Which book should I write?

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grohl, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, I bring a struggle to Sean that I've really been going through with my writing of what project should I work on next? And feeling all kinds of resistance around the different projects I want to work on. And I kind of bring it to him to get his perspective on it, to think about what I should be doing next. I only have so much time to write and so many days I can write, and I want to make sure I'm putting it on the right project. And so I bring this to him a little sheepishly because I didn't do my homework, but also to get his perspective on where I should be putting my time next. So for those of you that have ever struggled with what project you should be working on and what you should be writing, I think you'll get a lot out of this. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I have to admit that I did not read the book that you told me to read, so shame on you. I know, I know. It's so anyway won't get into that side of my life, but, yeah, it's so I've had a few people that have read the threshing now that. Because I got some early copies, and I guess this is a good sign. But the first thing two of the three have said has been, when can I read the next one?

So I hate. I actually have a new personal rule where I do not start a series unless it's already done. Because, you know, I've been caught so many times in this purgatory of waiting for the next book. And I'm looking at you, Patrick Rothfuss, who's never going to ever finish the third book in his series, and I hate that. And so then I got to thinking. I'm like, is this new book idea just a distraction from, like, I have no current timeline plans to write the next book in this. You know, this is supposed to be a trilogy. I leave it kind of a cliffhanger. So I'm wondering, should I shelf this other idea that we've talked about and focus on the next book in the threshing series? Which then I got to thinking I'm like, well, lots of. I think having a discussion about the middle story of a trilogy is a really interesting discussion that a lot of people would be interested in.

Because I always hate. Everybody always talks about how Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, that's the second one, right?

Yeah, I think so.

Is the best one. And I hate that movie. Like, I like the first one and the third one. I mean, it's fine, but it's just sad and boring. And so I wonder, like, talking about what makes a good middle one is. I'm curious why trilogies are a thing. Why is it not two books or four books or six books? There's so many trilogies. And then what makes a good middle book? Because to me, it's like looking at a trilogy. You have the beginning hook is the first book, Middle build is the second book. Ending payoff is the third book. And the middle build is always the hardest part to write in a book in the first place. And so to me, writing the middle build of a trilogy as a full book is going to be hard figuring out what the story should be. So I guess my question is first, like, do you think I should just keep going and finish this series before I move on to something else? Just so that, like, you know, for my dozens of fans, not, like, waiting forever for the next book? I don't know. And then if that is the direction, like, having that discussion just beginning, the discussion of what makes a trilogy and everything that goes into the middle book.

Well, there's a whole lot of strands that you just kind of threw at me, and I have a lot of thoughts about all of it. So I think the first one I'd like to pull out is the notion of.

What my opinion is about your creative direction. Should you write the second book and focus on that instead of going to another sort of content genre arena? And, you know, it's not a simple question to answer because it depends on what hat I'm wearing. So if I were, say, your literary agent, I would absolutely do everything in my power to get you to write that second book in the trilogy. In fact, when I sold your trilogy to begin with, I would have sold the whole thing. One giant, you know, package. And the reason why I would do that is because a, the publisher would insist on that because they wouldn't want you to follow your muse and go all over the place depending upon your whims. Because the publishing business is a business. It's about positioning a writer in a particular category of product and having them deliver in the domain of that category of product over and over and over again. So this is why John Grisham has pretty much stayed in his lane with an occasional walk outside of it that is never as successful as his primary lane. So publishers know that when a writer who knows a specific genre and is known for a specific genre steps out of that genre, their sales will decrease no matter what. So working with Steven Pressfield over the years, this is one of the things that he and I have had many, many discussions about. And it was almost a breaking point when we initially started working together, because I insisted that he agree to write a second novel in the war genre and also historical fiction in the sort of Greek Hellenistic Age era, which he reluctantly did at the time, because Steve is primarily driven by his creative forces. And, you know, that's why his first novel was a novel about golf, and his second novel was a novel about the battle of Thermopylae. Two completely different genres, two completely different positionings that the publisher has to do. So it was never really that big of a question mark to me why Steve's original publisher, William Morrow, decided not to publish Gates of Fire after they had published the Legend of Bagger Vance. Because I'm sure they loved Gates of Fire, but they were like, dude, stay in a lane, brother. You just did a golf novel. Everybody loved it. It. Let's get another golf novel going. And Steve, being Steve, was like, well, that really isn't what I wanted to write. So are you going to publish it or not? And they said, well, no. So he had to kind of start over with a new publisher, and thank God I got to read it and got to acquire it. So as a publisher, as an agent, as a professional business person, I would say you would be crazy not to write the second book in the trilogy, which also. Now, let's now analyze why I didn't say that to you. Why didn't I say, tim, what are you doing? Why are you sending me this thing? You got to write the second novel of your trilogy. Okay? The reason why is why we created StoryGrid Publishing to begin with, because it's my.

