Nailing the End of Your Book

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. In this episode, Sean and I continue to work through the first few scenes of the ending payoff, trying to make sure that they work, that they hit all the right things, that they're focused.

On the right conflict.

And as we work through those, we come up with some really good insights into just overall how to make your ending payoff work. And especially if you're thinking that your book might turn into a series, how to set up the end of your book so that you can continue in the series. So we talked through a lot of that. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I sent you my third take on the first scenes of the ending payoff of my story. And the last talk we had, the last episode was really helpful because it's been just rolling in my head how important it is to understand what the conflict really is. So, you know, realizing that everybody wants Jesse alive is why I was having trouble coming up with any conflict. So I wrote these scenes and I had. I feel like you give me all this advice, and I take about 10% of it because I don't really know how to wrap my head around everything. So I wasn't. I didn't end up bringing in any past characters. So I'm curious if you think that was a mistake. I'm still thinking they could be brought in towards the end, and I have some ideas about that. But the other thing I did a little different was I'm. I'm still trying to hide that the brother is a bad guy and still trying to set up President Marcus as the true villain. So in the first scene, him and Marcus get into it, and, you know, Lila steps in and Marcus ends up agreeing to let him go. But the last request that Randy has is that they cremate Jesse's body. And so I thought it was a really natural ask for him because he says he wants his parents to have closure for one, at least one of their children. So he wants her body cremated and sent back to them immediately. And of course, later we'll find out it's because he was trying to kill her off before she woke up because now he's awake and that's what he wanted all along. And then there's a scene where they bring him back. They log him out for the first time in four years and brings him back. And then there's a scene where Jesse wakes up and it's just this kind of scene where, you know, this. This guy that's in charge of, you know, cremating her body, basically she wakes up while he's trying to cremate her and he gets her out.

So.

So anyway, what are your thoughts?

Well, first of all, this is a really nice step forward from the last batch of scenes. And it reminds me of that sort of business philosophy. Maybe it's just general philosophy called Occam's Razor, which is essentially using the principle of doing the easiest, simplest choice to fix a problem. So, you know, Tim Ferriss is a big Occam's Razor kind of guy and he wrote like the Four Hour Workweek and the Four Hour Body and the Four Hour Diet all, you know, come out of that principle of finding the least amount of work necessary to get the most possible gain. And I think these scenes are a really nice example of Occam's Razor because what you've done is the scene where the scene I liked a lot of was when they go and get Randy out of his, you know, electronic prison because, you know, the previous scene where he's in the glass walls and it's sort of this hyper reality thing where they're having an argument and Randy's very strong and, you know, he doesn't put up with any crap that is really, you know, standard issue conflict scene. And I'm not saying it's. It doesn't work because it works. But when you juxtapose that with the reality of who Randy and what Randy has become, it really gives the reader sympathy for Randy at a level that they didn't have before. So when Lila and Marcus go to go to his literal chamber instead of his virtual chamber, the guy's a mess. You know, he's sort of suspended by this organic machine that's got plugs into him. He's withered away. His body is operating at probably the least physical strength possible. He's lost his hair, his skin is opaque. Great scene because that provides a very visual moment. The reader can't help but build that that visual in their mind in a much more interesting way than the glass walled virtual chamber. So I think that scene really, really worked. And then having him at the end of the previous scene saying, you Know, at least cremate my sister. That was consistent too. And it's. It makes sense that he would want his sister to have her last rites and to be sent her body and ashes. Her ashes be sent to his family. So that absolutely works. Again, the scene where you go back to the fallout in the severing room reads much stronger now with those other scenes, you know, linking them.

Right. Because I left that one pretty much the same, except for the very end.

Yeah. And, you know, one thing that did occur to me that. And I think it's okay that you didn't, you know, do this wild, crazy, let's steal the body and get it before it goes to the incinerator. Because really, this is a transitional moment. It's right before the end of the end to make it high octane action scene, which, you know, I was talking about doing earlier, you know, the last conversation we had.

It's much better at a. At a softer level, introducing sort of, you know, this guy who sort of is playing the. What do they call them in India? The people who. The untouchables, I think they call them the untouchable. Cast in India are the people who take care of cremation and death rites. And this guy is sort of the untouchable within this culture and society. And him, you know, coming to realize that this young girl is actually alive. It works. So I don't really want to be tinkering with it now.

You just.

You just really drew out the works.

Yeah. Yeah. See, without having the full sort of draft in front of me, I can't really evaluate where it falls on the. The hyper action spectrum. Right. I can't evaluate the scene yet to see if it's appropriate because the great. You know, we were talking about the Silence of the Lambs in the last conversation and Thomas Harris's choice to make the transitional moment from the end of the line, the. Oh, gosh, I'm sorry, my brain's a little foggy today. You know, the lowest possible point. What do we call the all is lost moment? So when Harris made the choice to transition from the all is lost moment for Starling into the ending payoff, where Starling actually takes control of the investigation in her own hands and travels independently to Ohio to find Buffalo Bill. He could have made that high octane action story, but instead he had set up this moment where Starling has to visit Crawford at a funeral home. Crawford's wife has finally died and he's paying, he's bereaved. And so it really makes it work. Because it's a very soft, non active, no action scene where two people have a conversation, one needs the help of the other and the other one is so bereaved that he can barely stand up. So I like the fact that you are sort of mirroring that sensibility here by having the critical moment when Jesse wakes up be less dramatic than what the reader would anticipate.

