Character Trumps Plotting

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 shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we continue down the.

Path of my middle build.

We talk about game theory, we talk about character versus plotting, and how to continue to keep moving that middle build until you can get to the ending payoff. So I think you're really going to enjoy it. Let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, we're now I should probably do a recap. So we're working our way through the middle build. We're, I'm guessing, a little over halfway. And it's all been kind of building towards this moment where she meets her brother and finds him for the first time. So this was one of those sequences that. Because I think it's the fifth sequence now in the middle build. So beginning hook and then the middle build. And this was one of those that I was just nervous to write because it was like every so much was leading up to it. So I wanted to kind of pair it. I wanted to make several things happen in it. So the first is you gave me the idea a couple weeks ago of, like, her basically figuring out that 83 from the number and the beginning hook. That woman was in the capitol at one point. And so I did a where they were basically showing a video of past participants in the threshing. And she saw her in the background. And then the next scene was basically her going into getting, preparing for and going into the second severing. The second test. And when I went back and was thinking through my scenes and looking at some of them, I realized, like, she keeps kind of getting by by the skin of her teeth. And she hasn't really done anything all that extraordinary yet as far as showing ability. And so what I thought would be interesting in this one would be to continue that thread and put her in the severing and then put her in a position where she basically, it is going to be the first one that's kicked out. And I tried to build some tension around that. And then the way that she escapes is her. The bubble thing, the wormhole thing shows back up and she goes through that to escape. So once again, she wins the severing by not doing anything, by not being extraordinary. So I Wasn't sure if that was, like, a good move or not, but that was what I was thinking with that. And then the scene with the brother, like, I wrote it, I reread it, and I just don't know if it's any good. Feel like it's such an important scene that I'll never be happy with whatever it is. So, anyway, so those were the three scenes that made up this sequence that gets us to this point where now Jesse will have a new objective and everything turns now from her just looking out for herself. So that's what those three scenes were. And trying to get it to this point where Jessica. You know, I'm thinking back towards that one video we talked about a couple months ago where, like, everything turned. Like, the attitude is what changes halfway through. So thinking, like, meeting her brother and her brother giving her this bigger objective, so bigger than her just trying to go home will change her attitude and how she approaches everything now. And then it ends with her brother basically giving her this objective and sending her back. And then that was it. So would love your thoughts.

I was really impressed with these three scenes. I think you really pulled them off. What I liked, too, about them is that you raised so many wonderful questions with these three scenes that, you know, they're gonna propel the reader further on into the adventure. It's sort of like that moment when we all have when, you know, we're either watching a movie or reading a book and we get to that point and we. We pause the movie and we go to the bathroom and we get, you know, another bowl of ice cream and we sort of like, you know, rub our hands together, knowing, oh, my gosh, this is going to get really great now. And, you know, just to go back to the global storytelling monomyth of the hero's journey, this is sort of, you know, some people call it the meeting with the goddess. You know, this is the moment when I think Joseph Campbell used that expression. This is the moment when the greater force of the universe becomes apparent to the hero. And you use Jesse's brother as that force, that person who delivers this information to her. And I think it works very, very well for a number of reasons. The choice that you made for Jessie to always sort of get out by the skin of her teeth in these very bad situations. For example, in the first severing, Jesse burns down the tower to sort of try and figure out a way to get home by messing everything up.

She only made it that far, too, because those other two coders helped her.

Right? Exactly. And then in, in the. It's almost like the. The knife fight in the alley between the two rival gangs. The scene where AZ gets her to go into the simulation. Again, she gets saved by this nebulous force. Right?

Right.

So she's, she's saved at the last minute by that. Now, in this severing, but before that happens, she does have to have the courage to jump through the wormhole. Right. So let's not say that she's not doing anything active to solve her own problems because she is. She in the. Here, she's sort of in a hero at the mercy of the villain scene in, in the knife fight with Az in the netherworld in the virtual reality and the wormhole opens up. Now she's faced with the best bad choice decision. Does she stay and get hacked to death and get scrambled, or does she risk jumping into, you know, the abyss? She doesn't know what's behind that goo and she has the courage to jump into the wormhole. So that's, that's not nothing. That's a very, very big telling character strength. And in this scene, you know, this scene, she is put into a position. And I really love the setup of this severing because it's very intellectual. Are you familiar with game theory and John von neumann in the 1950s?

No.