Belief that in order for a writer to level up their craft, to grow, to enjoy the process by which they become a better writer, better person, whatever that. If there is a publishing company that devotes all of its efforts to encourage that leveling up, then the more people who level up, the better the stories will be. So that would mean that StoryGrid publishing would have to put its commercial business concerns on the back burner. And that when Questions would arise about, you know, what the writer wanted to do versus what the writer should do. We would put the work above all else, which means that the writer gets to drive the bus. So if that means that you want to write this one book because it's salient to you, that it's interesting you to the point where you want to invest.

Two years, three years, I mean, it took us four years to do the threshing from scratch, so maybe this next book will take three and a half, right? So that's why I didn't say no, because story grid publishing is organized such that it's about the process, not the result. And it's our contention that the more you put the process ahead of result and the more people you bring into your circle, the better the opportunities in the long haul that things become commercially and financially viable over the long term, the better. So that's the answer to whether or not you should do the second book in the trilogy or you should do this psychological thriller that you're, you know, excited about doing now, I'm going to say this thing. The fact that you did not choose to read a current masterwork in the domain of the story that you're interested in writing, I'm not passing judgment on that other than that's useful information for us to talk about.

Because let's just like, there's no point in reading a book as a chore, right? So if you say to me, sean, you really need to read this book because it changed my life, I might be like, oh, I don't know if I want to read this book. But I would also say Tim has said that to me zero times in my life, and he's putting his, you know, he's being vulnerable by telling me that that's a book that I should read. So I will read it based upon my relationship to you. And inevitably, I'll probably like. You sent me a book, like, four months ago, and the minute you said, you should take a look at this, I bought it and I started reading it. And we've had discussions about it, we've integrated it into our business and. Cool. So the fact that when I said, why don't we both read this book? That is a masterwork in the genre in which you want to explore. And, you know, I wasn't super excited about reading it. However, I was excited enough to get it done and I read it within 24 hours and you didn't, and you were the writer. So I'm not saying you're a bad person for that I'm saying that tells me something about how salient this idea really is to you. It's kind of a cool idea that I think you like, but if it made you stay up an hour later every night to read this book, you weren't willing to. You're smart, right? So you didn't put it on that hierarchy of importance enough to do it. So you're not a bad person for that. That is information that you need to look at when you're thinking about things that we're discussing. So to me, that sounds to me like this isn't like, I must write this psychological thriller or I will feel like I didn't, you know, achieve what I'm looking to achieve. And now let's move on to the second strand. And that second strand was the people who you've shared the threshing with have kind of said to you, hey, man, this was good enough that I want to read the next thing. When do you think that's going to be ready? So that is sort of for you, probably unexpected information, I think, when you are not alone. Whenever we write something and we say, hey, you wanted to look at this thing that I made, you're expecting that people are going to be like, oh, God, this is Tim's thing. I guess I should read a couple of pages.

And then if they go, hey, I really liked your thing, you go, oh, great. Phew. That's over with. I'm sure they didn't read the whole thing, so. Because I'm shit and who cares?

So it was unexpected when people actually said to you, hey, I want to know what happens next. Can you let me know when I can read the next thing? So now you're like, oh, maybe the 10 people who have told me this are actually sincere. Maybe this thing is pretty good. Now you're starting to get stronger, and you're starting to figure out that you are capable of telling a story that people enjoy enough to ask you when the next one's coming. So now you're feeling like, well, geez, maybe I should go back to this thing and figure that out. And you're right. The middle book in a trilogy, you know, you read. What is it? Is it the Two Towers? Is the middle book in the Lord of the Rings? Yeah, it's kind of like you get through that, and you're like, oh, man, I can't wait to read the third. And it's not that it's like, great. It's really good, and it's not a disappointing experience. And it's amazing, but you still are waiting for the ending payoff.