Yeah. Because we talked some about that of, like, trying to come up with a unique way to wake somebody up was a little weird. And then on top of that, it's hard to. Well, we kept coming back to this place of, like, everybody wants her to be alive except for Randy.

Right.

And so we needed so to make it a dramatic thing. Seemed a little forced. That was why it felt forced, was because I was making this thing dramatic that wouldn't be. That has no conflict. So that's why I tried to. So when we kind of landed on like, let's. Let's just have her wake up. And we were talking about maybe like, Randy was trying to get rid of her body, but I'm like, that still felt like, yep, too much. And I was like, I think I can still do this. Where you're still questioning whether Randy's a good or bad guy. Because I felt like him just requesting his sister be taken care of is a very brotherly thing. And so I'm trying to string it along as much as I can and keep pointing to Marcus, which is why I wrote the scene and put Randy in such bad shape. And I still had Marcus abusing him so that everybody will hate Marcus and not look at the brother, you know, as the bad guy.

I really think it was a really inspired choice. And the critical moment in the ending payoff, you know, threshing scene, or just prior to it, is Jesse realizing that her brother is the bad guy. And the thing that you need to set up is a revelation scene where a character reveals to Jesse information that doesn't really seem all that dramatic but actually is loaded with meaning to Jesse. And so I envision right prior to her going into the chamber to thresh.

That Lila or somebody says to her, oh, well, thank God, Randy. Randy's efforts to have you cremated, you know, didn't go through, you know, like, you know, so that we, the reader, know that Randy was the one who pushed her to the crematorium. She doesn't know that. She thinks that she was just a dead body that they put into the crematorium. And she doesn't know that her brother directed people to get her to that crematorium immediately. And so what that's going to do for her is immediately tell her that Randy wants her dead, because Randy is the only person who knows that she can revive from death, from the virtual death. Because now I think you cut the moment and the scene. But you could use this sort of as a prologue to the entire novel where as their children, you know, they are playing or whatever, and she ends up dying in this virtual world. And Randy picks her up and starts running.

Because he's panicking, and then she revives. So Randy knows that she's capable of revival when nobody else does. Jesse knows that the only two people who know that are Jesse and Randy. So when she hears that Randy tried to have her cremated immediately after she died in the virtual world, she knows, holy cow, my brother is the bad guy. So this is a great setup for a revelatory turning point in a future scene that does not seem like a big deal to the reader until. So, again, so then acting in the threshing, Jesse can do dramatic things that circumvent Randy's agenda.

And that's where I feel like I wanted to pull in. Like that weird mentor guy from earlier. Yeah. Perhaps her friends, because she'll need people that aren't connected to the Capitol to help her with whatever she does in the threshing. Right. So I thought I would save that for the moment. For that. For those moments.

That's great, because then. Because the little note that you put in the rock at the very beginning hook of this story, you can paint. And you didn't know what you were going to do with that note when we were working through all this stuff. Now you can go back and say, oh, I left that Easter egg, and now I can do something with that and. And make it a pivotal moment in the threshing. And only Jesse and her rats are privy to what was on that note. And the other guy, who's the strange biblical speaking guy, he's privy, too, because he's sort of the spiritual leader of the rats. Correct.

Yeah, that was the plan.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think, you know, we can do this. We can go through all this stuff when we actually edit the book, but you've got. These scenes are. Are enough to move you forward into, you know, a deeper moment of the middle build.

The ending payoff, you mean?

Yeah, the ending. Sorry.

Okay.

I told you my head's foggy today.

No, that's fine. I just want to make sure. I'm like, okay, are we back talking about the middle build or I need to fix something.

Like.

I'm ready. I can go back. I can do it.

I think it's really. This is. It's flowing now. How do you feel about it? Do you feel that it's flowing in a better way than it had been in the previous two drafts?

So.

Okay.

You know those lateral thinking games where, like, they offer a problem and you kind of have to, like, be able to think sideways to find the solution? You know what I'm talking about?

Not really.