Okay, well, just a brief aside here because this is kind of compelling and interesting. During the escalation of nuclear weapons between the Soviet Union and the United States, the United States was curious about, well, geez, what's our overall strategy? You know, if we all have the same amount of nuclear weapons and somebody watches the missiles and the other responds, we just blow up the world. What is the right strategy to deal with that kind of, you know, zero sum game? Because it destroys the entire planet. So they, they went to this guy named John von Neumann and a number of other people. It wasn't just him. And Newman was famous for creating game theory. And game theory is, is based upon playing a game of variables. Do you. And the game that most closely mirrored the nuclear crisis was something called Prisoner's Dilemma. And the prisoner's dilemma is this. You and your colleague are fighting a faction and you are put into prison. And you know that your colleague was caught too. But they separate you and the guy who comes in from, you know, the powerful force turns to you and says, if, if you rat out your companion, your colleague, before he rats you out, you will survive. If he rats you out before you rat him out, you will die. So it's this really Difficult, you know, best bad choice situation. Do I rat out my friend and he dies and I survive, or do I hold my ground hoping that he will hold his ground too, and, you know, we'll both end up being tortured? And von Neumann did this as a mathematical situation. And what he discovered is the best scenario is to always rat out your friend.

And the reason why I'm bringing this up is that your simulation of the Severing is similar to a game theory game where there's no easy solution. If she leaves her room and goes on the offensive, her room is then vulnerable. So if somebody comes into her room, she's immediately scrambled and thrown out of the game. But if she stays in her room, she will quickly eat up all of her credits and her reserves and she won't be able to defend herself and people will be able to break through and get into her room anyway. But if she goes on the offensive, she can get more credits. So she's put in this really, really difficult psychological, you know, problem. It's a problem that doesn't have an easily solvable solution. Now, if you were a mathematical genius like John von Neumann, you would run all of the variables, right? You would say, well, if I can only stay in this room for a certain amount of time before all of my power is exhausted and somebody gets through, how long is that time? And so to make all these calculations would require a lot of time. And the great thing about your simulation is that these people don't have any time to make these calculations, so they have to go on their instincts. So the Severing game setup that you came up with, I thought was really ingenious because it's the kind of thing that a mad genius would come up with to see, you know, who can operate at the highest level of efficiency in the. In the most stressful situation, which is what they're trying to get out of these people in the first place. So, anyway, that's a very big compliment to you in this severing scenario.

What in the. But then I hijacked the whole thing, and. Which is great, okay, because that's what I was trying to do is like, I try to set up this super intense battle and they just end it before it even got started.

Well, you set that up with the wormhole before, and you. You had a choice. You had a choice. Do I have Jesse show an extraordinary amount of intellectual fortitude where she's capable of, you know, figuring out this game theory puzzle before anybody else and. Or do I do a little bit of deus ex machina, and again, get her out of the situation through a third party mystical force. Now, you did that with the wormhole before. That did not result in a wormhole connection. So you set up the fact that she could be saved again. And you do do that here. A lot of people, some people might say that.

You cheated and that she would have had to have gone through this process. But it's my evaluation of your idea, though. Character trumps the plotting. So what I mean by that is Jesse's at a stage where, you know, she's living in a very uncertain place. It's like a place of cognitive dissonance, which means that she can't really get a hold of what's going on. She doesn't know what her reality is. There's a wormhole. She's got to win these severings. She's. She's up against the wall. If she makes a mistake, then her friends are going to end up in trouble. It's going to ruin her family. So there's all this stuff swimming around in her brain that she just, you know, it's just one too many pieces of straw on her back. And that's called cognitive dissonance. When your brain sort of shuts down because you can't negotiate all of the things that are firing in in your environment. So she shuts down in that room and she just can't function. And she pretty much just sort of gives up a little bit. Not a little bit, a lot. She freaks out.

Right.

And I think that was a great choice. Because the hero, the heroic movement, must require that an ordinary person go through this trauma. And at the very, very end, they reach a level of. They exceed their own capabilities. They reach a place of transcendence of their selves. So I know I'm talking in, like, philosophical stuff right now, but what I'm trying to explain to you is that whatever's working inside of your writer brain right now is firing on all cylinders because it's giving you really good instincts in your storytelling. If I tried to explain what I'm explaining to you about what you've already done before you did it, you probably would freak out and say, there's no way I could do that.

But because you did it intuitively, because you're allowing your inner writer, your inner muse, to kind of take the controls and following where it takes you, these problems are sorting themselves out. So the choice to make Jesse really super vulnerable in this place and in fact, quit.

Mirrors the hero's journey in a very, very Strong way. And then to have her rescued by, you know, sort of the meeting with the goddess is what, you know, Joseph Campbell calls it. It's meeting with a higher power. And she does meet with the higher power, and the higher power is revealed to be her brother. And what's also nice about that scene when she does meet with her brother is he's very straightforward with her. He's not there to. He's not trying to be, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi to her or, you know, follow the force. He's like, I won the threshing. I'm imprisoned. I need your help. We don't have much time. You know, I barely was able to hack the system so that I could have this time with you. So he's very, very clear about his intentions. He's telling her, look, here's the situation. I know this is a lot for you to handle right now, but I'm the one who got you here. I'm the one. I need your help. All this stuff is baloney. We're being enslaved. The game is rigged. I need your help. That all is fantastic because he's giving her a new paradigm of the universe, right? He's telling her he's reducing her anxiety by filling her in on all this information. He's giving her a new mission with a new path, a new worldview. Her worldview before she goes into this meeting with him is all of cognitive dissonance. She just wants to go home. She can't figure anything out. Nothing makes sense. Everybody hates her. She's winning these things, and she doesn't know why. It's all screwy. Right?

