Finishing the Middle Build

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 Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. So Sean and I have taken a few weeks off. It's actually the first weeks we've ever missed in the history of the Story Grid podcast, so we missed doing the show. We were excited to come back and record this episode, which actually ended up going a little long because we're going through the final scenes and sequences of my middle build. So I've spent the last couple weeks working through the final scenes of the Middle build. Ended up, I think, being about nine or 10 scenes. And Sean and I worked through them, talked about what worked and what didn't. So I think it's going to be a fun episode. If you've been following along, you know, this has been a long slog getting through the middle build. So get to. So go ahead and jump in and listen and I think you'll enjoy as we walk through. And then we're able to move on and actually start the ending payoff of the book, which I'm very excited to get that much closer to a final first draft. So, anyway, we'll jump in and get started. So, Sean, I've spent the last few weeks that we took off writing the next couple of sequences of my book. So I sent you. I actually forgot. I think it was 10 scenes. Three, six. It was 11 scenes, roughly 10,000 words, because I can't seem to write a long scene.

And so we left off where Jesse had met her brother during the second severing. And that was the middle point of the book is. So she met him and he said that he would give her instructions and he needs her help kind of taking down the faction.

So then what I wrote was basically everything between that point and the point where she dies. So there was an arc of basically her both waiting around and looking for her brother. And then there was the arc of her going through the severing or going into the final severing and getting to that place. And she dies at the end of the third severing. And I tried to make that leave off where the next scene is basically the all is lost moment, because I set it up where both Ernst and Alex got caught doing stuff they shouldn't do. And they're gonna get punished for that. She's dead, brother's nowhere to be found. How do we even start to come back from this? So that's what I was trying to do. I don't think I got. I think there's still one more sequence before we get into the ending payoff. Because I got to get from the all is lost moment to the threshing. But I tried to get from the end of the second severing when she met her brother to the all is lost moment. So I sent you 11 scenes, almost 10,000 words. So that. Which the whole book right now is 45,000 words. So, you know, that's a good chunk. So this is the longest I've. Longest piece I've sent you to look at in this book. And if you haven't noticed yet, I keep talking to put off having to hear what you have to say.

Yeah, I've noticed.

I've noticed.

Yeah. But anyway, so that's where I'm at. And then for everybody listening, if you want to read through it, I'll post it online in the show notes. But anyway, what's your overall feedback?

Well, my overall feedback is good. I think you've got. This is like a really good piece of pretty well formed clay. And you've got. You got some, you know, you definitely have some work to do here, but generally the movement of the story is interesting. You build to certain moments very, very well. And overall the progression of the story is really coming along. The ending with the very last scene leaves us sort of with not knowing what's going to happen now. It doesn't make any sense, which is great. You know, your readers, once they reach this point, are going to be hopefully completely shocked and unsure of what's going to happen next, which is great. There's a, you know, and like any first draft, I'm considering this a first draft of your, you know, last couple of sequences in your middle build. Like any first draft, there's some shoe leather in here, meaning scenes that are sort of pointless.

All right, So I think maybe the best way to do it is to sort of. I'll just go scene by scene and give you my sort of general comments on. I'll ask you to give our listeners just a brief synopsis of what the scene is about. I'll try and sum it up quickly and then you can expound a little bit. And then I think it would be good to just sort of walk through the scene and see, you know, what the five commandments of each scene are, how Irreversible. The turning points are all that kind of stuff so that people can be reminded about the fundamental structure of each scene in terms of its inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax and resolution, whether or not your sequence is building or losing momentum, etc. So with that said, let's start with the first scene, which is scene number 33. And this is the scene where it's right after the second severing. Jesse wakes up and Ernst is very upset because he doesn't know what happened. So this is a really, really good choice that you made here was to bring the drama and the conflict down a level. You know, the last scene was about the brother telling Jesse that, you know, he needed her help to deal with conflict at a global level, at the biggest level possible. This complete society he explains to her is built on a lie. And he needs her help for him to help bring it, you know, to justice. So in scene number 33, there's a tendency sometimes for us to concentrate on one global conflict level, scene after scene after scene after scene. And what happens when you do that is the reader gets bored. They don't understand, you know, what this really means at different levels of Life. So scene 33 is terrific because you, you bring Jesse back. She's back in the post severing room, she's just been unhooked and now she has to deal with Alex and Ernst. And basically the, the inciting incident of the scene is Jesse passes the second severing. And the progressive complication is that Ernst angry with her because he's not, he has no idea what happened inside of the fictional world. In the alternative reality, the last he understood, she was in deep trouble. She had, you know, coded for a lock. He knew that the lock wasn't going to hold. And then a couple hours later, lo and behold, she, you know, she ends up finding, surviving the severing and everything is cool. So the crisis for Jesse is, you know, and Ernst actually confronts her and says, what's going on? You're lying to us. You got to tell us what's going on. So the crisis rises to Jesse, you know, will she tell them the truth of what happened inside the fictional reality or won't she? And it's a, you know, it's a best bad choice situation here because if she does tell them, they could really freak out. You know, if they knew that she was involved in a situation that was going to bring down or trying to bring down the entire society, they could betray her. But if she doesn't tell them, they're not going to trust her. So the climax of this scene is that she decides not to tell them. She's going to keep the information to herself. And the resolution is that Alex agrees. You know, he. He basically says to her, look, it's. It's cool with me. Keep your secrets. But you know Ernst, it's not good with him because he loves you. And I have one sort of major note here. A couple of things. And this is something for the second draft you need to create. And maybe it's just because we've been away from the story for a little while, but it's. It seemed as if Ernst went from level 0 to 10 in his anger with her without, you know, you're setting up his blowing up at her. And also the. The phrase he loves you, Jesse, I don't think is appropriate. I think. I think you. You explain it better when Alex says something like he feels Ernst feels responsible for what happened to Ricky. And Ricky is the former coder who is now in the infirmary with his brain scrambled. So I think that is a stronger explanation for Ernst's behavior than he loves you because it just seems too much too soon. He doesn't really love her. He just doesn't want somebody else to get scrambled and end up in the hospital like the last guy.

