Starting Your Middle Build

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grohl, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of Story Grid, the author of the book Story Grid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we go over the first set of scenes that I have written for the middle build of my story, and we start talking through as well how they fit into the sequences and how to transition between sequences. It's this whole thing that's super intricate and I think will be really helpful as you think about how to transition from the beginning hook of your story into the middle build and how you can show this new world without just it all being exposition and kind of boring. So we dive pretty deep into this, go over my scenes. So I think it'll be really helpful for you. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, I was hoping to get two sequences done, but I got like one and then like a scene in the next one done, because I'm still just kind of. I feel like I'm churning more than I'm writing. The first sequence ended up being five scenes which I sent you and I'll post in the show notes as well. So I had gone through and tried to do the, like, value shift and polarity shift, but I wanted to get kind of your take because this is the first six scenes of the middle build since we threw away the other ones I had tried. So what's your take on them with your quick read through of them?

My take is that you've made enormous strides. Just all that work that we did that didn't seem like any work and seemed like it was just a pain, I think really paid off because the specificity of the storytelling here is very clear, you know, And I have to confess, I want to know what happens next. And that is, you know, the mark of hitting a good, you know, a good stretch of writing. And also what you were able to do was you established a whole bunch of different new, fresh characters in Only probably it's 5,000 words, 6,000 words, and all of the characters. Because what's also good is, I know I said back in March that the first draft that you had written that we ended up throwing out that you were going to be able to mine that material later on, even though you didn't know at the time what would stay and what would go now, you can see what I meant because there's a real feeling of this echoing material that you wrote in your first draft, you know, last year.

Yeah.

And these characters are much more specific than the characters in the last, you know, idea that you tried to write. And the reason why is that what you had to do in these scenes was a whole bunch of different things. So you had to establish the setting of this Academy, you had to introduce Jesse into this world, and then you had to provide a lot of conflict inside the scenes that are traditionally the scenes that are exposition heavy. And using Jesse as an innocent in this world really paid off. The reading of the exposition doesn't come like sledgehammer. It doesn't feel as if, oh, this is the writer just trying to bang out a whole bunch of information so that I'll know what's going on later on.

When you say exposition, you're saying the parts were. I'm explaining the world exactly.

Like all that stuff about, you know, who the factions are, what the credits are, what the threshing is, what the severing is, how, you know, the Academy works. All of that stuff is inside of these chapters, inside of these scenes, but it's coming out of dialogue and it's also coming out of character. Action. And what I mean by that is the character. Is it Az? Is the name of the character az?

Yeah.

Okay. So he is using this information. You know, that thing that Robert McKee always says that I always bring up is to use exposition as ammunition. So what you did is you did do that. You had a character as use his deep knowledge of the academy and the world that, you know, he's living in as ammunition to belittle Jesse. So he's sort of playing this role of the hotshot on campus who's been assigned to bring in the newbie. And he's also, you know, trying to get the lowdown on who she is, where she's come from, why she's being brought in so late into the training. You know, he's trying to establish her as a threat in his own life. So essentially what you've done here, and, you know, if I had said to you write a scene where there's a character who, you know, is upset and is challenging Jesse, you wouldn't have written this scene. Instead, you would have written a more direct conflict kind of scene where they get into a physical fight or something. But instead, because you needed to establish the world, you put in that conflict as almost an afterthought. And it's not this heavy handed Conflict. That is too much. I think, as I suspected a couple of weeks ago, after you sat down and banged out and really thought through those four dimensions of your setting, then you were able to really ground this middle build and the beginning of the middle build in very straightforward active pros. So we're following Jesse as she wakes up, as she is talking to this guy who's trying to, you know, acclimate her to this training, and then she runs into the guys who she's eventually going to end up being teamed with. You know, I think what you've done in 5,000 words is a hell of a lot of work. And a year ago, if I said this is what you have to be able to do in five scenes, you would have been like, that's impossible. I'm not going to be able to get all the information of what this world is about and have a conflict and establish victims and, you know, put in a clock, because you established the clock of the thriller too, in this short passage. So there's nine months away from the big, big event. There's three sort of mini challenges that lead up to the final cut because there's only going to be three teams that represent the faction in this threshing. All of this information is in there, and it's very easy for the reader to file it away because they're expecting this information. They're expecting this kind of introduction to the world, and it really flows. I mean, I read this, these scenes, and five minutes, I mean, it just zipped right through it. I wasn't able. I didn't have the time to story grid spreadsheet them. But my gut is that each one of them had a polarity shift. You know, there were very distinct moments and turning points in each of the scenes. Now, these weren't highly dramatic turning points, but that's okay because the middle build is about establishing the world and the momentum and the stakes. And again, I think you did a really nice job here. And the fact that they go to visit the last guy who is the head of this mini team in the medical facility and he's all freaked out and weird was a great thing too, because what you established there was, you know, the negation of the negation, like what could be in, you know, the future for Jesse, I mean, it's a very real possibility that she's going to get her brain fried like that other guy and she might never be the same again. Yeah. So it's good stuff.