Right.

So this. You're right. You should have been afraid of writing the scene. But the scene works extremely well because of all the work we did before. All of that work that we did with the beginning hook, all of that work we did about constantly saying, what does she want? What's her object of desire?

What is the thing that she needs most? She needs. She wants love. She wants familiar love and safety at home. But the way she figures that is, I want to go home. Meaning I want to go back in time to when things were good at home. And so what the brother is offering her in this scene is a chance to get that. A very clear chance to get that. He says to her, we can go back. We can have it like the way it was. All you have to do is do what I tell you to do. So this is a really great scene because not only are you fixing Jesse's worldview, You're imprinting on the reader what's going to happen next. You're giving them an anticipatory suspense of, oh, my gosh, now. Oh, now it all makes clear. Her brother didn't die. That was a lie. In fact, he was imprisoned because he had the secret to figuring out how to win in the threshing. He's not giving it up. So that's why they had to get Jesse. There's a really nice moment of coalescing of Paul plot here. And so a lot of questions are being answered. And this is pretty much the midpoint of your novel, right? This is the moment when Jesse gets the new mission. This is the uber mission, right?

Right.

Her mission before was to flunk out of the school in the least amount of pain as possible and so that she can go home now.

Her.

Her new mission is do her brother's bidding and then all will, you know, sort itself out and she will get back with her brother. And, you know, in her mind, she's probably having fantasies that her and her brother skipped down the road back to their house. And, you know, everybody lives happily ever after. So I think this is a really, really nice place. And you're also pushing. You're pushing the plot and you're raising the stakes. Now she's involved in a serious conspiracy. There's no going back now because she's now taken on the mission from her brother, who's the ghost in this machine, and who even knows if the brother is being forthright or not. We don't know what 83 is all about. There is a whole slew of questions here that are raised. You know, who really is the bad guy? Who are these? Name of the reapers, who are they? What's that all about? We've never seen those people before. We're supposed to take this at face value. So all of this sort of, all of these questions that you've unleashed here, it's great because you've answered a lot of questions, but you didn't just answer them, you raised a whole bunch of new ones. So it's all those new questions that will keep the reader reading, keep the reader anticipating and hoping and trying to figure out the clues and the puzzles to what's really going on here. Who's the bad guy? Really? Who's manipulating who? What's the story with 83? Is she going to come back? I wonder if she's going to come back. I wonder. She seemed like she was a good person, and now it seems like she's not a good Person, we're not sure. So all of these things, you're giving fuel to the narrative velocity of the story through suspense. We have the same amount of information as Jesse has, which is great, because knowing more than Jesse knows would really ruin the suspense here. And not knowing as much as she knows, you know? You know, that's something that you could use as some sort of payoff later. You know, Jesse has information that the reader may not know. Jesse has, you know, she has that past of being her own hacker. She was hacking, you know, the ordinary world by herself with her group of, you know, sort of Fagin esque group of people. You know, that little. What they call them the rats.

Right. Which like we may.

They could come back. Yeah, they could come back.

Well, you know, I actually, we cut all of that. They haven't even been in there.

Well, you know, you left a little Easter egg.

Right. The beginning hook, the note under the thing. And then I had that weird guy that showed up in the middle build.

Exactly.

But, you know, I know at some point I'm gonna have to go back and tie all that together to actually make sense. And I. What I figure is this and tell me if I'm wrong here. So. But I want to come back because I have some questions about the last scene I sent you. What I figure is once I get to the ending hook, I'll know.

Ending payoff.

Sorry. Yes. Ending payoff. I'll know who needs to come back on the stage. And if I need the rats, then I'll just go back and rewrite, write them into the story. And, you know, like, I'm already setting up because I figured I gave so much ink to 83 in the beginning hook. She has to come back. Yeah. So I. So she's got to come back. But I figure if I need the rats to pull off whatever I come up with in an ending payoff, then I'll have to go back and put them in a little bit more in the book later. But figuring out the ending payoff will help me figure out some of those things.