Yeah. The thing I'm trying to establish is Alex is just along for the ride. Like, he's just happy he's still in it. So he doesn't care how they get to the threshing. He just wants to get there where Ernst is more attached to her. Not in a. Not in a romantic way, but in a more like brotherly take care of your my responsibility way.

Yeah, I think that's fine. But whenever you use the word love, it's okay. It's just. It's such a loaded word that it's better that he just says he, you know, you're like a sister to him or you're, you know, he's really close to Ricky and he doesn't want to see what happened to Ricky happen to you. And if he doesn't know what's going on there, he doesn't feel like he can protect you. So it's a nice way to get Alex to explain it to her, because Alex is, you know, it's a great exposition, as ammunition situation where you can actually have one character explain to the other character the behavior of a third character. And that is the way to get across things that are difficult to hammer home. So. And especially in a moment, in this moment, this active moment, it's all coming together because Ernst doesn't know what happened and he's as vulnerable as anybody else. And he. He's a control freak.

Right?

So Jesse's a control freak and Ernst is a control freak. Alex just wants, as you say, to get, you know, he wants to get his validation from third parties and he wants to, you know, become a hero. So the Alex character is working very well. So is Ernst and so is Jesse. I think I have a clear understanding in my mind of who these three people are. And obviously, if you haven't established that by now, you'd be in deep, deep trouble. So that's a really strong thing. I think it's a strong scene that with some minor tweaks, can be even better. And it really brings the three person triangle of relationships to the fore. And as I was saying earlier, you're bringing the conflict from extra personal to personal, which is a really good choice because we need to come down from the big stakes of is the society going to survive to, hey, you're lying to me. What's up with that? Because none of us in our own lives get to choose. It seems when we think about our own problems, we have personal problems and then we've got global problems. And we sort of go back and forth in our own minds about what's bothering us the most at one particular time. We're not analytical to the point where we deal with each of our global problems in a hierarchy. We just sort of flip flop back and forth. So storytelling has to have that same quality to it. We have to flip back and forth in concerns of the lead character. In the previous scene, her concern was, oh my God, she saw her long lost brother. Isn't this amazing? That's a personal conflict to, oh, I can't even deal with that right now because he's telling me that the whole society is a mess and I have to help him. So it moves from personal to global, extra personal. And then now this scene, you're back to personal. So it's a. It's a really nice movement and flip flop. Okay, so scene 33, just minor tweaks. Scene 34. This is kind of weak. I can see why you put it in because we need to take a breather with the action. And what you did here is you use the device like a couple weeks later they're in training for the final severing. And it's not. There aren't a lot of clear messages about the five commandments of storytelling here. The inciting incident is really weak. The inciting incident is nothing has, you know, her brother has not reached out to Jesse to tell her what she needs to do next. That's sort of the inciting incident of the scene. And so she decides that she's going to just keep staying in the alternative reality training, hoping that the wormhole is going to open up again and she'll be able to jump in and then he'll be able to tell her what to do next. And it ends with. And the conflict again is between the three, Jesse, Alex and Ernst. Alex and Ernst want to go to bed because they've been training for 20 hours and she doesn't want to go to bed. And so they leave. And then she stays in the alternative reality and then falls asleep. And that's the end of the scene. So does it technically work? Yeah, it technically works, but it seems the information that you're trying to get across in the scene is not coming through very strongly. And I think this scene particularly presents an opportunity to make your. The circumstances of the third severing even stronger. So here's what I'm thinking about this scene when I'm going to tell a short story. There's this Marine that I know, and he wanted to become part of the recon unit, an officer training course. And he was in college. And so he thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to prepare all throughout all of my senior year of college before I have to go into the recon training in June. I'm going to train so that I'm in the best possible shape possible for the recon training. And they did tell him what, you know, he would have to do. He was going to have to run, you know, three miles in 20 minutes or even shorter than that, 18 minutes or something. And he was going to have to bike a certain amount of time, and then he was going to have to swim, you know, a couple of miles. So it's basically a very intense triathlon, you know, with times that he had to absolutely hit. So what he did is he trained and he, you know, he would, each morning he would work on his swimming and then he would go do the bike and then he would do the final run. And he did that every day for, you know, 190 days. And he was in the best shape of his life. So he finally gets to Camp Pendleton or wherever they were having the recon training, and he gets there and the instructor says to him, okay, great, so you guys are all ready for your, your swimming and your Biking and your running, right? And they're all like, yes, sir. And he goes, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to start with the run. So he was completely thrown off because he was expecting a certain kind of training based upon. He read the letter very, very, you know, literally. And he trained himself to do the. To do the swim first, not the running first. So it completely threw him off and all the other Marines so that, you know, they were thrown out of their comfort zone. And he said he barely finished under the Times because they jiggered, you know, what they were supposed to do and when they were supposed to do it. So the reason why I'm telling this story is that I think the opportunity here in this scene is to do something really fun on those terms because I love the choice that you made for, you know, the final severing, which is very much an intellectual strategic game. It doesn't involve physicality at all. So what I think you should do is, in this scene, have all these people training physically to complete exhaustion, utter exhaustion. So they're all getting in the best physical shape of their life, and they're training with such intensity that they all think that they're gonna have to do some incredibly difficult physical obstacle course for the final severing. And so by the time. So what you should do is sort of build up that training in these early chapters before the actual severing.

Okay?

So instead of her just sort of like, using a lock pick and going through things that aren't really that interesting, you could have her, you know, going inside the reality and outside of the reality because they think, you know, there goes. There's going to be some physical task, you know, in both realities. So she's doing amazingly difficult things in and out of the reality. You know, Alex is giving her certain kinds of endorphins to get her, you know, her blood up or, you know, he's constantly monitoring her blood pressure, how much she's sweating, all this stuff. So they're highly training this amazing athlete to perform in some, you know, incredible, incredibly difficult situation that they all know. And you can refer to, you know, have them do some research, right? Like Ernst says to her, look, I've. I've gone through the last 20 years of the third severings, and every single one of them required this. You know, there was, you know, somebody had to push a rock up a hill. I don't know. I'm just talking off the top of my head. But have them use evidence, you know, sort of like what we would do if. If somebody said we had to perform at some later date, what I would do is I'd look and find out what, you know, what people had to do for other performances of that same quality.