So, yes, the middle book in a five part series, seven part series, three part series is always difficult. So I'd be willing to talk about the problems of the middle build in this episode. But I don't want to just say, let's forget about the psychological thriller. If you really want to do that book and you just really seriously wanted to read the Contemporary Master Worker and you just never got around to it. So you kind of have to answer that question yourself.

Well, so one of the things was starting a new project completely, like, having nothing to do with the threshing was definitely a way for me to be like, it was like patting myself against nobody, against the threshing, sucking. And the idea that anybody would want to read a second book is not going to ever happen. So then when I get asked again, you know, my. It was not a statistically significant amount of people. But the first couple people that read it, like, their first question was like, okay, what? And then like, one of them was like, okay, I need to know more about Jesse's powers. I don't. You know, you got to go deeper into this. She's like, listing off things I have to do in the next book. I'm like, I'm like, well, this is a good sign that, like.

Yeah, it's a good sign. So then I was like, well, maybe have I just been avoiding the idea of writing the next book because I'm assuming the first one sucks and don't really want to continue a story that sucks. And while I could make excuses about why I didn't read the book, the truth is I didn't read it. I got other things done, which I feel bad that now you've read it.

But no, it's not a big deal to me to read a book.

I got other things done. It's that thing of when people tell me they're too busy for something. I'm like, did you watch any TV in the last week? So now I'm torn because part of me has liked this idea of this story and fleshing it out seems interesting. But on the other hand, I have this renewed sense. I found myself thinking a lot, I wonder what's going to happen next in the threshing? Like, I wonder, like, where will you.

Pick up the story?

What's going to be, you know, who is she going to lose in this book? Like, what is she going to do? Is like, what's going to be the big conflict? I'm wondering all of those Things where I haven't even put any mental energy into the psychological thriller, right? So, because I feel like when I talk about, like, how I'm waiting for the next book in series and I don't start series anymore until they're already done, I feel kind of a little bit like a cliche kind of. Well, you know, I got to support the fans. You know, I got to. Don't want to leave them waiting. But I do for my. Again, whenever my kids ask me if I'm famous, I'm like, I'm known by dozens of people. And they're like, dad, I'm known by dozens of people. I'm like, exactly. But I do worry about, like, never finishing it. And, you know, now I have a better idea of, like, wading into a project is quite the commitment. You know, this isn't something I'll knock out in the next three and a half months. So if I had to choose right now, I would choose writing the second book in the trilogy.

Well, there's an alternative process that might be worth considering, too, and I would actually recommend this one. And this one is the way I organize my workday is that I have sort of difficult things I have to do, and then I have things that are less difficult, and then I have things that are fun. Fun for whatever, however I define fun. So what? My day begins with the difficult things. And so that's usually writing and editing stuff that is super, super important to me. And then I move into things that are less difficult, that have to be done, like accounting and all that stuff. And then lastly, I'll do something like, you know, play baseball with my kids or do some yard work, something that's a little bit more fun and there's no stress involved in it. So I think there's a way as a writer to do projects and kind of trick yourself with the following strategy is that you've already kind of done some preliminary work on the psychological thriller. It's kind of a fun idea. No massive amount of urgency to it. And then you've got this thing that's probably more urgent, which is book two in the threshing series. So I wouldn't, like, focus on any one of them. I would do both. So when you kind of get flushed out with the threshing, you go over to the other thing and you goof around a little bit. And I'm not saying you do nine hours a day, four and a half and four and a half. I'm saying, you know, start with the important project first, the one that you think is the priority, which would be the threshing book 2. And then when you start to find yourself getting exhausted, you know, working through those problems, if you still feel like, I'd like to tool around and fudge around with that psychological thing for a while, then you do that for a little while. And if you don't, then you don't. But you always have this sort of option to play, to play in another genre, play as a writer, as opposed to write as a writer. And the notion of play in writing, it's why we want to become writers. Because when we get into the flow of writing, it's extraordinarily playful, imaginative. We're in a flow state. It's awesome. So that's what drives us to wanting to be writers in the first place. And then once we become professional writers, then we start to, like, say, I'm going to put my ask in this chair and no matter what, I'm going to grind out my stuff. And you got to do that. That's what a pro does. But every now and then.