Okay, well, they're these, like. They're like word games or, like, puzzles, and you always have to be able to think kind of outside of your first reaction to something. I'm horrible at those games, right? And, like, my wife Candice is just awesome at those games. Like, she can do. It takes me like a half an hour to do an easy sudoku puzzle and she can get it done in like, three minutes. So all of that to say, I tend to struggle with breaking outside of whatever my first solution is. So as we've kind of ripped it apart, I don't know, like, it felt. So the second. The first batch felt good that we threw out for the ending payoff. The second batch, like we said in the last episode, felt forced. And this did feel much easier. Like, even though I was breaking outside of what we were talking about, it felt like, okay, I think this is the right way to do this. I enjoyed writing the scene of Randy coming out of the machine, you know, and I did like, I know that last scene of Jesse waking up. We'll probably have to rework some way, but I'm like, you know, I kind of used this setup in a previous scene we threw out, so I'm just going to keep this and we can do it later. So it felt good, you know, I. But my problem is I'm still just. So I have to constantly push out of my head what the threshing is going to be. Right. You know, I was. I was talking to Candace about it too, and I'm just like, I just. I feel I like, well, and I was. I was talking to a guy that used to work for Seth Godin, and he said, after particular project Seth worked on, I forgot which one. That Seth was convinced he would never do anything interesting again, you know, which, like, from the outside looking at everything that he does, that's crazy, you know, but it's like, I really, like, I have that feeling of like, well, that idea for that game that on the last severing, that was my last good idea, and I used it up, you know, so, so I feel good about it. And I felt like it got us past the point where, because I did feel like the scene I was so focused on trying to make her waking up interesting, right when that wasn't the, you know, in the last episode when we talked through what was really going on, it's like, oh, well, that's really not. The point of this is to wake her up. The point of this is to set up this other conflict. And so once I kind of got off this focus of like trying to come up with some fast paced or super interesting way to wake her up, it did come a lot easier. And that's when I thought, you know, when I decided to go ahead and wake him up, I got excited because I'm like, oh, that scene can be kind of really vivid, both in him being, you know, just emancipated. And Marcus still, you know, he's, he's so brutal to him because he's so afraid of him. And so that's what I'm trying to set up is like even this guy that like can't even hold his head up. He's like, he's got like six guards around him. He's still just like, you know, won't let anybody near him. He still is just tormenting him because he's just terrified of what this guy can do. And then, you know, hopefully I can figure out a way to pay that off of like, yes, everybody should be terrified of this guy. So.

Well, let's, let's think about this for a little bit because what I mean is the actual threshing, what you want to accomplish by the big epic threshing scene at the very end of the novel. From the start, you've explained to me that you want to make this at least a trilogy of novels. So couple of things occur to me and when we were talking about at the very beginning of this process too, of this project was, you know, having things that we take for granted end up being very. It's like the evolution of the thriller is the distance between evil and the victim. So the first thrillers, you know, which were really begun in the 60s and 50s and probably film noir were, and pulp fiction had thriller elements where the hero becomes the victim. So there's a long tradition of it. But thrillers have evolved from the evil getting closer and closer and closer to the protagonist. So it becomes a level of paranoia, who can I trust? And you know, when can I trust them? So the earlier thrillers were these outside forces that were threatening to the protagonist. So, for example, like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, North by Northwest, the lead character is sort of this hotshot advertising executive. In the case of mistaken identity, he is taken out of the Plaza Hotel because they believe he's somebody else. And it's this sort of very large conspiracy that he inadvertently stumbled into. So he becomes the victim. But it's a case of mistaken identity. It's not all that personal. They don't hate advertising. You know, the bad guys, played by James Mason, they just. They want to get rid of this guy because he would. He's a. He's an obstacle for their ultimate object of desire. So the level of evil in those first sort of generation of thrillers was like the Nazis or, you know, like the Indiana Jones stuff. You have. The Nazis and a rival archaeologist are out to get Indiana Jones. Now, as our world became more and more difficult to navigate and things became less and less secure, a lot of thrillers started to get closer and closer to home. And the one that. Top of my head from the 1980s, I think it was, was the Hand that Rocks the Cradle, right? That was the thriller where your nanny you. Is the level of evil, and she is there to take over your life, and she is threatening. And Rosemary's Baby, which was a horror thriller, that's. Oh, boy. That's when your husband is in a pact with the devil and he's using you and allowing the devil to rape you to have the devil spawn. That was 1968, 1969, based on an Ira Levin novel. Roman Polanski directed that. He also directed Chinatown. He really, you know, was. That's a dark figure. And Polanski is a very controversial figure, too. Anyway, so what I'm saying is that. So when we were discussing this earlier on, one of the things we were talking about is that Jesse. The threats from Jesse are really close to her. So her brother being this evil force behind, you know, the one behind all the horrific things that she's already gone through is a great payoff because it's in keeping with our paranoia in our. In our society. If we can't trust our own family, it's every man for himself. And what do you do when you're all alone in the universe and you're exiled from your own nuclear family? That is a very intriguing notion to explore, especially in a series of novels about, you know, adolescents reaching maturity. So the other thing that we talked about was perhaps, you know, using not just the brother, but even make it even worse by having the mother emerge later on as being in League with the brother. Because is there anything worse than your mother betraying you? I don't know. I don't think there is. Because your mother gave you life. She supported you when you were helpless. She, you know, no matter how nice your mom is, she did those things for you. So to lose the love of your mother and in fact have your mother loathe you to the degree that she wants you extinguished from the planet is a pretty intense notion. I'm not saying that you would bring that in in this novel, but the reason why I'm talking about this is to think of the global arc of this three novel trilogy and see, you know, this threshing. This threshing scene isn't just the climax of book one. It's the thing that's going to propel people to want to read book two. Right? It's almost. Yeah, so it's almost. It's like those great television series like you were talking about 24, which I'm not familiar, I haven't watched it. I really should. But you kept saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe they can't get any higher. They can't do anything worse than this. And then they would top themselves. So the threshing scene is going to serve as almost this inciting incident to get book two off the ground. The fallout from the threshing is going to generate the inciting incident of book two. So Randy, I love the concept of getting Randy back in his physical body because now we can look to some of the master storytellers and say, and. And think, well, how did they solve this problem? And one of the things that Thomas Harris did in the Silence of Limbs was, guess what he did? And he had Hannibal Lecter escape in Red Dragon, the first.

That was at the end, right?

