Final Edits of a Short Story: Beat Construction and 624 Analysis

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. My name is Tim Grall. I'm the CEO of StoryGrid, and I'm a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He's the creator and founder of StoryGrid and a writer and editor with over 30 years of experience. Along with him is Danielle Kielski, the chief academic officer of StoryGrid University, and Leslie Watts, the editor in chief of StoryGrid Publishing. So last week was mostly good news. I took a crack at writing the first two tropes, and as you listened to last week, I had a specific way that I went about putting the tropes in my own voice and then rewriting them in the style of a police report. So we're continuing along this process of writing my own iteration of Eyewitness by Ed McBain. And last week, as you heard, I wrote the first two tropes, and literally, they only wanted me to change one word. I finally cracked how to get myself into this style of a police report. And so my homework was to continue that for the rest of the scene. So that's what I did, and that's what you're about to hear in this episode, is how I went about doing that and then their feedback and changes that they think I need to make for the next iteration. But it felt really good. I feel like I'm making progress, and again, I'm learning a lot about this process. One of the things I want you to keep in mind here is that this isn't about me writing a perfect scene. Obviously, we're trying to recreate this scene, write it in my own voice, write it with my own story, use it as a masterwork guide, all the things we've talked about. But you have to remember, it's not about just writing this short story.

It's about.

It's about putting tools in my toolbox that I can use in the future. And so, as much as we're iterating and iterating and iterating, it's not just about getting this one short story right. It's about getting me to a place where I can use these tools and use these skills in future writing, that's what we're trying to do here. These are exercises that they're putting me through so that I develop these tools and these skills that I can use in all of my future writing. So hopefully you're seeing that this is what we do in the guild as well. Inside of the story Grid Guild is help writers put these tools in their toolbox. And so we're just trying to show you how we go about that process and how we use the story grid methodology to do that. So, anyway, we'll go ahead and jump into this episode and get started. So last week, I actually got good feedback on the two tropes that I had written.

And so what I had done then was I wrote it as if I was just kind of the normal way. I would write it in my own voice. And then I went back and applied the narrative device, the style of the police report to it, and that seemed to go well. So what I did this week is I worked on putting that through the rest of the tropes from the scene Eyewitnessed by Ed McBain. And I did the same thing where I just finished writing it the way I normally would. And then I went back and tried to adjust it for the style of a police report.

Making some of the, you know, again, trying to keep in mind at the same time, everything we've been going over for the past three or four months. So. So that's what I did. I worked on that, and I sent it over to you all. So.

So, yeah, so I think you did a really nice job.

I think there are some things. It's the kind of draft.

Where I would traditionally say, yeah, and then I would take it and do some changes to it. Not. Not substantial changes, But I thought that you did a really nice job.

I think the police report is really shining through now. The narrative device is very clear. There's some hiccups here and there with a word or two, but generally. And. And then I think there's a couple of. I think the payoff wasn't as strong as it could be, but I think we already talked about solutions to that. That could be the. Really well used at this point to signal to Sam the transformation of Watson, the detective.

That's a little.

It's not. It's not perfect yet, I think. Oh, here's. Here's one of the places that I think you really nailed it. And it was something that I was talking about weeks ago in the McBain piece when Capelli is doing the, you know, the interview with Struthers, he's very consistently just sending the. The same amount of signal with. With subtle variations. So. And what happened next? And what was that? And I think you do that really well here. So it. It. And then I think that the breakdown that Randall has really paid off, and him dropping in the expositional stuff about the pastor Well, I think it was a little on the nose and a bit ham fisted. I still think that it was the right place to do it.

But I do think that the payoff, I think we discussed, you know, weeks ago of using the same strategy of giving 10 bucks to Randall to have Watson do it this time to signal to Sam that, that he was telling the lieutenant, now this is just a bum.

So that lieutenant would, would not consider him a, a risky person. So right now, the way it ends, it seems that Randall's going to be in trouble because Lieutenant knows that he knows something. Whereas if, if Watson had just sort of pushed him out the door with the $10, then it would have safeguarded Randall from the wrath of the lieutenant. And that that notion would also really work as a device for, you know, Sam, the, the fictional Sam, who's in the Internal affairs department, who's going to read this report, she's going to get the message here. I use the exact same technique that the corrupt people did to, to protect someone. So all in all, that's a very broad canvas of what I thought. And again, this is something that I, as an editor, I would say, yeah, this is in good shape. And then I would go back and I would make tweaks and then I'd send it back to the writer and, and say I had some, some changes here that I think are important. What do you think? And usually nine times out of 10, they'd say, yeah, it looks good to me. And then those tweaks would be made. But all in all, I think, wow, you know what? We were on the brink of desperation and despair only a couple of weeks ago and this is just, this is the way things happen. It's a self organized criticality where you have a fun fall and then you, you emerge with a new insight, new understanding. And you were kind of pushed to that place. And instead of trying to do it the way we were telling you to do it, you found your own way, right? So you found the way to do it by saying, I'm going to write it my way, and then I'm going to do a compare and contrast function where I'm going to look at McBain, I'm going to look at mine, and then I'm going to fix it and I'll go beat by beat, word by word and make sure that I'm abiding by the narrative device. And we didn't tell you to do that. You did. You figured it out. So that moment of despair, you just, you went back to first principles in my estimation. And you said, well, I'm going to write it my way, and then I'm going to translate it, re. Encode it into the form of a police report. So, again, you know, I think you're. You're really in good, good place here, and I think some minor revision would. Would get you to the end point. But I. I hope I didn't step on any major criticisms from Leslie or Danielle, but we'll see. All right, so I'm going to stop there.

