What Does the Villain Want?

Hello, and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we are back on my novel. So we start out talking through the entire beginning hook of the story. That's what we spend about the first 20 minutes or so of the episode talking about. And then the conversation took a turn where we start talking about the middle build and the villain and how what the villain wants is driving the story and where there were problems in my story with this. So I think it's a really important episode because things seemed to be going well with the second draft, but I kept just having this nagging fear that something was wrong. And sure enough, there was. So Sean and I dive into that, and I think you'll enjoy it. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, it's been a good while now since we actually have gone back to the novel. So we went through some nonfiction stuff, and then we spent some time doing Q and A, and then I did my rogue me only episode. And so now we're back on the novel. And we'd gone over about the first half of my second draft of the beginning hook. So. And it was where I kind of wrote a bunch of new stuff and got about halfway through and was wondering if I was on the right track, and you told me to keep going. So I just had to finish the beginning hook, which I ended up having a lot of resistance on. I just. I don't know. I think I'm scared of the middle build. So if I never finish the beginning hook, I never actually have to go back and rewrite the middle build. I knuckled down and worked through it, a lot of it. So I added a ton at the beginning of the beginning hook, and now I've been reworking it. So finish that up. It's about 23,000. Wait, 23, 22,000 words, something like that. Where before the whole beginning hook was, I think, like 14 or 15,000. So, anyway, now that you've read the second half of the beginning hook, would love to hear where you think it is and your thoughts generally.

I think you're absolutely on the right track. And I was impressed with the way you've added a lot of real urgency and specificity. To the storytelling before, you know, in the first draft, it was very much kind of a generic world that wasn't all that clear. Now you're getting into the specificity of describing the streets, the other people in the world. And I think generally it's in good shape. There's a real nice feel, feeling of movement from a positive to a negative to a positive to a negative, which is a really good thing going for you. Obviously, you know, we're not. We. We're not picking apart each scene right now and story gridding it. And, you know, maybe we'll do that later. But for now, you're on track. All of the work that you've done in. In coming up with the structure in the first draft is really paying off now because it seems as if, you know, all the. All the pieces to the puzzle are there. And now you're, you know, you're really just executing a plan at a level that you would never be able to do if you hadn't done all this extra work to begin with. So what that's done for you is it's created a real narrative momentum, in my estimation, so that the final sort of push at the end of the beginning hook is a big enough surprise, and it pulls the rug out from the protagonist in a way that makes her see the reality of her actions. And what I mean by that is that I talk about narrative momentum in three different ways. There's one, the reader knows less than the players in the story, and that's mystery. That's the way, you know, we. We create mystery. And narrative suspense is what's going to happen next. The next one is when the reader and the protagonist have the same amount of information, and that's suspense, so that we don't know what's going to happen, nor does the protagonist. Lastly, the third one is dramatic irony. And dramatic irony is when the reader knows more than the protagonist and the players in the drama. And so what you've done here is you've combined all three elements there in a really solid way. Now the protagonist and the reader are in on a secret that the other players in the drama aren't in on, with the exception of the president and the mayor at the end of the story. So it's a real, you know, kick in the guts to these numbered people when they discover that Jesse couldn't leave whenever she wants. And not only can she leave whenever she wants, she's going to go to the magical land, she's going to go to the place where everybody wants to be so that's a real nice way of pushing into the. Into the middle build. And it also, you know, just to check your hero's journey here and sort of the eight, you know, way stations of a. Of a major story, you know, at the beginning of. At the beginning Hook, you want shock and you want denial. You know, when you want those two sort of active moments for emotional moments for the protagonist to evolve. So Jesse. Let's check that. So Jesse is shocked at the beginning because she's discovered to be, you know, stealing credits. And that's not just shocking enough. She's been invited to join the coder school for the threshing. So that's a big shock blow to the system for her. Now, denial is that she. She refuses to go on that, you know, journey. So in terms of the hero's journey, the call to adventure is when the president says, come to the pavilion. You know, come. Come join the magical world and be part of the threshing, you know, contingent. And she denies that by saying no, which is also in terms of the hero's journey, the refusal of the call. So we want our protagonist to be called and then to refuse the call. And in terms of Kubler Ross, that's shock and denial. So check and check. You've got both of those in your beginning hook. Now, the most difficult thing of the beginning hook is to create a transition between the beginning hook and a middle build that is surprising, that is, also pushes the protagonist into accepting the call. They have to cross the threshold willingly and actively. So they can't just be pushed there without, you know, having their own decisive moment. And the way you fix that problem works because at the end of the beginning hook, Jesse is revealed to be withholding information from everybody that she has come close to in a very short amount of time. So prior to that, you know, the arrival of the president, Jesse is sort of becoming entrenched in this numbered, you know, community. She's starting to feel comfortable. They're starting to feel comfortable with her. And then, bang, it's revealed that it's a revelatory turning point from your beginning hook into your middle build. The revelation is that Jesse can leave whenever she wants. And that bang, brings the shame upon her that she understands that she's acting like a child for not, you know, going on this journey. So all in all, the structural work, you know, that we've done for two years, you have done for two years is really paying off in a way that allows you to, you know, flesh out these scenes in a way that that works. And yeah, of course, you know, this isn't the final draft and some of the, some of the dialogue and some of the sentences aren't the best, but who cares? You are. The point of the second draft is to really craft the world, to expand the universe so that it's very specific to the reader. And, you know, the dialogue between 61 and Jesse really presents. It foreshadows also what she's gonna face when she crosses over to the magical land. And it's not all roses and sunshine there. It's a dog eat dog world. This guy has been there. He's sort of like, in terms of the hero's journey, he's an archetypical trickster, meaning everybody among the number thinks he's a crazy old man who whatever he says is ridiculous and you can't trust him and his brain's been scrambled. But he also tells the truth. So he gives Jesse a real sense of what this, you know, what this magical world is really all about. So that she is basically forewarned before she gets there, which is really important because, you know, the next emotional threshold that she's going to have is anger. And having the information that she's being set up to sort of be either, you know, given the golden seal of approval and brought into the. Into the threshing sort of team. It's. It's gonna make her angry. So all in all, I think this is.

