Calibrating Your Scenes

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me in a minute is Sean Coyne, the creator of StoryGrid and an editor with over 25 years experience. And he is helping me figure out how to write my first book. As I was looking back over my notes for this episode, I was trying to figure out what this episode was all about. And what I think it is, is about calibrating your scenes and calibrating how you build your story. So you'll hear him talk about a couple of scenes that I wrote, and those are going to be in the show notes, of course. But he keeps talking about how I go too far in some ways and not far enough in others. And I think it's this really nuanced thing that I'm trying to learn about how to keep the reader engaged with without just hitting them over the head with it. And it's this hard kind of middle ground to find. And so that's why I call this episode Calibrating your Scenes, which seems like a really boring title. But I think it's really important, especially for those of us really getting into writing for the first time and making sure that our story is building at the right pace and we're not going too fast and slowing down. So that's what this is about. We talk, of course, about villains again and inciting incidences again, but we go over my scenes as well and really get into the weeds on it. And I think it's something that you're going to really enjoy and learn a lot from. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, based on our conversation last week, I went back and I wrote two scenes, two different opening scenes for the book, and I sent those to you. What did you think?

Well, I think. I think you did first of all, your ability to. You're getting into a groove of leaving out things that are really important to leave out. So the exposition problem that you used to have is slowly fading into the background. And that is a huge step forward for a writer. What do you mean? Well, when you first begin to write, you have a tendency to, we all do, to over explain things. And so we'll add in extra exposition that explains a particular moment. She came into the house that was 20ft by 36 foot feet, and it was a 500 square foot home. So that is the tendency that we all have when we begin to write, because we want to be understood. So it's so important that we don't make mistakes as a writer when we're beginning that we overcompensate by adding so much information that it bores the shit out of the reader. So, for example, when you first started, you know, sharing things with me, you would have a tendency to, you know, have the character say things exasperatedly or fruitfully. He walked through gingerly, you know, adding a lot of extra adjectives and adverbs to create a false sense of description. So as you're writing more and more and more, you're discovering within yourself an ability to just get to the point, to just describe the action in a very straightforward way. So these two scenes that you wrote, and I have comments about both of them, like, four or five steps ahead than anything that you've shown me before. They're better than the scene that you wrote for the anthology. And I suspect that you didn't spend a lot of time on these, meaning you didn't edit the hell out of them before you sent them to me. And I think that's a very good thing, because what you're. You're writing from a place of wanting to go from A to B to C to D to E to F, and then, bang, finish your scene in a way that has a mini cliffhanger to it. So you're using the story principles that we've talked about so many times before, where you have an inciting incident, you progressively complicate it, and then you have a crisis, a climax, and a resolution. And all of those things are clear in these two scenes that you wrote. So, again, just to give the listeners a little bit of background of where we are now. Tim has returned and I have returned from long sort of hiatuses. And so we're getting back into Tim's manuscript and the thing that we've been corresponding over the past few weeks about. You want to write an opening scene that your reader becomes extremely invested in. You want to have a slam, bang, action scene that is going to really suck in the reader so that they'll read your second chapter. That is really.

A crucial part of any story, of any novel, of any long form, narrative nonfiction, is that you have to open really strongly. You have to hook that reader as soon as possible. So one of the things we were talking about in emails back and forth over the past few weeks is the necessity of establishing your inciting incident of your global story in such a way that it establishes the stakes of which are going to be life and death and also establishes the world that this character is living in. However, you know, briefly and shortly. You can do that. And it has to end with a cliffhanger of sorts where you're not really sure what's going to happen next. So in the two scenes that you wrote, you have that stuff. Now I have some ideas about how to take them to the next level. And there are a couple of things I need to tell you about your protagonist here, and I think you need to. The last time we ended our podcast, we were talking about hero, victim and villain. And this is the moment in this very first scene where you have to establish those three roles extremely clearly so that the reader understands what the stakes are. Who is the potential hero, who's the villain, and who's the victim?

I didn't see the victim very well.