No, it's about midpoint. He.

Not midpoint when he cuts the face off the guy. I've only seen the movie, but you say the movie's pretty close.

It is. It's. They just shot the book. It was a brilliant directing job because I think it was Jonathan Demme who directed it. He just shot the book. He didn't.

He was like, you know what?

I'm not going to do any better than Thomas Harris. I'm just going to shoot the book scene by scene. He cut some stuff, but it's all very consistent. That's why, you know, won the Academy Award, etc. Etc. And Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins won Academy Awards that year too. But the thing is, is that he had Lecter escape Knowing Lecter was the reason why people were reading the book.

Really.

I say this all the time, and everybody says, oh, yeah, I couldn't agree more. But it's the level of evil that generates deep, deep connection and interest. It's very exciting when you create a figure of such evil that you can't. You know, a reader can't turn away from the experience. So after Hannibal Lecter got out, then it became like, oh, my gosh, what's Lecter gonna do? Is he gonna come in and get Clarice Starling? So Harris had set himself up, and he was. He's a famous guy for writing novels based upon his financial situation.

It doesn't mean that he's a hack. It just meant that he works so hard on his craft that he sort of procrastinates until he's at. He's probably got maybe, you know, 11 months left of cash, and then he'll write the next one, and then he'll get his next advance. So he set himself up so that he knew he would be able to do sequels after the Silence Limbs. And he did. He did Hannibal, and he did a bunch of other ones. But anyway, my point is, if you look at this big ending payoff and understand that it's not just the explosive, amazing ending of this one novel, but it's the starting off point, like the Guardians of the Galaxy. I've talked about that before. At the end of the original Guardians of the Galaxy was an amazing, terrific ending payoff scene that completely consistent with all the story that had come before it. But it also served as the moment when the Guardians of the Galaxy became a unit. They literally became a unit to fight.

They all hold hands and, like, beat that thing or whatever.

Yeah. So now we're at the end of that movie, we're like, oh, this is gonna be great. I can't wait for Guardians of the Galaxy 2. And that's about to come out, and I'm sure it's going to do an incredible box office and maybe the biggest of all time. Who knows? But the point is that the writers who wrote Guardians of the Galaxy knew, hey, guys, our job is not to just do a great final ending, but to set up a new story. Whether or not this movie ever does well enough to do the sequel, at least we have to plant the seeds to be able to move it. So if you combine the notion that the ending payoff of this novel not only has to be thrilling and exciting and innovative, but has to set up the second one, then you can actually say to yourself. Well, what do I want to do? Do I want Randy to survive and escape and have Randy be the central evil? Because Marcus has served as the central evil for most of this novel. So the reader is going to see Marcus as the bad guy twitching his mustache when the big reveal at the end of the novel is, actually, it wasn't Marcus, it was Randy behind all of this horrible stuff that happens to Jesse. So do you want him to escape, and how is he going to do it? Is Jesse going to aid him inadvertently? Is Marcus going to aid him inadvertently? What's it gonna be?

So I've been thinking about this. So my overall plan from the beginning has been. I've referenced a couple times Brandon Sanderson's Theory series, the Mistborn Trilogy, and then he's written some independent novels in the same world, but there was an original trilogy. And at the end of the first book, they win, but by winning, they release a greater evil.

Right?

And that's the evil that they fight for the next two books to find, you know, that they. For the other two books in the trilogy. So my overall plan has been that Jesse dismantles the grid in some way where you. I. What I want is right? So we talk about what is the decisions. You can't go back on irreversible decisions or whatever. So what I want is for her to do something to the grid that affects basically the entire world. They can't go back and just, like, turn the grid back on, but nobody has a roadmap of what the next thing is going to look at. And it's going to create this giant vacuum because there's no power anymore. So then the struggle over the next two books will be filling that power vacuum that was created. So the plan is to. When Jesse does this, the brother ended. Like, I haven't thought through all of this, but I want Jesse to realize the brother's the bad guy and try to stop him. But by the time she realizes it or something like that, it's too late to, like, really stop what she started. And so he escapes and killing Marcus in the process. Because I feel like Marcus, he needs to die because he was the setup villain anyway. And basically he escapes, and he's now trying to take over the world, basically. And the fight moving forward will be between Jesse and him. So I think that can work.

It can be an ironic situation where she wins by destroying the grid. When she destroys the grid system, then it enables Randy to literally be free. And you could have a moment where, yeah, Randy kind of Says to her, jeez, I thought you were just gonna win the threshing and then I could take power. I didn't know you were gonna blow the whole thing up. That's even better. You know, now I can not only take power of this faction, I can, you know, I've got supporters all over the grid. I've been working on this for X4 years. You know, it's sort of like a marketing launch. The guys got, you know, followers that he's been working on for four years. And that was what was going to secure his, his power in the faction. Now that there aren't any more factions, the world is in disarray, it's chaotic. Jesse, of course, frees so many people that they're, you know, very excited about the fact of being free.

Well, are they? Because I set up in the beginning hook that they completely freaked out when they get kicked out of the grid.

Well, the numbered. The numbered.

Oh, the numbered. Yeah. Okay.

Those are her people.

Yeah. Cuz I figured the numbered will become basically her army.

Yeah, forward. Yeah. And though they'll suppress, you know, they'll.