I agree that it's. It's looking much better, and I think that.

We get this question a lot, like, when is it done? When do we stop looking at a draft? And so I want to talk about my experience with going through this a little bit, because the way that I look at it is that I don't.

It's, you know, it's not. It's not perfect. It's a lot better. And the way that I know that is the things that I'm finding are at a lower level. And so I try to, as I'm reading the things that. The things that come out, you know, you. You read and you see all the things that need to be fixed, but then you apply your own relevance filter as an editor and you say, okay, what. What needs to be done before the other things? So you're looking for things that either have the most impact on the reader or the things that are blockers, where if you don't fix those, then you can't fix the downstream things. So you have these ways of looking. And so as the resident green person, I feel like every draft we go through, and I'm like, well, doesn't really matter what I think about word choice at this point, because we have these significant problems at first, the blue level, then the red level. And I feel like this week I read it and I'm like, oh, you know, now it's my time. And so, so what I'm noticing now are these places where I think that the trope is overall working. It's just. Let's. Let's shift the methodology. Let's shift the word choice. Does this really. Is this the right word or is it not? And so those are the kind of things that I'm noticing now. And it's.

They're much quicker things to fix. And they're. They're kind of fun because you can talk about the different. The different choices there. And so it's like.

No matter how good you get at writing drafts.

It'S not going to be perfect, but it's going to be a different kind of fix that you have to do. And I think you're moving in the right direction with the kind of fixes that you need to do, where now it's just a list of smaller things. So over the last couple of weeks, what I've been really looking for is, do we have consistent essential tactics for all of the avatars? Because I think that is what really enables us to execute on that green level. And I think that you do. So I totally agree with Sean that that last trope needs some work in its execution. And I love the idea of mirroring the beginning, coming up with. With the. The $10 thing, because I. The. I've picked him up before. He probably recognized me. That's just too.

It's too loud to me. And so that was the first thing that stood out as I was reading this. And I think also the.

The part where he was over sharing is also a little too loud.

So the idea is that he oversteps his script.

And he does, and that's fine. So the overshare itself isn't too loud. I should. But Watson's response to it isn't modulated enough.

Sorry. So when he overshares and he says, yes, I know what he looked like, Watson's response is calling him out on it. And he says, so you were too far away to hear, but you were close enough to see very, in a very detailed way what this guy looked like. And so he's being very overt about calling out the discrepancy. And so we talked a little bit about this before, that he loses his leverage in the situation if he calls him out that overtly, and he risks having Randall just run away, which is almost what happened. So I think you want to dial that back and just make that response more subtle so that maybe we don't even get it on first read. Why is. Why is Randall reacting this way, where he starts doing something akin to what Struthers does? Because this is the moment where Struthers says, hey, I got a family. And I. You know, he's. He's overcompensating. But on second read, on third read, we start to really pull apart the nuances of what they're saying. And.

I'm going down a little bit of a rabbit hole with this. But, like, what I imagine is that the words are subtle, and then we kind of back propagate from the way that they're interacting with each other. We can. We can start to fill in the nuances of what kind of micro expressions do they have that he's saying, I'm not just naively saying, oh, so you didn't hear what they were saying then?

He.

He's saying it and he's saying, oh, so you didn't hear what they were saying then? And his tone and his expression, they're going to convey, I've got you now. Right. And then that's going to let Randall know without necessarily letting anyone else know that he's in trouble. So that's another area. And then like a very small thing is the. A place where the narrative device hiccuped for me a little bit is that Watson is consistent or semi consistently referring to the lieutenant as big man. And I thought that was a little bit informal for this sort of a report. So those are the kinds of things that are showing up on my list. And as you can see, like, those aren't structural things anymore. This is like, now we're changing the curtains and we're making the furniture all the same style. And so to me, that, that signifies the kind of progress that you've made in this draft.

So I agree, this, this draft is really wonderful, and you've made some, some great strides here. And so much so that I went back to the. I went back to the 6:24, you know, just kind of testing how well are we doing what's, you know, how are. How consistent are we. And I had some interesting discoveries. Well, interesting to me, hopefully to you, too. But the first thing was.

