is it when you see the star start to do a pirouette or a flip and then the camera cuts to someone who’s obviously a stunt double doing the move, then they cut back to the star (close up of course, so you can’t see her body in motion) as if she had just performed the move herself.

Bad.

Bad!

I thought about the great old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies (or Fred with Cyd Charisse or Eleanor Powell or Rita Hayworth, or Fred with anybody) and how not only does the camera never show anything but both dancers head-to-toe, but it never cuts away. Every scene is shot in one take, so you know there’s no cheating. This is Fred. This is Ginger. They really did it, and with no tricks.

The same principle applies, of course, to any setup and payoff in any story. The old saw that says

 

If you show a gun in any scene, that gun has to be fired in some subsequent scene

 

could not be more true.

If the gun is not going to be fired in the story, don’t show it at all.

If you start any narrative thread anywhere in the story, that thread has to be paid off later. Otherwise don’t start it.

I remember watching the final cut-together version of the shoot-out in the warehouse. Forget that the movie was terrible. The scene played great.

One Bad Guy pops up from behind a barrel and fires a shot; we see the bullet strike and shatter the windshield of the car the hero and his girl are hiding behind—and we see them react as the glass blasts all over them. Next a villain plunges through the skylight firing a machine gun. Rat-a-tat: a row of bullet strikes is stitched along the wall, just missing hero and girl as they flee.

The scene looked absolutely real and made complete sense. You could follow what was happening. The action looked authentic and convincing.

The director’s axiom worked.

When you fire a gun (or throw a punch or open a narrative thread), make sure the audience sees where it lands and what effect it produces.

Otherwise the scene looks confusing and fake. It looks like a cheat.

The Iceman Cometh

No Steve, No Ice Rink

Many moons ago when I worked for “the man,” I’d reached a state of utter burn out. There was absolutely no water left in my creative well. I’d peered into the abyss and fallen in. Even mine own private Resistance had gone on vacation. Even he knew I was toast.

I’d just finished a project with a very high profile celebrity that required an inordinate amount of humility. The celebrity would have none of my rational editor-speak or my insistence on linear storytelling. To make matters worse, the usual tools to enforce my power (really the corporation’s power) over the artist (money and contractual obligations) were useless.

The celebrity (someone with an extremely high I.Q. and an Übermensch sense of self…except when he felt threatened or unsure of himself…which was quite often, fun right?) wisely refused to sign the seven-figure contract I’d negotiated with his agent or accept one penny from the company until he was personally satisfied with the manuscript. He wouldn’t be strong-armed by the publishing machine. God knows he’d verbally agreed to the terms of the deal and had publicly announced his intentions of writing the book, going as far as appearing at the Book Expo convention with much hoopla.

But he simply refused to sign the contract until he was damn good and ready.

You may find it crazy for a publisher to move forward on a book without a signed contract, but publishers often agree to a project, announce it, catalog it, create a cover for it, and set a lock down pub date for it…all the while not having a “signed agreement” in place. It just takes a long time for lawyers to work out the specific language of the contracts and because large sums of money for these projects are at stake, it is very rare for them to go south. Who walks away from a million dollars guaranteed over a “returns clause?” The deals eventually get done long before pub date, checks clear, and all’s well.

Not so in this case.

In fact, two weeks after the book had been published and was on The New York Times bestseller list, I drove to this celebrity’s house, put the paperwork on the hood of my rented car and told him that I’d never ask him for another thing if he’d just sign the damn thing.

Funny that I had to “call in a favor” so that the person in question could be paid more money than I’d made in my career…

The absurdity of the situation did not escape my notice, especially after my reward for keeping the thing alive and actually getting it in print to reach the bestseller list was just getting to keep my job. Oh and a nice bottle of wine.

Here’s the thing:

The place where I was working had just undergone a “regime change.” That’s a nice way of saying that the publisher had been fired and another one had been brought in to right the ship. But what was weird was the “new” publisher turned out to be the previous publisher before the one who had just been fired.

Huh?

It was a sort of George Steinbrenner/Billy Martin kind of situation where the previous publisher had a few bad seasons and was “promoted” by the corporate hierarchy to a position overseas.  Big Big corporation by the way. He was probably under contract for a lot of money so the corporation shipped him to parts unknown to ride it out until he deposited his final check.

Another publisher (the one who hired me) was brought in to right the listing ship that the previous publisher had left…(now the returning new publisher…).

The publisher who had hired me had taken the company in a more “commercial” direction…meaning more big thrillers etc. on the list…hence my being hired. But she’d had mixed results and she wasn’t a very good schmoozer either. So she was canned (and all editors she’d hired were canned too…with the exception of moi) and the former publisher came back to restore the literary gravitas of the place, while he’d also been tasked with increasing net revenue. No easy feat.  He actually pulled it off.