That's.

Go ahead.

Well, and that works because that's when, you know, the first test is when she burns the tower down.

Yeah.

So the anger can drive that.

Yeah, it manifests itself in the. In the first stage of the first test of the mental build. So I wouldn't really worry so much about, you know, the middle build. You've got to plot it out. All you have to do is flesh it out more and have more fun and have more dialogue and have more. You know. The other thing that I wanted to say is that you also made a really, a bunch of nice choices by expanding the group of people on the stage and then bringing it down again and then expanding it and then bringing it down so that there's a real, you know, sort of transition between smallish, you know, two person scenes, three person scenes, to big crowd, big action sequence. So the other thing that you have to remember in, in a thriller is that you really need a lot of terrific action sequences. And so, you know, usually you're looking at at least seven in a major story. And in your beginning hook, you have a. You have A bunch of really nice little sequences here. You have the sequence of her being shamed, which is an action sequence that's terrifying. Then you have the chase sequence where she has to get back to, you know, the subway before her. Her light turns to red. And, you know, then you also have the little. These little active moments where, you know, she's. She's hurt by that crazy lady in the bed who's a minor. There's a lot of really nice little action pieces in this beginning hook that are making a promise to the reader. I'm really putting in a lot of great action here in the beginning hook. But wait till you, you know, wait till the big payoff. So you're really increasing the interest of the reader by really having these nice little action bits in the beginning hook. And then the middle build, you're going to have at least three of them, you know, three major events that transition into the big payoff at the end. So, you know, I think. I think you have a great plan for, you know, the next sequence of scenes and your entire middle build.

Yeah, I felt like having so one. It was nice to. On each scene, just go back to my giant list of to dos, the brainstorming ones. And it made me really glad that I had a column for the scene number because then I could just skip down to whatever scene I was working on, whatever brainstorm I had for that scene. Right? So there were. There were things like, okay, you gotta, like, the character that shows up to reveal that she can leave whenever she want. Like, he came out of nowhere. He didn't even exist in the book, and he just shows up. And so I was like, you know, but I had that in my notes. I'm like, okay, so. So, you know, I use the president and the mayor instead. Well, I think that works.

I think that works. And the reason why is that you're escalating the social, you know, extra personal tension on Jesse. And so if you had, you know, the mayor come, if you switched roles and had the president do the first one and the mayor the second, it wouldn't have worked because the mayor is at a lower social status than the president. So you need to escalate and progressively complicate by raising the conflict in spheres of social influence. So the president is a bigger force than the mayor. So the mayor, who gives the, you know, the sentence to 83, that she has to go outside without any protective gear. That's really something. And then when the president shows up, it's even bigger than that. Like, even that didn't get Jesse to go. And it's now going to require the president to show his face underground. And, you know, one small note is you should really sort of maybe use some of the. Some of the numbered in there to express that shift by having, like, an herald figure, you know, say something. But that's. That's for the third draft. Okay.