That's what I wanted to say. Yeah, that's the big thing. And it goes to. Now, the first thing I'm going to say is that I think that the scene where Jesse is caught in medius race, meaning she's in the middle of stealing, she's in somebody's house and she's in the middle of taking things. And the bad guy, or whoever it is, the authority figure, is sitting in an armchair, sort of watching her, doing what she's doing. So I really like this because it's catching her in a moment of vulnerability, so that it raises the power of. Of the powerful figure who begins to talk to her, and it gives that guy a lot of confidence. Now Jesse is in a moment of real vulnerability. And you know what I also liked about the scene was that there are these sort of third party figures who are there sitting there, but they're sort of locked into the world. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a virtual reality world where these two people are locked in and they are oblivious to Jesse being there and this other guy being there. Is that correct?

Right. Okay. I tried to leave that, like, unclear. I mean, but we've talked so much about it. But yeah, I just wanted. That was one of the things I kept.

That's a hook.

Yeah, I kept trying. Like, I actually wrote, like, there's so many times I like, pulled back in the middle of the draft where I started writing, like, what they were there for, and then I just deleted it all. And then I'd add a bunch of adverbs and I'd delete all the adverbs. And like, I just like. I kept like, just pulling back throughout the Entire draft.

Well, that was absolutely the right thing to do, because what you're establishing here in this very, very first scene, it's like that very first scene in that novel that you were telling me about. I read a long time ago. Long time ago, meaning like maybe three months ago, when it was the woman with her two kids and they have to leave and she's got to blind herself. Yeah.

Bird Box, I think, is Bird Box.

Yes. What I liked about the scene that you wrote with Jesse sort of in the middle of stealing is that it has a feeling of that very strange alternative universe, weird. What the hell is going on sensibility that Bird Box had and also the girl with all the gifts. So those two examples of opening inciting incident scenes, bird Box and the girl with all the gifts, I think have helped you understand what you wanted to create here and then added onto those two sort of examples of mysterious alternative universe worlds. You added on what we were discussing last week, which is the knock on the door scene, which, you know, we talked about it in terms of Inglourious Basterds, and you brought that to the table, too, here. So the fact that you left out all of the details about why there's these two figures sitting in chairs who are completely oblivious was a really great decision because, again, everything in writing is hooking and paying off. So what you've set up for the reader is a big mystery. They don't know why these people are sitting there. And so they're going to want to find out why they were, you know, and they're going to want to keep.

Reading because, man, I'm just so glad to hear you say that, because that's what I was trying to do.

Yeah. And it's. It's easier said than done. And you did it, so. So follow that instinct more and more and more. And what you'll discover is that a lot of the. One of the problems that you mentioned last week was that you overplot. You add everything in the kitchen sink into something because you think you need to keep adding more and more elements and more plot turns and twists. And the reality is that if you have a very strong central story spine, then you know that's gonna be enough really, to pull your reader along. So the tendency for overthinking writers like yourself, and I'll include myself in this, is to constantly be complicating the storytelling and adding more plot points, when in reality, if you can just slow it down and walk us through really tightly constructed scenes that have very, you know, strong beginning Middles and ends. You don't need as many major plot twists as you. As you think you do. Okay, so let's get back to these two scenes. All right, I'm just gonna. And you'll put these in the show notes. I know, but the one scene is written from the point of view of its third person point of view. It's third person omniscience. I didn't read it that closely to see if there was, you know, free indirect style there. Do you ever go into the mind of Jesse?

I don't know.

Okay. I can't remember. That's fine. You know, it's absolutely kind of cool that it didn't strike me that you had or hadn't. Because what that says to me is that the narrative was strong enough to drive me through without my editor hat jumping on and going, oh, he's in first.

You know.

I don't think I did. Because my worry is when I've done that in the past is when I start over explaining things. Like, I use that as an excuse to tell everything she's thinking. Where what I tried to do in this one was like, if I, like, showed up in the room and had no idea what was going on and started watching, I'm just gonna tell you what I see because I don't understand what the hell's going on.

Great, Great.

It's kind of what I was thinking when I started writing.

That's a really good strategy. Okay, so in the second scene, there's a setup where the brother is being interrogated, and then it's maybe a paragraph or so, and then, bang, it switches into his narration of the story. Now, right now I would advise that you go with the Jesse and the ambassador scene without tacking on that bit about the brother.

Yeah, I was trying to think, you know, you keep telling me to think hard about the narrative device.

Yeah.

And so that was kind of my stab in the dark of, like, I was thinking about, oh, geez, that super popular book where it. With the journal entries.

Oh, Gone Girl.