That'S exhausting and you start to lose the thread of why you wanted to be a writer in the first place. So I suggest having these kind of playful, fun side projects that you can use, because one day you're going to be like, I'm blocked. I can't think another second about how to solve that. You know, that point of no return in my middle build novel and my second book in my thing, and I'm going to do my morning work on the psychological thriller and just have fun, write some fun scenes. So doing both is going to be really helpful to you because it's going to reduce the pressure on the psychological thriller, which will probably unearth a lot of different fun things in your own ideas and mind. And then on the other side, you're going to be a professional writer. You're going to work through that second book. So that's what I suggest you do. Don't like, say, I'm only going to work on this no matter what, but give yourself the leeway to go back and forth as you feel appropriate. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I guess. I hadn't thought having two open projects at a time would be a smart thing.

It might not be for you, right? You might be like, no, I can't handle this. So I'm just going to focus on the other. That's totally cool. Right now I've got about seven or eight open projects, and guess what happens? I start working on one of them and I start banging out some good sentences, and then a light bulb goes off in my head about another project. So I make a note on a piece of paper, and then when I finish that day's work on that one specific project, then as the last thing, I go to the other project and inject the note and the idea that I just generated while I was working on something else into the other project. And guess what happens is that these seven projects are like one's 500 words, one's 3,000. So they all have varying levels of. I mean, we talk about this on our weekly business call. I'm like, well, I'm sort of like 90% done on this. I've got 70% of this. An idea occurred to me about doing this other thing. And I know in the back of your mind you're like, I don't even really care, Shaun. Just get the things done. You know, I don't even want to hear this, but for me, that seems to work for me. It might not work for you, but what I do find is that insights come to me when I've super duper micro focusing on one specific project. The other side of my brain sometimes will like throw things across the chasm that are applicable to other projects. And instead of throwing those out and saying, no, I must focus on this, I make a note and then I put it in the other thing. And then when I have to do that other thing, I've got fuel already there with all kinds of ideas that I go, oh, right. That happened to me when I was writing that book about the action story. This is more about, you know, the micro technologies involved in the five commandments, whatever. And so that helps me. So that might not work for you, but I think generally as a cognitive.

My understanding of the cognitive processes of insight generation is that when you are doing a parallel problem solving project with another one that has a similar domain of problem that you have insights about the other project as you're working on. I know this is a little bit abstract, but that's actually how our brains come up with these bridge neural connections, is that these things start to. The electrons kind of flow, the neurotransmitters flow, and somehow it sparks something somewhere else and a new connection is made. And that is because you're working sort of in a parallel domain. And so if you're writing fiction and one is a contemporary psychological thriller about someone who's resentful, and then you're also writing a science fiction fantasy novel, the second in a trilogy about a society that has been flushed into chaos.

Guess what happens is that when you start sort of trying to come up with characters who are resentful.

Stuff from your psychological thriller is going to be very, very helpful in solving those problems and vice versa. So I'm going on way too long about this, but I think it's a worthwhile experiment for you to open up your mind in such a way that you allow yourself to treat each project as the play for the other one. It's a good mind trick.

So how does that. Because to me, what that could turn into is never shipping anything. Because I'm always like, oh, I've got this new other thing I want to work on and I'll come back to this one, you know, when I'm kind of stuck on this other one. I guess that's been. That would be my worry on that is like just spinning up new projects, not shipping anything.

Well, have you ever shipped?

Well, yeah.

So you have. So you have a consistent record of your capability of meeting deadlines and shipping things over, what, 20 years? 30 years.

30. I'm 38, so. But, yeah, 20 years.

Well, you're in school.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You got a ship in school.

So I think worrying about not shipping when you've shipped before is sort of like resistance.

Okay.

Yeah, right. Subjectively, you know, when the shit hits the fan, you're going to deliver. Like when I go, tim, I screwed up. Can you fix this thing for me? You don't go, well, I don't know, because I'm playing with this other thing, and I don't really want to prioritize that right now. No, you don't say that. You go, yeah, I'll take care of that today. And you do, and you ship it and it's done. So I think a lot of us are really, really amazing shippers, and we get our stuff done all the time in multiple domains. When your kid has to be at school at a specific time, we literally ship him from home to school at that time every single day.