In an earlier iteration, one of the things you were trying to do, Tim, is you. You wanted to get this, this sense of Randall as a human, right? Like he's a marginalized person. And, and at one time, that was kind of what your controlling idea was going to be about him, how he is a. He is a person too. And, and we said, you can't really do that because the controlling idea for the pattern won't. It won't fit properly within that. It would break it too much. But what I noticed in this is.

That.

That you've accomplished that. You've woven that in, even though you are also fitting the pattern, that, you know, that's about corruption and how deep corruption runs. And so what I noticed is that Struthers is only sympathetic because of the murder, right? Like, there's no. Because he's, you know, he's cheating on his wife and he's, you know, he's, he's not a great guy. But here, Randall is sympathetic beyond the murder, right? So we get, we do have.

A deeper.

We can connect with him better than we can with Struthers. And so again, you do. You've done that. You've woven that in in a very subtle way without breaking the pattern. So that was great.

And then I was, you know, I was looking at the narrative device and as, you know, as if this is. We're of course looking at this as if it's an. A police report. And you do a really nice job. It's very consist now. And I love that. I love the way you found your way into this is, you know, writing it the way I would write it and then. Then putting on your Watson cap and, and writing it as if he's writing a police report. And I think that that, like, taking that out of this process to whatever else you write is going to be really useful for you. So that's great, because what you've done is you. You. Last time you wrote it was a trope or two that you had written that matched the narrative device. And now we've got it consistent throughout the story. So that's wonderful.

Another thing that I, that we've talked about in the past is how the. The young officer who is the single audience member here is a little bit different. Different from the protagonist. And that was creating some friction, right, Because a. A young officer is not a. Is not a. A, you know, a homeless person who is a witness to a crime. But what. So essentially they're in the same role in the sense of a universal pattern. They are both witnesses, both Struthers. Excuse me, both Randall and your Sam. Single audience member young officer. They're both witnesses to an injustice. And. But they're in the context, they're in slightly different role as a police officer versus somebody walking into the police station. So I feel as though this version of it, you have made that. You've made it. So you, You. You hit the middle of that Venn diagram so that we're accomplishing both. So it fits the narrative device really well. It's about signaling corruption, signaling injustice without. Without getting, you know, the blowback. Okay, so, and I went through, I looked at the. The tropes, I looked at the. The crisis matrix to see if, like, are all the things embedded. And it all looks really, really good. And the only thing that, besides just minor, like, word choice things that, That I noticed that we. We might want to consider is that in that first trope, the one thing we don't have is, is the line from McBain's story. He saw a murder.

And as a result, I think it doesn't quite get the. We don't quite get the inciting incident the way we do in the McBain story. And so this is. I think it's really effective as it's written. I think we just need to somehow get in there. Watson's conclusion, that is also the. That extra payoff.

Right.

We. When we talk about Trope 7, Trope 7 includes that last. The 33rd beat and the first beat again. So that's. That's the only thing that I think.

In terms of looking at the 624 at A. @ a fairly high level, that's the only thing I'm finding that you may want to fix in that. So I think, again, the. Broadly, this is a. This is a wonderful draft. You are doing all the things that we need it to do in the pattern. And now it's just time to refine some of those things to really. To really wrap it.

Up.

Yeah. I want to.

Double, double click on what you said about how it was hard for me when we talked about how it was hard for me when the. The Sam. The young officer was such a different person from the protagonist, Randall. And I think what got me over that hump was figuring out.

The conversation Danielle and I had from a couple weeks ago, figuring out Randall's why he's there, really locking into.

Why he's there. What's his motivation? What does he need? What is he trying to get?

And again, it was being able to.

Just say it the way I wanted to say it and then pull it back, or that's what it felt like. It felt like I was like putting in everything I wanted to put and then pulled it back to make it a narrative. And then, you know, as I've thought about, like, this is one of the things we did with the Beat the Reaper scene a year ago, where it was like, okay, write it as if he's telling his friends at the bar. Now write the same scene again as if he's telling his priest. Now write the same scene again as if he's telling his daughter. And so. And each time, you know, the language changed. The things that I pushed to the front change verse, you know, pulled back. And this was just that same exercise, but in a. To me, in a much. It had to be so much more cleaner because of the police report aspect. Like, the box I had to fit it in was much tighter than any other box I'd had to fit something in.

So. And I. And I kind of. It was kind of funny to me that for so, so much of Our time working on my writing the last year and a half has been about getting me to use the right type of valence language. And most of this was pulling out all the valence, and especially in the description parts.

So it was just. Again, yeah, I agree. But that. I think that's what helped was getting really clear on that. And then. And then really what I did is just what you guys talk about all the time is I'm like, who's the inputter and who's the outputer? So that kind of kept me from switching back to Watson as the protagonist is. I just kept paying attention to, like, Watson has to do something that changes the out. Changes the behavior of.

The outputter. So there were several times I went, when I was going back through the draft before I sent it to you that I like, was like, you know, Watson didn't actually do anything to Randall to get him to respond this way, so I need to change that.