Figure out something because I've set it up where they're basically all of the ones that are really good at the grid that couldn't be controlled.

Right, exactly.

And yeah, so my thinking is that she will do something to basically unzip the entire thing, which is what Randy wanted was what Randy was trying to do all along. But she thought she was stopping him.

Right.

And so then he'll escape and she'll be left kind of holding the bag because we won't know what Randy's up to for a while. And that will. That's kind of the end I'm looking at. So then it'll be her, Lila, who will be devastated because she'll realize she was wrong the whole time as well her mentor figure the rats and the numbered are kind of just left standing in the burnt out ruins trying to figure out what to do next. Because I still haven't really gone into who is running the threshing because that's the. Those are the people that will really show up big time in the second book.

Okay. I mean, you generally know what you have to do. You know the stages and now just take a step back. You have a lot of opportunity to do some fun stuff before the climactic scene. The other thing to think about is how did you know Suzanne Collins figure out how to do that great ending of the first Hunger Games? She was faced with the same problem. How do I make this interesting. And the way she figured it out was Katniss, and I forget the name of the guy that she's with. They figure out that their celebrity is more important than is so strong that if they both died, it would really destroy, you know, the. The power base. Because that's the way the power base kept control, was giving celebrities to the population, you know, in these Hunger Games. So when they figured out, oh, we're the last two standing, one of us has to die. What if we both die? If we both die, then, you know, the power structure is really not going to be able to rule anymore. We're going to have to sacrifice our lives for this, but it's going to help everybody else. So that is a heroic. That is the heroic tradition where the hero sacrifices themselves for the good of the larger, you know, group. So when Jesse is doing this threshing thing, there has to be that. That sort of moment where she has to literally make the choice, okay, it's me or everybody. I'm going to sacrifice myself. So that's another thing that it's a convention of the thriller. And the heroic tradition is to have your hero sacrifice for the larger good. And that sacrifice that she decides to make could be the thing that dismantles the grid inadvertently.

You know, I mean, but the sacrifice can't be her life, because we've already done that. It has to be her family, right?

No, she can't.

Well, because the whole thing has been. She wants to. You know, to me, the underlying theme of this, we originally, I feel like it's morphed into. And I don't know, I actually talked a little bit about this in the intro podcast a couple episodes ago of realizing. During that episode when we were talking, I realized that one of the underlying things of this is that family isn't your family. It's the people that are actually going to be there for you when you need them most. So your family isn't blood. Your family is these other people that you can actually count on. And we've touched on that. And so to me, the final decision. But all through the book, she just wants to go home. She just wants her brother. She knew her brother, you know, like all this stuff. So to me, the final self sacrifice will be giving up the dream of her family.

Yes, that. That's the. That's the subconscious. She's sort of. Once she discovers that Randy is the one who tried to kill her, that's the moment when she will make that subconscious choice. Because when you discover that everything that you believed is a falsehood. The first reaction is to just shut down completely. It's to just crawl in a hole and, and try and, you know, reboot yourself, if you would, if you will. The subconscious sacrifice is, yes, she's going to let go of that dream, but you need an external believable. Like in Guardians of the Galaxy, the lead character, Chris Pratt, sacrifices himself. He knows if he, if he grabs open that thing, he's gonna die. And so he makes that deal, alright, I'll die and everybody else can be free. So he grabs the thing and the thing that makes it work is that the other Guardians of the Galaxy jump on his back and they hold hands and they absorb that thing together. And that's what saves his life, because the other people care too. So you can see why I think that's a really good movie because it just doesn't take one hero. It takes a village of heroes in order to change the world. So that is the underlying message of the thriller, by the way, which we've talked about a lot before. But it's worth repeating. The reason why we love thrillers is because they reaffirm.

A value that we as human beings really need to have reasserted, that heroes, individuals who make difficult choices and sacrifice their own good for other people, are valuable members of society. And thrillers reinforce that meaningful message to everyone. So all the fun and the excitement of watching or reading or whatever the movies and the books, and that, that is absolutely true because, I mean, we get that excitement because it reinforces a deep truth that we all hold so fundamentally dear. This is why thrillers that end negatively, where the hero loses, never become commercially successful, because we cannot accept as human that reality. So we are reinforcing a global, universal human value in the heroic tradition of the person who sacrifices his own or her own personal stuff for the betterment of society. This is what people used to do to just. Politicians used to go into what they called public service. Not personal service, public service. They, you know, they, they understood that they were never going to get rich, but they could help people by doing public service. So in our world today, when all that stuff is getting more and more blurred and it doesn't seem to be public service anymore, it seems to be personal service. This is why the thriller is so important, because if we can write really dramatic and wonderful thriller stories, maybe it can change people's attitudes and remind them of how important it is to put your own personal crap aside for the betterment of other people. Because, you know, that's what we try and teach our children and the stories that we tell in these thrillers. So a lot of people say, oh, Tim's book is cute. It's gonna be great. And I'm like, it's an important contribution to the oeuvre of Thriller Dome. And so it's important to me that people do take this craft very seriously and do everything they can to be innovative and surprising so that people will engage with these stories. And the final payoff, when the hero sacrifices, truly sacrifices their lives or their exile or whatever, you know, she can absolutely sacrifice her life. She knows she has a gift. What you could build into the threshing is, hey, just so you know, Jesse, you know her. Randy can tell her this. You know, that little trick you and I know you have? It ain't gonna fly here. This is like, you know. You know how I won the threshing? I gave up my ability to do what you do, Something like that.

