The Impact of a Story Theme: An Interview with Scott Mann and Randle Surles about the book Operation Pineapple Express

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. My name is Tim Grall. I'm the CEO of StoryGrid Universe, and I'm a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. This episode is a little different. One is it's coming out on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday. The other is, sean's not going to join me. Danielle, Leslie, they're not going to join me. Instead, I did an interview with Randall Searles and Scott Mann. So Scott Mann is the author of a book that just came out called Operation Pineapple Express, and it's all about the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the role that Scott played in trying to get people out of Afghanistan safely. Randall Searles is a Story Grid certified editor. We've had him on before to talk about projects, and he was one of the editors on this particular project and worked really closely with Scott on writing the book, doing all of the interviews, pulling it together, and getting it ready. Because they had a really short timeline, which we talk about in the interview. This was actually really interesting to me because one is, of course, Randy's involved. They're using storygrid. They're using it on a project with a traditional publisher, Simon and Schuster. And I was really interested in that side of things, but I was also interested in how they dug in to find the story theme, the controlling idea, and how that helped them craft this story. I think a lot of times when people are writing books, I think this idea of telling a true story is often harder because in fiction, you can make up whatever you want to make up, but when you're telling a story that actually happened, it's an editing job. You have to figure out how to take this giant thing, all these different things that happen. You know, it's. It's a word that or a phrase that Sean likes to use a lot combatorially. Explosive. Right? There's so many different things you could put in the book. How do you decide what to cut out? And how do you decide what to actually put in the book? And how do you make sure it all hangs together? And of course, it comes to this idea of a controlling idea. So this is a really important book. I really highly recommend you go and you read it ever. I had only read a small portion of it when I did the interview. I've gone on to read a lot more of it. It's a fantastic book, and I think it's a really, really powerful story. Even if you don't know anything about what happened in Afghanistan or you have A really strong opinion about it. I think this is a book that's going to cross political divides, partisan stuff, and really cross time as I talk about a little bit in it. It's a really strong, controlling idea that I think will strike to the heart of all of us because they ask a question, have to come up against at some point. So it's a really interesting interview. We really talked about a lot of things about working with an editor, how to write a book under a short timeline. But again, I think the most powerful thing we talked about was this idea of landing on a really solid, controlling idea and how that helps you in the writing. So it's a really fun interview. I think you're really going to enjoy it. So let's jump in and get started. All right, Scott, so I want to start with you and just you kind of give me what this book is about. Like, you know, what's your description? When somebody asks you what the book's about, what do you tell them?

Yeah, this is something Randy and I talked about, like, in the very beginning. And for me, it is really simple. It comes down to what does a promise mean to you and how far would you go to honor it? Like, that's what this book's about. In the highest stakes environment you could possibly imagine, when people's lives are on the line and everything is falling apart, what does a promise mean and how far would you go to honor it? And it examines that, I think, in just real world detail through storytelling.

Yeah, I'll tell you, I haven't read the whole thing yet. I read like the beginning, and then I skipped to the end and I got emotional. It already hooked me.

It was really interesting. We talk a ton at Storygrid about double factor problems, which is basically problems that aren't a clear black or white. Right. They're always answered with it depends. And I really thought you nailed that with this book as well. But besides even that higher level thing, just what's the book about?

Yeah, it's about.

The collapse of Afghanistan. That's the setting in 2021. And it's about a group of Americans who came together to volunteer and try to help as many Afghan partners and allies as they could get to safe passage before the last American plane left the country.

Well, Randy, I want to ask you the same question because I'm sure you have a slightly different perspective because you were the editor on the project, not the writer per se. So when you think about the book, what do you think the book's about?

Well, first of All I was one of a couple different editors. So I want to take stuff away from some other people that were involved. But when we first started talking about this, when Scott first invited me on board, it was hard to. It was hard to come up with. The promise was the, was. Was the actual. What the book was about. We always knew it was going to be about Afghanistan. We also knew that there was going to be a variety of characters and there was going to be a couple that would stand out as primary characters, and then there was going to be a bunch of other characters. But it's about people and it's about relationships, right? It's about the relationships between the Americans and the Afghans. It's about the relationship between the Afghans too. It's about, the villain is the Taliban and it's about the relationships between those people and the Taliban and also the changing, almost crazy, you know, different relationship that a lot of Americans had with the Taliban during the time of this fall of Afghanistan. Because up until that moment, the Taliban were the enemy. You saw them, you killed them. And now in a way, they were semi assisting us in some ways, and they weren't. And they were right there with us and we weren't shooting at each other. So.

It was all about relationships and ever changing relationships all through the book. There's realizations on all sides about how things are changing and how. And trying to get to the objectives through those relationships.

You said it took you a while to come to that. So, Scott, how did Simon and Schuster approach you about this book? Or how did this book come about and how was it first pitched? Because to me, I'm guessing it was something like, hey, you know, we want you to write about this thing in Afghanistan. And yet you ended up writing this book about a much deeper question.

Yeah, and I think the other thing too, Tim, is that I was living it at the time, right? So, you know, I had, I had, as a Green Beret, I had moved on from my time in service. I had retired just like Randy had. I retired a little bit before he did, I think. And I was in a different place in my life. I was, you know, a playwright, an actor, and had written other books, but they were either self published or smaller houses, that kind of thing, very niche. And when Afghanistan collapsed, you know, I found myself like many other volunteers working to help a friend. That, that was really the extent of it. And then it just blew up from there where, you know, it became kind of a free for all to help a whole bunch of friends. And it was in the aftermath of that, literally where the ISIS K explosion had happened, the suicide bomber had detonated himself on the 26th of August. And.