And so that was super helpful of just making sure I was keeping the right person. The protagonist was just, who's inputting who's outputting, who's inputting who's outputting, and the input has to affect the output.

And then what you said, Sean, about. So I went back and reread Eyewitness, just looking at it, and it was really interesting. I started seeing. Now that I feel like I've understood the style of the police report. I was, like, seeing these things that McBain did that stood out to me. So I highlighted a couple, right? So when he was trying to Signal in beat 14 that Struthers was about to lie, he said Struthers considered his answer, right? And then.

And then. Oh, and then when he said he killed her without getting the purse, it was again signaling this wasn't a mugging, you know, so it was these little things. As I read through it, I'm like, oh, that was really good. And then one of the things I really stood out to me that you guys had said, I just couldn't see it was how little.

He said during the interview part, during the trope, the, you know, deliver the script trope. And so I. I mean, I went back and just kept pulling out words. Like, I just kept. Kept pulling out words of everything he said. So.

Yeah. So anyway, I. I think that's. I think that's good.

The first line.

I knew that last week when I turned it in, like, I just had cut that first line, and I'm somewhere. I was somewhere between, like, despairing that the first line and Eyewitness was Just so good. I just, I can't come up with anything else. And I thought, well, maybe will be something I can figure out once it's done and I can go back.

I do, like, go, I'm trying to go through everything you said. I, I almost kept the part with the money. The one little thing that was stuck in my head was, I'm like, well, it was, it was Dawson that offered him the money, so he doesn't have the $10 in his pocket. And like, I'm like, well, he, he probably does have money, though, so it'd be pretty easy to just. I, I, I cut it, I added it, and I, I ended up cutting it.

And.

And so I'd like to talk a little bit about the la. The end. That, that's too loud. I think I understood what you were saying about.

When. I don't know what Beat it is, but when Watson basically calls him out, like, I think I've got that, but I'd like to talk about the last line and the first line and then just like, and maybe this is something you could do after the fact if you just. Because if this would be something that you would just send edits back, maybe, Sean, you just go through and just like, put comments and the places of like, hey, reword this, reword this, reword this. I've already made a few based on what you said, and then I'll just do that and see if I can send you back something that is much closer. But I do feel like we need to talk about the last line and the first line, because those are the ones that I'm a little fuzzy.

On.

Well, the trick about innovation is to.

Is to get the intrinsic stuff and then instrumentally.

Do it in a different way. So the way McBain did it was.

All of the things that Leslie and Danielle were saying were so great. And the theme of.

Seeing Randall as a human being now who's seen a lot of probably bad stuff in his life, it has this double whammy factor on the single audience member who's the young officer. Right. So the young officer will now have a better appreciation for the homeless community. Right. So that's a, that's a side effect of, of the way you presented this story is that it's a, it's a mitzvah. Right? He's, he's, he's making less corruption through the report, not only getting some justice and putting the lieutenant behind bars, but to train the younger officers who are coming up about how to properly behave. So that's a That's a real, real leveling up in your story. That's not in McBain's. McBain's story. Struthers is sort of a. You know, he's. He's not all that sympathetic.

We. We are at first, but then the more you think about it, the. The less shiny he becomes, the more corrupt he is. Randall, his corruption seems to be.

In his. As. As Danielle had said a few weeks ago, he just kind of panicked after seeing the brutality of. Of what happened to.

Barnes.

Right. So I think that's. That's the sweet spot to think about how to. How to iterate that first and last sentence so that it can come back in on itself. So I don't. I don't want to propose a sentence for you, but I think the trick is to think about.

What would Watson want to tell in this report that would say something like, for someone who'd seen a lot of suffering, he'd never seen suffering like this before.

Right? So it would. It would say, this guy was a mess. I mean, this. This guy was really on the edge of. He had a traumatic.

Experience.

So.

That he had seen a murder. Could.

Be.

More.

It could still be very short and declarative as a sentence, but it would be about.

It would be about the. The degree. The degree of. Of trauma that. So the trauma that Struthers experienced watching his lover get killed by her husband was probably really bad. The trauma that Randall experienced has to level up from that because the way he describes the. The death is. Is a really beautiful, brutal, horrific beating that would disfigure someone's entire body.

Might even, like, really open up their. Their head.

So I think the trick to figuring out how to simply declare that he didn't just witness a murder, he witnessed a damnable act of violence, like, this was no everyday murder. This guy saw this wasn't a crime of passion. This was somebody who enjoyed it.

I think that that might be helpful and figuring out a, you know, a simple declarative sentence that would say he had blah, blah, blah.

That would. Would really.

Level up the ending, because then when. When the ending occurs. Now we understand the lieutenant's just not corrupt. This guy's a psychopath. Like, this guy has no problem crashing somebody's head in if he's in there in their way. And it levels up the entire story to levels of stake that are much higher than McBain's. And so that's how you do innovation, is you take something and you go, well, what's worse than witnessing a murder? What's worse than witnessing a murder is witnessing a psychopathic destruction of another human being's body for the fun of it. Because obviously the person who murdered Barnes continued to hit him after he was dead. And that's, that's, that goes over the edge of psychopathology. So that's kind of where I would, I would lead you to think about that. And then at the end with the, with the money, I get your point about the $10. You could even make.