Well, remember, remember about your ending payoff. It's thematic. It has to be on theme. So what that means is that the ending payoff in a thriller is usually the moment the ultimate hero at the mercy of the villain scene. And the way the hero outmaneuvers and outsmarts the villain has to be on theme. So what I mean by that is that the theme, the underlying theme of this story is a maturation plot. I mean, look, I don't want to Get a million emails from people, you know, telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about in terms of maturation plot and markets and blah, blah, blah. The overarching global story that you're writing is a maturation plot, but. But the external story that is driving the commercial potential of your story is an action thriller, dystopian scientific science fiction thriller featuring a middle grade protagonist. All this is to say that your ending payoff ideally will have your hero use their new worldview as a means to beat the villain. And part of the worldview shift that Jesse's having is a maturation plot which moves from, you know, sort of naivete to sophistication. Naivete of the world meaning seeing things in very crystal clear black and white terms. You know, people do what they say and say what they do and everything is, you know, on the level. When you mature, you understand that people say things and do other things, so they say one thing and it's doing another. People are very political. Things aren't what always what they seem. The world is filled with shades of gray. You have to evaluate people's words with a really, really fine tooth combination, you know, good microscope to see that their words match their actions, etc. Etc. So her maturation moves from understanding that you can't take things at face value anymore. And it's also a search for safety and love and community from. From her home, finding her place in the universe. So the rats represent. The rats were really her family. Her family wasn't her family. Right. Her family was what she was told should provide comfort. Her mother and father and her dead brother, that's what she was told was family. She didn't consider the rats her family. She doesn't consider Alex and Ernst her family. What she discovers is that, you know, in this journey is that family does not have to be blood. And so what could be cool, and this is just a suggestion, and it might not work, would in the climactic moment, in the climax, the ending payoff of this story.

It appears as if she will be destroyed by this power. And it's at that moment that she realizes that her family, her family comes and helps her in some way. That, that little note that she left all the way at the beginning, Hook tumbles forward and saves her in some way. It's like. Did you see the movie Guardians of the Galaxy?

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's the moment when the lead character grabs that orb and he's gonna, you know, obliterate and all the other people, put Their hand on his shoulder. Right hands. And together they absorb the evil. And they were able to put it back in that orb that is the hero at the mercy of the villain scene in that movie. And what captured and solved that. That incredible problem, I mean, that was a force of evil that was really difficult to overcome, was when those five Guardians of the Galaxy put their hands together and absorb the shock of that pain all together as one. By the way, that's like. The Guardians of the Galaxy movie is like textbook story grade. I mean, right. Right out of Hero's Journey, right out of action thriller. Right out of. Yeah, I mean, it's really.

I should go back and watch it now that, like, I have this perspective on it.

Oh, man. You'll look at it and you'll go, oh, my God. There's the hero at the mercy of a village. There's the mentor. There's the trial. That's the first trial when they're in the prison. Here's. You know, all those moments are just really terrifically portrayed. That's why it's a silly story.

But the underlying concepts of the storytelling in the Hero's Journey are so perfectly. They click together so well that you. You're watching this thing and it's absolutely ridiculous. The amount of suspension of disbelief required to enjoy that movie is outrageous. But the storytelling is so good. The core of it. They hit the conventions and obligatory scenes. They've got the hero's journey, they've got the mentor, they've got the force of evil, the antagonist. The antagonist, it's there. The middle build is all about the antagonist. It's just great. So anyway, I lost my train of thought other than to say that the ending payoff needs to be on theme. And so that's what's going to make your ending payoff inevitable but surprising. So ideally, that's what will happen. We'll go, oh, of course. Of course that's how he solved it, because that makes perfect sense. And of course, that's the real villain behind this whole thing.

Thing.

Oh, I get it. So all this is to say is that you. These three scenes are, you know, they're. You're really taking the story to the next level and you're. You're really making a promise to the reader that this story is just. It's gonna go places that you can't anticipate. And this is a young girl who's going to reach a level of heroism that is believable because of her vulnerability. If she got too. I mean, that's one of the things I. I'm not saying I'm criticizing the Harry Potter, but I think he was a little bit too strong too soon in the storytelling in that we lost little bit of empathy for him. Because the trick for the reader is to really see Jesse as somebody that they know ideally themselves. Jesse is sort of just getting by, you know, just barely, you know, barely. She's fraudulently keeping it going somehow. And that's the way we all feel about our lives. We think, oh, you know, if people find out the truth about me, then I'm really in Schitt's Creek. But let me just keep it going for another, you know, another podcast until they find out I'm a real fraud.

I don't ever think that. What are you talking about?