Thank you.

Keep going. Yeah.

Once we backed up and we, you know, Grounded the setting. And then I just kind of. We talked through it and retalked through just the hero's journey path. And once I got clear on like, oh, I need to like, establish the setting, establish the allies, establish the enemies, I still feel like one of the things I think we'll need to nail down in the beginning hook, or maybe not, but I was like, I wanted a way to solidify. We're always asking, what is the protagonist want? You know, what do they want? And that's what they're always going after. And so I wanted to establish that she just wants to go home without saying that. Without her saying, like, I just want to go home.

Right.

So that's why I tried to kind of slip it in where she was just like, hey, well, what's. What's so bad if he just got to go home and then end it with her? That kind of hope that she would just get to go home if she watches out of the program, like, no, no, no, no. You're going to be. You don't want to go home that way.

Yeah.

And I also was thinking through, like, most introductions to the new world that could come to mind are usually done by who will end up being the allies. Right. So they're the friends and so they're showing them around. So I wanted to have her shown around by the guy that would end up being the enemy and have that switch by the end as well. Just kind of as a way to try to do it differently. Oh. The other thing that I wanted to do because I need. I needed to establish so much in the world, I wanted to split it up so that I had as do part of it in one scene, as do part of it in another scene, and then the drill sergeant guy do it in another scene. So it wasn't all just kind of crammed into one place. Oh. And I was trying to keep them moving while they were doing it. Like, I actually went back and changed some things because at one point I had them just sitting down telling her everything. And so I tried to keep everything moving as fast as I could while slipping all of this stuff in. No.

Yeah. It had a very Aaron Sorkin esque sort of walk and talk feel to it. And that's a compliment. And what I mean by that is Aaron Sorkin, you know, who wrote the West Wing and A Few Good Men and a lot of great movies, the Social Network, he's famous for having his characters moving, like walking down a hall and having very deep conversations. So we're actually. There's action as they're moving from one scene to the next. And that's the feeling this had. It had a feeling of urgency that she is. She's way behind. It doesn't look like she has any chance whatsoever of ever becoming acclimated to this world in a way that will be helpful to anyone, especially herself. I like the fact that she just wants to go home. And it's not heavy handed either. It's sort of. She didn't want to go there in the first place. So it doesn't feel like you're trying to establish a character's want. It feels like a 12 year old kid just wants to go home. You know, they've had enough, so. And I also like the moment when, you know, she's plugged into the grid and she's figuring out how to get through this door and all of a sudden they have to pull her out. And that was great too because it doesn't make any sense. And then you use that as a cliffhanger to push you into the next sequence.

Well that, yeah, well that was going to be. That's actually in my mind the opening of the next sequence is her is that scene. So you got. I sent you six scenes. The fifth scene ended with her seeing the guy in the medical ward. And to me that was the end of the sequence that I'm calling Intro to the new. And the next sequence is the first severing. So the first test. And so that was in my mind the first scene of getting her to the severing because she goes into this world and I guess I am establishing it some more because they're explaining about how it works. But she gets pulled out so that they can go get ready for the severing.

No, that's good, that's good. There's a real sense of time elapsing and time being, you know, at a premium. She's been there, you know, maybe eight hours, six hours and she's already been inside the grid. She's already, you know, figured out what's going to happen to her if she doesn't succeed. She's already established possible friends. Like the Ernst character is obviously a nice guy and as is just a duplicitous kind of Machiavellian figure who, you know, the faction obviously had him orient her so that he would be threatened. So the organic sense and rational thinking of the villain. If we're thinking of the faction as the villain, it makes sense that they would use him to show her around because they want him to up his game, too. So the fact that she explains to him, oh, well, the president of the faction, you know, came and he's like, what? And then she said, well, I turned him down. And then he couldn't believe that either. So that's good, because you're escalating. You're progressively escalating the conflict with az, and it's obvious that AS was responsible for the other guy having his brain scrambled. So you're establishing a lot of really good dynamics here. Jesse is, you know, one moment she's the victim, the next moment she's the villain because she is a threat to az. The next moment she's a hero. Same thing with these other characters. You're mixing it up really well and it's flowing. You know, if there's one thing you're always looking to do is to not worry so much about the details. If the story is flowing. And this feels like, you know, wow, this is like Starship Troopers, you know, a little Hunger Games. It's fun, it's interesting. There's a lot of different things. We're not sure what the threshing is actually going to be like. You're slowly introducing because I don't know.

What the threshing is going to be.