It'S kind of like you're just looking around going, what the hell just happened? Like, you haven't slept in 10 days. Everything that you thought you knew about your life and your time in war was torn asunder. And, I mean, I was questioning everything. And then I started getting these. Because Pineapple was pretty visible, I guess, in the media and that kind of thing. So I started getting these inquiries about writing a book and the movie. And it really. I'll be honest, it pissed me off because I'm like, that's the last thing in the world I want to freaking do right now is write some damn book about this show that just happened. Like, I mean, and I. That's. I'm just being honest. Like, that's not what I wanted to do. But it was several mentors, Randy being one of them. We talked about it was like, look, if you don't tell it, somebody's going to tell it.

And so that was. I started to kind of come around to that, that maybe I could be the storyteller on this thing in a way that really honored the journey of those that lived it. And I started thinking about writing it in third person. Well, anyway.

One other person gave me some sound advice. Hey, get an agent for this one, pal, because you do not know what you're doing here, and they're going to come at you a million ways to Sunday. So I did that. And it ended up being. I'm glad that happened because we went through a process to select the right publisher. And Simon and Schuster, to me, really got it. They understood the importance of not only telling this story authentically, but getting it out in a year, for God's sake. On the anniversary. They were adamant about that, just like we were. So that was the process for it. But even then, and this was like, September, October, I was still wrestling with the fact that, man, I can't believe I'm gonna try to write and tell this story after this. It was so raw.

Well, and how did you two meet? Randy and. And Scott, how did you guys meet?

So I'll start and then he can jump in. But Randy and I both were in Special Forces together, But not only were we in Special Forces together, we were in the same unit. Like, we were in 7th Special Forces Group at the same time for years. But the way it works in Special Forces, his. If you're not in the same battalion, really, if you're not even in the same company. You're gone so much that you could literally be a half mile from each other and never know that person on that team. And that is exactly what happened to us. I'm sure we crossed paths, but I didn't know Randy until a friend of his recommended that he come see my play last out Elegy of a Green Beret in New York City. He came with his family, and we ended up connecting. I happened to be writing this was how long ago, Randy?

2018, I want to say.

Your play in New York?

Yep, in New York City. And then I was writing a book, Tim, called Rooftop Leadership.

At the time. And I asked Randy to come in because I knew he was, you know, from storygrid. And I had become familiar with Storygrid. I actually knew Sean almost immediately after I transitioned. I'd met him through Steve Pressfield, and he and I had become acquaintances and worked together on some projects. And so knowing that Randy was out of story grid, like, and a sergeant major, and I was really keen to have him work with me on my rooftop book, he tore it apart. Like, literally tore it apart. And we ended up starting over.

And then we went all the way through that, and this is why I wanted to go first. We went all the way through it, like, a year. And then he goes, hey, you should go to this big idea workshop, this nonfiction big idea workshop in Nashville. So I did, and I listened to you and Sean riff for another weekend. And I got outside and I called Randy. I was like, you asshole. We're starting over again.

And we did. And we did, because it was great. It was a great workshop, and it really helped me really get clear on what a big idea nonfiction book is. But Randy and I have known each other, I mean, for years we've been working on projects, and it just so happened that when the pineapple thing kicked off, I called him up and I was like, brother, I can't do this without you. Like, you're going to have to help me. And he was kind enough to drop everything and jump in with me.

You got anything to add, Randy?

Well, first of all.

I left group for about four years in 2007. The last time I went to Afghanistan was 2007.

And shortly after that, Scott became more well known in Special Forces because he started the Village Stability Operations. He kind of helped it nudge it along and started the train a training for that, which is where a lot of these relationships were built that were in the book. And he also wrote a book called Game Changers. That described how that was used in Afghanistan by Green Berets. And I didn't know any of this.

I went to Columbia for four years. I came back in 2012 and the guy who introduced us, Chris, he's like, hey, you're so smart. In Colombia, we need to have these briefings that Scott Mann did for Afghanistan, all these experts to talk all our guys about Columbia. I was like, I had no idea what you're talking about. I don't know who Scott Mann is. I don't know what briefings you're talking about, but sounds like a great idea. So. But Chris was my commander, so that's, that's how, you know, other than that, that's how he, he's the one that introduced us. He's the one that said I should go to the play. My parents and I went to the play. Scott is a really.

You know, he's a kind of a forward thinker in that when he does his plays, he has, after the play's done, all of the actors and directors come out and they sit down with the audience and they talk to the audience about veterans issues and some of the themes that were in the play. And, and I had an opportunity. I was like, hey, you know, Chris told me to come to your play. And he's like, yeah, I know exactly who you are. Your story girl, we need to talk. And, and that's how, you know, like you said, that's how we got together. And then we spent two years on your leadership book, rooftop leadership that hopefully will come out at the end of this year. And we were about two weeks from being done when he went dark because Afghanistan started falling. I'm like, hey, are you going to do this edit? You've had it for like three weeks. I didn't talk to him like that, but I was like, I was like, in my head, I'm like, what's going on? We're like, almost finished. It's right there. Reach up, grab it. You know, the orange. And, and I, he's like, hey, I, I gotta, I gotta out later. And I, since I never. I haven't been back to Afghanistan until 2007. All of my relationships, I already helped my interpreters get out of Afghanistan. I wrote them notes, they had visas, they were training, language training, the States. I don't really, I didn't really have a lot of other Afghanistan.