But that's the thing that connects people to a protagonist, is their believability of what we want them to get what they want. And we understand in ourselves what they need. And I talk about this a lot, the difference between want and need. What Jesse wants is to go back home. That's her external object of desire. She just wants to go home. She wants to go back the way things were. What she needs is love and safety and comfort, and that's represented by this mythical family life that she lost a long time ago. So what she needs and what she wants are sort of at loggerheads throughout the story. And at the end of the story, she's gonna get what she needs, but it probably won't be what she wanted. And that is when people love fall in love with a story. Because what we want and what we need are on the same psychic plane, but they're at different ends of the spectrum. And when we get what we want, oftentimes we lose what we don't get what we need and vice versa. So if Jesse were to get what she wanted right now and get to go back home, do you think she would live happily ever after with her crazy mother and her wimpy father? No, but that's what she's telling herself. If I could just get home and go back to my little hole underneath my bedroom, that everything would be cool. But what she needs is something better than that. She needs a safe place with family and connection with people who care about her and will have her back. And that's what she's going to get somehow at the end of this novel. And once she has her band of brothers or whatever, then she can take on even larger challenges. And that could be the Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example of they set that thing up perfectly at the end. We don't know who his father is. We know that he's got a bunch of friends now. He's got a brand new ship, and off he goes. We know that story's not over. I mean, that thing made a billion dollars. But we kind of want to see what happens in the night. Who is his father? I mean, there's no way that guy could have been able to hold back that little thing. He must have some special gift that he doesn't even know about. And it comes from his father. His connection and his need for connection came from his human mother. That's why he has the cassette tape of all the songs and she gives him. I mean, it's a. It's brilliant. The other cassette tape at the end is just great.

Okay, now that will sustain. I have to go back and watch it now? No, no, yeah, yeah, definitely back and watch it.

You should, because it'll probably. Something will click inside that could. Could be helpful and it's a fun movie to watch.

So I want to. I have some questions about the scene with the. Where she meets the brother. So, like. So my first is, did I hit the emotional level the right way? Because I felt like. Like I don't know how I would respond in that situation, you know, so. And then I wanted to make sure I didn't, like, over explain the family stuff because they already know all their family stuff. So that's why I was like, I just. I'm just gonna have her say that she knew he was alive and then just kind of leave it there. Like, did I hit that at the right kind of level?

I think you did. I think here's. Here's a tip, okay? The more. The more setup. And the more setup you do for that kind of scene, the better. Because, look, a couple of readers have said, oh, we know that in Tim's story that the brother's alive. It's silly to even use that. It's not gonna be that big of a surprise. And that's kind of true, right? When you reference a person, you say, they're dead and there's no body. They don't bury anybody, you know. Yeah, he's probably alive. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't use that plot device. The way you use the plot device and the way it works is when it's surprising, the revelation. Now, we kind of think it could be her brother when she goes into the. Into the netherworld. But what's surprising is the. Is the situation. The Situation is he explains to her I'm alive, and he gives her all kinds of information, and he has to tell her very quickly. He's got an agenda, and he can't. He doesn't have time to be. Oh, sweet sister, it's been so long since we've seen each other. How I love you and adore. You know, he doesn't have time for that. So that was a great choice to make, that scene where he couldn't be Mr. You know, sentimental. And she couldn't either because she's gonna get her brain scrambled if she doesn't get back there quickly. So that was a great choice. So the setup of you prepared for that scene in a way that made it non cheesy. There's nothing worse than that scene to dissolve in. Into cheesy declarations of love. Nobody wants to hear I love you. They want to see it.

They.

They want to see the action of.

I love you, okay?

And he. His actions of I love you are. I'm. The ghost in the machine has been protecting you, and I need your help because you're great. So I think the scene works. I don't think you hit it too hard or too soft. And, you know, it's hard to tell right now because we're not looking. I'm not editing the book with a fresh eye.

Okay?

But for now, it seems perfect. It seems great.

Okay? And the amount of information I shared was good because I. Because I'm, like, trying to cram all of that information in at the same time. I'm trying to cram in like, he's alive. He's trapped. The controlling force is evil. Not good. The whole faction threshing thing is kind of a scam. And then I'm gonna need your help, but you gotta go, you know, like, so I was just kind of like, okay, I'm gonna just kind of cram all this in real quick and then, like, kind of shove her out the door, and I'll figure out how to get her the information she needs later.

Yeah, it works because you set up the game. You set up the simulation. Yeah. It's. It's all within the universe. It follows the rules of the magical world. The magical world. You don't have time to be friendly. You don't have time.

Okay.

It's great. And you have to jam all that information, and it's a great. You know what that is? I've told you this before when you haven't done it. It's exposition as ammunition. All that stuff is exposition. The world Sucks. This is a lie. I need your help. I'm trapped. That's all exposition, right? But it's ammunition to move the scene forward. When she goes in there, she's curious. I'm not coming up with the best life value right now. When she leaves, she's enlightened, okay? She doesn't know what's going on. So she moves from unenlightened to enlightened in the scene. And there's a million turning points in the scene because of all the information that's pummeled at her. But it makes perfect sense because you set up that moment where you could have this great pummeling of exposition that, you know, increases the suspense and interest of the story. Instead of it saying, say, sis, you remember that time when we were little and dad said, you know, to always remember, you know, what Boy Scouts did back. You know, it's not that. It's. I'm in trouble. We have five seconds before you have to go. Here's the situation. You have to be ready for X. So it's exposition as ammunition in the best possible way, and you make it as a very active scene. That's invigorating. That really is just a meeting between two people and, you know, two chairs by a fireplace.