Well, yeah, that's fine. That's absolutely fine. But as you're playing around with the setting, it's keeping the flow of the storytelling going, and you're making more promises to the reader in a way that, you know, it's slowly they're getting it. And now also, what I love, and Jane Austen is great for doing this, is that. And a lot of novelists are, is setting up things in the future for the reader to hang on. So when you say, oh, there's going to be three challenges and then there's going to be the big threshing, essentially what you're telling the reader with that information is you're going to have at least four great action scenes coming up. And you would be surprised, but knowing that there's four great action sequences coming up is going to keep a lot of readers continuing to read the book. And you've got to, you know, so now you set that up. Now you've got to make each action sequence organically, you know, reasonable, but also more and bigger than the previous one. And so your ending payoff is going to be the threshing itself. And you know, what you have in the last conversation that we had in your global, when you were outlining the entire middle build, you know, you set in these mile markers that are going to do that. You know, you established very early on in the beginning hook that there's some mysterious thing with her brother. You're going to pick that up later. You might bring back, you know, one of the characters from the numbered, I think, 81 or somebody like that to serve as a Obi Wan Kenobi sort of mentorish figure later on. There's a lot of good stuff going on in here. And, you know, again, I didn't go through and map out the grid. Did you happen to map out the spreadsheet for it?

Well, I did the value shift and polarity shift. I'm trying to do that now before I send you anything to make sure at least each scene is turning on something before I send it to you, because that was.

What did those five scenes turn on?

So the first one is when she wakes up in the new place and AS is showing her around. And then they have the discussion where he can't believe that. Where he's poking, kind of asking her all these questions to try to figure out how important she is. And so I put that as negative to positive because she went from alone to a friend. Then the next one was when. So this is when they run into Ernst and Alex and AZ protects her from them. And then he takes her over and shows her the kind of room that they do the threshing in and then explains to her how the threshing works and why it's important so we get that information. So I put that negative to positive as well and confused to knowledge. And then the next scene is when she first plugs in and she's in with all the students in the grid. And this is where the sergeant puts her in with Ernst and Alex since they lost their coder. She's another coder. And this was right after as had explained to her that coders don't end up. They often don't make it. So I put plus to minus, safe to unsafe. And then the next one was when she catches up with. So at the beginning, as kind of shoves her off because he's pissed off that she was put with them. And so she tries to catch up with them. They kind of push her off at first. And then Ernst talks Alex into, like, at least, you know, bringing her in and talking to her. And so that's minus the plus outcast to belonging. And then the last one is. Oh, the last one. So this is the end of that sequence is when they're eating. They explain to her, you know, they're talking some More about just being on the team together and why she's probably not going to make it. And then it ends with them taking her to see the coder that got scrambled, and he's, you know, out of his mind. And so I put plus to minus, hope to fear. And then the first scene of the next one. Oh, I didn't do this one, but I would say I would be plus to minus because it turns on the fact that the severing is happening the next day, and she's only been there one day, so it would be, like, safe to danger. Something like that was probably what I would put.

No, that works. I mean, it's not as specific as you would love, but if you thought about it some more, that last scene would be getting acclimated to having the rug pulled out from under you, that kind of thing, where she's in the world and she's starting to, you know, move through the tasks and getting her feet wet. And then she's pulled out immediately and said, oh, we're gonna have to battle, you know, tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I intuitively could feel those shifts as I was reading it. And that's how you got the narrative momentum going. And it's always a good idea to do what you did, especially before you share anything with anybody. You know, do your homework, make sure that your scenes are moving. So, all in all, I think this is a really, really good start. I'm interested to see what's going to happen next. There was just a couple of very small notes. One is when as and Jesse are walking down the hall and they first run into Ernst and Alex. You know, it's kind of obvious that she's going to be stuck with those two. And if there's a way to hide that information in a little bit better way, that would be better. Because, you know, when we do learn that she's going to be paired with those two, it's not so much a surprise. We could see that telegraph quite a while before it happens. And as I recall, as is the one who says to her, you know, don't worry about those two. They're going to flesh out soon enough. Their guy was scrambled. So when he tells her that, the reader is immediately going to go, oh, I bet she's going to get paired with that.

Yeah, I can see that.

You could probably just, you know, even cut out those lines and just say, have ass. Say nothing. Like, they're not even worthy of commentary.

So when you first said to hide that, I thought, like, hide it in some Noise. So should they run into other people, should they talk to other characters? Or you're saying hide it by just removing some of the information I shared?

Yeah, I would remove the information that you shared. The reason why you want to do that. Always remember, when you're writing your first draft of a scene or whatever, it's perfectly fine to add all the information so that it makes reasonable, rational sense. But when you go back later on, your objective is to look at information that characters give away for free, remove it, and then you can use that information later on and pay it off in a much bigger way. What do I mean by that? Okay, so when as says to her, oh, those guys, don't worry about them. They're going to flesh out their guy was scrambled. If he doesn't tell Jesse that and Jesse asks about where their partner is because she doesn't know, then when she goes to that hospital unit and sees the partner, then that information is going to hit the reader in a much bigger. Your way. So when they say scrambled, having the scrambling pay off in a bigger way with her witnessing it in the moment as opposed to, you know, being warned before that information happens, that's a way of establishing a stronger narrative drive. So establish the mystery of, you know, these two guys. Where's their coder? And then you discover, oh, their coders in the freaking, oh, these are my guys. Their coder they put into the hospital. Great. You know what I'm saying? So that Jesse, when she sees their former partner is in the hospital, and maybe they don't even tell her that, you know, maybe she goes and sees that partner by herself, or maybe as shows her later on. I'm not sure. But all I'm saying is that when you have powerful information, the longer you delay the information getting to the character, and if you can dramatically pay it off, it will be a bigger moment.