So when we go, well, I just worry that I'm not going to, you know what? Worry about something else. Come on.

Okay, so looking at. Kind of. My main writing gig is working on the second book of the threshing, while also kind of giving myself permission to bail and work on this other one from time to time as I'm either inspired or I'm frustrated with the threshing and just need something to kind of clear the palette. That seems to be the advice you're giving me. Am I saying that Right, Yeah, yeah. So let's talk just a little bit. So I would like, if we don't get to anything else today, that's fine, but just could you talk a little bit about the trilogy setup? Like, is it because I wondered this before I was writing is why is a trilogy so popular? Obviously there's series that go, you know, longer, but the trilogy seems to be the kind of mainstay. It's either one book or three. It's not two or four, you know. So is it because it's the beginning, hook, middle, build, ending, payoff, just showing up in that form? Or like, why the trilogy over other things?

Well, I think it's the process by which we. A trilogy is just an expanded single novel. So.

The thing about storytelling that is just so remarkable to me is that it's a very, very complicated technology, psychotechnology of the mind. That sole purpose is to basically encourage people to learn.

And the way it does that is it mimics and mirrors the natural complexity of the world in such a way that it feels quote unquote real.

So the reason why trilogies and sort of odd numbered multi part things I think are so endemic is that there is the notion of every individual that life is linear.

And.

Story reflects that desire for life to be linear. And that there's a beginning, middle and end. And that once you reach the end, then you move on to something else and the past is the past and we'll, you know, we'll let it go. So that's our desire, our unconscious desire is to have a certain outcome in everyday events in our lives. So when we all sort of set goals in our minds and make plans, we say we're going to get that house, we're going to have a couple of kids, we're going to live in a nice community, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. And then once all of those sort of goals have been attained, then I hit a place of quote unquote, happiness. And in this world of happiness, I am content and nothing seems to get me down. And I'm constantly in this sort of nirvana of contentment. Now when you lay it out like that, we can all agree that's not the way the world is. It's not even close to that. Because what happens is we set goals and when we attain those goals, we discover that we are not content. Oh geez, that didn't work. Oh man. I guess I have to get a bigger house. That's it. Bigger house with a better garage. And then I will be content because then I will have storage space for all this other stuff that I bought along the way. So I do have a point here. And the point is, is that the reason why people like these beginning, middles and ends is because it allows us to attain, to acquire, have. We get to have things when we understand that there are causes that bring effects. So the cause of working 40 hours a week brings the effect of me being able to pay for the house and to have my kids. So that seems to be a linear deal. Now, that's the halving mode. It's a mode of existing to attain things, to have things. And that's a really, really big part of life. And I'm not trying to, like, denigrate it or make fun of it because you gotta have things. You gotta have air, water, shelter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there's another side of existence, and that side is called becoming. So it's the being mode. What are you becoming? Who are you? What is your essence?

So Heidegger once, you know, Heidegger was a very complicated person. But he did have this kind of cool idea that, you know, most things that we categorize, we can say they have an essence like a chair. It's the thing in which you sit to relieve yourself. So a chair has an essence, a material essence that we can all agree upon. Birds. Birds make music and they fly. That's sort of their essence. And the one sort of animal on this planet that doesn't seem to have a single essence is a human being. So we can't say every single person has this essence because every single one of us is unique. So what that means is that each one of us are, quote, unquote, existentially confused. It's a state of being that we all inhabit. We're not really sure. It's like you're not really sure if you're a writer, even though you've written a lot of things. I'm not really sure if I'm a writer, even though I've written a lot of things. So the evidence suggests that we are writers. But yet we're still not sure, right? We're still not sure if I'm really a good father, am I really a good husband, or am I just playing the part of a good husband, right? So that whole section of reality, and it is real. It is no joke. That section is an existential mode called the becoming mode.

So if we confuse the having mode and the being mode, the becoming mode, and we think, if I buy the big House, I'm a good father, then. Oh, wait a minute. That's called existential confusion. Acquiring something does not make you be something. So the reason, I'm getting back to the answer of why people like trilogies. The reason why people like trilogies is that in our genes, if we did not acquire water, if we did not acquire food, we died.

