Fear of Your Doing Your Best

Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grohl, 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 to dive into the ending payoff. I went back and and rewrote a few scenes, and we go over them, and it starts out just as a conversation about the issues and problems with the scenes. And then it turns into something a little deeper as I realize some of my own fear that's holding me back from doing my best writing. So I think this is an important episode, not just for, you know, you're going to hear how we work through, how to solve some of the problems in the scenes, but you're also going to hear us work through some of my own fears with my writing. So delve into a lot of stuff in this episode. Think it'll be really helpful. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, I went back and rewrote. It ended up being four scenes, and it's the again, the first four scenes of the ending payoff of the book. So, you know, the beginning hook of the book is roughly 25%. The middle build is about 50%. So we finished that up a few weeks ago. And then now I've been working on, I guess it was five scenes I sent you. So. Because last week we went over the first four scenes that I wrote, and it was like I kind of got some things right and kind of missed some other things. And so we went back and I just rewrote the all five scenes. So some of it I left a little the same. Some of them I wrote from scratch. So the opening scene. So real quick, I'll just tell you kind of how I feel about it. So I feel like I tried to write that opening scene different. We talked about having it where it, like, it kind of turned into this argument where President Marcus, like, wouldn't do what Randy asked. And I couldn't get there with the writing, so I just. I wrote the scene that I sent you, and then the next scene we kept the same. The next two scenes were Lila trying to get her get Jesse's body back because she had died at the end of the middle build, and Randy had sent her to retrieve the body. And then the final scene I sent you, scene 48 was the scene where she wakes up and it's Randy waking her up. And it's from her point of view, though, of waking up and having this conversation with Randy about what she's supposed to do next. So more than I have been in the past, I feel very ambivalent about these scenes. I feel like it was. I feel like it was very forced. So I don't know how they ended up.

Right, Right. They do feel forced, but that doesn't mean that they're not helpful. The big thing that's difficult to dramatize in a really compelling way is just to talk about the hero's journey. Just again, because the hero's journey, as I've said before, is sort of the underneath spine of story of the story for an arc plot. So when you have a single protagonist, like you do here, and the protagonist is having an internal movement as well as, you know, moving in an external story, which is the thriller plot that you have going here, they go through a hero's journey and an arc moving from, you know, they. An ordinary world into an extraordinary world. And then they have to return to the ordinary world by the end of the book and the place we are right now, and they return with wisdom, or, you know, Christopher Vogler, in his book the Writer's Journey, calls it, you know, they return with the elixir. It's what Joseph Campbell called, you know, the gift. Returning to the ordinary world, back to our ordinary environment with a gift of experience that we can share with the community. So your book has a really. It's really these moments in the hero's journey are very clear, at least in my thinking right now. And what we're struggling with is the very difficult moment. It's the final, final, you know, rite of passage for the character in the hero's journey. And that's after sort of the three tests that we put Jesse through in the middle build. Now she's got the final, final exam. It's the big, big moment. So what we're doing, feeling around here, is how to get from the moment of her death, her loss of consciousness of where she's going and what she's doing, to a renewed sense of purpose to prepare her for the final challenge. So this is the moment, you know, Vogler calls it the resurrection of the character from, you know, a metaphorical death to life. And in your case, your character is literally dead or she's in an alternative state that only her brother Randy can reach her. So what is really difficult is to dramatize this moment of resurrection. In a unique and non obvious way. And the suggestion that I had last week, which I still stand by, is to make a mini set piece of action where they have to retrieve Jesse's body in order for Randy to actually communicate with her. And you did do that in these scenes, but they weren't particularly exciting or innovative or compelling. But with that said, you know, you've got the structure there. The scenes, the way they're progressing, I think are relatively sound.