Okay.

All right.

You said there was a couple notes.

You know, I might have just combined both notes because I think the scene where they go to see the guy in the hospital, it works. But I think you could make it work even bigger. Okay.

Because what you described is actually, I'll have to make changes to, like, three or four of the five scenes to kind of string that out longer, which is fine.

You know, I wouldn't do it now. It's a small thing.

I'm making a series of notes that I can refer back to, and we're actually, like, doing the whole book.

Oh, good. Okay.

Yeah.

Don't stop and go edit now.

Yeah. My thinking is, if You. If you say it works, because what you're describing is, like, it works at a level seven, but we could probably get it to a nine.

Right, right.

But working is all I care about now because we're moving forward because I feel like, you know, when you were.

Writing, did you feel like you were in a groove and that you knew what you were doing?

Yeah, it felt like it was trying to think of, like, the proper metaphor. Like, it felt like it was unfolding naturally in my. In my mind. Like, I knew. Well, it was really nice because I have all my scenes kind of laid out. And what I think helped a lot, too, was grouping them by sequence. So I have these kind of mini arcs I gotta fill. So actually, when I compare the. You know, ended up being five scenes in the first sequence, it did not match this. You know, I only gave it three scenes in my plan. But the arc is the same.

Yes.

So it allowed me a little more. Because in the past, when I tried to map out scenes and then one didn't go the way I wanted it or the direction I thought, it kind of, like, screwed up the whole rest of the plan because it's like I picked a different path to walk on. So all those other waypoints don't matter. So when I was writing, I kind of had those scenes in mind, but I more had, like, okay, this sequence just has to get me from. She showed up. I gotta establish allies, enemies. I gotta explain the world. I gotta set some tension between characters. You know, I just gotta get. And I gotta, like, destroy her hope of going home. I gotta kind of touch on that a little bit. So I had those things to do, and I just had to get to the end of that. And so as I wrote and, like, I cut one scene at, like, 600 words, but I'm like, okay, well, that's fine, because I. I had a value shift, and I got to the next point where I could give the next part of the story. So it felt natural and it was nice to have. Because in the past, like, the middle build was just too big to think about. But then looking at individual scenes, I kept, like, getting off course of where I was trying to go.

Right, right, right.

So breaking it into sequences was much more digestible. I could kind of play around with that because I. As long as I got there, it didn't really matter how. As long as I got to this point because that sets up the first test. And then, you know, I got to write the test. And no matter how I get to the end of the Test. It doesn't matter because the end of the test will set up the next sequence, right? So I feel like it's giving me space to kind of let it flow and not be so confined, but also not so free that I'm just writing all of this stuff. Stuff that's not getting me where I need to go. Because when I think back to the first, you know, because I wrote a few scenes and we threw those out. Wrote a few scenes and threw those out. It was because it was like gazing into this canyon when I was thinking of writing the middle build because it was just so long, right? And I had no idea where to start. So that felt good. Yeah, it felt like it flowed really well. I just feel immensely more comfortable writing a scene now. Like, I know when I sit down to write, I know exactly where I'm going, and I kind of play around with it as I go. And, you know, it's still kind of interesting to me how I feel like I'm building a scene, like, with blocks instead of writing linearly, right? So I'll, like, write a little bit. Then I'm like, oh, I need to set that up. So I'll back up and write a little bit, and then I'll go forward and write some more, and then back up and, like, write a little bit. And by the end, I have a working stage scene. But I wrote. If you watch, like, how I wrote it, I'm, like, placing pieces instead of writing from point A to point B, which is not how I thought it worked. I mean, I'm sure different writers do different things, but I've always been a linear writer. And this feels much more like, I'll write something. I'm like, well, that works, but I need to set it up a little more. So I'll back up and, like, add a paragraph or two here. And then I'll fast forward and keep writing and then back up and just keep, like, doing that over and over again. Almost like I'm molding something that I'm actually just, like, driving. So then I did that within the sequence too, where, like, so some of the exposition that, as did I actually cut out and moved forward to the last scene where they're explaining scrambling. I kept trying to figure out an interesting way to up the stakes of scrambling. Because only thing she knows is the crazy dude from the numbers, which doesn't seem so bad. He was kind of fun. And so I'm like, well, how can I reveal that this is extremely dangerous without them saying, this is extremely dangerous? And so the first way I wrote it is as saying, this is extremely dangerous, you know? And so then once I got to that last scene in the sequence, I'm like, oh, I could, like, show her this is what will happen. And so then I wrote that and then went back and cut all of that out of the scene where as is explaining things. So I even, like, I had this big bowl of things I needed to introduce. And I kept kind of placing them in different pieces again. So I was trying to cut down the amount of exposition in any one scene.