And then I'd prepare for that. And so then I would feel confident going into that final severing. Hey, I'm totally prepared. I've done everything physically possible and mentally possible to prepare for this test. So, you know, I'm going to walk in there with confidence. And so by the time she does walk into that third severing, and all those other guys do, too, when they hear what it is, they're going to be. It's going to be a stomach blow. Like somebody punches them right in the solar plexus, and they have to completely rejigger their thinking. So that's an opportunity for you to build something and pay it off in a much stronger way.

So, I mean, my whole goal with this scene was to just establish that time is passing and she's not hearing from her brother. So, I mean, so would I basically reach those same goals, but in a more interesting way with what you're talking about or like.

Yeah, exactly. And you can have her while she's in this training, you know, constantly looking for a wormhole, you know, making mistakes and diving into. You know, it'd be kind of funny.

She.

Because she's so exhausted, she thinks she's seeing an opening in the cyberspace. She goes to dive into it, and then she falls on her face and she cuts her lip or something. And they're like, why did you do that? You know, like, oh, no reason. So that we. We get a sense of her flailing around trying to get information, and she's getting more and more, you know, having more and more anxiety about not ever hearing from her brother, that she's getting more and more hinky. And at some point they're, you know, they can confront her and say, what. What are you doing? You're making all these mistakes. It's just not like you. She goes, oh, I don't know. There's just. I'm. I'm waiting for some information. It hasn't come to me yet. And then you can further establish that she's keeping secrets from these two. Well, what kind of information? What are you talking about? Oh, forget it. I didn't mean anything by it. So that way the reader understands that she's working very hard to get information from her brother that's just not forthcoming. And it will also make her decision to tell them about her brother make more sense later on. Because then it's. It's not necessarily a quid pro quo.

It's, she's just into my room.

Yeah, exactly. Like there's no other. She has to share this information because those other two brains might be able to help her in ways that she can't figure out herself. She has to reach a level of desperation that she has to bring those two in or. You know what I mean? She has to reach a climactic moment in her thinking that she's exhausted her own resources to get information from her brother. And telling these two guys, maybe they'll come up with a better idea than she has. And it's a way of entertaining the reader with some really cool, active stuff. You know, you can have Ernst, you know, program competitors for her, right? So she has to box, she has to run, she has to, you know, there are animals chasing her. You know, all kinds of fun stuff. And you can even open up the scene where she's being chased by a bear or something. I don't know. And then. Then we. Then we figure out, oh, that's a training exercise. So use that as.

A way to have fun. So the reader gets to watch this training exercise. And they don't understand it's a training exercise until the climactic moment of the scene. And that way we're not getting bored by all this shoe leather where we're just waiting around for them to have the third severing.

Okay?

And using things like. Well, in the. In the fifth severing, you know, in the fifth threshing. Here's a. Here's some video of what they had to go through. You see, they have to jump over that cliff. And we've measured the cliff, and it's 12ft, 9 inches. So you have to practice your broad jump to at least 12 foot, 9 inches. And maybe she can't get that far and she freaks out about it. You know, something like that. So that's scene 34, which needs a. Some extensive attention. Scene 35. See if I can find that. Oh, okay. Here's another one where it's sort of not going anywhere. It all builds up to Jesse saying, hey, we, you know, Ernst, where's that old communications room you were talking about, you know, while ago? Can you take me there? And at the end, she agrees to tell them, you know, her secrets if he takes her there. So it seems kind of flat. It's not really an interesting thing. Again, she's making a deal. It's a quid Pro quo. If you take me to that room, I'll tell you my secrets and.

Could be stronger. Right. So there's again, you could do. You could do another training scene. You know, you could. The earlier training scene could be a live scene in the cyberspace. This one could be, you know, an intellectual thing where they're going over past threshings and what's happened in the third severing and what she's going to have to do. But she. From my read, she's reached a point where she can't figure out anything. So she wants to explore the rest of the compound to see maybe she can find her brother. Maybe he's in the catacombs. Maybe he's literally downstairs in one of those abandoned communications rooms. So she doesn't know how to get there. So she asks Ernst, and he basically says, you know, unless you tell me what you've been holding back, I'm not going to take you. And I'm not saying it doesn't work, it does work, but it just. It's not exciting enough.

It sounds like what you're saying is like, I kind of have the bones there. I just need to make it more interesting and exciting.

Yeah.

Like am I get. I'm getting to the right places, just not in an interesting way.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's why I said this was a really solid first draft, because you put, you know, you put your roadmap positions of your scenes in place, and now when you go through these again on a second draft, you're going to look at them and say, am I escalating the stakes here in a. In a good way? You know, because what's going to happen if. If she refuses to tell Ernst her secret? Right. Is it irreversible? No, because she could. Tomorrow she could tell.

Right.

So you want to ratchet up the tension by making these turning points irreversible, but we don't.

Do I want every scene to be irreversible? I mean, I thought the whole idea was to like.

No.

Can't make every scene irreversible.

No, exactly. But you've already, you know, the post severing scene, which is scene number 33, that's a reversible choice.

Okay.

Because she can tell him her secrets later, but she has to reach her own point. And, you know, she's the kind of person who's. She's not gonna ask Ernst where the communications rooms are. She's gonna explore him herself. Right. She'd be like, forget it. I don't want to involve this guy anymore. I can do it myself.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as you were talking is maybe. So I have one scene that's a training scene, and another scene of her basically trying to get through the castle herself.

Yes.

And she explores everything she possibly can. And the end of her rope is. I know there's more to see, but I don't know how to get there. But Ernst does.