Afghanis that needed help getting out at that time. So when all this was going down, I was, I had my own feelings about, you know, whether what was going on and what those 20 years meant. But I didn't have a lot of friends that were Afghanis that were trapped there. And so I wasn't. I wasn't called in on this. And Scott kept trying to bring me in, but I was like, I don't want to. There seems like there's a lot of people going on, just kind of chaotic. I don't want to see step in there and not be able to help and cause more commotion. So I didn't. I wasn't very aggressive. I would go into the chat rooms that were in the book and listen and watch and see if anyone needed anything that I could assist with. But most people were already running with the ball, doing things they. People they knew and were really invested in it. And so I didn't see it really a place for me at the time. And then. And I didn't really understand what was going on, what they were doing until, you know, he called me and said, hey, I need a project manager. And I was like, I don't know what that does. And he's like, I'm gonna write up a contract. And the contract says you'll do whatever we ask you to do.

And I said, okay. And so that's how we. That's how we started working together. But. And then Simon Schuster. I'm sure the first couple meetings we have with Simon Schuster editors and people, they're like, who's this guy? But, yeah, so. And then also actually, he asked me to look at his play too. And I don't know if he took any of my suggestions, but over Covid, he actually made his play into a movie. And it's on. It's on Amazon now. You can buy it on Amazon. So we worked on that for a little bit, too.

When Scott, you know, with you signing a deal with Simon and Schuster, I'm sure they had their own editors, their own team. So when you were looking at the project, what made you think, like, I gotta have Randy on this project?

That's a great question. Well, there were a couple of things. One is, I had worked with Randy. You know, I have an immense appreciation for Story Grid as a. As an approach. Right. And both writing, editing, and I had worked with Randy on it with my own book. That was my heart, you know, it was. It was all the lessons I'd learned on leadership coming out of Special Forces. And so I. I knew that whatever this book was going to be, it was going to be. The expectations were going to be enormous. You know, it was the responsibility of carrying. Of telling These stories.

That otherwise would not be told. That, that voices just, that did not have, they did not have a voice. And that really bothered me in the sense that I felt like, okay, I am a storyteller, I'm an oral storyteller, I'm a decent writer, but I really need the discipline and rigor and structure that I know comes with storygrid and what it, and how you can really hammer and chisel out the true narrative, the true story of what's going on. And that's going to be required. Like there's not going to be any appetite for fluff or anything. That's just, you know, not that. Just the efficiency and emotional resonance of the story itself. And I had gone through such a journey with Randy over. I mean, I'm not even kidding. He's serious. We were 98% of the way done with the book and it was a two year journey and we shelved it, you know, to do this project. And so I knew that he could bring that to it. And I think he was a little reluctant at first because of the fact that Simon and Schuster was, you know, at the helm of this thing. And, and I told him, I said, I don't really care about that. What I care about is like, we are going to have to interview all of these people. Some of them are still in Afghanistan, some of them are severely traumatized. We have like 45 days to do that on Zoom. Then we're going to have to write this sucker in like 120 days, you know, and then, or, you know, some maddening number, it wasn't much, somewhere between four and six months. And then we're gonna have to, you know, submit it and get it out the door for the anniversary. So I just, I don't know, I just, I, I knew that working together we could probably have a chance. And I felt like working solo. There was no chance, there was no way I was going to be able to carry that load and do that and it, or, or produce what people deserved. So that was my rationale on it. And, and I just, I, I trusted him. Not just as a, as a story grid editor, but also as a sergeant major, as a guy that, you know, really got what this was like. He understood it at a visceral level and he took it very seriously. And I, and that's what I needed. Like, above all.

Yeah. I always think it's interesting.

Because this is, you know, this is a true story. This is a memoir, basically. And yet you've got to write it in a way where it's, it's interesting and it has narrative drive. And I always, I always wonder, like, is.

Is memoir and true stories, like, harder? Because you can't just make up whatever you want to happen next. So, and this could be a question for both of you, but how do you approach that when you're thinking through like, okay, this is a true story and now it's not just like a normal memoir where it's like, you know, my sad life, right? This is an actual important story that you got to tell truthfully, but you also need to do in a way where people actually read the book to the end. And so how do you approach that, a true story, while applying narrative drive, narrative techniques to make it an interesting story?

If we're talking about the story grid, I started with the five commandments.

Scott was already familiar with it, talked it through with some of the other editors, and they're like, eh, okay, we'll mess around with it.

But the key was.

It'S very uniquely written in that some of the scenes are like super, super short. And it was almost impossible to get five commandments out of it. But what I was looking for was looking for a turning point crisis question for each. Let's call it a sequence, each group of scenes involving that specific character.

And kind of evolving the whole thing around that. Like, there's, I don't know, there's probably 15 secondary characters that all have pieces of their story told chronologically through the book. And you might not have gotten that far, Tim, but I wanted, you know, it was really important to Scott and me and I to make sure that all their stories were resolved right. They made choices during their. During the two weeks of this book. They made choices to risk their families. They made choices to quit. Some of them didn't even get out. I won't tell you who they are, so we don't ruin it for you. But, you know, some of them, some of them died because of their choices, but they made choices and then there's a resolution to that choice that they made. So that's the crisis, the climax and the resolution. And when we finished the, when we thought we finished the book, we looked at the final chapters and like, hey, we got to resolve some of these people. Because I know they're going to read this book and go, what happened to what's his name? So we really hammered in and result, try to resolve all of the secondary characters at the very least. And then also trying to write the scenes with an inciting incident. I mean, we really focus on the Five Commandments. This is a really. It's not a book I've ever imagined writing, and it's not a book that I ever imagined, you know, trying to figure out. It's very unique in that the first half of the book is about one, pretty much one person in his relationship with a variety of Americans that helped him get out. And then the second half of the book is about everybody else. And so. And he's a small piece of that, but a very small piece of the rest of the book. And so. But he still needed a resolution at the end of the book. We almost forgot to put in there, but it kind of worked out.