Well, I was wondering. I was starting to think, what if during the threshing, I jump back and forth between two parallel action stories? One is what's going on in the threshing with Jesse, and the other is what's going on in the real world and in real world. So we know. I feel like coming up with, like, okay, well, she can come back anytime. Except for this time is a little like, yeah, what if. So what I've. What I have established is if something horrific happens to her body, she's not coming back.

Right. Right.

So what if. So Jesse realizes when she's going in the threshing or near the beginning of the threshing, that her brother's full of shit. And. But, I mean, we don't tell the reader yet, but no, when she realizes that, right? So she gets to the point in the threshing where she's doing the thing her brother told her she needed to do, and she starts not doing it, she starts doing something else. And when he sees that, he starts attacking her real body because he knows if he can shut down her real body, it'll stop her in the threshing, and she can't come back. And so then it becomes as trying to help her finish her work in the. Because her body shutting. She's shutting down into threshing because her body's shutting down. And then it becomes like Ernst and Alex and whoever else trying to stop the brother from hurting Jesse in the real world. And she has a moment where she could. She could stop it all by just doing what her brother asked, but she's just Keeps going. Knowing that works. Does that work?

That works very well. And you could have Randy sort of take over her medications, you know, have her be. Have him, you know, take. Take on the role of a medic. Like, Alex thinks that he's the medic, but Randy's rigged it so that, you know, he's got access and he doesn't. Something like that. But that works where. Where Randy is going to put her into cardiac arrest and, you know, really make. Because at this point, it's so important to Randy to escape that he'll sacrifice his sister in order to do it. He's got a. And the other. I'm not trying to pile too much on you right now, but the other thing that's necessary, which is we haven't had a speech in praise of the villain yet. So we need to have Lila. Yeah. Or somebody tell the story of how powerful Randy is.

Well, I thought the villain did the speech in praise of the villain.

He can. Or other people can. For example, in Silence of the Lambs, Crawford and Hannibal Lecter serve as the chorus explaining how powerful Buffalo Bill is. You know, all of the clues in Silence of the Lambs are just. They can't figure it out. What's with the moth in this throat? Why is there no pattern in the death of the bodies? These girls have nothing in common. They're found in rivers. So the whole speech and praise of the villain is really all about the investigative materials that explain just how smart Buffalo Bill is. So Buffalo Bill never, you know, says, hey, Clarice Starling, you're. Now you're in my chamber. And now I'm gonna tell you how smart I am. So Thomas Harris knew he had to praise the villain. And the way he did that was using. I mean, the whole. The whole what if Is based upon praising the villain. Right. Because Thomas Harris said, hey, there's this really. You know, he was a. He was an AP reporter for years before he became a novelist. And he heard about the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, which was run by John Douglas, and he understood that what they were trying to do was get to think like the most diabolical evil forces who have ever walked the earth. So they interview these guys, these serial killers, after they've been imprisoned and try and, you know, re. Engineer their thought processes so that they would be able to find and catch the future serial killers in a better way. And it does. It did work for a while. And so Silence of the Lambs uses that idea that these serial killers are so sociopathic and so good at what they do, that they cover their tracks in a way that a normal person who isn't a sociopath, psychopath, that's a human being who has no ability to be sympathetic or empathetic for another person. So they view the world in terms of works. Doesn't work like, is this good for me or not? It's almost like a mixture of Ayn Randian philosophy with Nietzsche, where you've got these people who are incapable of empathy for anybody else, and as long as they get what they want, they're happy. So if they get enjoyment from torturing people, then that's what's good for the world and that's what they'll do. So sociopathology is a real thing. So anyway, so Thomas Harris knew about all this stuff, and he said, oh, all I have to do is explain the workings of this behavioral unit, put all the red herrings and clues in there, and by osmosis, I will satisfy the speech and praise and the villain. And the other thing is, he does it literally, too. He hands Starling a folder that has all of this information on a plane ride from Quantico to West Virginia to find, you know, they find the latest, you know, victim. And so the way Harris handled it was by using the crime subplot to get all that information out there. Now, you, on the other hand, do not have a crime subplot. You've got pure action story, which is driven by hero's journey principles, where you have your hero leave the ordinary world, go to an extraordinary world, face multiple challenges, you know, be victorious in those challenges. And just when she thinks that she's got the whole thing figured out, oh, she hits rock bottom. And then the ending payoff is she's got to have one final major challenge after her resurrection in order to solidify, you know, what she understands and knows and her gift. So the threshing is that final incredible moment when she comes to realization of who she is, what her world is like. Her worldview changes. And at the end, she goes back to the ordinary world with her gift intact, and she shares her gift with the community. Now, you've got that set up. You've got her. She's going to return to the ordinary world. She's going to free the numbered. The numbered are going to join her. She's got Lila as her sort of vice president, and then she's got her spiritual friends who are the rats, and the her Obi Wan Kenobi mentor figure who will continue into the next novel. So the speech and praise of the villain is one thing that you haven't ticked off of the Thriller list. And you could have other people do it, or you could have Randy do it. You could have Randy almost enter into the fictional, the false reality and have a conversation with Jesse. Or you could have Lila, or you could have him do it in the training sessions, right? They've got four weeks before the actual threshing. And in these four weeks, Randy has secured his release so he can teach these guys how to win. So in these moments of teaching, he can explain his worldview to these three teams in a way that praises his very deep understanding of the world. And he can actually explain how he won the last one. Or you could have Lila explain that. So you do. This is a great thing because now, you know, oh, one of my scenes, I can tick off the speech in praise of the villain requirement and use that as a way to, you know, put velocity in the actual scene itself. So, you know, there's going to be a moment where Randy stops and goes, let me explain something to you people. Do you think it's like a great coach who will stop practice and I'll go, whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody stop. Let me explain something to you about the Russian faction. They are this, they are that, they are this. And then you can set up who these opponents are going to face because we don't even really know who these people are, right? So you can set that stuff up and then he can say, my experience, this is the way the world works, right? And he can explain his worldview. We've got sheep and we've got herders. We've got the people who herd the sheep in order to, you know, save the world. And so he can do some kind of great speech that's fun and interesting and entertaining, but underneath it explains why he's doing what he's doing and why it's so important to him. He obviously believes in what. He believes so strongly that he's willing to kill his sister in order to make it happen. So, you know, there's lots of great stuff here that can really, you know, you can really play with and deliver in this ending payoff. All, all of the work that you've done is setting up a really interesting, fun opportunity to deliver a really kick ass scene. And it might be, it'll probably be a series of scenes because I like the idea of going back and forth between the reality reality and the virtual world. And eventually she is going to smash the machine and make everything reality again. And that is a great ending because facing Reality is what we all need to do.