Yeah, Gone Girl. Like, where each chapter opened with a journal entry. I was, like, playing around with, like, what if each chapter opened with testimony from the trial? Like, we talked about there being a trial. And, you know, that's where the narrative device. But that was just kind of what I was messing around with at the beginning of that.

Well, I think, you know, I'm not going to say that you should throw away that idea yet, but it's always been my advice to if you can get away with not Having to add that kind of meta narrative device stuff at the very beginning, then don't do it. Sometimes it works because there's a sensibility to the writer where there's this sort of, you know, this mystical character inside their mind is kind of almost dictating the story to them. We've all had kind of experiences like that where we just sort of like are. I don't want to get too mystical here, but it's almost as if you're listening to somebody tell you a story and then you're just sort of taking dictation of what they're telling you. And that's a great example of a narrative device that works like. The first thing that comes to mind is, you know, Steve Pressfield's book the Legend of Bagger Vance, which is the story, you know, it's a first person narration of an older man looking back at a seminal moment in his life when he was a young boy. And he's this great old sort of grandfatherly storyteller who's telling a story to somebody who needs to hear it. But I don't think you need that here. Your beginning with Jesse in the middle of the house rang interesting. And it did feel as if somebody was narrating a scene that they were actually picturing in their mind, which has cinematic feel to it, which is great. Now, so with that said, I think the scene with Jesse and the representative of the villainous dark force works. Now, here's what doesn't work in the scene. What doesn't work is that you don't establish the victim, which is something I talked about, we talked about just a second ago. Now, the reason why you want to establish the victim is because you want to establish in the reader's mind a mission, a mission story spine that they can anticipate to the end of the line. So without a victim mentioned and without a mission for the hero to save that victim, there's a level of uncertainty that can really work to your disadvantage because you want to be able to fire on all cylinders in this first inciting incident scene such that there's no way that your reader will not read the second chapter.

So a way to do that is to firmly establish the hero, the villain and the victim. You've established the hero, you've established the villain. You don't really talk about the victim. You talk about the victim, the brother, but you talk about him as if he's dead.

So let me run this by you. So my plan was to use, was to have the brother be dead. Or they assume he's dead. And the revelation that he's still alive is basically what gets us from the beginning Hook to the middle build where that's what gets her over the hump. And what I tried to do, and I obviously didn't, was basically the reason she ran was to protect her friends in the beginning. I never know if this is getting lame, as I say it, but the idea was her friends of rats were basically in danger now and she was going to save them. That's why she ran. Is that. And my thought was that would be the victim in the beginning Hook. That would. And the victim would switch to her brother, which would be why she went at the end of the beginning Hook.

I think you're trying to establish too many victims early on. And I think that the best choice is to make a single victim that will draw. So here's what I suggest you do. And the other thing that I need to say before we get too far is that the choice of turning point. Now, the turning point is something I talk about in the story grid book. And it's a crucial moment that turns the tenor of the scene. It turns the value shift of the scene from the core value of the scene to its opposite. So, for example, if the core value of the scene at the beginning is life, there's gotta be a turning point that shifts it to the threat of death. So the turning point that you use in this scene is Jesse stabbing the ambassador. Correct.

Right.

Okay. So now every turning point, we have two choices to turn a scene. We can do it through character action, which is what you chose, which is when Jesse stabs the ambassador. So that's character action is one way to turn a scene. One character does something to somebody else, somebody acts to do something to somebody else. And the other way to turn a scene is through revelation. Now, revelation is a way of somebody throwing out information that the other character does not know. That changes everything. Their life was one way before they hear this information. And it's another after they hear this information. So the choice that you made was to make your hero do a violent act. And I'm going to warn you about that. To have your hero resort to violence in the inciting incident of the scene. Especially when she is, you know, we haven't even really established what her age is yet, but she's more in the Katniss everdeen Arena, maybe 16 to 19.

I established it in there. I said. Because there was that line where he said, even a 12 year old girl will get black, blah, blah, okay, well.

Then this is even more important to say, okay, a 12 year old girl using a knife inciting incident of the scene is going to turn off a lot of people because it's just too dark, too early.

Okay?