You can see why being a publisher ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Just as an aside, I liked both publishers. The boss who hired me was an old school brassy force of nature who’d risen from the secretarial pool to the corner office when women were still being called “girls” and my new boss (the guy who used to run the show brought back to run it again) turned out to be a real mensch.

But I had a boss in between myself and the publisher too and let’s just say we had a complicated relationship…more on that in a minute.

So what drove me into the abyss?

While I’m confident the celebrity liked working with me (we’re still distantly friendly), he could have cared less about my “career” or the fact that his failure to deliver the book when he said he would could easily be grounds for my firing. That’s not a criticism either. That’s the right attitude for an artist; serve the art not the peripheral forces demanding attention around the art.

Remember that this was a “big book” for the company too. It would drive a lot of revenue into the coffers just before the end of the fiscal year. My inner Sammy Glick knew that if I could get this thing together, I’d earn a lot of respect from my bosses and maybe I could become one someday soon myself…. So I kept making promises.

“Sure it’s going great! Don’t worry!”

“Book’s due to the printer next week? Oh don’t sweat it, we’re just doing some little interstitial tinkering.”

“You absolutely need by Friday? Sure, no problem!”

I worked three days and nights straight…didn’t leave the office…and stayed up all night long the night before the book was due on press with the celebrity and his equally suffering co-author to hit the deadline.  But we did make it and we did sell a lot of copies.

So after that wild ride, I should have been over the moon happy with the success of the project, right? I should have been energized to jump back into the fray and push that old rock up the hill a little more right?

Instead, I wanted to crawl into a shallow hole, cover myself with soft, handmade quilts and sleep for seven and a half months.

About a week after I’d gotten the celebrity to sign the contract, he called me and asked me if I wanted to hang out and play golf. He’d fallen into a bit of a depression himself after the whole thing too and like freed hostages surrounded by people who just didn’t get what they’d been through, he wanted to have a mini-reunion. To laugh it all out of our systems.

So I went to see my immediate boss just to let him know I’d be taking off the rest of the day to hit the links with the celebrity. You know to decompress?

He did me a great favor that day by refusing to grant my request for the afternoon off.

I realize today (not at the time of course as I was blinded by Black Irish rage-fury that thankfully I was able to suppress before I expressed it) that my boss did what he had to do. It wasn’t personal.

The corporation that employed me at its discretion and of which my boss was its immediate representative wouldn’t benefit from my playing golf with the celebrity now. Before the guy signed the contract? Sure. But now that he had, the corporation had already realized whatever profit it would get out of that relationship. Time to move on.

What the corporation needed from me now, and let’s not forget who paid me, was to plow into the next project. Not wallow in the past.

If my boss were to approve my 18 holes of downtime, he’d be sending a dangerous message to me and to my fellow employees. That message would be that rewards and favor will come to editors who take wild risks, make promises they shouldn’t, and put the company in compromising positions. I was guilty of all of those sins.

That is not a good business model for a corporation. The whole thing could have easily blown up spectacularly. I was lucky it didn’t. I shouldn’t be rewarded for doing such a thing. I needed to be warned not to stretch so thinly. To take the smallest risks necessary for the most monetary gain. Not big ones… And so I was.

So what does this have to do with the photo of the skating rink?

Not so long ago (I confess I’m still in the midst of it) I faced another burn out. This time I called my business partner and told him all about it. How I’m finding myself physically resisting the plunge into the next thing. How I need to get the Hell away from Story Story Story for a while. That I need to do something else with my hands for fun that has nothing to do with Editing or Writing or Teaching etc.

Now, this business partner is known for his defining the very concept of artistic “Resistance.” He’s known for kicking people in the ass, for putting forth that it is through grinding hard work and only for the work’s sake that will we ever be touched with muse-inspiration. That excuses are Resistance’s furies. Isn’t the mother of all excuses “I’m burned out?”  Good luck getting this guy’s sympathy.

And keep in mind that this new “corporation” is a two-guy only operation. When one peters out, the other is left holding the bag. There aren’t any side businesses or autonomous imprints in the company that are going to pick up the wastrel’s slack.

After I rang off from that dreaded call, I had the energy to plan and build an ice skating rink for my kids. From scratch. I can still hear the snickers from the guys at Home Depot when I told them what I was going to do with “all that lumber.” I lifted every board, strung all the lights, and turned every screw. And not once did I think about inciting incidents, progressive complications, crisis, climax or resolution.

That’s what the photo is, a moment at the end of last night’s ice time, just after I poured a nice new sheet.

There’s no denying that change require loss. Walking away from an esteemed branded institution that enables rubbing elbows with celebrities is a surefire way NOT to get your calls returned.  But your kids will trade that loss for a skating rink any day of the week.

The only problem for me is that I skate as well as I golf.