Watson better by maybe gives him 20, you know, maybe he gives him more. And it signals to the audience this guy's more valuable than ten dollars. What this guy just gave was a fifty dollar tip.

And then that would really signal to the young officer, Sam, this guy's gold. Don't let, don't, don't misread these people. They can really bring you gold. And you appreciate them and you listen to them and you take down their stories and you think about what they have to say, because they can stop this. They're on the front lines. They see psychopaths every single day. And they're gonna, if you treat them properly, they will treat you properly, and you can do a good thing in the world together. So that might be a trick to use at the end. And you do have to safeguard Randall. Watson has to, he has to figure out a way to diffuse the psychopathic interest of this lieutenant who, who was tipped by, you know, the other partner. I forget. Dawson.

So look, look, look at what we're doing now. We're, we're now talking about innovations on tropes beyond just meeting the trope. And when you start doing things like that, you know, you're cooking with gas. And so that's, that's the suggestion that I would have, and.

I don't think I would have more changes than those two tropes that Danielle and Leslie really hammered on. And also the big man, and also referring to Randall as Randall in the police report. It's his last name. That's the only other thing. So don't say Randall said this. You say the witness. You know, you would identify him as a credible witness. The witness then said this. He wouldn't say the homeless guy then said this. He would say the witness said this or the, or the guy's last name. I think that's, that's a technicality that's very important because it signals to the young officer this guy was credible. And I'm not going to use his familiar first name and disrespectfully refer to him by his first Name in a police report. This guy was real deal. He was real.

Information.

What about the last line? I picked him up before. He probably recognized me. Is, is what you said about the first line basically apply to the last line.

Too?

I don't know that I'd even have him say that. I would have him say like bums.

What are you gonna do.

You know, just have him categorize Randall as just a fly swap, get the fly out of the police precinct.

Because then.

But it is tricky because Dawson did tip him. So you, you are going to have to have Watson somehow convince the lieutenant that, that Dawson was, you know, mistaken, that this guy meant anything.

So, you know, usually what happens in those cases is that you defer. You go, yeah, Dawson was right, just another bum, something like that. That, so that.

Dawson was right from the start. You know, Captain, you know, it's just another, another fly gotta get out of the precinct. Something like that. I mean, that's not the exact language that I would use, but that, that would be sort of the intent that I think you would want to use as a tactic. So that Watson is using a covert tactic to convince the psychopath that is his lieutenant, that he is, he's, he's playing by the rules of the corruption in the, in the office. Dawson said this guy's a bum. You know.

I.

Agree. Internal source level, it corresponds to propositional order.

So when we're building up the words here, what we can do is we can say, okay, Wilson is going to say something that is built from a worldview.

About who Randall is and what that meant. So now we start to get to what Sean's suggesting, right, about bums are like that, you know, or something like that. And so he's getting at the order that he can inform Watson of to let him know this is the page we're supposed to be on. This is the proposition that we're supposed to believe.

In. So would that be something like, hey, why don't you spend your time interviewing like a witness? That would actually be helpful.

Or.

In response, I think that would, that would read like a breakdown, like changing the.

Subject. Remember what corrupt people do?

They, they bring people in.

And so they, they.

They flatter them. They go, hey, man, we're on the same team. You know, what's a few bucks here and there? You know, we work really hard. Why not take a few bucks from the, from the bad guys and then we'll throw them in jail. It's cool, right? And so they use propositional logical strategies to get people to Throw away their virtues. They go, what, what, what difference is it going to make? It's a, it's a victimless crime, right? All that cocaine in the, in the evidence room is just, you know, it's just going to be destroyed.

You know, let's just sell it on the side. We'll make a little dough on the side. What's the big deal? Is it going to blow up the world if we do that? No, you're going to have a better car. Yeah. So that's what they do. So the lieutenant is a psychopath. Psychopaths, all they care about is me, what works for me. That's why they're very charming.

So that's how Jeffrey Dahmer and people like that were able to do the things that they did because they would charm people into becoming instruments for their satisfaction, their.

Whatever.

Right? So the Lieutenant, if we frame him as a psychopath, the last thing he's going to want to have to do is kill somebody in his police precinct who's a great detective. So he's going to, he's going to lure him in, into the corruption as best as he can. So he'll flatter him, he'll say something of that sort and he will redirect him. He's not going to confront him and defeat him by saying, you shouldn't be interviewing people like that. He's not going to throw around his power because he's already powerful. A psychopath knows when and when not to throw their power around.

So what's really wonderful to me is that, you know, Danielle's using our technology to, to really get to a, a place where you understand what, what the appropriate response from a psychopath in this situation would be. And so when you redirect, you do use propositional, logical, you know, things like if X is Y, then, you know, do this and it gets them on the same page as the corrupt force. So.