Yeah. And so I liked. I tried to. So again, the last scene was super soft in the first draft, so knowing where I was going allowed me to kind of turn some volume up on some, like, one. I just had to make it extremely clear it wasn't in the first draft. Just extremely clear that Jesse could leave and how much the number that, like, just incensed and offended the number. And that's why I. I tried to add 61 in more because he only showed up, like. Basically I tried to use him as a proxy for the numbered at large. Right. So he. We saw his emotion as a proxy for, like, the whole group. And then. Yeah, so I felt like it. I felt pretty good about where everything was going and, you know, where I ended up with it. So kicking into the middle build. I mean, am I basically just doing the same thing where I should just, like, start with the next couple sequences and work through my notes on where those are going and what needs to be. Just keep doing the same thing.

Yeah, I think so. I think you. You made some really great notes of things that you have to put into these scenes. And you have a very clear understanding of the global progression in terms of Kubler Ross. Plus, you know, the. The hero's journey. You know, I think you're going to have a lot more fun fleshing out all the stuff in. In the magical world now, because you can present it. You really need to make the magical world so incredibly different than the darkness of where she's coming from.

So everything has to glitter. Everything has to be just the best. And underneath, it's very dark. So the counterbalance is. Is that in for the Numbered, it's very externally dark and dim and horrible. Right. But internally, the numbered feel that their kinship, they feel a kinship among one another. They feel like, you know, they're a tribe, they're outsiders, but they belong to a tribe of people. In the magical world, everything is externally amazing, but internally, all of the characters are exiled. They don't feel like they're part of a larger thing. They're just trying to survive. They're just trying to make it through the circumstances. And even, like, the team members that are assigned to Jesse, they're They're gonna. They're not gonna be easy to. They're not gonna be as easy to embrace her as. As the numbered are. And it has to be active choices that they, you know, they make as they experience, you know, Jesse's personality, etc. And I think you've already clearly, you know, put that in. In the first draft. So it's really just knowing that, you know, the big note is Jesse's going to, you know, it's an amazing, interesting, fascinating, beautiful world externally. So that's really my big note for the middle build is that it needs to be as. As light as, you know, the beginning is dark.

Yeah, that was one of my questions is. I feel like I was. I'm still waffling on what I want that to look like, because the two kind of options, which you may have already answered, but the two kind of options that we've gone back and forth on is like, one, is it like a. Like a military training camp? Or two, is it more like glamorous and they're the heroes? But, you know, even what you just said, if I look at it as building a world that is the direct opposite of the numbered world, then that helps me answer some of those questions. So instead of below ground, it's above ground. Instead of kind of everything being a manual hard task process, everything is much more automated and people there to do it for you. And, like, is that what you're meaning? Like, I mean, is that a good place to start, is just like, what is the opposite of this world and create that one?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It should be. Is it a military operation? Yes, but it's also sort of a. It's an. It's military and intellectual at the same time. So, you know, what do you kind of want to do is have a combo plate of military kind of structure, but it's almost like Google, you know, like how Google hires people. They put them through, like, these crazy, you know, verbal tests that they have to, you know, solve these riddles amongst, like, 14 different interviews. I, you know, I'm just kind of making that up. I'm not even sure if that's true. But.

But yeah, I mean, you. You want to use. Model it on hierarchies and structures that we're all familiar with, but do it with a twist. You know, make it so that it's. It's very exciting and appealing to people who are reading the book, almost as if they place themselves in that environment to see how well they would perform, which is. I'm not really being Very clear. No, I mean, it's.

I think I'm getting an idea of where I should go with it. I'm thinking of like, you know, the training is strenuous, but yet they kind of live in luxury around it. So it's not like boot camp.

Where they're just being ground into the ground.

No, it's sort of like the status of a high school football player. Right. So like the, the training is brutal and painful and horrible and it's a real hierarchy in order to, you know, get on the starting team. But once they are out, when they're outside of that sort of arena in the school itself, they are, you know, upper class citizens. People treat them as if they're gods of a sort. So like there's, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They get, they get preferential treatment everywhere.

Yeah, yeah. And everybody wants to be them.

You know, I could even play on things like, you know, they cause trouble, but they don't get in trouble. You know, like they get a pass on it.