Well, I'm glad you explained that to me, because I'm going to take back what I said about the payoff of Jesse seeing the former coder in the hospital. And the reason why I'm going to to do that is that I forgot because I only read the thing very quickly.

And I mean, that's because I got it to you, like, four hours ago.

I just want to be clear on who was responsible for that.

But the fact that there's a character choice. I really like the fact that you did use exposition as ammunition. So instead of those guys saying, oh, it's really, really bad, instead they took her to see the guy in the hospital. Those were character choices on the part of Ernst and Alec. That established them as good soul. Right? Because what usually happens is if somebody is out to get you, say you start a job and somebody sees you as a threat, the last thing they're going to do is warn you about some really stupid thing that you don't do in the office. Just as an example, I wrote about this a long time ago. But when I started in book publishing, I was an editorial assistant, right? Which is basically a secretary to the editor in chief. And nobody tells you all of the things that you have to do and the etiquette of the editorial meetings in publishing. So somebody was showing me around the office, and the editorial meeting came, and she didn't tell me, whatever you do, don't sit at the table. Because only senior editors get to sit at the table. We sit in chairs around the table. Nobody told me that. And I sat at the table, and it was so embarrassing.

Because.

The first week of work, and I'm making an ass out of myself, right? And the publisher was so great. And she looked at me and she goes, hey, new guy, you can't sit at the table.

So it took the publisher to speak to me directly. And it was at that point I knew, oh, that woman who was showing me around, she's not my friend.

Gotta watch her, you know? So AZ isn't gonna tell Jesse how terrible scrambling is because he wants her to be overconfident or not. No, because then he could beat her in the, you know, all the competition. Whereas Ernst and Alex do want to tell her because they want her to know what she's getting into because she's on their team. So the more information that she has, the better it is for Alex and Ernst. That is a really good way of saying all that stuff without saying that stuff, if you know what I mean. So through the character's actions, we are learning about who they are, how. How they think about Jesse, who's on whose side, et cetera, et cetera. So Alex and Ernst don't have to say, don't worry about it, Jesse. You're on our team and we're going to take care of you. Instead, they show her something that she probably isn't going to want to see or deal with, but she needs to know it. So they're giving her the truth, and they're giving it to her very quickly, and it's establishing their relationship very quickly. And you had to do that because this is a thriller. This isn't some long British novel from the 1800s. You've got to keep the action going.

The thing that I've learned and you've drilled into me early on that I just keep telling myself is say as little as possible and make you or whoever tell me, I don't know what's going on. You need to give me more information. And I'd rather err on that side than on the side of saying too much. So even as I was putting in the exposition, I was like, okay, I want to just, like, drip this stuff out just enough where they know, enough where they don't feel lost, but they are waiting to like, I. Again, I'm not entirely sure where I'm going. So that helps me hide things because I don't even know what's happening yet.

But anyway, you're doing it organically. You're doing it because you're using characters who don't have information. So Jesse stands in for the reader, and it makes sense that people are like, okay, this is where the. This is where the cafeteria is. This is the time we wake up. Your clothes are in the closet. So you're not, you know, you're not just saying that to a character. That doesn't matter. You're giving that information to the protagonist, who is standing in for the reader at the. At the same time. So you're aligning your reader and Your protagonist as the same thing, which is a way of establishing empathy for your protagonist through your reader, if that makes sense. So the reader is experiencing and getting this information at the exact same time as the protagonist. So that's a great way of establishing empathy. We don't know any more than Jesse knows. And go ahead.

I want to make sure. There's one thing. I want to make sure I get in before we're done today, because I'm struggling with something. But the other is like. So I'm reading right now the Count of Monte Cristo, and I'm struck by. So I've literally. So this is a confession time. Like, I've literally never read any. Any of the classics. Any of the classics. Like, name a classic, have not read it. So I'm on Ryan Holiday's list where, like, a month he sends you books he's been reading that he recommends. And the Count of Monte Crista made his, like, book, like, novel of the year or whatever. And so I'm like, okay, it's time to read a classic.

It's a commitment.

Yeah, I don't mind long books. I just. I've tried to read so many of the classics. I saw this quote once that was like, the classics are the books everybody wants to have read but don't actually want to read. And I'm like, that's me. Because I've tried to read several. And I'm like, this is boring. I'm not reading this. And so this one's caught my attention. I'm enjoying reading it. So anyway. But there's so much where the author directly tells you something. And I've noticed that in several books, you know, I've read lately where Jane Austen does this in Pride and Prejudice, where she just tells you the setting. Like, it's, here you are. This is what's happening. This is how things work. And then we enter. And I'm not doing any of that. I'm just, like, trying to only give information through what's happening, which is tough. It's just tough. Like, it feels so much. I'm, like, so much more straightforward. I should just tell people what's going on. But I'm like, well, I've already decided. You know, I'm not rewriting those early scenes because I finally have those scenes and I'm not going back, so I might as well just keep doing this. But it's like, I'm, like, trying to figure out how to tell all this stuff without doing it through. Just, like, opening the chapter and, like, explaining where Jesse's at.