Just as we were finishing writing the book, that some more information about where he was in life came out. So.

The other piece I tried to, like, first of all, Scott, I feel like it was three months, you're saying four to six months, but there was three months of rewrites and whatever. But the thing was, it was three months, and we started two weeks late because we thought that Simon Schuster would have a better plan. And then we got tired of waiting. We made a plan. So it was really, really, really quick turnaround on getting the first draft out. And then we had at least two major rewrites and then a couple other kind of small rewrites. And. And. And as a result, you know, if I had two years with it, like, Scott, Scott. One day I think I was through the second rewrite or something. Scott's like, hey, is this a really good book? Can we make it better? And I was like, I think we're at like, 90, 95%, Scott. And, you know, if we had another year, we could bring it up to 99. But is it worth it? And, you know, is it worth it because, you know, it'll be more significant coming out on the anniversary of what happened than delaying it. And, you know, if you want to delay it till Christmas, will it be that much better to make a difference? Because does it all match? Does every. Does every scene and does every character arc match a kind of a Five Commandments kind of thing, or the conventions or the obligatory moments? Absolutely not. But we had that goal to begin with, and we tried our best. But also, real life doesn't always give you those answers as well.

And my experience with memoirs and true stories like this is you really need to, during the interviews, and we had to go back and re Interview people to get the answers to some of these questions. You look for that moment where there's a turning point leading to a crisis. Question. And it's not always obvious.

It's not a turning point crisis question. When they're faced with death and they choose life.

That'S an obvious direction. Right. The question is.

There'S more nuanced stuff that you have to look for and you go into the interview, ideally with questions, trying to dig those out of the interviews. So it's a different process. And, and we by no means got it right every single time. And sometimes there was no interview. There's no second or third interview because they're in Afghanistan, communication is horrible. Or they're in hiding in a different country, or there's. They're evading through Afghanistan to get out of the country and there's no way to reach these guys again, or they don't want to, they don't care to talk to you because you left them behind. So there's a lot of PTSD and there's a lot of bitterness. And so sometimes you get one shot. And you kind of have to also craft those crisis questions as potential crisis questions. I don't know what he was thinking. I get a chance to ask him again. I didn't ask the right questions when I had the interview, but I can kind of picture what he might have been going through and I can pose that as a potential crisis question, like what he could have been thinking. And that's another way we, we, we address some of the issues.

And I would just say from a narrative drive perspective, Tim, like, as I thought about it, you know, as a storyteller, like, how in the world are we going to break this thing down to a way that it's readable and it's digestible and you just, you don't want to stop turning the pages because that's what it was like when you were in it. Like, it was so fast and so intense. Like you didn't sleep, you didn't sleep, you didn't sleep for 10, 12, 14 days because, you know, you literally had your phone on your chest and the first little buzz, you were back up on your phone. And because when we were asleep, they were moving and when they were moving, we were like periods of darkness were reversed. So you couldn't, and you couldn't live with the guilt if you woke up and somebody had been beaten or left alone. Like, you know, so I wanted, I knew that. Capturing that intensity. I wanted the reader to feel what it felt like for, yes, those Afghans that were wading through, you know, knee high feces, feces filled trenches in 105 degree temperature with their children while getting beaten by a Taliban rubber hose. Like, I wanted that level of emotional detail, but I also wanted people to understand, like to be sitting at the breakfast table with a double amputee who's trying to save the interpreter who saved him on the battlefield while his kids throwing cheese grits at him from the breakfast table, you know, and he's got his head down in his phone and he's reading a message about.

You know, how this guy's wife's being beaten and he's trying to like conceal that from his child because that's all he's done his whole life, is to keep this kind of thing from his family. And now it's at his breakfast table, the one like safe haven he has, you know, and, and I just thought, man, how in the world are we going to do that? And we just, to me, I could see it and the narrative drive for this was it had to be written in third person, third person on this. It had to be written in a way that like it was not, hey, this is what I did at band camp, rescuing my Afghan friend. Like it needed to be, you know, toggling back and forth almost in a Dunkirk kind of way. That latest movie Dunkirk, where you're just toggling back and forth between these different points of view and you're just going for the ride, you know. And then the last thing I'll say that I knew we had.

Going for us in the story, the narrative tools was we had two clocks, we had two ticking clocks. We had the timeline of departure which was stated as 31st August.

And we knew in the chat rooms and everything else that.

It was going to be more like 26 August. Because by the time you, you can't be pulling Afghans in on the last day of your evacuation. Like you've got to make way to get your own people out and you know, posture yourself for self exfiltration. So we knew it was going to be around the 26th, that it was going to wrap up. And it started on the 15th, right? So you've got a definite ticking clock there. And then you have very early on in the process the.