Okay. And I also think that the addition of President Marcus in the first scene was a very, very big leap forward. And the reason why is this. When you're trying to create conflict in a scene and you only have two people, it's very difficult because then it becomes a did not, did to, did not did to. It becomes this very just shallow argument between two people. But when you add the additional third person, the stakes for conflict are much higher. And we've talked about the idea of the hero, the villain and the victim. Wow. I don't know, a year ago, but we spent a good like two or three hours on that, as I recall. And in a scene, it's great to have three people because those three people can play those three roles and they can alternate the roles. So when you brought in Marcus, you know, the reader's interested to see how this power dynamic is going to work. Randy is literally being held captive, so he's a victim. Lila is also a victim because she was cast away to the numbered, but we don't know that yet. President Marcus is a victim too, because he's down to only two teams for the threshold. So this is all kind of very interesting to start. And then as villains go, Marcus is definitely a villain. Randy, we don't really, we're not really sure if he's a villain yet, but we could definitely see his potential for being a villain. And same thing with Lila, who will turn out to be 83 later on. And heroic moments, those three all have the ability to be heroes as well. So the dynamic that you've set up in the scene is terrific and the interplay is good. You're using exposition as ammunition. I have to tell you though, it did feel a little forced. It felt as if you were trying to jam in information about Randy's being held captive. You know, a little bit heavy. It was heavy handed. Okay. That doesn't mean that you can't do that. It's just bringing it down and doing it more artfully. I love it when you do things like, well, you're not gonna like what I need you to do. And then you cut the scene.

See, I feel like that's, like, too cliche.

No, it's not. It's not. Because what was cliche was the way she got the body. It was sort of following in an elevator and the guards are pushing a cart. Oh, lo and behold, she's not on that cart. Oh, she's got it. And I mean, you did. It's a workable scene. There are progressive complications. You abide the five commandments in the scene, as far as I can remember. But it just felt like, oh, I've seen this scene before.

See, I was. Yeah. And that was my way of trying to not like. Like to progressively complicate her. Even getting the body back was like following the wrong path the first time.

Yeah, yeah. And that. That's sort of cheap surprise in a way. And you can do cheap surprise in the thriller, but you can only do it once. And I think this is not the moment to have cheap surprise. This has to be, you know, literally, almost. Literally pulling her out of the fire.

Okay, so it didn't. Like, did I not. Did I not build the tension enough?

Then you're just signaling you're. You're telling the reader far too early what kind of scene this is by the choices you're making the setup. So when we have. Yeah, I mean, the other thing that you would want is to somehow use some other characters in the situation. Because following one person on a mission is very limiting in what can happen. Either she's going to succeed or she's going to fail. And if you have more than one, say if you brought back Alex or Ernst to be recruited by Lila to help do this or somebody else, you know, then you're dealing with two people trying to negotiate a plan with a lot of people trying to stop them.

So the other thing I felt.

And again, you don't have to have a scene where she goes to Ernst's room, knocks on the door, says, hi, I'm Lila, and I've worked with the thing. And would you be interested in helping me, you know, get the. You just go to the scene, you just cut to the scene, and you let the reader, you know, oh, she must have had that meeting with, you know what I'm saying? Don't do the shoe leather scenes because the reader will fill in those blanks for you in a way that's much more interesting than, you know, you trying to do them.

So the other thing I thought about it that didn't work is there was not much irreversibility to it. So I was wondering. So part I was planning on making it a little more violent where she has to, like, take some people out some way to get the body back. And I was wondering if I should have gone further down that path where if she. The only reason that she doesn't get destroyed by President Marcus because of everything she did to get the body is the fact that she came back. If she didn't come back, she would have been really screwed. Like, should I go further down that path where.

Well, what you have working for you that you've completely forgotten about is the element of the clock. So you could set up something where Randy says, you need to get the body in this place at this time, and if you do, I can get inside her brain and resurrect her. Now, this is all information that he gives her after he says, you're not going to like what I'm going to ask you to do. So her goal is to get Jesse back into some sort of, you know, severing room, you know, operation room, where they can put the jack into the back of her skull. So she needs to have the jack in the back of her head in order for Randy to talk to her. So, and you have this great element where you could have somehow Lila gets her into the room, people are chasing her. She knows all she has to do is get that thing into Jesse, into the back of Jesse's head, Randy will be able to resurrect her and all will be well. And of course, that doesn't happen. She gets into the room thinking that the minute she plugs, you know, Jesse in, she's gonna wake up. So she's waiting there and there's people chasing her. She finally gets to the room. It's almost like the somebody who's trying to defuse a bomb. You know, once they diffuse the bomb, oh, all bets are off and everything's fine again. So we need to make Jesse's awakening be really surprising. Look, the reader's gonna know that she's gonna wake up, right? So we have to deliver a scene that is surprising in the way that she wakes up, because they know that this novel cannot end with her living in oblivion. So this is a. I mean, obviously this is a very important scene to figure out, because if you can really get the reader to go, oh, my gosh, I didn't see that coming, then it'll propel the story into the ending payoff. And you know, some other limitations of the first scene between Lila and Randy and Marcus is that they Give away the ending payoff. They're saying, look, we only have two teams for the threshing. What are we gonna do? And that works to a degree, but it's veering toward, oh, my gosh, now I just know how the rest of this thing is gonna play out. There's gonna be a big, you know, action scene at the end, which will be moderately interesting, and that'll be it. And that's what we want to avoid. I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to make you feel bad or.