Yeah. Okay. There was. I was just reading this review of. I think it's Ron Chernow's new book on Ulysses S. Grant. And there was a great quote from Abraham Lincoln. I can't wait to read this biography because Chernow wrote Alexander Hamilton, all a bunch of great books. But anyway, somebody came to Abraham Lincoln, they said, hey, we're really worried about U.S. grants drinking. He's, you know, he seems to be drinking an extraordinary amount of whiskey and we just, we don't know what to do about it. And Lincoln said, well, know what to do about it. Find out what he's drinking and then I'm going to order a barrel of it for every other general in my staff. Because Grant was such an amazing general that Lincoln didn't care. He could, you know, as long as he continued to perform on the battlefield the way that he was, then he didn't really care about how much he was drinking. So that's kind of the way it is with high school football players. Right. So it's like as long as they're winning on the field, if they, you know, smash some kids books on the ground, the hall monitor is going to overlook it or the vice, you know, and that kind of thing is endemic in our society. I mean, there's the recent, I mean, the basketball scandal now with Rick Patino is another example where you have a coach who's getting paid millions and millions of dollars a year, but he's also taken bribe, you know, allegedly. He's Taking bribes under the table from Adidas and getting kickbacks so that his team wears Adidas stuff. So that's a good way of thinking about the status that these coders have. And it's also nice that you had 61 explain the world a little bit from the point of view of, you know, kind of a. A sub tier coder whose job is to help train. You know, he has contempt for those people. Even though. Yeah, there's this one guy who really beat me, though even he has respect for the brilliant coders who, you know, he's of course, insinuating that it was Jesse's brother. I mean, that's kind of obvious, but I think it's okay to be obvious in that case because we want to push Jesse into the threshold and that's part of the progressive complication, you know, chain that gets her to actually go.

So I've been thinking a lot about how the, you know, you say the villain drives the action because of their object of desire. And I've been thinking about it because, so my boys, we now feel like they're old enough we to like, watch all of the Marvel movies. So we've just been like, rolling through them two or three a weekend.

And. And so I've watched some that, like, I haven't seen. We just love those movies. And what I've noticed is that, like, the. What always kicks off and drives the action is there is a thing that the villain wants.

Yeah.

And so I feel like that's been. That was soft in my first draft. So it's pretty clear in the beginning hook that the President wants Jesse in the Capitol. But I get in the first draft, I was pretty like, there's so many things like, I wasn't willing to make a decision on. So I just, like, shot right in the middle.

Right.

And so now what I'm trying to figure out is what does the President actually know about her? Because in the first draft it was kind of this, like, well, behind the scenes, the brother is kind of running things, and he said he needed her, and so that's why the President went and got her. But then when she died at the end of the middle build, it was kind of like, oh, well, we can do it without her, you know, and that's, you know, and then they let him out. And so I'm like, well, that. That's not good. I feel like that's a little weird. So, you know, thinking, why does the President want her so bad? Because I feel like it has to be more than the brother Wants her in the Capitol or wherever, whatever we end up calling it. So I'm just kind of struggling on that point of, like, why does the President want her so bad? What does he know about her or think about her that makes it. That's driving this whole thing. Because I feel like if I can figure that out, it will change all of the interactions he has with her through the middle build. Because he, you know, that's after the first test, is when she goes and sees him and meets, like, the real president, and he threatens her there. But I feel like even that was soft because I didn't totally understand why he had her there in the first place. Right.

What you're talking about is the MacGuffin. You know, the MacGuffin is the thing that drives. It's the object of desire for the antagonist of the story. Now, you're absolutely right that the antagonist, the villain, the middle build belongs to the antagonist. And you do need to firmly establish what it is that drove the president of the faction to come get Jesse. Now, one of the things that we talked about long, long time ago was that he believes that she is the only one capable of winning the threshing. And that's because her brother is, you know, was the hero of the previous threshing or quote, unquote, you know, he's the one who brought them the crown. Right. Now he's being imprisoned, and we. We haven't revealed that he's still around yet. So let's talk about it.

What.

What do you think would compel the president to bring her? What special gift does she have that he needs to get what he wants? What does the president want? He wants to win the threshing again. Right?

Right.

So that he can maintain his power.

So, yes, that's what he wants. And in the first draft, it was just kind of like, oh, well, Jesse's really good at this, so that's why he wants her. But I feel like that's not strong enough. I feel like. So my question is, should he. Should he know that she can. Like, would it be okay for the reader to not know that she could survive dying in the grid? But the President knows, and that's why he brought her there?

Oh, yeah, that's absolutely. That makes sense. No, the. No, just. Just to reiterate the prologue, you haven't written a prologue yet. But the prologue is the clue for the reader that Jesse's capable of surviving death in the. In the grid. Right, Right. Okay. So the president must know that in order for him to. To pull out all the stops to get her into the training system. Because the ideal participant would be someone who can survive death in the grid. And then they'll win the threshing because everybody thinks they're dead. Right?

Yeah. So my thinking is that the whole. The way that the brother Randy survived or won the threshing was because he survived something he shouldn't have been able to. And that allowed him to undercut the whole system in a way that nobody else had ever been able to do before. And that is also why he got locked up, because the President realized that he can do anything he wants. And so then Randy makes a deal with the President, like, basically, get my. You know, my sister can do the same thing. Get her here, and you'll win the next threshing.