The threat of the suicide bomber from isis. K. Like the threat, the threat stream reporting is profound and you know that it's going to happen. Like, you know it's going to happen. Like where were conversations in the chat room? Like, how long do we have? Like, these people are all combat veterans, they are all analysts. Like, they know that this is going to happen and it's more about, you know, how do we make the most of the time we have. And so you've got these two ticking clocks that are happening that I think lend a tremendous amount of urgency to the drive in the story. And then finally you're on your. If you're a shepherd, you're on your phone, so you're literally looking at the action through a soda straw. You know, you've only got one little microcosm of what's going on. And then it's in the chat rooms where information is revealed by what other people are seeing. And then all of a sudden you toggle, toggle to the commando wading through the canal with his children in his arms and his wife at his side. And you're looking through his eyes and then you're back to looking through the soda straw. So all of those to me seemed like really useful tools. And then as Randy was talking about bringing the rigor and structure of the story grid into it, it allowed us to play with those openly, but yet still bound ourselves in a way that was responsible and let us move to resolution.

When in the process did you realize this book was about making and keeping promises?

It was epiphanal for me, Randy and I, and we had, we were having a conversation and it was, we would do these pull up calls. God, I just thought about those we were doing for so 90 days of just literally 2,3000 words a day. And we would pull up in the morning and we would pull up in the evening. And I had sequestered myself up in the mountains of North Carolina, was jamming away and Randy and I got on a call and at some point I just remember saying to him, you know what I think this thing is about is just two basic questions.

What the hell does a promise mean to you? And how far would you go to honor it? Because as I had started to get into the interviews and I started asking that question and it was amazing the responses that we were getting. And it just became so basic and simple to me. And as soon, for me, as soon as that clarity, I got that clarity, everything changed. Like, it just became for me, it was like, for me, I know that's what this is really, this is really what this came down to. For those of us who fought in that war, we gave our youth to that war, we gave our friends to that war. Like, man.

We gave it. Not all of some gave more than others, but my God, 20 years, you know, and now you want us to just walk away from these people like that? Some of us are here because of them. And just something as simple as what you learn in kindergarten, just a promise and standing by your friends when they're in trouble, like, that's really it. And what does that look like when people really do it? And what does it look like when people who you would expect don't?

And the contrast in that is deafening. And so for me, that was just super fulfilling and clear, and that's never changed for me. And the more I do this a year later, and I'm absolutely certain that was the right angle to take for this book.

And is that what kind of helped you decide what to keep in the book and what to take out of the book? Because, again, like, if you did all of these interviews and just, you know, right at the beginning of the book is this just giant cast of characters that you're about to learn about in the book. And even though it's like 400 pages long, that's still heavily edited to what actually happened if you wrote it all down. So, like, what helped you, like, decide what to go in and what to leave out?

We had at least probably somewhere between eight and 10 other stories, other characters which had sub characters and other characters inside it. And we really had to look at two things. One, did they write a Pineapple? Because some of them have extraordinary escape stories, but they weren't involved with what got created, or if they were, it was very, very. It was a fingerprint, not a handprint or a. Or he carried them out, you know, with the help of Pineapple. So we had to really go, how much did this person involve in the Pineapple Express.

You know, capability. And the second one was, you know, how much. How much relationship.

With the.

What am I trying to say here?

The. Gosh dang it. The relationship with.

The promise. Well, going back to the promise, the promise has to do with United States promising Afghanistan by giving him 20 years of, you know, having. Bringing this to a resolution. And also the promise of the individual American characters to the Afghani characters and their relationships. So finding.

A person who got out by themselves, which there weren't very many, and they weren't involved with someone from Pineapple, once again, or there were some. No relationship there that we could. We could. We could track, we could trace, we could touch. Then that. Then we. That's when we had to really. I mean, it was hard for Scott. Like, I said it a couple times, like, Scott, I don't think this guy goes in there. It's like, no, we got to put it in there. I was like. And I was like, I just don't think it goes in this book, Scott. I don't think it goes in this book. We had a bunch of conversations with this and, you know, and it was. Some of them were really hard to take out. Like, he's like, okay, okay, except I want to put a little bit here, a little bit there. I was like, no, no, I think we just take it all out. It's like, we'll just put a little bit here. It's like, I just don't think that guy has a. Has a story in this book, man. We can write another book. But I don't think this book. I think it's just not going to fit. It doesn't fit the purpose.

And understand too, Tim, that like, so as I was rolling into it from an author's perspective, my, my emotional connection to all these people was, you know, enormous and raw. And again, looking at it through a soda straw, I didn't even, honest to God, I didn't even really know. When we agreed to write the book, going into the interview process, I thought, I have no clue who. I mean, I knew some of the protagonists, like, for example, Zach. Zach is a former Green Beret turned inner city school teacher whose hero is Harriet Tubman. And he fashioned an underground railroad using paratroopers and Afghans to move them through a sewage filled canal. I mean, are you shitting me like that? That's okay. Yeah, that guy's definitely a central character here. But, you know, then some of the others, I had no clue. Like the Minister of Women's affairs, one of the four female ministers in the country, actually waded through that sewage filled canal and went out our apparatus and we didn't even know who she was until afterwards we find out that she was like the most senior hunted female leader in the country. And she had got out on the Pineapple Express. So, like, we didn't know, but it was clear as we interviewed her, we're like, yeah, definitely a primary character. So for me, what I tried to do was, was ask myself, all right, like Randy said, those criteria were there, but also, who embodies certain thematic elements of what this thing was, that, you know, they're kind of a universal singular for all of that. Like, Hasina represented to me.

What so many at risk women in Afghanistan were and are going through.