So you, you have to think about a dangerous psychopath using.

Logical, propositional stuff to seemingly defuse a threat to their power. Because, you know, when you're in power, fighting a lot is a bad idea. Because when you're fighting a lot, you get wounded, right? And one person fighting an entire group isn't going to last very long. So what the powerful do is they, they, they corrupt other people to serve them in their power base. That's what Dawson does. Dawson is serving the Lieutenant and he's the little snitch, right? So Dawson lets the lieutenant know, we got, we got a problem in the hen house. There's a fox who's going to ruin things for us. And his name is Watson. You should go check him out. So now the lieutenant's going to squash this, and he's going to do it in a way. He could use a guy like Watson on his side. The lieutenant. So he's going to be nice to Watson until he proves that he's really not on his side. And Watson is brilliant. Right? So Watson is going to pretend covertly. Hey, man, I'm. I'm part of the team. I'm just doing my job. I just wrote up a report. Did I do something bad? You know, so he needs plausible deniability in order to not get identified as corrupt or get killed by the corrupt other corrupt car like Barnes did. Right. You got to remember, Watson was friends with Barnes, and Barnes was completely disfigured by the same guy. So how Watson behaves in this situation is going to tell us a lot about his character. Will he stand up for the right virtues or will he send Randall down the river? I mean, he could. He has a choice. He could just give up Randall and go, yeah, I think he ought to take a look at him, Lou. Let's, you know, let's get him in cuffs, let's get him down to fingerprinting.

That would be a cautionary tale.

Because Watson is playing the good guy the entire story. And if he did that at the end, that. That's not. That's not the pattern that we're trying to create. Don't get me wrong.

But I. I'm sorry to have interrupted Danielle's Socratic approach, because she really did bring it back to the Green Zone at the really, really important level so that it helps you solve the problem by asking, what tactic is he going to use to diffuse the situation? Is he going to go, hey, you're one of ours, right? You're not going to let this guy. And so when he does tell the guy, when he does give the money to Randall, it's a signal to the lieutenant, yeah, buddy, I'm on your.

Side. I love that exploration of what it means to be corrupt. And I think that it's a really good thing to inject in this point in this process of looking at the beat, because it takes us down to that subsource level, because what you're saying, when you say, okay, we need to all be on the same side, he needs to be acting in a luminary fashion. And that means that he's going to only be focusing on the similarities between them. Right? Because they need to be one group. Yeah. And then we can look at. Okay, he's focused on himself as a psychopath. Is he going to be acting egoically? Like, is he trying to get something from Watson in that moment or is he trying to act from soul? Is he trying to get Watson to conform in that moment? So what would you say? What would you say for.

That? Can you, can you ask a question.

Again? Yes. So we know that as a psychopath, Wilson is focused on himself. So when we look at his internal subsource, his internal motivation, the why he's doing it, is he acting egoically? Is he trying to pull something and get something from Watson? Or is he trying to, I think of them as like pull and push, or is he trying to push out? Is he trying to act from soul, which is getting Watson to conform to how he wants the world to be.

How Wilson wants the world to.

Be. Man, I feel like I could argue for both because I feel like.

Well, we're calling this a psychopath, not a narcissist, because a narcissist is always about. But then, you know, be similar because I would think he's trying to get him. I want to say the first one because he's acting out of his ego to get.

To get what he wants out of Watson. But then when you say try to get Watson to conform to the way he wants the world to.

Run.

That also feels true of. He's trying to. He's trying to. This is his little kingdom he's running here and he needs everybody to conform to his.

Kingdom.

So does he fear for himself at this.

Point? The.

Lieutenant?

Yeah.

No. Does he think he's in danger? Okay. So egoically he would be trying to protect himself.

And so I think that when you say he's not really in fear, he's. Then he's really just. He's at a higher level trying to. Trying to put his pieces where he wants them to.

Be. I see.

Okay. And so I think you're going to be in that soul.

Realm. Right. So, okay, this is almost like the way we talk about Maslow's hierarchy. Right. So since he's not afraid that he's going to get caught, he's going to be at a higher level of still trying to move the pieces around. He's not even worried about if he'll get caught for this. He just wants Watson on his side for future stuff.

Okay. Because I was thinking as we were talking, like, so Watson will do a better job of signaling, like I was just getting rid of the guy Dawson was right, basically. And so that will put his mind at ease. And so he would respond out of that basically, like, good job. I really, really love working with you, Watson.

You got a good head on your.

Shoulders. Yeah, just in the blue zone.

Psychopaths, the way you catch a psychopath is that.

They are inherently. They believe their own.

So usually what they do is they think that they're always a few steps ahead of everybody and that they. They basically have control. They have control of the world, and they can move people like chess pieces to their own advantage. And so that's usually what. What will get them to make a lot of mistakes. So they believe in their power, so totally, they think they have total power, that.