And I'm not saying that she wouldn't use violence at some point in the storytelling, but it's going to be the last resort. It's going to be a moment that is just so over the top threatening to her or to people that she cares about, that there's just no other alternative. Because we have to think about not just perhaps the reality that There are some 12 year olds who would resort to violence very soon. But I think the overarching sensibility of most people is that a 12 year old is innocent. A 12 year old is not a fully formed human being yet. And they are frightened, they are vulnerable, they are fearful of violence. So this is all to say that I think you should switch the turning point from character action to revelation. Now, prior to the turning point, Jesse is insistent that there's no way in hell she's going to go with this guy. So the core action, I mean, the core value of this scene is is she going to go to the Capitol under this new program or is she going to stay in the world in which she is. Is she going to leave or is she going to stay? So the thing that's going to make her leave is going to turn the scene. You decided for her to stay to protect her third party rat friends.

Now, we don't care about the rats. All we care about is this girl because we don't, we don't have any backstory about these rats. We don't really care that she wants to protect them. We just want to get this story moving. What we want to establish is a clear hero, villain and victim. So here's. I know I'm repeating myself, but it's important to, you know, sort of get this mantra in your head. So here's what I suggest. I suggest that you have the story, turn the scene, turn through the revelation, and that the ambassador says to her, oh, by the way, your brother's not dead. So you can establish early on that she thinks that the brother is dead. Everybody in this community thinks the brother is dead. There's no way in hell that she's going to go to this special program because what happened to her brother.

So.

When the ambassador says, okay, I understand your point of view, Jesse, okay, we'll leave you here. And you can also establish, look.

We'Re not going to come after the rats. We like rats. You know, the rats help us find the bugs in our system. So don't worry. We're not going to come after your friends. You can have this guy be, you know, that Christoph Waltzian kind of figure. Don't sweat it. You know? You know, we're not here to rid the world of rats. We need rats. We need rats in the system to find the bugs.

So I understand your trepidation of her abandoning her friends. So you can get rid of that very early with sort of a. You know, it's a way of this guy charming Jesse into going with him. He's going to try a whole bunch of different things to get her to go with him, and. And she's not going to budge until he throws out the trump card. Oh, by the way, your brother's not dead. You know, I know it seems like he is, but, you know, in fact, he's one of the people who asked us to come get you.

Okay, so my issue is, I thought the. The way I was picturing the beginning hook. So the first 25% of the book was. Was basically her refusing the call and then ending with her accepting the call. So the whole thing was not going to go. Not going to go, not going to go. Okay, I'm going. And then that's what kicks off the middle build.

So that's why I was trying to turn it in a way where she ran and said no, because then the rest of the beginning hook would be building towards her saying yes. I mean, I'm not changing that. That was just my current plan. But obviously, we've thrown about 83 of my plans out the window so far, so an 84th won't hurt that bad. But so we'll just. I need to know where I'm going with the beginning hook if she says yes in the first scene.

Okay.

Oh, and I was planning on using the revelation of the brother still being alive is the reason why she would go. So I'm. I was, like, 14 scenes away from giving that away.

That's exactly correct. That's exactly correct. And now that, from what I recall, is what I probably advised you to do. Now, the reason why I'm changing it now is this. We have to write. All the plans that we make are great for a map, but we have to react to the. Where the story is taking us as we're actually writing it. And so what I'm saying to you is that the way you've established this world has a lot in common with the Hunger Games, and I Think. And it also has a lot in common with the girl with all the gifts and bird box. And the thing about that kind of establishment of a world is that the reader is very, very, very, very familiar with the hero's journey. Just in their bones, they know what it means. So they know that the hero is going to refuse the call. And Jesse does refuse the call in this scene at the very beginning. She's like, what, are you crazy? I'm not going there. My brother's dead. If I go, you know, what's my mother gonna do? She already lost one kid. And the guy's like, well, you know, it's not really. You know how that goes. I mean, she doesn't really care if you go. He doesn't really say it that way. But my point is, is that the reader, once they read this, they're gonna go, oh, she's gotta go. It's like in the Hunger Games, I think Katniss goes, agrees, and sacrifices herself for her sister. In the second scene, right? Or the second chapter or third chapter.

Yeah. The first one is she's out hunting with her buddy, and they're talking about it. And then the second scene is they go, and she.