And then the President, why doesn't he just have Randy do the threshing? Because he can't trust him. So the.

The rules that I had in place were that once somebody wins the threshing, they can never participate again. But we could come up with something less. Kind of like I came up with something to fix this problem. Right.

Right.

I mean, we could even have something where the other. You know, because I've never really. Another thing I'm gonna have to ground in reality are the other two factions because we never, ever hear anything from them.

Yeah.

So it could be that they had a. They had a. A competitor that had won maybe the last five threshings, and Randy finally beat him. But then it had to do something on the Randy's end to where he couldn't fight again. So it's either the President can't trust him, or maybe something physically happened to him. I don't know. I need to figure that out.

Yeah. Obviously, it's a very important piece, and the. I mean, it speaks to whether or not we're being too clever by half, by having Randy become the ultimate bad guy. Because you don't want to build something on top of something else, because then it just. It gets a little bit too diffuse and confusing. If the President. Randy, is incarcerated. He is essentially a prisoner locked in a room. Who does he have? He. He has access to the grid or not?

Well, he has some access because that's how he finds her.

Right.

Remember? So, I mean, we don't have to make him a bad guy. I mean, I don't want to get stuck on this thing that, like, he has to be the bad guy.

That's true. He doesn't have to be. But you're right. We really do need to clarify the MacGuffin of the villain and have a very clear villain in the middle build. The one that is sort of directing Jesse through this. These trials in order to get something.

I mean, this. The simplest and most straightforward is just to keep it. The President, he's the villain. He's directing everything. He desperately wants her in the next threshing because she's the only one that can win it.

That works. The only. I'm not trying to be difficult here, but the thing that is important to remember is it's hard for the reader to get so excited about the villain if their entire motivation is to just maintain their supremacy. You know what I'm saying? So the President wanting Jesse to win the threshing so that he can stay at the same level isn't as exciting as a villain that needs Jesse in order to escape or get out of or to raise their social standing. It's like the. You know that movie the Incredibles, where the bad guy wants to destroy all of the heroes so that he is the most heroic in the universe. Right. Do you remember that movie?

Oh, yeah.

So the reason why he's doing it, his MacGuffin, is he wants to destroy heroes so that he becomes the biggest hero. So he wants to elevate himself from one level to the next. So the President wanting Jesse and using Jesse would require that he will get even bigger after they win this threshing. Is that even possible in this world? Is there. You know what I'm saying?

Well, and that's when I go back, and I like the idea of the brother being the villain because he raises his. His stature by taking over the faction.

That's correct. So that works. The. The difficulty that we're having now is shape shifting the brother from, you know, the guy that comes to save her. So if he's the shapeshifter, and I think that works, then the President has to be a sort of a false villain. I mean, someone who's a villain but is less powerful than the brother. And in order to make that work, we need the false villains MacGuffin to be center stage until the big reveal at the end of the middle build when the brother reveals himself as the ultimate villain.

So what is. What could the President's MacGuffin be in order to bring Jesse? So he could be thinking of this. If he brings Jesse into the arena, he'll have leverage with the brother to get him to reveal the secret. And if he knows the secret? Go ahead.

Well, then the secret is, what's the secret? Because to me, the Brother has to reveal the secret in order for the President to actually want the sister. Unless she. He's. Unless he doesn't actually think she can win it. He's just bringing her there to force the brother's hand. Right, but then why put her through all these tests? Why not just like lock her up and say, I'm gonna kill your sister if you don't do this.

Right?

So I feel like the President has to see her as his savior. Like I have to have her here or I'm gonna lose everything.

Yes. Let's. Let's just put a pin in this for a second and think about if there we can get inspired by any other story that's similar to this and the villains. Motivation. What's the villain's motivation in Guardians of the Galaxy?

The first one.

Yeah.

To exact revenge on. I forgot who they're called exact revenge on. This population wasn't what he hate.

Didn't he want that? Some. Some kind of thing that.

Okay, so how. Yeah, yeah. So he. He wanted the stone, but only because Thanos wanted the Stone. Because if he got Thanos the stone, then Thanos would help him destroy his enemies.

Right.

So he wasn't powerful enough to destroy his enemies on his own, and so he made a deal with Thanos. Okay, I'll get you that stone, and then you'll help me destroy my enemies. And then he double crossed Thanos because when he got the Stone, he realized how powerful it was and he kept it for himself.

Right.

But the object of desire was the stone. The Infinity Stone and the Infinity. Like.

Right.

It's sad how much I know now.