No, no.

So this is, you know, this is hard work. It's not. It's not as easy as coming up with crazy, weird ideas for the beginning hook that you'll go, oh, well, I can figure that out later, and I can pay that off later. So one of the things you can do here is think about, is there an Easter egg that I planted at the beginning of my story that I can whip out now and surprise the reader? And you have a couple, right? You have that weird. That weird sort of Jabba the Hutt figure who speaks in riddles, who Jesse spoke to in order to figure out, you know, her first severing. You've got those little, you know, rats that were her friends way, way, way, way back. Now, wouldn't it be interesting to bring some plot element from one. Either one of those two sources and have it re. Re. Engage here? So it also could be. Here's an idea. The. Her former mentor who helped her solve the problem in the first mentoring was, in fact, Randy. So Randy isn't the one who resurrects her. It's that former mentor. And Randy is playing that part because he doesn't. For whatever reason, it's more important to Randy to keep his motives and what he wants as secret as long as possible. So when Jesse wakes up, she doesn't believe that she's been awoken by Randy. She believes that she's been awoken by that biblical figure from 19 chapters ago, right? And then the reader will go, oh, right, I forgot about that guy. I wonder what he's going to do in the end of this. And, you know, maybe Lila, you can do the big reveal that lila is actually 83 by having her cohorts be, you know, two of the rats from. From the very beginning of the story or something like that. But you can see what I'm doing. You want to be able to add in things that are mysterious and intriguing to the reader so that they don't, you know, their mind doesn't tumble down your plot points and figure out your ending before you want them to. Right. So you could. You could hold back all that information about, you know, you could still have Randy. You could still have that scene with Randy, Lila, and the president, but tone down, you know, just kind of have Randy have the president over a barrel. And he does, and you do do that, and the president does agree to allow Randy to have access to the teams. I wouldn't suggest that Randy is going to get Jesse awake. I would say Randy believes she's dead, too. Have the reader believe that. Randy believes that. Okay, so it will seem as if Randy is as surprised if Jesse's awakening as everybody else. Now, he's already worked out a deal with the president so that he can do the final training with Lila so he can do all that, you know, hey, Jesse, you know, won't it be great when we get home and help mom and dad? He can do that later on. And I'm just throwing things out here to try and complicate the story in a way that will propel us into the ending payoff. And the big reveal is that, you know, Randy has. Has sort of set this up from the very beginning. He was using his sister in order to get his revenge, get his escape, and for him to take over the faction and. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, I think.

Have you dissociated? Like, are you in another place now?

Yeah, I just. So I'm trying to wrap my head around it, and I realize, like, so there's been this voice in my head that, like, I finally, like, while you were talking, I realized I've been listening to, which is.

Don'T make this too exciting because you still don't know what you're doing for the threshing. And if you make this too exciting, you have to beat it again.

Right, right.

Because I'm like. Well, because as you're talking about making this more exciting or interesting or compelling or whatever the word you want to use, I keep wanting to pull back.

Well, that's interesting that you're recognizing that, because that is a battle that every writer goes through. And a lot of writers just never recognize that battle. And they end up really hurting their work because they don't see that they're, you know, they're their own worst enemy. And the fear of going to. Delivering too much excitement too soon, you know, just. You got to do it. You got to say, I got to just ratchet this up some more, you know, and you're absolutely right when you said, I'm worried about the irreversibility of these progressive complications, because, you know, we're at. We're really at the final punch of this plot.

Yeah. Every decision needs to be irreversible at this point, and there's very little irreversibility of what's happening.