There was another female NCO who, who we felt like really embodied the pride and underrepresented voices of female Afghan soldiers. There was an American citizen who was not going to leave his family behind. He refused to follow State Department directives and was not going to leave his parents. That embodied so many amsets that America's furious about, Right? And so that was the other thing is I wanted to, again, in a Dunkirk kind of way.

You just sit in that cockpit with a fighter pilot and feel like you understand the whole Royal Air Force's perspective. Like, same thing. Like, if you walk with this one commando through this canal, you got a pretty good read on what the commandos went through. So that was my. And that was very arbitrary. And, like, I had the thematics in my mind, and then I would have to, you know, do jujitsu with Randy on which one stayed and went.

And.

And. But overall, man, at the end of the day. And I think he would agree with this. Like, I didn't. I didn't override any of them. Like, if he said they needed to go, they went. Because I knew I was close to it, and I knew that, you know, it would be. That he would actually have a better call on that than me.

I knew I'd wear him down and that. But we got the last three days. It's like, okay, we're gonna throw this guy out, right? You're like, whatever. I was like, okay, yeah.

You know, it's interesting because it's so interesting to hear you guys talk about this and hear you guys land on things that we've been talking about more in recent times in story grid.

Like, okay, so a couple weeks ago, I was in Colorado at this thing, and I met this guy that runs. His name's Josh Scott. He runs KHS Pedals. It's a guitar pedal company. And he's working on this book. And he's like. He's like a, like, guitar historian. Like, he can tell you everything that's ever happened around the guitar since, you know, the beginning of guitars thousands of years ago. And he was trying to write this story or trying to. He's working on this book. And I was like, well, why do you. And he's having the same trouble. What do you put in? What do you take out? And I was like, well, what are you trying to say? Why does this matter to you that these stories get out there? Because we all read it. You know, we all went through a US History book when we were growing up, and it was like, on this day, this happened. On this day, this happened, and nobody gives two shits except to pass the. Pass the test. And I think what was so interesting in this case is the way that you landed on that fundamental question, a really controlling idea about promises. And then once you have that, like, that's a question.

That everybody has to ask themselves in their life, right? Like, I've never been to war, but I have to ask that question. You know, I have to ask that question in my marriage, with my kids, with my business, with my friends. Like, that's a question you bump into all the time. And I want to get to a question to you, Randy, on this, because inside of Storygrid, we talk about how, like, the editor's job is to stand in the gap for the reader, right? Like, you're there to make sure the final product is something that will change the reader's life. And so when you are approaching these things and you're trying to decide what to tell Scott to keep in and what to tell Scott to take out, like, what kind of. Again, what kind of things are you. You thinking through to make those decisions and make those suggestions?

Well, as far as the characters are concerned, you know, I. I'm very.

I'm very spreadsheet oriented, I guess, for lack of a better word. So I started making. And some of this was. It was, you know, kind of Scott's like, hey, I need a spreadsheet. This, this, this. And this is like, I already got that. I just. He's like, oh, okay. And. And then I was like, I just got to tweak it. And then I show it you to him. And it would be like, which character showed up in which act, for instance.

And how many times and what he's doing. And if we had two characters that were pretty similar, like, we had a couple of incidences where, like, hey, we have. These four characters are all special Operation Afghanistan trained by Americans with an American who's guiding them out. Are they different enough with a family with four to six kids trying to get out? So are they too similar? We need to tell different, you know, a different diversity of stories. And so really, we got to look at these and say, are they. Are they different enough to include in the book? And because they're all four extraordinary stories, and they're all four, you know, really heartbreaking, but if you heartbreak them in the same way every time, it loses its strength. So we looked at that. We looked at it that way. The great thing that Scott did was come up with the promise, which we. He. And when you asked, when that came up, we had a. We had. We started two weeks late because we didn't have.

We had done all the interviews all the way through December, and.

We had a really great proposal which had a lot of starter introduction and starter stuff. But we didn't have a plan on how it was going to get written.

And we didn't have this mantra of the promise at the moment. And you know that once we had the promise, then we went forward and said, okay, this is. You know, this is what act one's gonna look like. This is what act two. Like, this is what act three is. And it was a combination of Scott and I batting it back and forth and. And then making us PowerPoints slideshow because we're Green Berets, and that's what we're best at, besides killing people, I guess, is making. Making a PowerPoint spreadsheet. And we were like, okay, this is the act. These are the people in the acts. These are the relationships in the acts. And we started and then. And then we looked at it and like, all right, this act's really long, and it's got relationships that are very similar. So do we need those? And does. Do all of them have promises involved? And the overarching promise? And it was.

Took about a month to get it rolling. And once we started getting the spreadsheet filled out, which was my job. And once we started.

And I wasn't in every interview, I was feeding them sometimes information to ask in the interview, but I was transcribing the interview and then taking the information and putting it in my spreadsheets. And so I didn't want to listen to it twice, for lack of a better word. So I didn't go to the interviews. A lot of times I would transcribe it and listen to it there and then put it in these spreadsheets. So after the first month, once we really got a handle on what the promise meant and how we wanted to get a diverse cast and not have these things that were similar, that's how we kind of decided who we're going to eliminate, what scenes we don't really need because they're similar and things like that.