Well, or you could have it like a really nice, fun moment where she's in the catacombs and all of a sudden a light turns on. She doesn't know, oh, my gosh, I'm cornered. There's no way out of here. How am I going to get out? And of course, it's Ernst. He's turned on the light, and then he confronts her. You know, so you can use that as a nice cliffhanger where you think, oh, she's totally going to get caught now. But it's actually her, you know, her friend, and it's. And then she can look at him and go, oh, man, this guy's a lot smarter than I thought he was. He got down here, he knew what I was going to do, and he was waiting for me. You know, I bet he's got a good idea about how to get in. Into the computer system. And then she tells him the secret. So she's actively making a choice to bring him into her, you know, world. It's Ernst and Alex, and they can be like, what are you doing? And we're gonna think it's somebody like as or somebody like that. So I think that little cheap surprise will work. You know, that's an element in the Thriller where you have, you know, that moment where.

Yeah, yeah, you see the shadow coming around the corner.

Exactly.

Oh, okay.

Oh, no, it's actually her brother. Oh, good. So I think that's a good idea to deal with that, too. She's reaching a point where she has to bring in Ernst and Alex, but she needs to exhaust all of her own personal intelligence and thoughts before she does. So. So having her try and get in there herself and having those two discover her is a good answer. Okay, so that's scene 35, scene 36. I just have one note here, and it says, shoe leather. Nothing happens.

So I don't even know what that scene is about.

It's basically them just finding their way into. Yeah, now that you say that, I'm like, yeah, nobody gives a shit about.

What I wrote on that scene.

Oh, that's where they're kind of walking around the hall and then.

Yeah.

And Alex goes, I'll go this way. You two go that. It's like a Scooby Doo episode. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Scene 37. Jesse tells them what happens. Ernst believes Alex doesn't. They split up. Okay, so I like what you're. Where you're thinking here, what you're thinking. It. It seems to me is that Alex is a believer in the society. And Ernst has been holding his suspicions about, you know, the social structure since he was introduced, you know, in the novel. So you're gonna have the disbeliever and the believer and Jesse after she explains her brother and the whole situation. And then having Alex split up going one way and them going another way is a good idea, but you don't make anything of Alex's suspicions. So if you're going to open up that jar of peanut butter, you better, you know.

Make a sandwich. I don't know.

What do you mean by that?

I think, Alex, what you wisely did is you. Both of these guys don't believe Jesse's story. Ernst believes it, but Alex doesn't. So after Jesse says, hey, I went in this wormhole. My brother was there. My brother won the last threshing, by the way, and they've imprisoned him instead of making him a hero. Ernst is like, yeah, I can kind of believe that. But Alex is like, no way. That's not the way this world works. Are you kidding me? You're a liar. And your brother's a liar, too. Come on. Forget about it. So I think opening up that negativity and having Alex represent the true believers of, you know, the faction is a really, really good idea. Now, the way to make a sandwich out of that is to have Alex leave and say, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I think you guys are crazy. If you weren't my teammates, I turn you in. So open him up as a possible person who would betray.

The coalition of the three. And what that will do is raise even more mystery in the reader's mind for later on, Then the conflict will be.

At some point, Alex will have to make a decision of who he's standing by.

That's right.

And another thought occurred to me about maybe opening up one of those training sessions is to remember when you had that. That film where 61, one of the numbered or 81.

Yeah.

You could bring her back and have her be like a sparring partner for one of the training sessions.

So I was planning on bringing her Back to prep for the threshing.

Oh, okay.

And so here is my thought. So in the next scene is. So they find this computer that still works and looks like it's in use, and it's basically a backdoor into the Faction system. That's what the next 1338 is.

Yeah.

And they realize. And like, kind of the cliffhanger of the scene is somebody's logged into this computer within the last few days when this whole section of the Capitol is supposed to be abandoned.

So my thinking is, what I was planning on doing is bringing her back. They had brought her back to help train, but she's in league with her brother, with Jesse's brother, because she had been training him in the first. She was on his team in the last threshing. And so she's using that computer to do things like under the capitals without them knowing what's going on.

Yeah, that worked.

That was okay. Because that was my thinking is because at some point, I got ex. Well, one is, does the whole way I set up the whole computer terminal work? Because what I've been thinking was there's so many. I would start thinking through other books I've read, and there's always this, like, this mission they end up on that's completely pointless. Like, at the end of the book, it was like they were completely on the wrong trail because they were doing this thing that they thought would get them to this place, and it doesn't get them there. And so what I was thinking was, Jesse's desperate to find anything. They find this computer, that's a backdoor. So she's like, oh, that's how I'm going to find my brother. But it only ends up biting them in the ass and not getting them anything. But I'll have to close the loop of the computer at some point. So that's how I was planning on doing it.

That works. I think that's a good choice because, you know, when it. When it's too easy for them to figure out how the brother was in that cyberspace, then it's not gonna work. It just seems. Yeah.

You had said not to have, like. Because I said, yeah, then the brother's gonna help them. Da, da, da. And you're like, no, no, no. Have the brother not show up again.

Yes.

So she's on her own. So this whole sequence is her flailing, trying to figure out how to re. Establish contact or find him or something. And so when they find this open computer, she's like, oh, this is how we're going to do it, even though it's not.

That totally works. The computer stuff seems absolutely fine. It's a little familiar, but I think it kind of needs to be familiar. Meaning, you know, the. Where they find the passcode and the hacking and, you know, them watching Ernst as he types on the typewriter pad.

It's a little familiar, but I. I think sometimes you have to have those tropes. And a trope is just a little piece of business in a story that people expect.

Yeah. Like, that's why I put. Basically, there's a post it note on the bottom of the keyboard with the password, because that's where everybody sticks their password.