So our genetic material really makes it important that we have essential things to survive.

So the way in which we evolved was to learn cause and effect. If I do this, I get to eat. Oh my gosh, it works. I'm going to keep doing that. If I do this, I get that. And so this having sort of cause and effect relationship is extraordinarily important to the evolution of life.

So it's no wonder we get confused because the becoming mode, the being mode, is much more internal. It's much more about how we find meaning on the planet. So trilogies are popular because they lock into our belief system that having will get us contentment.

Now, the really, really good stories constantly undermine that bullshit. Because it's bullshit. You cannot buy a car that will make you.

You cannot get love by buying something.

When you look at things as having, you look at them as inanimate material objects.

So to become, we cannot look at ourselves as machines that if we just put the proper inputs into our machine, the output will be contentment.

So the middle part of a trilogy is very difficult because you're negotiating this landscape that is similar to reality. Because the middle build doesn't really have a beginning, middle and end, does it? It has sort of a beginning, middle and end.

But the implication is that we didn't get there without something happening before and we are not finished at the end of it. So this is why it's a difficult thing to craft, because people's inherent desire is to have a very reasonable cause and effect, having formula for knowledge or truth. Does that make sense or is this all too, way too abstract?

It's pretty abstract. It makes sense. And then thinking through. So with the middle build, what you're saying, or with the middle book is just. Are you saying that because it doesn't build to an ultimate conclusion, that's what makes it so hard.

It's like watching great series television.

Those series creators, those writers, those storytellers, every single episode that they create is a middle build. It's really, really difficult. I've been watching Better Call Saul spinoff series from Vince Gilligan that spun off from Breaking Back. It's just.

The skill, the way they're crafting this story, I know that they don't know the ending.

But what they're doing is they're living in this consistently built complex reality that is based upon Breaking Bad. And whenever they get confused, they say, well, what's, you know, what's this world like again? What year is it? You know? And then they sort of craft these unexpected events that you know, what would happen if Jimmy McGill.

Does this? How would that happen? What would go from there? And so they craft these hour long beautiful pieces of story that have their own beginning, middle and end. But we know when the story starts, there's a super duper long previous history. And we also know at the end of the episode things are going to happen that we have no idea in the future are going to happen. So you can craft, I think using the techniques of really fantastic long series television creators and thinking about how they craft these episodes would be helpful in doing the middle book build in a trilogy.

The thing about the middle build in general, and this is kind of like a new story grid tool that I've been really playing with for six months. And it's the notion I'm now breaking the mineral build into two pieces. And the reason why I'm doing that is that the structure of complex systems, there's this whole kind of probably it's been around for about 50, 60 years. It's called systems thinking, systems theory. And it's a super duper, the highest abstraction level of looking at the world that you possibly could imagine. And essentially there's this really great YouTube video by a guy named Dave Stone, I think I've mentioned it before. And it's called the Synathin framework, C, Y N E F I N. And it breaks the world into different kinds of systems. So there's the order system and there's the chaos system. And that used to be the paradigm when things in the mythic structure of the world weren't so complex. So you know, at the very beginning of Homo sapiens time, just getting something to eat and finding a mate were, you know, huge problems. And there were order and chaos. Like were you going to be able to make that happen or not? And over time, order and chaos sort of came together in this really interesting thing that systems thinkers think is the actual reality of the natural world all the way from the Big Bang to the present. And that's called complexity. So what you find in chaos theory is that within the chaotic random movements, there are these really remarkable systems that seem to be ordered and fractal. You know, the fractal Phenomena, the butterfly effect. That's out of chaos theory. So complexity is this mishmash of order and chaos. And that we believe systems thinkers, is the actual order of the natural world. There's no linearity to it, but there are patterns. So, you know, the concept of exponential growth lives in complexity. Compound interest lives in complexity. The nature of connected networks lives in complexity. Now, order is divided into complicated order and obvious order. So what I've just described is sort of like four sort of domains. There's the ordered, complicated system, the ordered, obvious system, chaos and complexity. So it's my theory that story mirrors the process by which one navigates through those four terrains. And the beginning hook, about a protagonist who has a complicated worldview. And that complicated worldview works. It works for them. They seem to think that they've got an asymmetrical relationship with the rest of the natural world, such that they are capable of having their primal needs met and they can pull one over on everybody else. They're doing okay. And something unexpected happens to that character. And guess what happens then? They sort of have to be flushed into an obvious order, which would be a movement from their ordinary world into an extraordinary world that is seemingly perfectly, obviously ordered. The only problem is that this protagonist doesn't really quite know that order yet. So, for example, it's like your character Jesse moves from her ordinary world in New York City. She has a complicated worldview that seems to be working for her. She's a really good hacker. She gets the credits when she needs them, Things are going okay. And then something unexpected happens. And at the end of the beginning hook, she is forced to because she has to make a best bad choice. She will be cast out of the group and exiled from her existence, which will threaten her life. Or she will do a deed for the group such that she can return to the ordinary world. She gets flushed into this extraordinary world, right? And it's the world of the training center in the magical world that she has to get in on the plane to go to.