Yeah. The only thing, I guess I would just add, and I don't even know where this fits, but I just. I keep thinking about the workshop in Nashville and, you know, the big idea nonfiction approach. And one of the things, Tim, that came to me as we. I mean, it was in my. It was in my heart. But as we started talking about how the book ends and how it lands was it always. It always just struck me about how in a big idea book that, you know, it goes in a different direction at the end. There's a real turn in polarity there. And I felt that, like, I'm like, yeah, man. Like, this may not be like, the, you know, the quintessential big idea book. Like, it's certainly heavier on the memoir side, but there is a question I'm going to ask at the end that I don't think anybody's going to see coming, you know, And I think it brings it home. Right. And I just. It just felt good to think about it, and it felt good to know that I could do that and it was okay to do that. And I just. I want to throw a shout in all seriousness to you and Sean for gifting me that, because I came to that very, very early in the process and. And I knew that's how I was going to land that chopper. Like, I knew that's what it was going to be and that it was an extremely generous thing that could be done is to let the reader really think about this question in their own life.

And I would never, I don't think, have given myself permission to do that or even known that was an option in this, you know, And I think it. Everybody. I've used, and Randy will attest to this. Like, I've given a lot of talks on the book already, and I asked that question at the end, and it's the thing that everybody comes up at the end and says, wow, man, thank you for that. Like, I didn't see that coming. And. And you can tell they're introspective and they're looking at their own arena, and, damn. Like, that's. That's why we do this, I think. And. And it really. I mean, you guys are seriously onto something with that. And it was so cool to see that even as a possibility of something as heavy as this.

Yeah. I mean, I think you were talking about the surprising but inevitable end. Right. And, yeah, I think that's what is so interesting to me with a book like what you've written here and other ones that we would all probably kind of talk about is this idea that, like, I think what I love about this is that it's not just a book about what happened in Afghanistan. Right. Because there is a really small number of people that would read a book that's just like, you know, kind of listing out details of what happened.

Where this is a story where you're trying to get people to see the world in a certain way. And then. And even the way that you set it up, you give them something, you know, you like. Right. Hook them when they're not looking right at the end of the book. And I think that's such an important thing. And what I think is fascinating, and maybe it was just the whole, like, you know, having to operate in such tight constraints of writing the book so fast, but it's like the fact that you guys landed on that when you did saved you so much time and effort of, like, you know, landing on the controlling idea, landing on where the book was going to end allowed you to make those. Those decisions along the way when you only have three months to write this entire book.

Yeah, I just think that was. That. That was fascinating.

Yeah, it really helped. It really did. It helped. And it gave us, I think, an anchor point throughout the whole thing, particularly when things got really dicey.

And they did.

There were some periods where the deadline and just the. The dynamic realities of life. It threw just about every curve at us you could possibly imagine. And, you know, the other thing too, man, and I gotta say it, like, it was nice to have a Green Beret with me on this because there was just something. Because there were times when we would both just start laughing the same way that you would laugh on a mission in the mountains in Afghanistan when, like, literally every fucking thing in the world has gone wrong and you just start laughing, you know, because there's, like, nothing else you can do. And then it's okay, you know? And that was a lot of this. I gotta say. I absolutely love working with Randy, and we have a lot of fun and, you know, it's been a really, really cool experience. But there were some times, man, I didn't know. Like, I really wondered if we were gonna make it to the. You know, in time because it just. It was so much.

Yeah. And I was also interested since, you know, Randy, you're so steeped in story grid and. But then working with Simon and Schuster, who probably has no idea what story grid is, and so what was they do now that's great. Like, what was that? Like, did they. Did they care? Did that ever really come up? Were they just happy you were hitting your deadlines and it was written halfway decent?

Or.

Or were they interested? Or did they ask questions like, did it ever kind of come up in that. I'm just curious, their reaction to using something like storygrid so explicitly.

You know, I didn't call it story grid when we were talking, when I talked shop with the other editors, but I. But I. Sometimes they would try to change stuff or cut stuff that I knew a was emotionally needed to be kept in there because they didn't understand the big picture. And Scott was going to Fight him on it. And then I had to explain it. And I would use story grid, verbiage vocabulary to kind of say, hey, this is why this has to be in there. Because you haven't read the end yet, but it has to be in there. It's setting it up and you understand a setup. And ultimately storygrid helps you write a good story that works. That's the definition of storygrid almost. And they can recognize a story that works. So we wrote a story that works. And they had other editors that came in after Scott and I that we got to veto later on, and we did. Sometimes I'm like, that's not. When we wrote that scene. That's not what we intended. We need to put some of that back. And then in some cases, they did make it better. They were better with words. They had better word choice than we did, or they rearranged something and it made it better. We're not infallible, and neither are they. And so we ended up working pretty well with them in the end. I mean, they had two other editors involved. And most of their editing was after Scott wrote I edited and maybe did some fillers too. He wrote most of the, of it. And so after that was all done, we would submit it to the first, first guy who's working with us through the whole thing almost, and he would. We'd send the full, the chapter, the sequence, the scene, whatever, to him. He would mess with it, send it back. I would look at it. I would prepare Scott so he wouldn't tear his hair out and say, hey, this is what he said. I think he's right. Or I think you're. He, we're right. We need to convince him were right. And he was. He worked for Scott. He worked for us. Right? And so, but he also knew the business, so he knew what Simon and Schuster were expecting as well. And so that was a, that was a conversation we had a lot. And then there was another guy. After we'd gotten through the first act and a half, another guy came on for just a week and he just read it start to finish. It was like, this has got to go here for the big picture and stuff like that. Some of this stuff made sense and some of it was like, out there. Like, no, we're not doing that. Put that back. And, and, and in the end, Simon and Schuster were very.