Yeah. You know. Yeah, I think that worked. I think it totally worked. And I think you set it up well. So that. That's why Ernst has to be away in the third severing now. All right, so chapter 38, they get into the mainframe, and then chapter 39, they have a debriefing where Ernst is going to tell Alex how to do the job in the basement while she's, you know, in the threshing or in the severing. And then they. At the end of the scene, they decide that Ernst has to be the one to do it. I think that's okay. It's a little. It's a softer scene that's a bit of a pause. It's sort of what you do before you launch into, you know, your fifth action scene. So I think if you could possibly combine, you know, the 38 and 39 scenes into one more sort of compelling scene, that would be better because it seems a little bit. Okay, okay, we get it. They're in the mainframe. Yeah. Alex is too stupid. All right, enough already.

Well, and all that's gonna change anyway if Alex is not. If I'm taking his doubts further.

That's right. I think taking his doubts further is a really good idea because then you set up the thing like, will he betray them or won't he? Will he? You know, is he.

Because then in the scene when Arnold confronts him about where Ernst is, that will be the point where he has to make a decision. So I could that drama a little bit more because right now he just kind of jumps in and, like, gives an excuse and lies and gets them past it. But I could build the drama up a little more where, like, he's. He finally has to, like, he keeps trying to dodge the decision, and then he finally has to make a decision. Yes.

Good choice.

And that. That's. That's scene 40. So I could. So overall, so far, like, if I bump up the action and make it more interesting for scenes 34 and 35, I'm gonna cut 36, then start creating some, like, tension and suspense with Alex and what he's going to do in 37 and then 38 and 39, kind of build to the point where Ernst is going to go off on his own. This is how they're going to try to break in. Alex is going to play the comms role and medic role for Jesse in the last Severing. And right before they go into the severing Alex, it kind of comes to a point where he has to make a decision and he'll of course, decide, or maybe he should decide to give Ernst up.

I don't know.

That would be more surprising.

I don't think he would give him up because he doesn't really believe that Jesse and Ernst are going to save the world. You know, why would he think that Jesse and Ernst, in some mystical vision that Jesse had, is going to bring down the faction? You know, if I say to you, Tim, I've decided that, you know, the entire publishing industry is corrupt and I'm going to bring it down.

Right? You would go, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. And I go, will you help me? You go, well, yeah, it depends on what you need, you know, like. Like if it's going to further my career a little bit, yeah, I'll help you. But I don't truly believe you're ever going to bring down the publishing industry, Sean. But so that's kind of the way I think Alex is viewing this. And that's the decision he makes. So he's going to say, oh, no, he's sick. Because Alex is believes that for whatever reason, his, you know, the person that he got stuck with turns out to be a pretty damn good player. And his chances are pretty good that Jesse, even though she's a wackadoo, is going to get through that third severing and then his family is going to benefit and he will benefit. And there's no chance she's going to bring down the faction. That's ridiculous. So he's going to, like a. Like a really smart Machiavellian player, do what's good for him by making Jesse believe that he's on her side. So I think it still works. And, you know, and you can even make a joke of that later on at the end of the book when she says to him, you know, I was just so impressed that you stood up for Ernst. And he'd be like, well, any idiot. There's no way I thought you would ever win. I was just trying to, you know, do better than. What are his choices? You know, if he gives up Ernst, then they're thrown out and he has to go back to Schittfill or wherever he's from, you know?

Right.

I think it works for him to. To lie. And also, he also makes up that white line. He goes, well, you know, I. He told me he was going there. I don't know. If you call up there, he might not be there. I don't know. Just like a weaselly way of, you know, not committing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. So we're on scene 40. So does scene, like with the. With the bumping up the drama that we talked about, does scene 40 work?

Yeah, I think so. I like the fact that they think they're going to be in their own private little cubicle, and then they get there and they're, you know, it's a progress. It's a really nice, progressive complication. Oh, great. Now we have to perform in front of everybody, and everybody gets to see what everybody else is doing. This isn't so great. What are we going to do about Ernst? He's down in the basement. It's a. It's a nice, progressive complication to the. To the sequence and to the book. It raises the stakes.

So I was trying to create a scenario where Ernst absence is noticed.

Yes.

Like, they thought they would just, like, he'd be in and out, no big deal. Nobody would even know he was gone because everybody's off in their own bay. But now they're in the same room and everybody notices that it's just Jesse and Alex.

It's great. It totally works. It's a really good decision. Okay, so let's get into the third severing again. I love the choice of making it now. Did you make up this game provenance?

Yeah. Okay, so. So this was the hardest part to come up with this. Right. So as I'm realizing my method of writing is basically to put it off as long as possible while I try to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. And then I just write the whole thing at once. So I reached out to a good friend of mine who has read, like, every comic book ever writ, you know, ever created, ever. You know what? Like, just as, like, a. Just his mind is full of, like, all of these worlds. And I was like, dude, I need. I need something, you know, to, like. Because I could not figure out how to do this last severing because I needed. So spoiler alert. I needed as to kill her at the end. I needed her to win and then as to kill her. Yes, right. So that I made that decision ahead of time, which was, however we're doing this, I want her to clearly win, but then AS kills her. So I didn't want it. Because we talked about before how the first two severings, she kind of skated by, right? Like she got lucky. So I needed that to happen. I needed something where I really wanted something intimate, where the. The other two, everybody was spread out kind of on their own, trying to take care of themselves. So I wanted them in a place where, like, they were super intimate right in front of each other, which means it can't be super action. So I walked my buddy through, like the first severing. I was like, it's almost. It was almost like capture the flag. The second was. Was this game of hide and seek. He's like, well, do something like, like, like kid related. He's like, both of those games you play as a kid. He's like, the third game should be another game that you play as a kid. And so I'm like, okay, what's. What's an intimate setting that you play as a kid? I'm like, oh, it should be like a board game or something, right? Some kind of, you know, like Monopoly or what monopolies to. I wanted something super logic based. So I just came up with the game Providence and Knights and Peasants. Because I was trying to just think of like some kind of future version of chess with six players. I went back and read. My buddy Josh Kaufman wrote a book called the first 20, how he learned all these different skills. And he learned this game Go, which is super intricate and super logic based. So I went back and like, read, because he has this whole explanation of the game. So I went back and read that chapter and I just came up with this idea of these knights and peasants and that kind of thing. But then I also wanted. So I wanted a logic base, but I wanted some kind of chance in it too. So my first thought was, there'll be a Russian roulette, right? So there was a gun, and you put a bullet in the chamber and you spin it, and every time you lose a peasant, you get this gun. But then I'm like, I don't know, a gun's a little much. And we already talked about guns when I brought a gun in that I'm gonna have to change later. And I didn't want Them, like, shooting each other in the face. You know, that was a little too much because this is young adult. I'm thinking, I want Connor, my son, to be able to read this. And I think them shooting each other in the face would be a little much. So that's where I came up with the idea of I was reading. I started just Googling, like. Like, with so many of these things that I'm Googling, it's like, if you didn't know I was writing a book and looked at my Google history.