And she, you know, sacrifices herself. Okay? So she doesn't deny the call. She doesn't want to go to the Hunger Games. But the revelation that turns the second chapter is if you don't sacrifice yourself, your sister's gonna go. And your sister's gonna get killed immediately because she's an innocent. So Katniss goes, oh, geez, I can't refuse this call or my sister's gonna die, so I'm gonna go. So similarly, what you're establishing in this first scene is a girl who's been caught basically stealing, and that's a capital offense. Right? So she could theoretically be arrested by this guy and thrown into clink for and be put to death. Is that correct?

Yeah, because the people she was stealing from were plugged in.

Okay? So you really need to hammer that home to her. So, okay, you don't go. You die. Now, that's a revelation that works, and it establishes the cruelty of this world, too. Because she's there. She's not stealing, like, silverware. She's stealing food. Right?

Right.

Okay. So she's stealing food from these people who are plugged in, and that is a capital offense. That's a pretty good revelation. So if you want to save. If you want to save the brother is alive revelation for a long. For somewhere down the road, you could use that one Instead, I wouldn't have it be a capital offense. I would say it will require incarceration.

Because if it's a capital offense, it raises the stakes a little bit too quickly so that it seems a little over the top. But if you're caught, when somebody's plugged in, the first offense means, I don't know, I'm just making this up, a year of hard labor in the mines or whatever. So the guy says to her, all right, you're 12 years old. Let's see, statutes would say, yeah, you got to give us six months in the copper mines. So you want to go to the copper mines, or you want to go to the super duper great, you know, program that I'm offering you? And she goes, well, I guess I'll have to go to the copper mines. He goes, okay, well, let me think about that. Yeah, we can make that happen. The thing of it is, though, if you go to the copper mines, your parents are not going to be able to get your credit. You know, you can kind of like, you want to think about it from the point of view of the villain. His job is to get her to come, and he's got a whole bunch of tools that he can use to do this. And the big trump card that he has is, okay, I'm gonna level with you. It's your brother who sent for you. He's in deep shit, and the only way that he's gonna get his life saved is if you come and join this program.

So are you going to come? Now, that's. That's a thought, too. I mean, think of it in terms of, you know, you're trying to get your son to cut the grass, and he says, dad, I don't want to cut the grass. There's no way I'm cutting the grass today. And then you'll say, well, I'll give you $2 if you cut the grass. Nah, that's not enough. Okay, $5. No, I don't want $5. Okay, how about you stay in your room for the rest of the day? Okay, well, I don't mind staying in my room. You know, it's like. It's literally that kind of arguments that you try and go back and forth. You're trying to convince somebody to do something that you need them to do. So the character, just take a step back. The character action of her escaping and stabbing the guy in the leg is too much. You don't want your hero to do that. Especially. Especially she's 12 years old. She is not going to use violence if you can help it. She is going to use her brain and her, you know, her really smart, clever way of getting out of situations, not violence. Because she's just not going to be strong enough to overpower a grown man. And if she does, it's going to ring false to the reader, and that little bell will go off in their head, will say, I don't believe. This is baloney. Now, if you do want her to get out of the situation and. And deny the call in this first scene, you've got to figure out a different way for her to escape that is going to use her brain and not a knife.

So, okay, so are you saying that because the hero's journey, the call, is denied so often, having her accept the call in the first scene is a turn that's unexpected, and that's why I should do it. I'm trying to understand why you're encouraging me to go down one path over the other.