Anyway, so that's an authorial choice. And you know, Dickens, all of the major classic novelists, Melville, Hawthorne, etc. They all did take the big authorial, third person, omniscient, 30,000 foot, godlike point of view. But you'll find that those are the passages that make you go right to sleep. And, you know, commercial fiction today, the more of that that you do, the less people want to read it because we are all so conditioned now to television and film and storytelling through visual means that there is no third person omniscient, you know, authorial point of view beyond a director or screenwriter. But it's all spoken visually. So in the literary world, there's been a drastic movement to eliminating that sort of voice. Now, somebody like Wes Anderson in films likes to play around with that old convention. And so, you know, some of his films are so wonderful because they feel as if they're 19th century novel.

I hate every one of his movies.

Every single one. Like, it comes out and I'm like, maybe I like this one. And I hate it, like, well, so.

The last one, the. The Grand Budapest Hotel was very much in that, you know, that sensibility. And so was the Royal Tenenbaum. And the way he got around that was having the actual narrator. I think Alec Baldwin did the narration in the Royal Tenenbaums. Anyway, so you're making an appropriate commercial choice to not give that, you know, once upon a time, long ago and far away in land filled with fjords, there was a young shepherd. You know, nobody wants to read that. They want to see the shepherd, you know, took a spear and killed the whale. You know, that's a hell of a shepherd.

So here's the part. And this is why I didn't give you two sequences. I gave you one sequence in a scene is. I am really stuck on what to make this digital world feel like. So I gave a glimpse at it in the last scene that you read. How did that feel to you? Because I don't know. Basically I'm taking the Matrix approach, which is like, there's this world that's like the real world. And then she has to manipulate that world using her ability. Did that, like, ring true the way that I set that up? Because if it did, like, I've got to. And plus, like, I'm honestly trying. I'm scared. I know this first test, right? So there's three tests. And I know the first test has to be, like, good. You know, it has to. It has to have some kind of, you know, where the sequence I just wrote was just kind of like, okay, I'm introducing the world. It's pretty straightforward. There's no, like, surprise. So I've got to do this in some kind of way. And I remember that with Ready Player One is like, every time he won a test, it was like, oh, man. It was just this awesome moment. And especially with her. Like, I've set this up where everybody, including Alex and Ernst, thinks that she's going to just be crushed immediately. And so I have to set this up where she is going to be crushed until the very last second. She, like, kind of slides under the door as it closes because I still have to maintain the tension that she might be crushed in the next one. So she can't just, like, come. Come in and just own the place. And then it's this whole, like, I'm kind of rambling, but I'll just keep going for a minute. So there's this one convention I hate in movies when they set up all of this mystery and it's like, really got you hooked and, like, all these crazy things are happening and you're like. The whole time you're trying to figure out, like, what's going on, what's going on. And I hate where at the end they're like, oh, it was aliens. And it's like, well, fuck you. Like, alien. You can just say anything. It was aliens, you know, or they were in a dream, or it was all magic, you know, and it's fantasy. And instead of, like, actually pulling it together, where it actually makes sense. And I've kind of set myself up for that where, like, you're in this digital world that can be anything. And so I don't want to do that where it's like, oh, was she just like, you know, one. Anyway, I'm just really churning on, like, how to do all that.

Well, I think the answer will come from a couple of things. The first thing is to concentrate on the qualities that each of the tests is challenging.

So I set that up. Right, I gave.

So what are the three qualities again? Hold on.

I have it in my notes. Okay, so scripting, encoding, speed and dexterity. So basically how fast and how good she can code manipulate the world. The second one. So this is. I looked up a bunch of stuff on, like, what makes you good at hacking. So I think the NSA is now watching me. So I was reading all this stuff and I kind of put it down into three categories that you have to be good at to be a good hacker. So the first is Just your overall knowledge of coding and how kind of robust you are in that area. The second is basically how good you are at hiding what you're doing. So forensics and stealth is the second one, because it's not just can you code, it's can you do it without being caught by the powers to be? And I've set that up as well. Of the whole reason you get scrambled in the grid is it's Reapers is how I'm calling them. It's their way of keeping people from even trying to hack because it'll kill you in real life or hurt you in real life. So it's not just how good you are at coding. It's being able to hide it from the Reapers and from the grid itself. So that's the second one, and then the third is physical stamina. So how long can you. How hard and long can you go without giving out? And I kind of set that up, too, when Alex is like, you haven't evolved to the point where your brain is used to doing things separately from your body. So the more that you go in the grid, the more your body tends to shut down. And so that's his job, is to keep her alive while doing this.