So that middle build that you crafted for the threshing begins. Then the movement from the protagonist into this extraordinary, strange world that has rules that the character really hasn't figured out yet, but everybody else has. And then after progressive complications, unexpected events, you reach a point of no return. And that's the moment when Jesse kind of freaks out in the second severing. And that point of no return is so traumatic that we as the reader know that she is never going to be the same kind of person as she is Again, because she can no longer use her worldview to solve her problems. Now she's sort of helpless. That point of no return is the demarcation point between this obvious sort of rule based order into chaos. She doesn't know what's up, what's down, what to do about it. So that third sort of quadrant is about chaos and how she navigates that chaotic world. And it's important to note that she's not the only one navigating a chaotic world. So is everyone else. The entire culture in that system is in chaos.

So like the bad guy doesn't quite know what to do, her brother doesn't quite know what to do, her teammates don't quite know what to do. Everybody's sort of like waiting to see how this plays out. And then eventually she has a worldview shift. She changes the way she views the world. By the end, all is lost of that third quadrant and she resolves, well, the only thing to do is to go in there and see what happens. And so that movement. So when she goes into the threshing, her attitude is, I'm going to sort of take it as it comes.

She doesn't have an ideology, she doesn't really have a plan. She just is going to take it as it comes and respond to the unexpected events that happen to her in real time and trust herself that she will be able to handle it.

That's what you do in a complex system. You can't walk into a complex system and have a cause and effect relationship with what's going to happen. You can't control a complex system. All you can do is do little experiments. You're going to poke the system, sense what happens, what the output of that is, and respond. If when you poke the system and it comes back negative, you don't do that anymore. So you do these kind of. They're called safe to fail experiments. So that whole ending payoff of your novel is about Jesse participating in this threshing event.

And sensing and responding in real time to a complex environment and believing in her heart that whatever they throw at her, she's going to be able to figure out. Guess what that is? That's called living in the moment. That's being mindful of your environment, responding to it in real time. That's how we can best navigate difficult, complex things. We don't go in with an ideology that says, oh, if they say that, I'm going to say that no, we don't believe in one single idea. That's an ideology. No, instead we Believe in responding as optimally as possible to the circumstances of unexpected events that occur in real time. That's a very sort of complicated idea, but not really so it's sort of like the super bowl was recent, you know, it just passed. And when a player starts to do that, like the quote, I forget his name. Patrick Mahones. I think he is the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. And for three and a half quarters he wasn't sort of responding to the complex environment in such a way that he was being. It was working. But in those last three drives, he was, he was living in the moment, responding to all the incredible amounts of stimuli flowing into his brain and responding. And his other guys, he was participating with the other 10 players. This is why we love watching sporting events. We're watching a team of people participating together in discovering and reaching a goal that is beautiful to watch. So that's kind of what Jesse is doing in the ending payoff of your first novel. And she gets the whole kitchen sink is thrown at her. And at the end of your book, they ask her, well, what are we going to do next? And she says wisely, I don't know. Because she doesn't know yet. How does she know? She has to learn how to respond to what comes next.

So these four quadrants, the complicated world that shifts into the obvious order, that shifts into chaos, and then back up to complexity. Now in your second novel, you've got to push her from the complexity of the ending of the threshing into a situation where she's back where she started in book one, which is the complicated realm. Okay, you see how this is sort of like a spiral? Like she moves from one quadrant to another and it's sort of like a corkscrew.