Because I'm looking up, like, Russian roulette variations, different ways to play Russian roulette. Like, I'm, like, looking at all these things. And then I saw that a bunch of casinos have Russian roulette style games. And I was like, oh, I'll just do a deck of cards. Like, there'll be, you know, red cards and white cards, and every time you lose a peasant, you got to draw a card. So you either lose by losing all your peasants or by drawing the wrong card. So you get logic because it's moving the pieces on the board, and I get some chance in there because I need to, like, cut the first two people, because there's six, and it's going down to three. So I got to get it down to her and the three bad guys pretty quick. Yes. And so. So I used the logic part where, like, I didn't have to. I felt like it added a nice, like, back and forth, Right. So I'm trying to save my pieces, but if I could, I have three, but I could die on the first one. So that's the, like. Like, that took me about a week and a half to finally figure out what I was gonna do for this thing. And that's kind of the path I took because then it gave me a chance to where at the very end, she, like, barely pulls out a win, and the guy she beat is gonna die on his next turn because, oh, I introduced two that they die in this setting, right. And I tried to do that in a surprising way. And right before he. That fourth person was gonna die because she beat him at the last second as just flips out and, like, dives at her and, like, chokes her and kills her. That's. So anyway, that was basically those.

It's a great game. It's. It was really, really believable and interesting. It was. I love the name of it. I could see, you know, I could see the Tim Grohl Providence board game on sale now from, you know, Parker Brothers.

There's no actual rules. Like, because if you, like, you have.

To think about man. We'll give away board games when. When you publish it. Couple of notes about the thing. Generally, it's fantastic. Generally, it works. The payoff is terrific. Again, when you have a very intricate, intelligent payoff like this, the setup becomes so crucial because you need to really make the reader believe in their heart of hearts that she's going to have to run a marathon, swim a thousand miles with sharks biting at her feet. You really must make the reader believe that it's going to be a hugely difficult physical challenge. So that when you do bring in this payoff, it's going to be astounding to them. Okay, so a couple other notes about the chapter. When they get into the alternative reality, don't have them in an intimate space.

Really?

Yeah. You really want to make this extremely surprising. So when they get into the world, it's almost like a Hunger Games setting. They're in the middle of this massive ecological phenomenon. They can hear wild animals. They can hear everything, right? And they're sort of in this clearing, and they can just. And maybe there's some sort of iron fence around them. And then as they're standing there waiting for directions, they all think they're gonna have to run and get to another place and go through this amaz, physical, horrifying, you know, travail. So you want to build it up in the earlier scenes where Ernst kind of explains these previous severings and what these people had to go through. You know, they had to go through a desert, and then they had to go through over a volcano. You know, all that kind of stuff. So when they land there, it's exactly as they expect it, right? So they're all. They're all ready to, you know, run. And then President Marcus arrives, and he comes out of a cave or something. He's like a vision who comes out of the clearing. And he walks up to them, and they're all expecting him to say, okay, here's your spear. And you've got nine hours to kill that, you know, mammoth over there. And instead, what he does is he waves his arms and this beautiful black table rises from the earth. And six chairs are next to the table. And then he goes into the explanation of the Providence game.

Okay?

Okay. So now they are ready to. Like, their heart is beating fast. You could even have, like, Alex reporting to Ernst. Her heart rate is so high now. I don't know how she's going to last. And then they sit down and play the game. Now, when one of the people die, don't make it so unexciting. Make it very Hunger Games. Ish. So they draw the red card, and instead of their blood coming out of their nose, maybe their seat, you know, straps go around them, and the seat goes into the wilderness, and we hear them screaming, and they're destroyed that way. So we don't physically. We don't actually watch them witness them dying. We hear them dying. Okay? And so when Jesse says, you know, Ernst goes, what's going on? What's going on? And she goes, I don't know. Check with the other comms guy. But all I hear is screaming. And then, you know, maybe later. And hold. Hold the information as long as you can that these people are dying. They're not just being scrambled. They're dying. So that will escalate the tension in the scene so that by the time you reach the place where it's her. And I love the alliance with the other girl, and I love the way you set up this guy snickering at her, and then he makes that fatal mistake, and she wins. My last note is, have AZ killed Jesse? But not so dramatically. There's an old movie that was really upsetting and terrific. It was called Midnight Express, and it was the story of this guy who was in Turkey, and he was trying to smuggle hashish across the border. It's based on a true story. And they catch him and they throw him in prison, and he's just tortured in prison, and it's all this horrible stuff. And he finally is in this room alone with the guy who's the head of the prison, and the guy tries to assault him. And instead, our hero pushes the guy very, very hard. And the guy falls and stumbles back, and he falls into a hook that's in the wall, and it goes right through his cerebral cortex, and he dies. So it was sort of an accidental death. And I think that's the way AZ has to kill Jesse. He gets so much rage that he attacks her, and he pushes her chair, and she falls and hits her head on a rock or something. But to have AZ literally standing with his feet on her chest and strangling her is just too much. It's got to be an accidental rage moment where, you know, it's just one of those things that accidentally happened.

Why does it have to be that way?