That's good stuff.

And you gave me that when you said that. I was like, oh, that's perfect. So there's the coder. She's the one, or he or she's the one actually plugged in. And they have two support staff. They have a comms person who can directly communicate with her while she's plugged in and kind of feed her what she needs. And then the medic is there to keep her body alive while she's doing this, because the body doesn't like how much her brain is working when the body's just laying there. So those three things.

Okay, so one of the things that I always do whenever I can't figure out a story is think about what stories have happened already that I can rip off. So in terms of these three trials, think about what the Reapers, the people who control the game, would do. What would they want? They would want to find the brightest people who have the deepest knowledge of probably history. One of the things to think about is, were there famous battles in military history where one general or platoon sergeant or somebody who won the Medal of Honor, did something extraordinary in a moment of incredible stress that turned the tide of a battle? So that's one thing to do some research on. And then if you find that battle, what you would do is manipulate that battle and the circumstances of that battle and fictionalize it for the trial. So, for example, when they get the severing, they'll probably like get, you know, here is your. Here are the severing materials and the challenge rules. And so they'll get a dossier of some sort, I'm thinking. And what they'll say is the goal of this is to get from X to Z, from A to Z. This is what they do in special forces training. By the way, a friend of mine is a Green Beret, and they have this training session at the very end for the guys who make it. And he was a really highly decorated Green Beret. And what they do is they give you challenges that are impossible. And so the challenge was to take a basket 500 miles in an hour or not 500 miles, like 100 miles in an hour, and you have no car, you're dropped in the middle of the woods. There's no way for you to possibly accomplish the task. And so I asked him, how did you do it? They said, well, I could smell smoke from a fireplace, a chimney, where we were in the middle of the woods. And I figured we were somewhere near a farm. So I went and I knocked on the farmer's door and I asked him if he could get a ride to the base. They said, sure. And not only did he give us a ride, but he gave us a piece of blueberry pie. So we went all the way back to the base in like 15 minutes from the time they were dropped off in the middle of the woods. And he hands the colonel the basket and he says, mission accomplished, sir. And the guy's like, how did you do that? And he said, mission accomplished, sir. And that's all that mattered, right? And the colonel was like, well, good for you. You know, you did it. And it didn't matter how he got the mission accomplished. He figured out a way to get it done. And so that's a way to think of these tasks is there's the traditional straight through path, like, okay, if we start running the second we get, you know, dropped off in the woods, and I've got my compass and we each run six minute miles, maybe at the last second we'll make. And so it's this impossible task for everyone. Instead, somebody's like, oh, I smell smoke. Oh, there's got to be a farm around here. I bet the guy's got a truck. If I ask him nicely, he'll give us a ride. Did you get it?

Yeah, yeah.

So there are these kind of riddle. I would look up ancient Greek riddles. There's the famous Medusa, you know, riddle, what animal begins on four legs, then has two legs and ends up on three? And Odysseus, I think, answers the riddle and he says it's man. You know, you start out as a baby and then you walk as a man. And then when you get old, you get a cane and you know, that's what got him out of a deep shit. So if you figure out like these, these riddles and then build a world or a task around the riddle, think of it as a game. It's like you have to play ping pong in the first challenge and the next challenge you have to play badminton. So it doesn't have to be a consistent world as long as the rules are straightforward. And once they go into this world, the world is established. So the first task might be, okay, this is from the Battle of Verdun or something or I don't know. But this is a way of solving a problem, is to find some famous riddle in history or in storytelling and adapting it for your purposes.

Well, I wonder, like on the forensics and stealth, could I look up bank robberies? Yeah, famous bank robberies. So, okay, so back to my one question. So I like that. That gives me some direction. I'm still back to what this digital world is. I've been thinking of this almost like the mazes you give rats in the science lab or whatever, where like you build this thing that you know is going to be hard for them to do. But there's like. Well, I thought that of like the direct path and that's what I tried to establish when she uses a sledgehammer instead of trying to pick the lock, you know, of like, I'm not going to do this the normal way. I'm just going to, you know, brute strength my way through it. So I mean, does, does that scene work like the way I set up the digital world with like how she's interacting with it, how she's interacting with Ernst staring it like, did you feel like you do?

Yeah, I think I wouldn't get hung up on in this digital world. I would think of it like the Matrix where they go into a reality that looks like a reality. So she could go into an autumn field. That looks like an autumn field. And there could be a farmer on the mountain and she has to run up the field to get to. And then the next one, the next task, she could be in the middle of a rainstorm in Tokyo. So think of these as many little sort of story movies. And don't worry about digital stuff. Think of her in a real world context. It's a virtual reality. It's not. You know, I think what you're doing is you're. You're thinking of an electron. Remember Tron, that, that first movie? Yeah. It's like this weird, you know, grid system that, you know, it just doesn't. Yeah, it just seems like a guy who's, who's got stuck on graph paper, you know, and you don't want that in yours. You want the Matrix, which is this virtual reality that seems absolutely real. So the reality can change every single time. And so one time it could be Elizabethan in, you know, England. And she has to get the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's new play. How's she gonna do that? I'm just making that up. And the next one could be. It's World War I and she's in a trench. And so to make up these little mini, you know, it's. It's sort of like a time travel thing as opposed to this digital gritty system that I guess.