No, that's great. Anyway, so the Infinity Stone was in the possession of Peter. Whatever his name is, right?

Yeah, Peter Quill.

Peter Quill. Okay.

The protagonist.

The protagonist. So in order for that guy to get the stone, he had to get it from Peter Quill. Right. Okay, so the whole middle build is about that guy working very hard to get the stone from Peter Quill.

Right. And the end of the middle build was when he got it.

Right. So what, let's use that as inspiration here. What does Jesse possess that the President wants?

The ability to circumvent the grid in a way that nobody else can.

Is there something more clear about. Clear that we could invent? Is it. Does she have.

I think, yeah. That's one of the things that's bothered me because in all of these movies it's like super simple. I want that rock. Like, that's all I care about is that stone that he's got in his pocket.

There could be a what if.

What if the brother hid? Like, because there's been movies where, like, one person hides some. Something in somebody else's pocket. Right. And that person's walking around not realizing what they have. That would be like north by Northwest, if I'm remembering that. Right?

Yes.

No, that's different. I haven't watched that movie in a long time. So, like, could the brother have given her something that she has and doesn't realize that she has or.

That's a little. I think that's a little. I don't think that works. I think maybe the brother, you know, buried an Easter egg somewhere in the grid, something like that. And the only one who would be able to find out where it is would be his sister. And so the series of tests is a way to see if she would be.

I don't know, what if he's in a coma and that the President can't get what he needs from him?

Oh, that's good. So he's a ghost in the machine. And so is. Would part of the training be an effort to get her to go to a special place in the grid? I don't know if the brother.

What? So what is. So let's look at another example. So what. What does the villain want in the Matrix? What is Keanu. I can't. I'm trying to remember what Neo had that the villain wanted from him.

Neo was the one. Neo was the one spiritually that the villain knew could create an uprising. He is the one.

How did the villain know that that was him? I can't remember. Do you remember?

He just did, because the villain was the machine and it was surveilling. The thing about the Matrix that was so cool was that the villain was a machine and the machine surveilled everyone. And so when Keanu Reeves gets the call from Morpheus to, you know, to join the uprising, the. The machine is aware of that because it's surveilling everyone. And so the machine, when Morpheus calls, sends, you know, his bad guys out to. To liquidate Anderson, who is Keanu Reeves. And it's Morpheus who's living in. In the darkness, who saves him through the telephone. Right.

So the villain. So really, in that one, the villain. Status quo. Yeah, he's trying to fight for the.

Status quo, not really the status. Yeah, I guess so. But the problem that the villain has in the Matrix is that there are human beings who have disengaged from the Matrix and they've figured out that they are being used as just, you know, pods for this machine. And they have somehow undone the cord on the back of their heads. And they're living in the real world, which is hell. So they need to destroy that uprising in order to get things back to normal. So if the President understands that. Jesse. Oh, my gosh. Okay, this. Okay, that was a good idea to talk about the Matrix, because if we were to think about the threshing in a different way. The threshing is. Is not what it says it is.

The threshing is, in fact, a process by which the ruling faction, which are all in cahoots, they bring the best and the brightest of young people to the Capitol and thresh them out and beat down their spirits to the point where they can't, you know, over. You know, start a revolution. Are you still there?

Yeah, I'm just thinking.

Right, so think about the threshing as almost like a beauty pageant that doesn't really, you know, the purpose of the threshing is not what they say it is. So the reason why the President wants Jesse is because she is the one he needs to destroy her within the system in order to circumvent an uprising, a possible uprising.

So if that's the truth. Okay, so then I'm. If that's where we're going, then why didn't he just leave her with the numbered? So I would have to go back to the beginning, hook, and rejigger it to be like. Which is fine. I'm just thinking through the ramifications that. Rejigger it to where even when he puts her down there, she starts unintentionally stoking and uprising.

That's right. That's right. She.

And so he needs to let her uprise in a controlled place so that he can destroy her at the end.

That's right.

And then he. When he destroys her, she comes back.

That's right.

So what he wants is he's on the constant. Okay. Okay. So he wants to make her. So he has. He has ultimate. So the only way that works is if he already has ultimate power. So he has ultimate power. And he's constantly on the lookout for people that might be throwing uprisings. And most of them, he sticks down with the numbered and takes them out of commission. So he does that to her.

Right.

And she still stokes an uprising. So he brings her. But then why is there. Ah, I'm just driving crazy.

No, no, it's. It's. This is. This is a really crucial question to solve, because this is going to have ramifications for the. For the other two novels.

This is. And this is also why I've been scared of the middle build, because I knew this was broken.

Right, right. I confess that, you know, I haven't been as deeply immersed in the story as you have.