So yeah, because I'll have to put her back through that same process.

I mean, that is thematically what they mean by the hero's journey.

But it's looking at the heroic journey more in terms of the cognitive processes necessary in order to best navigate complexity. And complexity is defined as.

Non linearity that does have embedded patterns within in it that Homo sapiens are remarkably incredibly attuned to. And what we do is we discover these patterns inside the complexity of the natural environment, we pull them out of that complex system, and then what we can do is figure out how to do cause and effect technologies from those complex environments.

So I want to wrap this up, but just think about online book marketing. When online book marketing first started, a few people, and I think you were one of them, you were definitely One of them, there were a few people who noticed that there was a pattern. If you were capable of creating a subscription list of people who cared about your writing.

Then you could talk to them directly and increase the probability of them purchasing your work. So the cause could create an effect. So if you could cause yourself to have a subscription list of subscribers, you could affect an end result of more book sales. So at the very beginning, this asymmetric power, meaning people like you, who understood that pattern and were able to roll out that patterning for your clients, it increased the sales for your clients. And they said, this guy has special sauce. Now what happens is over time, that innovation gets weaponized, meaning other people notice that Tim Grohl has figured out this formula. So they go and they read everything that Tim Grohl has done, and they figure out what he did, and then they do it too. And then they add on a little bit more oomph. And soon the cause of getting more book sales doesn't return as highly as it did initially because more and more people are learning that technology and the asymmetry of your expertise over other people starts to get a little bit diminished. So what that causes you to do is to go back into the complex universe, figure out a new thread, and then put that one. So you're leveling up your professional ability to market books online, and then other people are starting to steal your technology and use it to help other people. So what eventually happens is that everybody understands that technology and the cause and the effect no longer is obvious.

And then some people just quit and they fall into chaos until another person rises and acquires a new skill that can innovate that book marketing online system.

So you can use this movement from complicated order to obvious order to chaos to complexity and back again on multiple domains of analysis so that you can start to make sense of the world when, you know, I'm sure there are people today who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers who say, yeah, man, you know, a few years ago, this was amazing. I would be able to send out three emails. And the return on that email, you know, offer was extraordinary. Today I got to send out 20, right?

And it's not that people haven't done it the right way. It's just that the technology starts to sort of slowly erode until it no longer works. So the cause and the effect lose their fecundity. And guess what I've described. That's like technological innovation. So Homo sapiens, at the very beginning of our cognitive sort of revolution, about 70,000 years ago. What made us so powerful was our capability to use projectile weapons. So we could figure out how to put a little piece of bone, like a sharp piece of bone on a reed and be able to throw that from far away and kill things without getting damaged by having to fight one on one with an animal or a Neanderthal. So that projectile weapon of the reed with the sharp bone tip on it, you know, over time became a nuclear warhead. It's the same technology, it's the same abstract idea. I'm going to be safe over here and I'm going to launch something elsewhere that will take out the people that I don't want around me.

So if you look at the rise of technologies over time, you can see this.

Sort of like the cause and effect become more and more, it grows ever more powerful. And so when you're telling a story that's sort of the cycle of how your character grows through their power and through their existential understanding of who they are, they have to keep breaking their worldview to expand it, to become more powerful, which makes them have to break their worldview again. You see, it's a cycle that is ever repeating. There's no beginning, middle and end. Because none of us, until the day we die really, truly know who we are. But we try really hard to figure it out. We have a good sense of it. We self actualize. We find the domains that give us the most meaning and we work as hard as we possibly can in those domains to leave something behind that could be helpful to other people after we die. But even in that last moment, I'm sure most people are still like, hey, I don't know what happens next. You know, what's going on. Here I am, I'm at the end of my life. Nobody gets out of this thing alive. How's this going to end? So a story does have an ending, and that's kind of. It makes us feel a little bit better, like maybe there's a good thing at the end of this thing. So that's why you have these really, really deep structures that we're really aligned with. And the middle build of a story is difficult because it's a movement from the breakdown of a cause and effect thing that we take for granted. And it no longer works, which pushes us into chaos. When all the things that we think are going to work don't work anymore. That means everything's random and randomness is chaotic. We don't know up and down or left and right. Things just happen.

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