Right. So you. You actually figured out your story problem without me at all. That's also great, too. So say to yourself, okay, that's totally fair that you. You know, you don't want to make this too exciting because you're worried about paying off the final.

But ever since. So it's. Ever since I came up with that game for the third test, for the third severing, right. And it took me two weeks to come up with that idea that I'm like, I got no more ideas.

And so I still have no idea what I'm doing for the threshing. And so the idea of ratcheting it up even more so then the threshing has to be even bigger and better.

It.

Honestly, I don't. Did you ever watch the show 24?

No.

So just super action thriller TV show. And that was one of those, like, every time they would do something, I would think, I don't know how this could get any worse. Oh, I remember thinking, remember that book Worm? I don't know if we've talked about it on the show, but it's like this super long online book.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you told me about that.

Yeah, yeah. And like, I was reading that the same way because it's like one point. I forgot, like, 1.7 million words this book is. And, like, something would happen. I'm like, I can't imagine it getting any worse, but I'm only like 18% through the book, you know, and then it would get worse. And then I'm like, how did the. How did the author even come up with this? Like, this is crazy.

And.

And I don't think I can actually come up with something like that.

Well, look at it this way. You. You came up with the go game. You came up with the. The moment of. I think that the reader is going to believe that the third severing is going to be an incredible physical challenge. And you certainly zigged, and you made it a mental challenge. And you're gonna make some. Some tweaks to the scene, you know, to make that even more shocking.

Right.

But that was a really great decision. And so you have to trust yourself that you wouldn't. You're gonna be able to figure out how to make the threshing itself really, really interesting. The other thing to do if you get lost is to go to those major climactic scenes of the classic stories that you find so compelling. You know, the fact is that the worm guy, who. What's his name? Who wrote it? It's a pen name, right?

Yeah, I forgot it's his. It's like his online handle. Right, forgot. It's. I'll have it in just a second.

Yeah, we should definitely credit the guy because he. Anyone who can write a 1.7 million word epic story and get people just churning through it as quickly as they do really, really knows how to tell a story.

Yeah. So his online. His online handle is Wildbo. Wild B.

Right, right, right, right.

And I forgot his real name. What I'll do is I'll link to it in the show notes, I'll link to the book and. And it is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've ever had. So if you're into that, I would definitely go back and read the whole thing and I'll link to it in the show notes.

So, yeah, I can understand your reluctance to go for broke at this very moment, but we need to go for broke because we need to surprise the reader. A number of people who have been following the podcast have said a lot of times to me in emails and comments that, oh, it's so obvious that the brother's alive and it's so obvious that she's going to resurrect herself. And to a degree that's true. But when you're locked in to a really compelling story, you don't, as a reader, think that far in advance if the scene by scene work is so strong that you're constantly being surprised. So we have to understand that people believing that she's going to come back to life is absolutely true. They who's ever reading this novel is going to say to themselves, well, she has to come back from that final climactic battle. Now what's going to keep them reading is them saying to themselves, I wonder how he's going to do that.

Right?

So use that as your challenge instead of I got to get this scene over with so I can really churn on to the threshing thing.

How is he going to do that? How is he going to surprise me? How is he going to resurrect this girl? How is he going to get the body? How is he going to make this a really amazing, active moment that is irreversible too? So that is the problem that you need to solve right now. The Problem that you. The threshing is not a problem that you need to solve right now. So don't worry about a problem that you don't need to solve yet.

Okay?

That's my, my biggest advice is that we always get ahead of ourselves and we want to fix the problems in the future when we've got plenty to deal with right this very moment.

All right?