They. They're easily believe that they're able to manipulate other people. So if Watson covertly gives him the yes Siri Captain right on your side, they'll be like, yeah, that's a good. That's a good dog. Yeah. You know, people like us, we understand the world better than others. Right, Watson? Yes, sir.

Reese.

Sir. Yes, sir, we do. And then what does Watson do? He writes the perfect report that will get him, you know, justice will be served. So that's. That's where the. The heroic figure can outwit and outmatch a more powerful figure. So in this instance.

Both Randall and Watson are teaming up to outwit the psychopath. And so they all play roles. They understand what role to play and when to play it. And Randall's gonna, thank you so much. I'm leaving now. And he's going to pretend like he's just another fly that has to be swatted out of the police department. Right. And Watson's gonna end up playing good soldier to the lieutenant and then the lieutenant, because he's so in love with himself and his power, and he thinks that he's in full control, will be like, yeah, that's another. That's stupid, Dawson. What does he know? He's just a little baby. And so I think this investigation into psychopathology and. And also the toolbox that we use at story grid to come up with the proper tactical responses is extraordinarily illuminating. And it's. I'm laughing because it's so exciting to see it in play without me pulling the switches. So it's. It's. So that's a really good thing to remember about a psychopath. Right? So if you're. If your villain is a psychopath, they're super powerful, but their vulnerability comes in when they believe that they. They have more power than they actually do because none of us have any control over of everyone. It's, it's just. That's uberus, right? That's. That, that's what will strike you down. By fate, pride goeth before the fall. And who is the ultimate figure who, who believed that they were more powerful than all beings is Lucifer. And, and the satanic forces in mythopoetic stories, that's how you get them. They are inherently self destructive because they believe their own. They can't break frame.

So this is thematically, look, I'm talking in the blue zone right now, so I don't want you to get too worried about what I'm saying. Follow the directions that Danielle is giving you and Leslie are giving you. But the blue zone, I'm always checking to see if it maps into the forms and patterns of mythos in and through time. And if you're talking about a psychopath, the best psychopath of all time was Lucifer.

In, in, in Paradise Lost.

And you know, he gave him an ironic name, you know, the light giver. He believes he's shedding light on the world and he's the force of darkness. So there's, that's, that's one of the things that people do is they attack intellectualism because they, you fall in love with your propositional knowledge, you fall in love with your, your, your proofs and your theorems and your propositions, and you forget about all these other levels of, of, of experience and that ends up destroying you. When all you think you are are your propositions and your theorems and proofs, you're in trouble because there's three other levels of experience that you're not, you know, playing with. You're not, you're not attuned to them. And psychopaths, they fall in love with their own.

Bullshit. So now that we know the, the direction that we want to go and we really have a clear idea of who this guy is and how he's acting in this moment. What I'd love to do is just take a look at the existing beat that you have and look at exactly why it's not working. And that I think will give you a better sense of the direction. Like how do you put the things we talked about into practice word by word, right? So right now Watson says, any idea why he ran off like that? And Wilson says, I've picked him up before, he probably recognized me. Okay, So I would say here, you know, he is in that active buildup space, he is engaging with Watson. And I think that this would be helpful to. To go back and forth. So do you think here that he is acting in an enlivening way or a depleting.

Way? We're still talking about the.

Lieutenant. Yes, I've picked him up before. He probably recognized me. Is that enlivening or.

Depleting?

Enlivening. Yeah. It's helping Watson fulfill, like figure out what's going on. Right. So then we know, because enlivening has the one option. We know that he's enabling Watson's agency. So, so he's not redirecting. He's allowing him to continue down that path. And so he's not redirecting him. And that means, because these are one to one to one. This means that he's acting from perspectival complexity. And that means that he is projecting into how Randall would think and trying to. He's empathizing to a certain extent, and he's trying to figure out what Randall would be thinking and how he would be acting. So you can see already that just that act of trying to take on someone else's perspective and really understand what they're thinking, that this is weird for someone who's like this.

And now let's take it all the way down to those subsources. Right? So when, when he says, I've picked him up before, he probably recognized me. Do you think that. So when we, when we look at external subsources, we're looking at whether the speaker is emphasizing difference, similarities, or both between himself and his conversational partner. So what do you think is going on.

There? Differences, similarities, or both between him and Watson. Right? You said his conversational.

Partner.

Yes. Okay, well, the difference is the differences would be, I've picked him up before, but the similarities would be, you know, we're both cops. We know how this works. Once you've had one run in with people, you have more run ins with the same.

People. I don't know that that's in the text.

I would probably lean toward difference here.

I don't. I think that he's creating a gulf more than. More than balancing. I'm not seeing. Oh, I'm not seeing any chummy.

Were both cops evidence there.

So he's got all of these, like, to me, when. And this isn't a hard and fast rule, but when I say when I see, like I've picked him up before. So it's I and him. He recognize me. All the pronouns are going on except you. He's talking about a whole lot of Stuff that has nothing to do with Watson. And so. And so, like I said, that's not totally.