Okay, so the next sequence I need to write is basically the in between. Between her waking up and the threshing starting.

Yeah. So this is like the super duper intense training session. It's like the moment in the Godfather where they bring Mike down into the basement. Michael. And they teach him how to fire a gun. They go, mike, this is what you got to do when you kill Sollozzo. You got to have the gun. You make it real loud. And they take it. I think it's Clemenza, right? He takes him in the basement and he teaches him how to shoot close range with the most effect, to scare everybody in the restaurant so that nobody challenges him. And also to make sure that he gets them right between the eyes. So Michael, before, you know, when he volunteers to kill Sterling Hayden, who plays the detective, the police officer. I forget the name of the bad guy. Sollozzo. Michael's just an innocent. And he's like, you know what? They tried to kill my father. I'm gonna kill them. And so that. So Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, they go, we gotta have a scene where, you know, one of one of the really great killers teaches Michael how to kill. And so they take him in the basement and they give him a gun, and they show him how to aim the gun. And it's so. It's such a wonderful scene because at the end of it, Clemenza looks at him because he's not sure he's gonna survive because this guy's just a green kid. You know, who knows? Maybe the. The cops will kill him. And he looks at me, goes, michael, you know, we was all real proud of you, what you did in World War II, which was a brilliant, brilliant idea because it reminded the viewer that Michael Corleone had fought in World War II to beat down fascism, to beat down tyranny. And what is organized crime but tyranny? So he's completely shifting his worldview. Michael Corleone didn't believe in the family business, and now he is the family business. And this is the moment. If he kills Sollozzo and it's over for him, his life is set in stone. The die has been cast. And this happens in the first. This is the end of the beginning hook of the Godfather. Once Michael shoots Sollozzo and the detective, it's all over for him. He now subscribes to the life of the family. The family is now the most important. He gave up his future in order to get revenge for the people who Shot his father, played by Brando. And there's this wonderful moment when they finally bring Brando home, and he whispers to Tom Hayden, where's Michael? He's like, he's the one who killed. Who killed Solo. And then Brando makes them all leave the room because that's the last thing Brando wanted. He wanted Michael to get out of the family. And it's just so brilliant. So anyway, I forgot my point. Other than, oh, have that scene where you have the old grizzled veteran played by Randy and Lila tell these young punks what they're gonna face. Hey, look, you know, you've been through a lot of training. You've been through three severings. You guys all have the mental capacity and the physical capacity to perform. Now, what's the thing that's gonna throw you through a loop in this threshing? Well, here's. Here's the thing. You have to kill all. We need one. One man has to be standing, and it has to be our guy. So, you know, the thing you're going to face is this. And then Randy tells them, in my situation, the way I came out of this, you know what? When I was in your place, I didn't have anybody who won a threshing. I did win a thresher, and my reward was four years in solitary confinement. So what I'm saying to you is, you better win this, because who knows what's gonna happen if you don't? Something like that. But you can have that great, great, you know, Salazo or the great Clemenza, Michael Corleone scene with Jesse as and the other guy. And you use Lila. Lila and Randy can play off one another. They can play good cop, bad cop, whatever. It's good.

Okay? And so I need to do. I need to get that in that training scene. Is there any other thing, like. Because I'm getting from. So I'll need to have some kind of scene that's the fallout from Jesse waking up. Or do I just skip that whole thing?

Just skip it. Skip it for now. Because I think the way you've handled her waking up now is gonna make the reader go, you know what? Tim Grohl did me a solid.

He didn't make me read 4,000 words of this girl slowly coming to life again. He got her to wake up, and now we get to go into the good stuff.

All right?