Because he is going to end up becoming the hero in the threshing. He's gonna save her, and to have him.

So him killing her is just. He can't come Back from that?

No, he can't come back from that. So he has to accidentally kill her. Okay. And also, you have to remember, he probably wouldn't kill her because he wants to be in the threshing. Right. And he doesn't know that. You know, I'm sure it's frowned upon for these contestants to kill one another.

Well, my thinking was, like, once she's gone, I mean, but so there's. And I reference it in one of the scenes when they're doing something they're not supposed to do, which is basically, look, we're the last ones, so we have some leeway here because they're not going to get rid of us. So that was my thinking was he was basically. It would be a way to. At the end of the Hunger Games, when they both take the berries, so they basically twist the hand of the Powers that Be to let them both live. So my thinking was, like, he's basically forcing their hand because if she's dead and the other two are dead, they have to have three. So he's going to be let in. Yeah.

But I think as is less. He's not a brutal force. Yeah. I don't think he's absolutely evil. I think he's a true believer in the system. So he. Yeah, he wants to. And I could see him getting so angry that he pushes her because she winks at him. And, like, it was just like, yeah, stick it, buddy. I just beat you. So I could see him having the rage. But that strangling is. Is no small thing. You literally feel somebody else's life leaving. So you have to be a very. You have to be at a level that it's just. The reader is just not gonna like him from that point forward where they. They could have sympathy for him losing his temper and, you know, accidentally killing her. So that's my gut on it. I think if you want him to redeem himself at the end.

Yeah, that's the plan.

Yeah, he. You can't come back from somebody who strangles somebody like that.

All right, like, what if he actually attacks the guy that lost out of rage? And when she tries to stop him is when he, like, turns and, like, knocks her back and she, like, smacks her head on the table or something.

Yeah, okay, that's good. I mean, I think that works better. So that sets up her death is an accidental thing. And, you know, you can either. Even after she recovers and they're preparing for the threshing, you know, you could have a moment where the tribunal has Met about as. And it's been recommended that he be allowed to be in the threshing because the assault was ruled accidental.

Okay.

There could be some question of whether or not they're going to allow him. You know, they reviewed the tape, you know, and it was absolutely an accidental occurrence. And that way you open him up to redemption at the end of the story in a way that the reader will feel, oh, I guess he wasn't really a bad guy after all. He was really only in it to. To help the faction. He was a true believer who died for a cause. Okay, so again, I mean, that's 10,000 words of solid stuff that can be absolutely manipulated and maneuvered in a really great way. And now the place you're 45,000 words in, by the time you do an edit of this stuff, you'll probably end up adding three to 5,000 words. You're at 50,000 and you've got, you know, a 10 to 12,000 word ending payoff. I think in your future here, I think you've reached your all is lost moment right here, right now.

Well, I don't know. I never know. Is the all is lost moment when the actions that caused the all is lost moment happen? Or is it like the next scene when everybody's like, well, shit, what are we going to do now? Like, what I was trying to do is get to the point where the next scene is everybody. Like, when you turn the page to the next scene, you're like, I have no idea how they're gonna get out of this hole.

Yeah, exactly.

And so that's what I was trying to reach here.

This is the bottom of the trough. This is the bottom of the trough. And the next scene is, you know, a bargaining situation where the powers that be are now going to have to figure out, oh, where do we go from here? We lost this entire team. You know, what's going on with Ernst? What's going on with Alex? You know, Jesse's dead. What do we do?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to do. You told me to get into a hole I didn't know how to get out of. So great. I just tried to dig. I just kept trying to dig it as deep as I could because I thought for it to be all his loss, it couldn't be just Jesse. It had to be all three of them in bad straights. So Jesse's dead, Ernst and Alex are in Shittsville, and the brother is still kind of lost. Like, we don't know what happened. To him. So everybody's at a loss. And so I'm not sure. So that was my next question is like, well, what's the next sequence? So it's the aftermath of everybody trying to figure out what to do. I've got to figure out some kind of, like, dramatic way that she, like, wakes up, right, and she's fine. And then I gotta. Basically, I've got to get to the preparation for the threshing. Because that's when we go into the ending payoff, right?

Yes. Well, actually, the ending payoff begins in your next scene because the threshing is your final, you know, nine chapters or whatever. It's the moment, you know, like in Clury Starling and Silence of the Lambs, the confrontation scene with Buffalo Bill is, you know, it's 3,000 words at the very probably. I think it's about five scenes from the end is when it starts. But there's this. The moment when Starling goes to Belvedere, Ohio, is the beginning of the ending payoff. When she rejects the old rules of the FBI and goes rogue is the moment when the ending payoff begins. And your ending payoff is going to begin with. Essentially. Let's. Let's, like, logically walk it through. Now, these people who die at this. At this provenance game, they are going to believe in their brains that they were ripped apart to shreds by ravenous animals. And they will have a heart attack and die, but their bodies won't be destroyed because it's all imaginary. So when the bodies are laid out, they have to disconnect these dead people from the cords to get them into a coffin or whatever. Or if they're going to an incinerator or whatever. So, you know, you could have a scene where maybe Ernst and Alex are being discharged and they're, you know, they're having their ranks stripped and they. They have one last request. Yeah, what's that? We just need. We would like to say goodbye to Jesse. Well, she's dead. Well, we would like to, you know, pay our last respects to her body. And so they go to the room where she's still plugged in and they're standing over and Ernst says something like, I'd like to be the one to take the cord out. They're like, yeah, whatever, go ahead. So he does. And that's the moment when she resurrects. And it's a nice thematic moment because she's the only one who sees reality clearly. So when she's disengaged from the phony world she lives, you know, while other people, once they leave the phony world, they can't live anymore. So I think you could do something interesting like that, which will. You want to kind of build to that scene. So you don't want it to be the very next scene. It could be, you know, as in front of a tribunal, you know, being like the scene we discussed where he's. They're determining whether or not he should. He and his team should be part of the threshing or not. Because if. If they lose as. Then they only have one team for the threshing. Right.