So it's sort of like you've got. It's like the sink in your kitchen just blew. Blew up and you've got water shooting all over your kitchen. Are you gonna worry about your roof? No, you're gonna fix the sink before you call the roofer to fix the hole in your room. It's just, look at. When you look at writing in those terms, you can stop your, stop yourself from making mistakes and writing. You know, one of the things that first attracted you to storygrid was you hate wasting words. You hate, you know, dumping, throwing out 60,000 word manuscript because you didn't know the principles of storytelling. So this is a really critical moment. And a lesson that I'm certainly going to convey to other people in the future is don't solve Act 3. Know where you're going. I'm not saying don't have a plot outline. I'm not saying fly by the seat of your pants. What I'm saying is get a general idea of where you need to go. You know that you are going to have a climactic scene that's called the threshing at the end of your novel. Great, terrific. Don't worry about that when you also know right now I need to surprise the reader about how Jesse is going to come back to life. Is it getting her out of the incinerator? Maybe, maybe not. Is it in fact she goes in the incident? Who knows? But you've got to think of what is the equivalent of that. Go game for this scene. Can I churn on this, the setup of this scene? Can I use things that I planted before? Can I establish character using action in this scene that will reveal things about people that are surprising? This is the fun part for me too, because as an editor, I like to churn on this stuff too. And a lot of times I just pump out idea after idea after idea. That doesn't work, but it will get you to think in that arena. So the problem that must be solved here is how do I get Jesse resurrected in a way that's surprising that the reader will not see coming? And I don't think it's having a conversation in the netherworld with Randy, it.

Needs to meet more. Just act like action instead of.

Yeah. And also think about, you know, who would be interesting to save her body. Maybe it's as. Maybe it's Ernst, maybe it's Alex, maybe it's that nasty Colonel. Maybe it's the President. You know, like there's no reason why you can't try something completely off the ball because each one of these people wants Jesse to survive. Because, you know, why none of them wants to fight that battle. Think about it. There's a dragon at the end of this novel that has to be slayed. Who wants to do it? I wouldn't want to do it. Do you think AS wants to do it? No, he just wants to be there when somebody else kills the dragon. And President Marcus can't go. He's not gonna do it. Everybody has been relying upon this poor girl, and now she's gone. So every single person in this novel is going to be motivated to try and resurrect her so that she'll go kill the dragon because none of them want to do it. So that works. That gives you the freedom as the writer to use whatever character that is in this world to join together to get her conscious again. You know, it's the kind of thing where a rumor could start. You know, the rumor is, you know, I heard that she once woke up after, you know, a thing. Well, let's get her body. I'm just. Again, these are bad ideas that I'm pumping out, but they're. They're trying to elicit in the writer, you, alternative just to allow yourself as the writer, the freedom to forget about all the internal rules that you have been, you know, building up in your own mind. Like, oh, as would never do that. So you don't even consider as. As a possibility to be the critical player that gets her alive again. Whereas in reality, he's very motivated to get her alive again because he's in deep trouble. Who wouldn't want her to go fight the dragon? That's kind of an interesting idea. Maybe it's Randy. Maybe he's set up this whole thing so that she will die and that they lose the threshing and then he will be released and then he can have a counter power struggle with Marcus to take over, you know, that part of the world. That's a possibility. Think about who wants her to fight the dragon and who wouldn't want her to fight the dragon and why. And these are, these are ways to solve this critical problem of resurrecting her in an interesting, innovative way that's going to make the reader say, I never saw that coming. Oh, my gosh, I knew she was gonna have to wake up. But that way, it's sort of like that moment in the middle build in that very first. The very first severing when we talked about her purposely trying to lose and just shutting down the game so that she can get thrown out of the program and go home. Right. And I think maybe I'm kidding myself here, but I think that's going to be a surprise to a reader who has not listened to the 70 hours that we've talked about this.

Yeah.

And there's going to be. There's plenty of people out there who haven't listened to the 70 hours. So I think we're in good shape. Now. The other. The other strategy is that if you're absolutely crazily obsessed about the threshing scene is to take a crack at it.

Or, like, that just makes me want to puke.

Okay, then, like, I just.

I've just. The more I think about, the more I'm like, I just have no. I don't even know where to start coming up with a solution for that. And so this feels like something I can solve. Although, because now, when you were saying.

I have these moments, like, right now where I'm like, who is listening to this? And why do they find it interesting? Because it's mostly me just saying, um, a lot. Um, there you go. So I have this thought of, well, if everybody wants her to be alive, because now, as you listed out all the people, I'm like, well, pretty much everybody wants her to be alive. There would be no conflict around doing something with her body. Like, why would anybody try to stop anybody from doing something with the body?

That's correct.

So then the whole thing of, like, Steve, like, body snatching, the thing kind of seems dumb because it would be like, it's like a kid that has a broken toy, like, and somebody wants. It's like, all right, take it. You know, I don't want it. It's broken. That's right.