It's not, it's not your book, so that would be weird.

But this is, this is actually the fun part. Even though it's terrifying. If you were to think of this as sort of the one. This is the Christ story in, in, you know, in essence. So what did the Romans want when Christ started, you know, getting a following is they destroyed him. You know, they thought they destroyed him. So use that wonderful, incredible story, the greatest story ever told, by the way, as the inspiration for Jesse. So if you look at the President as sort of.

I forget Pilate.

Not Pilate, the King Herod, you know.

Okay, the one that killed all the babies.

Yeah. And so he is sort of like the head of this really big civilization who cannot, you know, have somebody stirring the pot among the numbered or the minors. And the fact is, is that when Jesse. Jesse's sort of exploits or personality or what she's done, it has. Has spread sort of amongst the people who mine. And the number and the way it's spread is through sort of the, you know, like the dark web of that world. So that there's these messages that the, the rats and Balaam or Balaam or whatever his name is, they're sort of like reporting on one of their compatriots. You know, she's been selected, she's refused the selection. So it's almost like this, you know, what's his name did this really well in Ender's game too, where there's this popular sort of way of communicating that, you know, the authorities just can't stop. So it's this underground sort of media, you know, bubbling up about this girl who, you know, is, is defying all of the. The laws and all the things. So it's really important for the President to make her an example. She needs to become a cautionary tale for the rest of the. The. All the miners and the under underground numbered people. So that's why he wants to bring her into this training so that she can fail. And he makes it really hard for her. But the problem is she can't. She. She almost fails in the second one, but then her magical brother comes to. To her aid.

So the President's job is sort of what like King Herod did was to discredit Jesus and to discredit Jesse. That. That is the MacGuffin. And the way to get that, you know, to layer that in would be to use some characters and some ideas that you've already embedded in the story. That is to use the rats and Balaam as sort of the. You know that. You know. You know what the dark web is, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's. There's. There's a sort of a dark web element in this universe, too, that, you know, it's almost like the human spirit that you can't completely regulate no matter how hard you try. And these. These miners, you know, they get these. These little blips of text messages or whatever you decide to do that sort of tells this incredible story about, you know, it's like fake news. Not fake news, but.

Go ahead in that.

In that scenario. So originally. Jeez. So this, like, chain. If we go down this path, it changes. So now it's no longer about getting more power. It's about maintaining power.

Well, it's also. I mean, you could make this, like, if there are, say, three levels of power, the President rules at power level one and power level two, and power level three, we don't even know about. But those level one and two are pressing down on the President to make sure that he keeps his faction under control. So you could have little, tiny. I mean, I'm talking off the top of my head, by the way. This isn't. You know. You know that this isn't.

Well, yeah, I guess I'm thinking more not about, like. Because I can weave in the dark web stuff and all that, but, like, I'm thinking, well, this. So if we're looking at, say, the Matrix, it was a chase movie. I mean, the whole time they're just trying to get Neo. Well, that doesn't really work. I mean, we don't have to exactly do it like that. So if we would have to do something about where he's drawing her close to set her up for a fall. I don't know. I don't think we're gonna solve it right this second. It just has changed like this. I have to solve this MacGuffin problem before I enter the middle build. In my opinion. Like, what. What is going on here?

Well, I mean, you could. You could sort of take it in terms of the way Suzanne Collins solved it for the Hunger Games, is that she. She kept raising the stakes of the tests on Katniss. And the reason why that worked was because the power structure was using those tests as entertainment for the underclass. Right? Because the pageant and the Hunger Games was a big media event. It was this thing like Survivor meets, you know, the Voice. And if you were to say that the President is manipulating, you know, Jesse through these. These trials as a means to really build up the underclass's attraction to her as this figure that, you know, they could support and rally around, he's going to build it up and build it up and build it up and. And then destroy her. So that he once heard it sort of reach a certain level and then fail. It's like that is kind of the way power structures kind of work, is that they allow rogues within their structure to, you know, rebel because it's kind of amusing and other people think it's funny and. But then there comes a point where it's like, now it's time to knock them down on, you know, back to the level and make them a cautionary tale for anybody else who thinks that they're going to be able to overthrow us. So he could be. The President could be sort of enjoying this. And it works because you've already established that he's kind of having fun watching, you know, this drama play out. And so the MacGuffin for him is that he's using Jesse in order to maintain his power structure and also to sort of prove to even higher levels of power in this universe that he knows how to take care of his faction. He's sort of like, he's the warden of the prison, and he knows how to, you know, keep the inmates under control.

Okay, I like this.