Right. Okay. So looking at. So I guess this is a good time, as ever, to let everybody know that we're taking a few weeks off after this episode. Both of us doing a bunch of traveling, and so we're going to take a few weeks off from the show, be back after that. And so I'm looking down at. You know, I don't want to just write three more scenes over the next three or four weeks before we talk again. So I kind of want to go over my plan to get what I. What I'm hoping is to. To write. Because at this point, I've now written three or four sequences in a row that you've just approved and let me keep going. So what I'm wondering is, should I, like, power through the rest of the middle, build over the next few weeks and see how I do kind of on my own for that much before you take a look at it? I guess that's my first question.

So how many chapters you're at 31, 32.

32.

Okay, so 32 chapters, and we're shooting for, what, like, 62, 64. You know, it's not the end of the world if we come in a little over or upper. So you're basically at midpoint and you. How many scenes were your Opening, beginning, hook again.

So, yeah, 11 scenes was the beginning hook. So that means we're at 21 scenes into the middle build.

Okay. Yeah, I would write. I think you're probably. And again, don't take this as, you know, an edict from on high. I think you need about 12 more scenes in the middle build to kick you into your ending payoff. So if you. So you're at 30, 32.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the end of your middle build is around scene 44. You know, just as reference, Silence of the Lambs beginning hook was, I believe, 13 scenes. The end of the middle build came at about scene number 48 or. Yeah, I think it's around 48. And then it kicked off and ended at 63 scenes. Pride and Prejudice. Its opening is 12. And then the middle build ends, I believe, at 46 or 44. And then it kicks off. So these are just good ballpark things to keep in the back of your mind to see, you know, where you're going.

What's the word count on those two books? Do you know, off the top?

Yeah, I think Silence of the lambs is about.

78, maybe 80,000. Pride and Prejudice was maybe a hundred because, you know, it was much more florid language. But, you know, same scene package.

Yeah.

One was written in 1813, and one was written in. In 1986, I think.

Okay. Because I'm at 36,000 right now.

Yeah, you'll be fine. You've got probably 30 to 40,000 left. Maybe 30 to finish up your first draft. And then what you'll find is you'll tweak things. You'll add maybe a chapter or a scene here or two, and you'll probably end up somewhere around 75 to 80,000.

Okay, so you're saying so.

So, yes, the answer is, yeah, finish the middle build, and then we'll see what happens.

Okay, so I have. So let me kind of tell you where I'm going. I have two sequences already kind of laid out, and then I. Okay, that. But I made. I laid those out weeks ago now. And anyway, so the next sequence is basically she. She shows back up and then there's this aftermath of her winning the severing again. And nobody quite understands how she pulled it off. And she's got to, like, lie and hide. So then she's got to get her directive from her brother. That wouldn't be something that she has to do sneaking around the actual capital. Because I thought it would be fun with. Basically, all of the action in the middle build has happened in the virtual world. So I wanted to put an action kind of sequence in the real world where she's actually having to sneak around the actual capital and pull something off that her brother tells her to do. And then when she does it, she does it. But AS almost catches them is how I'm going to set that up. And so in reality, he actually did figure out what they were doing, because then it sets it up so that in the final severing, it's down to six teams, and the three left standing go to the threshing. But while she's in the severing, she's off. She runs off to do her brother's bidding, and AS follows her. And this is when. At the end of this sequence is when she dies.

Mm.

So then the final sequence of the middle build is going to be her coming back to life. All of that kind of aftermath that I haven't figured out yet. But that last sequence will go from her coming back to life to the threshing beginning, because the beginning of the threshing will be the beginning of the ending. Payoff.

I have one suggestion. I would not have the brother get in touch again. Are you still there?

Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out why. Why?

Oh, okay. Because the reader is going to expect some magical moment when she gets her assignment, right? And she's gonna expect that. What's interesting to me would be if the message never comes. So she's expecting this. She's expecting this. Things are just moving along. She's getting more and more panicky. I'm supposed to do something to save my brother's life, and it's not. Nothing's coming. So it's at that point where she reaches a climactic moment in her life, in her thinking, and she says, all right, I've got a. Something's happened. He can't communicate with me. What did he say? He said something about, I need to get something in the Capitol. So she has to proactively make the choice herself.