That's why the. The scene rings false. So then that takes.

You look at it.

You look at it the other way. If you look at it. So this is. This is proving to be interesting. If you look at it the other way, then the person who wants her to stay dead is the villain. Right.

So the whole setup could be in.

Would be.

Randy wanted her dead from the beginning. Like, he wanted to set her up as the hope and Then take her out so that he would put President Marcus in a really, really bad position.

Right. Or I'm just thinking off the top of my head. Or he could be setting it up so that they. They need to bring him out of retirement to go into the threshing again.

What if in the conversation, is there a President Marcus.

He can't. Is there a rule that says he can't go back and be one of the team leaders in a threshing again?

Well, I mean, if there is, I can rewrite the book to not have one.

I mean, there isn't.

Well, I had it in my head that that was a rule. But. But then why wouldn't it. Why would they go through all this stuff and not just make him the guy again anyway from the beginning?

Right?

Like what? Why go through this whole charade of keeping him locked up if they would just reuse him again?

Well, from the previous work that I read, it seemed that Marcus recognized him as a political threat to his power because he did not know and nor did he reveal how he won the previous thresher.

Right. So he's kept him locked up to keep power. So maybe in the conversation, Marcus agrees to let Randy go, and then before they can, is when Jesse comes back and so it ruins Randy's freedom that she comes back.

That's correct. That could work.

So then the conflict comes from Randy sends Lila to kill her to stop people from getting her.

Right. To literally get her.

It's her job to put her in the incinerator.

Yeah. And she.

He makes up some story about, I can't let them have her body, so we need to get rid of it. Because I still want her to. Lila, to be a good guy.

Right.

So then it becomes a race for somebody else to save them, save the body from Lila. Because that would work. Because when you said that about everybody wants her alive, I realized there is no conflict.

That's right. You know, the other great way to really hammer that home is to have one of the characters explain that to the reader in a discussion. Like, Marcus could say, I just, you know, everybody wants her alive so that it doesn't get to. You have to sort of subtly let the reader know the person who tries to dispose of her body, who plots to do it, the villain, because everybody else wants her to survive. And you could have even Lila say, look, who really wants to fight the dragon? I mean, the only one who's ever won a threshing is you, Randy. And you can't go in because you are blank, blank Blank because of the rules. So we might be talking around this problem in a way that, that is complicating it beyond the internal logic of the story. But my gut is telling me it's. We're getting closer to a surprising solution to the dilemma. And maybe it's not an incinerator that puts her, you know, maybe it's. I don't know. But this is the problem. This is the central problem that is stalling the story. Because we need to firmly understand the crisis moment that Jesse is going to face in the threshing. So it's almost like we want a level of. Like, in the Silence of the Lambs, we know the reader knows that Clarice Starling has entered the belly of the beast. When she knocks on that door in Pittsburgh and the moths are flying around. We know that she is going into the lair of Buffalo Bill and she doesn't know it. This is called dramatic irony when the reader has more information than the protagonist. If we can establish that dynamic in the threshing where the reader has more information than Jesse, then we create tremendous suspense about how is she going to triumph. Now, in Silence of the Lambs, what Thomas Harris did was he planted the information necessary for Starling to survive very, very early on in the book. And it's a moment when Hannibal Lecter, who is the. The vehicle that teaches Starling how to survive in an evil world, he tells Starling that schizophrenics have a particular smell. They smell like goat because their pheromones emit a goat like smell when they are, you know, running or excited. And he also establishes that Starling is the best shot of all the recruits. She wins all of the shooting contests. She's an amazing shooter. So the climactic moment is, and we don't know this as the reader, all we know is Starling is going into the lair of Buffalo Bill. He's turned off all of the lights in the basement. And he puts on infrared glasses so he can see and she can't. So as the reader, we're standing there and saying, starling, please, no, don't do that. And we know that Buffalo Bill is enjoying it. He's watching her stumble around in the corner. And she smells that he's present, but she can't see where he is. So the goat smell is helping her. She knows he's in the room with her. And then she hears the click of him trying, of him loading, you know, the shot in the. In the gun. So here she hears this very subtle click. She Bang. She hears it. She smells it. She shoots him in the dark and kills him. Now, all of that information that gave her that gift and that ability was set up much earlier on in the novel. So this is. We want to create a dramatically ironic situation in the threshing itself. And what I mean by dramatically ironic, that we want the reader to have information that Jesse does not have. And so when she goes into that, we are just at our wit's end, hoping to God that she will pull through in some extraordinary way. So what we need to do now in these scenes is to give the reader the information, because Jesse's dead, that Jesse will not have when she goes into the threshing. So part of what that is is revealing or giving a very clear indication of who the real villain is and what they want and how they're going to get it and why they set her up. So probably the way to. To explain that is to establish if somebody. Somebody has to say, whoever tries to destroy her body is the person who is trying to destroy the faction. Something of that nature. Do you know where I'm going? I think. I feel like I'm. I might have lost you a while back when I was talking about dramatic irony.