Well, it's not that I'm encouraging to go down one path over the other. It's that I'm trying to think of the logic of the story. The logic of the story is that this is a. This is a dystopian world where there's haves and haves nots. It opens in a scene where a young girl who's 12 years old is smarter than everybody else, and she's caught stealing from a family that's plugged into, you know, the alternative reality. And that is a crime in the society because they want to encourage people of plugging into the alternative reality. So as she's in there and she thinks she's completely, you know, undetected because she's been doing this a lot and she's really smart. Oh. All of a sudden, there's this figure who's sitting in a chair who says to her, hey, how you doing? Yeah, I see you're stealing. You know, this is. This is a problem. You know, we've been watching you. We've been letting you get away with this stuff. Now, here's the deal. We need you to come to the Capitol to join our super special program because we actually look for people like you, and it's important that you do this. And she says, nah, I don't want to do that. Well, why not? Well, because, you know, you did this to my brother, and he's dead. So if I go with you and I die, what's that going to do to my parents? So the guy has to say, oh, yeah, I understand what you mean. Well, here's the situation. If you don't do it, you're gonna end up getting six months of, you know, hard time and in labor. So what you're doing, you're. You're establishing the parameters of this world through this active scene where one person is trying to get something from another. And there is a. There's a perpetrator and a victim in the scene. The victim in the scene is the girl, but she's also going to be the protagonist of the story. So you want to seed in to this inciting incident of your story that there will be somebody else that she has to sacrifice for in order for her to be the hero. So the hero's journey is. The hero begins and is told that they have to go do something. And their initial reaction is, no, no, I'm not going to do that. So, okay, so you actually have that in this opening scene. She says, no, I'm not going to do that. I know what happens to people who go on this stuff, and I'm not going to do it. So you have abided by the hero's journey. Denial of the call just in this opening scene. Now, if you have five more scenes where she keeps saying no, the reader is going to get exasperated because you have established in the very first scene her saying no. And I think that's fine, because you know what? We know that she's going to eventually go, right? Somebody offers an opportunity like this to get the hell out of the dystopian world, they're going to do it. And that's what a story is, where somebody goes from one world to a new world. So to delay that, just because of the formulaic elements of the hero's journey, you are abiding by the hero's journey, but you're escalating. You're speeding up the hero's journey. And that's what Suzanne Collins did in the Hunger Games. She didn't fits and futs with the Hunger Games. She got her on the way to the Hunger Games after two chapters. The book is called the Hunger Games. And guess what? She is in the Hunger Games in two chapters. And we're with her. We're like, oh, great. We don't have to read all that crap about her not wanting to go. She's going, oh, my gosh, this is great. We don't have to, you know. You know what I'm saying? So I think your instinct to get her into this program is going to pay off and going to excite the reader because they're going to Say to themselves, oh, this is great. Tim's not going to make me read those seven other scenes that I don't care about where she goes and protects the rats, and the rats say, thank you so much, Jesse, for protecting us, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And eventually she's going to go to the Capitol. We want her to go to the Capitol immediately.

You know, so in Stephen King's book. Oh, geez, the date one about the JFK killing.

9, 11, 11, 22, 60.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then the first, you know, the beginning hook of the book, which was I remember us talking about on the show, because at the end of the beginning hook, I checked percentage, and I was at like 26% of the book. I'm like, yeah, nice one.

Nice, Sean.

But the whole thing was like, he goes back to do this kind of mini journey as a test for the big journey. So he goes back to do the mini journey, he comes back, and then at 26%, he dives in for the real story of the book. I thought, like, so I'm just struggling with. Then what am I doing with the rest? Like, so I'm 2% into the book. So if I. So if she says yes in the first scene, I've, like, killed where I thought I was going with the first 25% of my book, and I've done it in, like, the first 3%. So what. Where am I getting her at 25%? Like, what am I doing for the next 14 scenes of my beginning hook?

Well, the beginning hook, you have to think about it. You have to say to yourself, okay, that's what Stephen King did in that book. You have to also remember that was a different genre. That was a historical, alternative fiction, reality kind of thing. It was like science fiction with alternative history. So he needed to establish the vehicle that would get us back in time. He had to create the time machine. And so he spent the first 25% of the book creating the time machine. Correct.

Well, I mean, I don't want to get in the weeds on it. No, the time, you know how his books are. It's just a weird supernatural thing exists, and he doesn't explain. Explain why. But the whole thing is the guy, his mentor figure, wants him to go back and stop the JFK killing, but he goes back and stops a smaller issue just to see if it's possible.

Right, right, right.

That was the whole thing. So he was establishing that, yes, I can actually change history. So now I'm going to go back and change the jfk shooting.

Right.

So I'm thinking like, I'm trying to think like where I want to go is she ends up the training portion. The middle build is her developing the skills and getting the knowledge and tools so that she can fight in the threshing for the her faction. And the whole reason why they want her is they figured out that she, she doesn't die in the game. And so she's a soldier that can constantly regenerate, which will give them the upper hand. That's where I was going with it.

So the threshing is what is that sort of like a Hunger Games competition between rival factions or what?

Yeah, but in the digital world.

Okay, so the capital and this ambassador represents the power in charge, correct?

Correct.

And do they have an annual threshing where they fight alternative factions on this, in this online world?