Yeah. I was getting hung up on. Is that just like ho hum, or just basically establishing a real world thing in this grid to set up the scenario. That's an. Okay, that's a good way to approach this. I guess I was trying to like. I get in these spots where I'm like, well, that's been done so many times where it's just like the real world in a digital world. You know, do I need to come up with some kind of other thing? And so I'm just like spinning on that instead of like, well, if I, if I come up with an interesting way to test each of these things and just like you said, establish it in a real world stage setting, you know, that works and is interesting enough, I think.

So I think if, you know. And then you have these little sort of escape hatches within the virtual reality that she discovers when she finds one of these hatches and she goes down it. It's almost like going, you know, alice through the Looking Glass. And she ends up. Did you ever see the movie 2001?

No.

Oh, well, you should rent it. I mean, it's a great movie. It's one of the first crazy science fiction movies. Stanley Kubrick and the way he solved this problem was the characters kind of move inside of their brains. And it's really. It's the kind of movie people used to like, smoke marijuana and go see, you know, and they'd be like, wow, man, it's really heavy. What he chose to do, Kubrick, was to mix space travel with, you know, the. The space inside somebody's mind, which is the virtual reality. There's this one very strange room where this astronaut ends up going. And we don't know why, but it works. So I think your big. Your big moment is when she falls down one of these rabbit holes. And who's there but her brother? Maybe it's the ghost of her brother. We don't know.

Yeah, I set that up.

And that place.

I set that up in the. I think the second severing, I can't remember. I've got it. I've got that mapped out. I've been just stuck on what the digital world looks like once she logs in. And so being able to establish just like a set a time and place and using that makes sense.

And then also think about dream world, the life of dreams.

Yeah, I was thinking of things like Inception, too.

Yeah.

Have you seen Inception? Yeah, yeah. You know, where it's like all of a sudden, everything goes cattywampus when the person realizes that they're in a dream.

Yes.

And so, yeah, I was thinking those things, and I was thinking, like, basically, she. She's able to naturally find these back doors that everybody else can't find. And she doesn't even realize what she's doing is interesting just because it comes so naturally.

Let me tell you what, just to close this out, because this is one of the best dreams I've ever heard of, okay? And this is Steve Pressfield's dream. And it's just. I tell people this dream all the time because it's so wonderful. Okay? So Steve had this dream years and years ago, and he writes about this in the War of Art. And the dream is this. He's on a ship. He's on, like, one of those big Navy ships. It's a destroyer. It's in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And he's just, you know, he's a sailor on there. And, you know, they hear. All the guys hear that there's, like, an enemy ship very close by. And all of a sudden they take fire and part of the ship gets hit. And Steve, you know, in his dream, was asking the other guys, what's going on? What's going on? And he's hearing over and over again, you know, from people down the corridors. Don't worry about it. Largo. Largo's here. He's. He's our gunnery sergeant. He's going to take care of everything. And so Steve in the dream is feeling relaxed, and he's like, okay, good. There's a gunnery sergeant named Largo who's going to fix everything. This is going to be great. Everything's going to be fine. So he goes up above deck, and he's going towards the place where the bullet hit, or the bullet, the missile or whatever, and they're taking on water. And he gets up to the place, and the captain turns to him, to Steve in his dream, and he says, what are we going to do, Largo? And Steve wakes up and he realizes that he was Largo in the dream and that everybody expected him to fix what was going on. And I always loved that dream because. And I think if you were able to. If somebody were to use the sensibility of that dream where you think somebody else is going to take care of it and you don't even know your own name, and to realize that you are the one who's in charge, you're the one who's going to save the day is so interesting to me. And it was that moment like he, Steve, the writer, realized that he had to take control of his own life, that he was expecting other people in his life. I mean, this isn't deep, dark, Freudian psychoanalysis. This is Steve waking up from a dream and going, man, I got to take care of my own shit.

I'm expecting other people do things for me when I should be doing it myself. And that might. I always love that dream because it's so clear and it's got a great payoff, and it's fun when you realize, oh, my gosh, I'm the guy in charge. I'm the one who has to get things done. I'm the one that everybody's relying on to use a dreamlike world in a circumstance like that. That pays off tremendously in a story, because everybody can relate to that.

Oh, I thought you were telling me that dream because you're saying, tim, stop asking me. This is yours to figure out.

Well, that, too.

All right, well, I'll get to work, and I'll have something to show you for next week.

Okay, great.

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