I mean, think about. If you're the reader, you're like, yeah, you know, she's gonna wake up because she's gonna have to fight the dragon in the ending. Payoff. And if she doesn't wake up, then your books forget it. Nobody's gonna buy it because they'll be so angry that you killed off your protagonist at the end of the middle build that they'll throw the book across the room so they know she's gonna wake up. If you drag on the drama of her waking up, they're gonna be enough already. Just get her to wake up so that we can get the action scene.

And so you would say the same thing about, like, you know, we all know that everybody's gonna lose their shit when she wakes up, so we don't need to see all that. We just need to get into what happens next that pushes it forward. Right.

Let's let the reader fill in all that. How everybody lost their shit. Or let some filmmaker who adapts this into a movie figure that out. Right?

Yeah.

And.

Well, it was funny, too, because I tried to. Even in the scene where Ran, where they bring Randy out to put as little, like, description as possible. And even some of the stuff you said, I did not write. Like, you filled it in with your own stuff. Like, I forgot what you said, but I'm like, I didn't write that. And, you know, so I guess that's a good sign. So I'll work on the scenes between.

Just. Why don't you just, like, really focus and just do the scene. We just talked about the Michael Corleone, Clemenza scene with Randy and Lila and the. And the three. Three schmucks who have to go into the threshing. What are they. What are they going to say to them? That's going to be the most helpful. Helpful to them. You know, they're going to explain. You could have it almost like a Steve Jobs kind of speech. Okay, here's the situation we've got. You got to fight three factions. You've got the Russians, you've got the blahs and the blah. And here's what the Russians specialize in, and here's what the blah specialize in. And this is what. And as you can see, it's virtually impossible for you to win.

Yeah. Is this where he can, like, he can reveal how he won?

That would be great, because you've planted that seed so many times that if the way he won is spectacular, it's. It'll be great. And it could also reveal about how ruthless he is and how dangerous he is and why Marcus put him behind bars for four years. Like, this isn't a guy you want walking around in the community.

All right?

I mean, he has his uses. It's like that scene in A Few Good Men where they have the Marine colonel on the stand, and they're like, how could you allow these Marines to harass one another? And he's like, look, you want us to defend the country. You want the toughest sons of bitches that we can make right? So if one of them dies in a training accident, they die in a training accident. You need me to take care of this. So don't sit there and tell me that I'm not living up to the letter of the law when you put me in charge of defending the law. It's a great scene. You know, I. I'm not as dramatic as Jack Nicholson, but that was the point. That's what Randy is. Randy is the guy you want behind you or in front of you when you have to go into a bar and face 10 guys, because Randy is not gonna quit until he kills everybody. And so, yeah, you want to have Randy available, but you don't want Randy to come over to the house for dinner because he might freak out and kill everybody. So that's the kind of guy Randy kind of is. And we don't need to know why he is that way right now. You can explore that in other books, but just establishing his ruthlessness, his intelligence, and his. He's not. He's not a romantic person. He doesn't care. He wants to win. He wants to feel. Figure out the best way to get what he wants as quickly as possible. He's a sociopath, and sociopaths are wonderfully charming.

Okay, yeah, so I'll work on that, because I've had a general idea of how to set it up for a while, which is they want you to think you're supposed to kill the other people, but that's not how I want. I won in this other secret way.

Right, that I had them kill themselves.

Because. Well, I wanted some way that to do it, though, he had to stab his two other coders in the back.

Yeah.

He could have, because the speech.

In praise of the villain is, if it wasn't for me, the faction would have fell apart years ago. And this guy you got running it is a complete idiot, and I have to run it. And so I'm doing everything it takes to be in charge, because without me, everything would fall apart. Like, that's.

Well, you know what? Marcus would probably let him say all that because he's unleashed him. He doesn't have a choice. So go ahead, randy. We've got 20 guards around you. Go ahead, talk as much as you want. Want. Because the truth is, is Marcus is still in charge. So it's okay if, if you want to go down that literal route.

I was thinking of setting it up here. But later when he's trying to kill Jesse is when he'll actually. Either him or Marcus will give the real final speech, because I feel like he's still. Because he's, he's gonna give some information to all three of them and then he's gonna say some point, peel Jesse off and say, look, once you get there, this is what you really have to do.

Right? Right. Right.

Right. And then when he's trying to kill Jesse at the end, he's. And they're free, everybody's freaking out. He's going to do the real speech of like, you don't even understand, like, why I have to do this.

Well, the other thing that'll really work well is all of a sudden he's gone.

And nobody understands why he was working so hard to kill Jesse. And it would seemed inevitable that he would. And then all of a sudden he's just gone. And they're wondering why, why did he leave? Because Jesse inadvertently gave him everything he wanted. So he escapes because of her self sacrifice. That's irony. She does an act. She continues to pursue her goal even though he's trying to stop her. He doesn't know what her goal is.

He just knows she's gone off the reservation. He realizes at some point she's, she's veered off.

She's gonna win this stupid threshing, and then he's still gonna be locked up. And then once he sees, oh, she's not going, oh, and then he sort of like lets her alone. And then you cut. She does her amazing thing. You cut back, where's Randy? You know, that kind of thing.

Okay. All right, well, I'll work on that scene because it sounds like I've got my work cut out for me with just that one.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, I'll do that and then we'll talk again next week.

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