And then, you know, then to pull the rug out by having the brother, you know, in this coma who's, you know, that's what he did to her brother. Right. Her brother is now in a coma. He had a following, too, and he was destroyed. So now he's going to destroy the sister, too. It's like after jfk, they had to kill Bobby. You know, after they killed Bobby, after they killed jfk, they had to kill Bobby. And once they killed rfk, I mean, I'm not saying that there. I don't. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it is tremendously incredible that the President of the United States was killed in 1963. His brother, who was even more dynamic than. Than the older brother, is killed in 1968. And then, bang. And so was Martin Luther King. And then, bang. Here we are, you know, 50 years later, still having recovered from, you know, that era that was an era of possibility that was undermined by, you know, several assassinations that, you know, undermined American, you know, sense of progress and unity. So if you use sort of that idea that he, the president, you know, basically wiped out the brother, and now he's got to do the same thing to the sister. That's why maybe the.

Okay, so maybe the brother was. So he was the one that everybody thought was going to save them. And when he got crushed, it kind of shut it down. But now all the youngsters think, well, we can do it.

That's right.

Okay.

So I think that's a pretty solid thing to stand on, as long as you establish the present as sort of this. You know, he's kind of amused by this process. Like, oh, boy. Okay, so now I have to knock down the sister. Okay, well, how are we going to do that? Let's do it the same way we did it to the brother. Let's build up, you know, the anticipation that she is going to be successful and then kill her. And then once she's dead, it'll really knock, you know, these people down another couple of pegs. Little does he know that the brother is going. Is in a coma, but he is connected to the grid.

And is using his sister, too, to revive.

And in this scenario, he's not the villain. They're reunited at the end.

Right. You know, he. He might become a villain in book two. I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a simpler design. And again, when you're doing a trilogy, an epic trilogy.

The first book needs to be of a simpler design, but sets up future.

Conflict.

Well, I feel like, in general, these things, if you try to make it too complicated, there's very few books and movies that get overly complicated that people enjoy.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? If it's like. Well, then now it's that thing where, like, when there's four twist endings, it's like, okay, you know.

No, I agree with you. I agree with you.

So I want to come up with just to me, a simple. I mean, what do we always go back to? Like, these stories are kind of simple, timeless stories that show up over and over, and then I innovate inside of that. But if I'm trying to come up with this suit, that's what's. I mean, again, watching all of these hugely successful stories that have been around now for, you know, 80 years, when we're talking about the Marvel stories.

Yeah.

And, like, I'm watching him, and it's like this guy wants this thing and is trying to crush everybody to get it. Like, it's not overly complicated. You Know, and then a story about a ruling, a ruler that wants to keep ruling and is trying to crush people underneath him. I mean, that's, that's, that works. So how do I just tell that story? I don't want to come up with something new. And I feel like if I can't just clearly be like, this is what the villain wants, and everybody's like, okay, yeah. Then it's kind of like, okay, if I can't even explain it without confusing people, there's no way the book's going to not be confusing.

Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. So it's really a lot simpler fix than you might expect. It's just adding check in moments between the president and his henchmen, you know?

Well, I feel it's that whole thing of like, once you make. It's. I mean, if we keep going back to the metaphor we keep using, it's like, if I'm in New York and I know I need to be in California and I come to a decision point, it's whichever one gets me west the fastest. Right. It helps me just make the next decision. So that's been my concern is like, I'm still not overly clear on where we're going here, which means I'm going to not know what decisions to make on a scene by scene basis.

Yes.

Where, like. And so looking at the beginning hook, it's like, okay, we know we need to establish family stuff. And so like in every scene, I tried to put something about family because I knew that. I know that's where I'm going at the end of the book.

Right.

Okay. I'm going to try to lock this down on where it's going and the ramifications for some of the things. And I'll maybe like write that out and send it to you and work on the first couple scenes and see how it feels. But I like this story better than the other one.

Yeah, the other one was. Was too complicated. And I think, you know, in the first book, in a series of books, we need a very clear, identifiable villain from the get go. And she has to overcome him by the end. And because he's so powerful, it'll work. Using and manipulating the presence of the brother is another factor. But you know what? We can fix that later. I think you're right. I mean, this MacGuffin thing is a big deal and we need to solve it.

Well, I mean. Well, and what we're describing is another version of Star wars where there's this small rebellion and they want to destroy the Death Star and the Death Star is there to quell the rebellion. And right before the rebellion is quelled, they destroy it and it wipes out everything. Okay.

Okay. So just do that.

Alright, I'll work on it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything StoryGrid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, all of that can be found@storygrid.com podcast if you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter torygrid. Lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on itunes and leaving a rating and review. Thanks for subscribing and being a part of our work here at StoryGrid. We will see you next week.