No, I'm. I'm just trying to. In the past, when I've solved problems, I've taken all this stuff you've said and let it marinate for a little bit, and I come up with something. So I'm not trying to pressure myself to come up with something, but I'm just listening and thinking because it's, you know, I'm talking.

You know, I'm. I'm thinking it through too, and using dramatic irony. Like if you have dramatic irony in your middle build or your beginning hook, it's often it doesn't work, but it's great to have it in the ending payoff. Because if somebody said to you, oh, you won't believe the climactic moment in the Silence of the Lambs, you go, really? What is it? Oh, well, the lead character kills the bad guy.

Right? Because that's what happens. Starling kills the bad guy. The end. That doesn't sound very good. But it was used. What Thomas Harris did to get to that scene was extraordinary amount of work. And so by the time we got to the scene as the reader, we had so much information that it was just excruciating to read that scene. But we couldn't help ourselves because it was so well crafted. So that's an answer to the question of, well, everybody's gonna know. She's. She's gonna, you know, come back to life. Everybody knows that Starling's gonna kill Buffalo Bill at the end of the novel. Because if Buffalo Bill wins at the end of the Silence of the Lambs, nobody's going to like that book. Nobody's going to talk about that book. Nobody likes it when evil wins. It's not a very good, commercially appealing message. Evil wins when we try and overcome it. You know, that's the controlling idea of that novel. And nobody wants to buy that novel. Right. We overcome evil when we find the truth in our own selves. And, you know, I. I spent months delineating and going through the silence and lamb, and it's in my book. So I'm not going to try and do it right now, here in five seconds. But you get my point is that when we build up these big moments at the end of the novel as our climactic moment of the entire novel, we can often lose sight that. It's a simple. The simple thing is Jesse gets in a fight and she wins. That's the end of the novel. But how she gets into that fight and how she wins is what's going to compel people to get to the end of the novel. And so this is a critical moment in the story to set up that big payoff at the end. This is why I was talking earlier about thinking about little Easter eggs that you dropped, you know, earlier on, like that, the weird guy with the weird advice and the rats. And the note. What is that note she left? You know, what note did Jesse leave underneath that stone all the way back at the beginning of the novel? What's been going on behind the scenes off stage that you could perhaps fabricate into a very, very critical moment right here?

So would one way to look at this be, should I think about tipping my hand and showing the reader that Randy's the bad guy in these scenes? But Jesse doesn't know it yet when she comes back, that's possible. So then it gives her information to act on. We're screaming, no, no, no, that's possible.