To go on the mission without having any information. So she goes to the. You know, thinks about her inner coder, comes to her rescue. She has to think through the thinking, you know, one of. One of the things that's. That's really moving and, you know, it's sort of like in Star wars when Luke. Well, after Obi Wan Kenobi dies, right? And he sacrifices himself so that they can get away on the. On Harrison Ford's ship or whatever.

Yeah, the Millennium Falcon. Come on.

So, you know, it's sort of, like, the Force is dead. You know, the guy's dead. He can't help him anymore. And within himself, that's when Luke has to remember on the ship, oh, I have to trust the Force. He's dead, but the Force is still alive. So it's my job to do it without him and to trust. So Jesse has been given information that's absolutely necessary. She's been given her mission, that she has to do something to help her brother, to free him from his prison. He says that he'll be able to get a message that specifically tells her what she has to do. But we never get that message, do we? Thematically, human beings never get the message of what they're supposed to do on the Earth.

Do we?

We're all born, and we don't know what to do.

We don't know what to do tomorrow. So what do we have to do? We have to think of it ourselves. We have to say to ourselves, okay, what do I need to do? What's the. What's the effect that I need? Okay, so how can I make that happen? So Jesse has to sort of be a human being and think for herself. Say, the goal is X. How am I going to free my brother? Well, let's see, Ernst. What do you know about the capital? What do you know about the wiring? What do you know about where. Where are all the computers? Where's the whole, you know, motherboard? You know, she. She's going to have to ask and trust other people to help her with this riddle. Well, why do you want to know? I'm just curious. Do you ever know what about that secret room you have downstairs? How did you find that? Oh, well, it's funny. I did this. So she has to get some help, and she has to start trusting other people. You know, like, Luke has to trust Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. So the message shouldn't come. And if you have the message come, the reader's going to go, ah, this is stupid. This is stupid. You mean she's gonna know exactly how she's gonna get this guy out now we're just gonna watch her do it. And then, okay, here comes the scene where the guy catches her doing it. And you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So that's a way to outsmart your reader and say, oh, you think. You think that just because he said he would get her a message that I'm going to have him get it to her? No, that's not the way life works. There aren't any messages that we get. Nobody tells us what to do. So that's why fiction and storytelling is so important, is because the closer you can have it mirror the reality of our living day to day is that we don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know what's on the highway on the way home. I don't know what's for dinner. So if the trick of storytelling is to constantly be surprising the reader, you tell them what you know. We all think we know what's going to happen next, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.

Okay, sure.

So the other question I had is, so is when she dies, is that the all is lost moment, or does the all is lost moment come in the ending payoff?

No, I think the all is lost moment is when she, quote unquote, dies. And here's. Here's the thing. You've been setting up this scrambling, this brain scrambling very intensely. And she has yet to be brain scrambled. So the opportunity is. Have you. I mean, there's a great scene in the movie Cool Hand Luke, which is an old movie. It's a fantastic movie. It's Paul Newman at his best. And he plays this. This guy who ends up in this chain gang in the South. He's in prison for doing something stupid. And he's just kind of a wise guy and he sees the world in a different way. And he's kind of, you know, he's thin, he's not that strong, but he's got an inner fire that nobody can stop. He mouths off to some guy, this huge guy, and the guy says, we're gonna settle this on Sunday, and we're gonna have a boxing match. This is how we settle things here in prison. So the Sunday comes. Paul Newman steps out into the ring with George Kennedy, who plays the big tough guy. And George Kennedy proceeds to beat the hell out of him to the point where he's bleeding. He can barely see straight. But Paul Newman keeps getting back up, and George Kennedy keeps knocking him back down. And it's getting so uncomfortable for everybody who's watching it that people start to walk away because they don't want to watch this guy get beaten to death. But the scene is so wonderful because these guys recognize something in Paul Newman that they don't have. And what Paul Newman has as Cool Hand Luke is an inner fire that refuses to accept the way things are. And he'll die fighting to the very end. And George Kennedy, you know, eventually gets to the point where.