Yes. It's a. Yeah. Every I had in my head four years, they come together to fight for the who establishes the power. I was. Maybe it's because we're in an election cycle, but I'm thinking of that of like it's been agreed long ago that they come together and fight for who will rule for the next four years. Is there like, side note, like I feel so I can talk about what I'm writing in nonfiction all day long and not feel embarrassed. But every time I talk about something, story idea in fiction, I feel like, like so stupid.

Right, right.

You know, because I'm like, well, you know, there's these, these rats in there. You know, it's like it sounds good in my head. I say it out loud. I'm like, it's so lame, you know?

No, it's not. I mean I had, I mean poor George Lucas had, you know, these little animated, these little puppets that he used to do for Star wars and people thought he was out of his mind. So this is the difficulty about doing fiction and especially the difficulty about doing what you're doing is opening yourself up to critical thought of basically dreamlike ideas that you have in your own mind. And yeah, it is embarrassing to reveal plot points and ideas that we have for stories that do not reflect reality because they come from your own subconscious. So you're, it's, you're feeling vulnerable to. You feel stupid because you're talking about something that's coming from your insides. And when you do that, criticism can really be very painful because it's literally coming from the inside of you and it's not, you're not sort of projecting, you know, these non fiction ideas that are in you know, the public record. And you can say, well, Seth Godin says this, and, you know, this guy says this. And so what I'm going to do is combine those two things. And then when you talk about nonfiction, you're talking from a. From a point of view of things that are in the record now. So when you're creating something from whole cloth, it's coming from your internal self, and so you get very embarrassed about it because it's. It makes you feel vulnerable, and it makes perfect sense. So I am not here to ridicule or make you feel bad about what you want to, you know, fictionalize and come up with in the story. What I'm here to do is to help you construct a world that has a beginning, middle, and end, that has consistency and progressively complicates to a crisis moment in the story that will pay off in a thematic way that you want to do within the genre that you've chosen. So the genre that you have chosen is the thriller genre. And the value and the payoff of the theme of the thriller is that heroes sacrifice themselves in order that others, a larger group of people, will benefit from their sacrifice. So the. The global theme of your story is that it's important that heroes sacrifice their own petty lives and. And things in order that a larger segment of people will benefit from that. So that's the controlling theme of a thriller, and that's what you're shooting for. So you are establishing a protagonist named Jessie, who we expect, because we all love thrillers, will eventually sacrifice herself for the greater good, and that will be the payoff of your story. So all this other stuff that we're talking about, the threshing and the, you know, the capitol and the ambassador, and this is all to serve that theme, that theme of a young girl who is pressed into service for reasons that she doesn't understand, but a villain does. She will come to a crisis moment where she either does the bidding of the villain and benefits from doing that bidding, or she betrays the villain and undoes the villain so that the greater good will result and she will sacrifice herself in order for the greater good. So that's generally how this story is going to go. The inciting incident is that Jesse is called by the villain to join the villain's plot. She's not going to want to do it at the beginning. He gets induced to doing it for a reason. Then the middle build is her discovering what the villain's plot is, trying to gain favor with the villain in order that she can do the Villain what the villain wants so that she can save the victim who will be her brother. And then she thinks everything's going to be okay, but then there's going to be a big reversal where the brother is actually part of the villain. And then she discovers that she's been played this entire time. And then she has to make a decision about whether or not she is going to sacrifice herself for the greater good or she's just going to go along to get along. And all the other stuff that we're talking about, threshing and the Hunger Games and all these things, is to serve that very simple spirit spine of story. A hero is brought in by a villain to do the villain's bidding.

The hero finally discovers the truth and has to make a crisis decision. Do I do what the villain wants, or do I do what's good for everybody else? And she does what's good for everybody else. And the resolution is that the villain loses and she loses, but the greater good is served. Does that make sense?

Yes. And it sounds amazing.