And she wants to believe him with all her heart. But, you know, in a critical moment in the. In the climactic threshing, something clicks in her brain and she says, holy guacamole. My brother is the one who's been using me this entire time. How am I going to get out of this? What's the best bad choice? What's the, you know, what's the best bad choice for me? That will safeguard Other people. How do I get out of this situation with the least amount of damage to rest of the world? Because if she loses the threshing, she, you know, not only does she suffer, but so does Alex and Ernst, and so does the entire, you know, numbered and the entire community from where she came. So, yeah, this is. This is deep, hard work right now. But I think we're peeling back all the baloney to find the critical problems that must be solved in order to kick us into the ending payoff. And I think using the. The concept of dramatic irony. The other thing you have to remember, Tim, is that she's. She's in a netherworld. So it's perfectly reasonable for. For information to come to the fore while she's dead that she's not going to know about, but everybody else takes for granted. Like in. In the Silence of the Lambs, there's a great, you know, red herring where the FBI says, oh, don't worry about it, Starling. We've got our man. He's in Chicago. And so she says to herself, ah, geez, they've got him. I've gotten all the way to Ohio. Oh, no. What am I going to do? And she says, oh, well, I'm just gonna keep. Keep going on the trail. It's a critical moment where she could have quit, but she said, I'm here. I'm gonna go interview this weird guy who was her sewing pal. And when she knocks on that door, we know that's the guy who killed her because of all the other clues that were set up by Harris throughout the novel. And so we, you know, what we're trying to create is that moment in the threshing when Jesse's standing there with her sword and somebody says something, and we all tumble. You know, the reader tumbles back to all these little things that have been adding up. And it clicks for her too, because when Starling sees those moths in the guy's house, she knows this guy's the killer. And that's when she takes out her gun and says, you're under arrest. And he runs in the basement. So we need to have set up that critical moment when Jesse sees the moths and it bang. Oh, my gosh, my brother's a bad guy. I gotta get my brother out. You know, I gotta bring my brother to justice or whatever. So the critical problem we're trying to solve now is how do we make it interesting when Jesse comes back to life? And one of the things that we figured out is everybody would love it if she was Alive. So we need to find and reveal the one person who does not want her to live and why. And Randy is our guy.

You know, maybe I let them wake him up, and he goes and tries to get rid of the body and get stopped in the process somehow. Like, he knows that body's sitting somewhere and she's gonna wake up if he doesn't go and get her. Because if he sends somebody, it'll tip it. It'll tip the hand to that. That person will now know that Randy's the bad guy.

Well, also that the advantage of that idea is that the reader is going to believe that Randy escapes his prison in order to save his sister's life, and instead he goes there and tries to kill her. But he's stopped at the last minute by somebody. Ernst or Alex maybe. Or as. And as goes, hey, man, what are you doing?

So it's a great moment because we think, oh, I know how this. Randy's gonna escape. He's gonna go save her, he's gonna resurrect her, and then instead, Randy escapes, goes to her and tries to destroy her body, tries to kill her, you know, destroy whatever ability she has to. To resurrect. That would be surprising. And I can see why you didn't want to write that scene, because where do you go from there?

Yeah, well, I mean, I. I didn't think of that scene, but. Right. But I was.

That could work.

All right, so I'm gonna rewrite these scenes again.

And he can, you know, can. He can extract that ability to get out of his thing in much the same way that he does now by, you know, blackmailing Marcus and saying, look, if you don't free me to help these two stooges who are going to be in the threshing, we have no chance at all.

Right, so that's where I'm thinking that scene will turn into. He wins the argument and gets let go. Right.

There's got to be. You could do a really fun thing where you go, okay, well, you're limited to the following hours. You will have access to the threshing training, you know, facility from, you know, 6 o' clock in the morning. You will be under constant supervision, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like, there's some. Yeah, there's some ram, you know, limitations or whatever.

Well, and then the scene, it could be a fun scene where I set it up that he's going to get her body to mourn over her, and then, like, she twitches and he, like, shoves her hand underneath her and Takes her to the incinerator or whatever I come up with.

Yeah.

And so then you. It starts to dawn on you that he's trying to get rid of her before she wakes up.

Right.

And then I gotta figure out an interesting way to stop him without actually him getting caught so that nobody else knows, including Jesse, that he was the one trying to kill her or that he was trying to kill her. And then. So then she doesn't need to wake up in an interesting. Because what I've been stuck on too, is like, how do you make somebody wake up in an interesting way?

No, it's when she wakes up that's going to be interesting.

Okay.

Not how she's going to wake up.

Right. Yeah. I kept like, well, how. I mean, there's only, like, one way to wake up. You just wake up. Right. How do you make that interesting? So then it becomes about the timing of when she starts to wake up. And he's in a rush because he knows she can wake up.

Right.

So what I'll do is set that up from the beginning of the first scene where he's pushing hard to get out because he's got to get out to get rid of her.

Yep.

Okay, so I'll work on that.

I keep thinking, like, well, you know, we'll be done with this in, like, April with the first draft, and I'm thinking it's gonna not be done in April. So, I mean, but, you know, that's fine. Or something.

Yeah.

Okay, so I'll work on that and come up with something on that, and then we'll go over that in the next episode.

Okay, sounds good.

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