So I have a couple questions on this. So one is, every scene in the book so far is from Jesse's point of view, there's nothing. We don't see anything happening that she's not seen.

That's right.

So. So this will be. I've wondered, like, does this. What the next scene. She's not. I mean, she's dead. I mean, she could be in the room, I guess, but like. So, I mean, is it. I guess it's not a big deal that we'll have like one or two scenes where she's not.

Well, you could make it. You could make another choice. You know, you could. You could do something radical where you take up the voice of another character and have them describe the proceedings that happen afterwards. This, after this. This is the moment you could bring back 81 and say, you know, I came to the Capitol on Blank and I was there for. I was there to train the final members of the Threshing. And, you know, she could be the one who's reporting what's happening or.

What if it's her brother?

It could be her brother. Yeah, because he's.

He's in the middle of his own. All is lost if he just lost her.

That's right.

And I think she's dead too. But he could watch the tribunal because it's going to be in the digital world. Like, he could be watching everything that's going on.

He could be describing the death of his sister in the hopes that he can get that message to their parents. Could use that as a device.

Okay, I think that gives me enough ideas. I'll pick one that fits.

Yeah. And always remember, don't worry about, you know, oh, this is going to make the whole 45,000 words before not work. Because there are little. You know, there are narrative devices and tricks that you can use to go back and revise. You know, there's a. There's a novel I talk about all the time. That I edited years ago. That's Steve's second novel, Gates of Fire, Steve Pressfield. And Steve uses, you know, story within the story in that. As that structure where you have the sole survivor of the Battle of Thermopylae explaining the warrior ethos and Spartan way of life to King Xerxes, who has just destroyed and killed all 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. So he goes and he tells the entire story of his indoctrination into the Spartan world all the way through the climactic battle at the very end of the novel. Now, I don't know if Steve wrote a lot of that stuff before he put that narrator in, but it could be perfectly plausible that he wrote the entire novel and then said, you know, I need a device here that will make this make sense. So why don't I have the sole survivor of the Battle of Thermopylae pulled out of a pile of dead bodies, have him, you know, taken to the tent of King Xerxes, and have King Xerxes ask him a very pointed question. What kind of men were these Spartans? How the hell did they stand up for three days against hundreds of thousands of my best soldiers? And so the slave, the sole survivor, is given some wine and something to eat, and he goes, well, let me explain to you what the Spartan way of life is. And then he goes all the way back to his own life and how he became associated with the Spartans. You might be able to use that device later on. You don't know. But my point is that don't freak out if you have to sort of tweak it. I like the fact that she has reached a literal death at the end of the middle build, and I think you're going to figure out a way to solve that problem. But my only point is that don't get too discouraged or freaked out that now you can't have the same device that you've had for the first 45,000 words. There are ways around that, and there are narrative devices and tricks that the reader will accept and, in fact, really embrace. So I hope that helps.

Yeah, no, that's. That's good. So there's a. We got to figure out, like, everybody's got to make decisions about what to do next. Then she's going to come back to life. Then they got to make another decision, which is, basically, we're going to kick out this loser that lost and put her back in his place, because she's back now, and there's got to be some Kind of addressing of like, they all now know she's the special one, because if she can die but not actually die, they have a good chance of winning the threshing because she can do things that nobody else can do.

That's right. So they all believe in her, but she doesn't believe in herself. So she's got to have a tremendous amount of stress on her by the time she enters the threshing, because she doesn't understand what her special gift is to her. She never died. She just woke up and she was in the area. Right? So you can. You can even have her not know what the hell is going on. And maybe her brother or 80 one has to explain to her, well, here's the situation. You died and you came back to life. That's why people are treating you differently now. So our thinking is that you have a good chance of winning the threshing because you can die. She goes, well, I don't know that I can die. Well, you can.

Well, and there's still that. Like, there's this. I watched the Jessica Jones series, and she partners with Luke Cage, who, like, has, you know, his. He can't be hurt, right? His skin is impenetrable. And she was, like, asking him, like, have you tried this? Have you tried this? And finally, I forgot how he said it, but basically he's like, look, I don't want to find out what I can't do, you know, what I can't withstand. And so there's this level of, like, just because she came back once does not mean she'll come back again. And then, like, so by the time we reach the threshing, however I get there, we're going to have her brother. We're going to have 86, we're going to have Ernest and Alex, her AS and Craig and, like, all of these players moving into this thing at the same time. And I've got to figure out what the threshing is. And she's got to win it, but win it in a way where she burns down everything. Because that's my end is. My end is not that she wins the threshing. My end is that she unravels the society.

Oh, God.

Yeah, I see how I'm gonna pull that off.

Well, that's good. That's good. That's really good. If you had an answer for all that right now, it probably wouldn't be a very good book.

Okay?

That's the very difficult thing about writing is you can plan until you're blue in the face. But, you know, if you are so confident that you are perfect, perfectly nailing every moment, you probably aren't. You're probably telegraphing how things are going to end in such an obvious way that readers won't buy into it. And that was the problem with your first draft of your novel back a year ago, is that you had planned it so meticulously that it was obvious what was going to happen from page one. And now, since you've had to completely change everything all the time and you've written yourself into a really drastic hole, you have to. Your imagination has to really kick into overdrive to solve these problems. But if you can set up the problems, you can solve them. That's the thing that people don't understand, is that if you have the imagination to get yourself in such a massive, you know, plot hole that you can't figure out the solution. The truth is, is that you can figure out the solution, but you just don't know it yet. If you can plan the problem, you can plan the solution.

So should I worry about going back and fixing any of these scenes or should I just keep. I mean, I took notes on what you said to change or should I just keep pushing forward? Because it sounds like I'm. I got the story elements right. I just need to make them more interesting and exciting. So, yes, I would keep writing.

Keep writing. Yeah. And try and do, you know.

The post death, like trio of scenes afterwards and we'll see what turns up.

Okay. All right, I'll get to work.

Okay.

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