It is amazing when you can. And the difficult thing is to be able to go deep and figure out this threshing stuff and the world and whether or not we want to extend the. The, you know, the hero denying the call for the first 25% of the book. It's like getting into all that stuff is to serve this global story spine. That is an important thing that we all want to hear. We all want to hear that there are bad people out there who are going to ask us to do things for them. We might end up doing some bad things for them. And then we will come to a realization that what we were doing was not right. And we will change ourselves and for the greater good. This is. This is an important story for society. We have to learn that there are, you know, there are forces of evil out there trying to manipulate us into doing things that we don't think are right. And sometimes we go down that road for the villainous, you know, thing. But we have to understand that at some point we are going to have a deep realization that what we are doing is not serving the greater good. And therefore, we must change. And that's what a thriller is all about. It's all about the hero coming to understand that they have to change and that their change will be for the greater good. And they will sacrifice their petty life or their pettiness in order for other people to have a better world. And that's why this story is important. That's why you shouldn't Denigrate yourself for coming up with really fun ideas that are inside of you about threshings and about all of the stuff that you're coming up with, which is really cool and interesting. And I think your first scene with Jesse being interrogated by this nice ambassador while these two people are plugged into machines that we don't understand is kind of cool. So let's go with that.

Use what you've come up with for this inciting incident of your global story and just build off of that. Instead of trying to figure out how everything's going to figure out in the end, let's just go step by step. You know, Maybe the first 25% of the story is going to be her indoctrination into the capital world. And the turning point at the end of the beginning Hook. Of the global story will be something that says, oh, by the way, you're going to be the commander of the rats and the threshing. I don't know. I just came up with it, but let's not worry about, oh, shit, poor Tim's already mapped out 14 scenes at the beginning hook. What are we going to do now? We're going to have to throw those away. Well, the good thing is you haven't really written all those scenes yet. So this is why I said to you in an email a couple of weeks ago, look, let's really nail down this inciting incident of global story, because that's going to really give us our North Star into how this thing is going to move forward.

Okay, so between the two scenes I sent you, because actually, the one, not the one we've been talking about the most, the first one with the whole kick down the door and come in and attack the dad one, that was the first one I wrote that was kind of like, would you. I mean, that was the one that just was very cliche, I would say. Would you agree with that?

Well, it. I. I wouldn't say cliche. There was unique elements in it. It was familiar, and it's a classic kick down the door scene. But the second one was more interesting because it. It had a level of. There's a terrific. I think the first novel that David Baldacci ever wrote was about this thief who breaks into, I think, the White House or something, and he's in the middle of stealing something, and he sees a crime where the president is, I think, raping somebody. I forget what the novel was called, but it became a movie. Clint Eastwood starred in it. And anyway, that's an interesting way to get Something going too, where you have somebody who's living outside the law. Right. Jesse's living outside the law. Now, she's motivated for good reasons. She's there to take some food from people who have more than they need, but she's living outside the law. And she's being confronted by the law inside this very strange world that is, I think, more interesting than my idea, which was the kick down the door scene.

Yeah. I tried to. To establish, like, things in the world without saying it as well. Like the fact that he lit a fire or there is a. An oil lamp for light, but he had like a walkie talkie in his ear.

Right.

You know, so I was also trying to establish, like, the whole juxtaposition of the elites have basically access to electricity and the commoners don't. Right. Okay, so is my homework. Should I, like, take the scene, the first scene, and fix the things we've talked about? Is that what I should work on next?

I'm trying to think what the best strategy is. I. I do think that it's worth. Worth working on this scene to really get us to the next scene.

Now, globally, you have. You have a million ideas you have. And what I do think you do have, Tim, here is you have a vision in your head that is getting more and more clear. It's a lot more clear than your first draft of your last book, which seemed to be a bit generic. You know, like there was this sort of bad corporation, and this seems very distinctive and interesting and unique. So, yeah, your homework is to work on this scene and to keep in mind the following. Jessie cannot use violence. She cannot use a knife. You might want to turn the scene using revelation instead of character action.

Or if you do use character action, it has to be really clever. Clever in a unique way that will get her out of the situation, that will make the reader go, oh, my gosh, she is so smart. I can't believe she did that. But they're definitely going to get her. I wonder how they're going to get her. And then that would set up, you know, the second scene where she thinks she's gotten away and in fact she's fallen into the exact trap that the Ambassador set for her. So she thinks she's really smart and she got away, but the reality is that the Ambassador's just three or four steps ahead of her, and it's at that point where she's forced to do what the Ambassador tells her to do. So I think you may be right. I think you may want to save the fact that the brother is alive for a bigger moment later on in the story. But what that's going to make you do is to come up with a really great way for her to escape this situation that does not require any violence.

Okay, I have that down.

Right.

All right, well, I'll work on that and we'll come back next week.

Okay.

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