This is humiliating. I can't kill this guy. I know What I'll do, he'll now be my best friend. And so he picks up Paul Newman and he throws him over his shoulder. And he goes, oh, Cool Hand Luke. This guy's got fire. And I think that's what Jesse's gonna do. Now. Cool Hand Luke doesn't think he's very special. Cool Hand Luke thinks he's an idiot, but everybody else sees the fire in him. And eventually, you know, when you're. You have that much fire, people try to destroy you. But Jesse, I think when she has her all is lost moment, it's not necessarily her all is lost moment, okay? It's. Everybody. It's. Everybody else sees her as dying. She's just. She has too much fire inside of herself to really. To allow herself. Her brain to be scrambled and to die. So, yeah, she dies. She dies just like everybody else. But something within her, you know, resuscitates her. She doesn't think anything of it. It's just, you know, it's happened to her before. And, you know, there's a certain thing that. That she does within herself. And bang. You know, the engine starts again. So I think the all is lost moment for the reader. I mean, yeah, it is her all is lost moment because when she wakes up and she's alive, she's still, you know, next day is the threshing. I don't know if you've ever been so sick that you've been in the hospital, but if you've ever been in the hospital and there's something that you have to do, the next day, you're. There's no, you know, there's no way you can even conceive of doing that thing. So it will be her all is lost moment, but not for the reasons it is for everybody else. That makes sense. So she's gonna be exhausted and she's gonna be recovering from her death that she didn't die from. And she's gonna have to raise this. The energy and the. And the willpower to get up off of the table and go into the threshing. And so, yes, the answer to your question is yes, it will be the all is lost moment for her and the. And the novel. But thematically, it's the moment when she. She realizes her gift. She pulls out the gift card. You know, this is the moment when she's got. She's like, okay, I gotta pull out the gift card. And, yeah, this is my gift. I refuse to quit. That's my gift. You know, it's not very special or interesting, but you know, I'm just not going to quit. So I'll go to the threshing, and I'm going to just keep going until they obliterate me, because I don't quit. That's her gift, and that's what, thematically is going to make your story work, because that's a message that we all want to hear and need to hear, is you just don't quit.

Okay? All right, so I'm going.

All right, so don't quit.

Don't what?

Don't quit.

Okay. Yeah. So. So I'm gonna work on. So I'm just gonna write until the end of the middle build, and then that's what we'll go over when we come back online, and it'll be perfect, and you'll prove it, and we'll be able to move right into the ending payoff.

No, the only advice I'm going to give you is do everything in your power to write yourself into a hole that you don't think you'll be able to get out of. Okay? Because that. That will be a great problem to try, you know, to solve. And if you can't solve it, we can always, you know, go back and cheat. But pretend that you're not going to cheat and write yourself into a hole where all the odds. Just like that. You know, in Guardians of the Galaxy, at the very end of that movie, you're like, oh, my. How is this guy gonna get out of this? Right? And he does that stupid dance routine.

And you're like. You have the point of view of the antagonist, and you're like, what the hell is he doing?

And then it all becomes clear. So you want to get into the position that they are at the end of. And obviously, you can see the guys who worked on that story, they're like, how are we going to get him out of this situation? It probably took a long time for them to think of that, and it was perfectly in character because at the very beginning of the movie, he's goofing around, dancing. The first introduction to him as an adult is that he's just a goofball. He's dancing around this desolate area, and in the end, that's what saves him.

Okay, so I'm writing this.

I got a killer. Well, I got to put her on her own so her brother doesn't save her. I got to kill her and bring her back, and then I got to dig a hole so that going into the threshing.

There'S just no way she's ever going to Win.

Yes. And the other thing is that she. I would not bring back the brother or any of that plotline until the ending payoff.

Like, so. No brother, no 83, no rats. None of those people show up until the ending payoff.

I think you can bring back 83. You could even bring back 61, but I would hold back the rats until the ending payoff. I think there has to be a combination of brother rats, Marcus, the president, and, you know, whatever the Russian team is, you know.

Well, I think AS will be involved in some way as well.

Yeah.

Because I. Because I feel like I was thinking of this in the shower yesterday. Like, his story is, he truly believes in the faction. So what I want him to do is to realize that Jesse is the only one that can win the threshing. And he sacrifices himself to save her because he wants the faction to win, because that's all he really cares about. I mean, I don't know.

I think that's in character, and I think it's a good holy shit moment, so. Because I think. I think that could work.

That's what I was. I was thinking about him yesterday, and I was like, you know, the whole reason he hates Jesse is because she's not taking it seriously.

Yes.

He feels like her even being there is the faction not taking it seriously. And. And so he has to. He. But he. He redeems himself by giving himself for the thing he believes in.

Yes. That's good. I think it's surprising, too.

So. Okay, so I'll get to work on this, and we'll talk in a few weeks.

Okay.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. As I mentioned, Sean and I are going to take a few weeks off. This is actually the first time we've really done this where we're going to go a few weeks without an episode. We've got some traveling to do, and I've got some writing to do. And so we will see you back here in the feed in a few weeks. Now, if you're wondering how to get notified of future episodes, if you have not already subscribed, make sure you subscribe to the podcast in itunes or Stitcher or whatever you use to download your podcast. Also, as always, make sure you go to storygrid.com and sign up for the newsletter. That's where we announce everything happening in the Storygrid universe. And Sean and I have a lot of plans this year. We have a lot of new stuff that we're going to be doing for you, for the listeners. So we want to make sure that you know about all of that so you so you can find everything@storygrid.com when you sign up for the newsletter. Also, if you haven't yet, make sure.

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