You know, hey, if Scott wants that in there, we're leaving it in there. That's, that's, that's, that's how it ended. It was never like if you don't put this in or take that or turn this, it's over. It was always like, you know, if, if they, if there's three people against Scott and I or against Scott and they said, hey, we really. And Scott's like, I, I, I'm going to die on this. They're like, okay, we'll leave it in there. That only happened, that happened very rarely. And even when it did happen, we, it still, he still agreed to a tweak or something like that because he did, he didn't not see what they were saying and he just thought that was a really emotional part that had to be kept in the book.

And the other thing too that gave us Tim that I think was a competitive advantage was that Randy's absolutely right. There were a lot of people in the orbit around this book because they placed a lot of bets on this book early on. So they were heavily invested in their human capital with it. But what I would say is what Randy and I had that nobody else had was we had a grammar for all of this. Like, you know, and, and so I would, even if as I was starting to map each chapter out from inciting incident all the way down to resolution, like we had a grammar, like we had an outline. We, we, we, you know, and he had really schooled me on that. Just in our interactions with rooftop leadership over two years, like we had a way of talking about this that was, that was kind of funny because other people started to just pick up on it and they started to use those terminologies because it was a grammar that we could all get our head around. And I think looking back on it now, that was huge because when you've got that kind of a disparate, diverse group of people trying to converge on this high stakes event, if you don't have a grammar or a language or a way of looking at the problem, like man, you're in trouble. And, and we had that. Randy gave us that. And I'll tell you the other thing too, and he won't tell you this but, but I will is it. He, by the end of it, he was quarterback in the whole thing, man. Like there was no doubt in anybody's mind. And the most senior editor at Simon and Schuster will tell you the exact same thing. Like he was quarterbacking the whole thing. And, and I am convinced because a, the methodology was sound and he knew it and understood it and everyone trusted it because, because they saw it happen again and again and again whenever we went up against walls. But I Think the other thing was just that there was a language for it, and I think it made everybody feel safer. And. And so by the end of it, when we were really out over our skis, you know, he was quarterbacking, and I think that was great because it gave me confidence, but it also gave everybody else confidence. And I, you know, I thought it was cool. I thought it was cool to see from the start where they're looking at like, hey, who the hell's this dude? And who let him in to. At the end, like, he's quarterbacking? And I think that was really great. And. And I think it was a real testament to what we were able to do. And. And the confidence that. That organized, that huge organization has in us now is off the charts. Like, I mean.

It'S crazy the amount of confidence they have in us for the marketing side and everything else, and I think it's a. A direct result of that. So it was. It took some time, but that. That language and that process.

Definitely was entrenched at the end.

So one, one, one other thing, Tim, is that our process, you know, the first four or five chapters were hard. We had to figure it out. But after that, I would. We would. We would talk about, hey, this is what's going to be the first act, second act, third act, right? So I would look forward and I would. I would extrapolate a five commandments for that chapter, and I would put that at the front of a template and say, I think the five commandments are this. I think. And then I would connect the transcript to all the. All the.

Interviews that had anything to do with those five commandments so that they knew exactly where to find the information. And I would extrapolate quotes that would support those five commandments, and I would stick those in there underneath the five commandments, and that's what. And then Scott would roll. After he finished the last chapter, he'd roll into that and like. And he may not. I mean, I think about 75, 80% of the time it worked out the way I thought it was going to be with the five Commandments. But then, you know, we'd have a conversation like, I don't think it's going to work. I think it should go like this. And I'm like, well, let's. Let's see what happens. And we'd roll with it. But that's what we started doing, is I started helping outline the stuff ahead of time, which gave Scott kind of marching orders. Like, he's like, all right, now I know exactly what I'm looking for. And also, oh, I need to interview this person again because I need to understand what they're thinking about to get this crisis question stuff done.

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, you know, like at night when you're moving on a rope and there's like, knots in the rope. It's like that was kind of. Because you didn't know what the hell you were doing as you explored into each chapter, really. And it was just kind of those knots in the rope that gave you footing, you know, to build it out.

Yeah. All right, let me end with this question for you, Scott. Now that it's a year since this happened, you've gone through this process of writing the book, the books coming out right on the year anniversary.

I'd like to hear from you.

What you're hoping happens as a result of people reading this book and kind of where you see that we're at now a year later.

Yeah, I think.

I've reached a level of clarity on the book. I've gone through the whole emotional roller coaster that I suspect every author goes through, particularly when they work for, you know, big organizations for the first time and, you know, the project is bigger than they are. And I've gone through all that. I've gone through all that emotional agita of what I want this thing to be. And I think at the end of the day, what I've landed on is I just want people to care more about this problem than they do right now. And I hope that they will find some measure of clarity for their own life on how they can play a bigger game. Like, if those two things happen at any level of scale, I would be an extremely happy guy. Like, I mean, I've just tried to keep it really simple.

Just people to care more than they do right now.

And get a bit deeper on what their Pineapple Express is, on what it is that they want or can do when things fall apart. And, yeah, that's it for me. And everything else will work itself out.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything StoryGrid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the StoryGrid universe. If you'd like to check out the transcript for this episode, any show notes for this episode, and to buy a copy of Operation Pineapple Express by Scott Mann, which I highly recommend if you're watching on YouTube, there's a link below in the description. If you are listening, you can go to storygrid.com podcast and we put a link in the show notes there. Or of course, just, you know, go to Amazon and search for it. I'm sure you can find it. If you want to access any past episodes of the StoryGrid podcast, you can go to storygrid.com podcast and as always, to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show, or by going to Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating and review. Thanks, as always, for being a part of our community here at Story Grid. We'll see you in a couple days.