Reliable to just look at that, but it's a good indicator that he's creating a gulf between them. So what you want to do is shift it so that he's talking about. He's talking more about those things. We're both cops, you know, we know this kind of stuff. And so shift it into that.

Whatever wording you use, like the feeling of bringing them together, the feeling of creating a bubble that he and Watson both inhabit and they're on the same team.

And then for the internal. Do you think that he's protecting himself? Do you think that he's trying to get Watson to conform, or do you think that he's thinking about the whole system and trying to build a shared.

Understanding? He's protecting.

Himself. If he's allowing Watson to continue down the same path, I think he's actually opening himself up to more harm here. I mean, I don't know. This one's a little.

Bit. I thought protecting himself because he's. He's giving an explanation for why he ran off. So.

Yeah, I feel like there's got to. In. In the way that he answered the question. Right. So this is a. I feel like this is a cascading problem. So because I didn't protect Randall with the giving of the money, then that question is still open. And so when he says, any idea why he ran off? Like that, he's basically accusing Wilson. And so Wilson has to give some sort of explanation for why he ran off. So he has to protect himself by saying that. But. So I see what you're saying, but I think that problem disappears if I fix upstream. Right. Because we. What we were talking about a few minutes ago is we're going to put Wilson in a position that Lieutenant In a position where he does not feel like he's in any way in danger, where. So we're going to fix that upstream. So by the time we get to this final beat, he won't. He won't in any way feel like he needs to answer for.

Himself. Great. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

Yep. And I think. I think that's a really accurate representation of what's going on. Yeah. Leslie. Sorry, I didn't mean.

To. No, it's okay. I wanted to connect this back to.

Connect what Sean was talking about and what Danielle has been talking about back to the whole. The whole scene type that we have for this, and in particular, the. What we called this trope. So the whole Scene, the whole story is, which side are you on? And so that, like, we're coming right down and we want that line to tell us exactly which side Wilson is on and which side Watson is on. And. And then with greater specificity, this trope is about testing loyalty. So the, the question or the. The response to the question is also a question about which side are you on.

Son?

Right. And. And it's telling him. It's communicating. This is the side you need to be.

On.

Right? We're. We're cops. We, you know, it's. So that's. It's bringing in all of those. Those.

The sources and subsources are working together to try to accomplish. Showing that, you know, where that, that Wilson is testing him. Watson has to appear to be in line to appear to be conforming. But the report, as Sean said, the report is all about differentiating and actually showing that he's on Randall's side. And so I think that all of the tools are really working in concert here and point pointing to the same conclusion. And so I think it's just fun that we got to it through different.

Means. I love that that you're pointing out that about the. That the. The report is the answer to the last. Because we go to Eyewitness now. What the hell got into him all of a.

Sudden? I.

Asked. Lt. Anderson shrugged wearily. I don't know, he said. I don't know. And then we circle back and the first line is, he had seen a murder. So it's like if you look at that very step by step, what Capelli is saying is, well, I know he had seen a murder, you know, and so if you think about it like that, I think that's a really great point, Leslie, is that you circle back and just treat it like the first line is an answer to this line.

And so whichever one you connect more with, because we've talked about the first line and we've talked about the last line.

Work on one and then you can use it to kind of triangulate the other one.

But make sure that they. They work together in that.

Way. Okay, so I'm going to. I made notes on everything.

That y' all pointed out, so I'm going to work on those. And if you can just, you know, if y' all will just do one more reading through and just leave a comment if you see any other, like, words that I feel like earlier y' all were like, there's a few different places and maybe we did hit them all. But just to double check Oh, I put in here. I thought this might be a little too.

Tongue in cheek or something, but did The C attached MP3 file part. Did that. Did that.

Work? I like.

It. You did.

Just for those listening, um, I have. I led the way to my office. I directed the witness to an empty chair. I started the voice recorder and set it on my desk before taking my seat. And then in brackets, I say see attached MP3 file just to try to drive home the police report thing a little bit.

More. Yeah, and what I like about.

That is that you're updating the. The story. Because Ed McBain's story is set in the 1950s. He wouldn't have been able to do that. Um, he might have said, you know, follow up on the tape or whatever, but. But he couldn't have done that. And so I think this is recognizing that your context is different. You have other affordances that you can slip in there. You know, it's just like people talk about how if you're writing a contemporary story, you have to take into the account. Into account that there are cell phones, you know, and. And that. That. So communication is really different than it was in the early 90s. So I think that that's a really nice way of updating for the context and showing what would. What probably would have.

Happened. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything Story Grid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. We're continuing to put out great content at our YouTube channel, Story Grid, so you might want to check us out there as well. If you want to check out any of the titles that we've released through StoryGrid publishing, you can do that@storygrid.com books if you want to reference any of the past episodes, you can see the scene from this episode. Anything having to do with the podcast is@storygrid.com podcast. And finally, if you want to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by going to Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating and review. Thanks, as always, for being a part of our community here at Story Grid. We'll see you next week.