Steven Pressfield: 21 Proven Methods for Writing Great Stories | How I Write

Steven Pressfield is a master in the art of storytelling. He spent decades studying what great stories have in common, so I said, hey, come on the show, that's what we're gonna talk about. What are the principles of storytelling and character building? I want to know the things that transcend genre and culture and speak to the heart of the human condition. I want X-ray vision into what makes stories great. I wanna know what makes you get to the end of the story and just say.

So that's what this conversation is all about.

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Let's just zoom out into the three ac structure. What is it about the three ac structure that you've embraced after initially being like, Ah, I don't want some formula over here. I just think it's so true, you know, the concept of um I forget who said this, but somebody

Some wonderful writer was saying, Here's the key to any story that you're working on. Break it into three parts, beginning, middle, and end. And I remember thinking at the time, you know, there's a lot to that, you know. I think a lot of times there can be more than three acts, but mostly

If you can do three acts, it really makes a lot of sense. The first act is supposed to hook the audience and get them involved in the story. The second act is kind of progressive g things get more complicated like the midpoint of act two. That's where things the stakes get higher, it gets more interesting. And then act three is where you kind of put the accelerator down and go to the climax.

And I think a joke is like that. You know, you sort of a rabbi and an alligator walk into a bar, right? And then there's a little and then there's the punchline is Act Three. So it is a sort of a natural kind of rhythm for storytelling.

Tell me about the inciting incident. The inciting incident is the moment Usually at the end or the middle of Act One, when the story really starts. And what had come before that, you could kind of call setup, the first Rocky, if we remember that. It's kind of a long build up of introducing Rockies and Philadelphia's kind of a crumbum fighter. He goes into the gym, he finds that uh Mick, the trainer, has

kicked him out of his locker, you know, he gets he gets no respect, right? And then we see, kind of, parallel to that, Apollo Creed, the heavyweight champion, has scheduled a fight,'cause it's the centennial year of America, right? And he says, Schedule a fight in Philadelphia and the uh his opponent breaks his hand or something. So Apollo has to kinda go, Well, how am I gonna save this? And he says, Okay, I'm gonna change it and I'm gonna give some local fighter

a shot at the title. Right. And so he looks through the book of the local fighters and he comes to the Italian stallion page and that's Rocky and he says, This is the guy I want to fight. He's an Italian immigrant Columbus was an Italian, he discovered America, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the word comes down to Rocky, you've been chosen to fight the champ.

That's the inciting incident, right? All of a sudden the story the rubber hits the road and we s and another thing about the inciting incident is when we in the audience or we as readers hit that moment, we can kind of see the climax. We sort of flash forward. It's like, ah, he's been chosen to fight the champ. Well, the climax is going to be him fighting the champ in the ring and we're excited by that. You know? So the inciting incident gets the s gets the story rolling.

Now, you were talking about uh how the inciting incident can basically foreshadow the climate. Yeah. Is there a way where the inciting incident can basically show a sense of mystery that's going to be a recurrent thread throughout the entire movie or the entire book, the entire story? Because what came to mind was

Remember in the Truman show really early on the light falls on the street and it's like what is this light? And then basically the whole movie is like what is the light? And then he realizes that he's living in Manufactured reality. And so I think that maybe that is a kind of inciting incident, but a different kind. Let me go back and talk about for a second, talking about um inciting incident in my newest book.

about uh a recurring character of mine who lives lifetime after lifetime as a doomed, cursed figure, a warrior from the ancient world that is pulled farther and farther into the modern world. And in this story what happens is a horse appears kind of mysteriously following him. He's serving as a mercenary in some unknown conflict, and he recognizes the horse as his horse. From fifteen hundred years earlier when he served in the Roman legions, complete with a brand the

for ten for the tenth Legion that he served in. And so when we see this, talking about a mystery, now we wonder, What the hell is this where are we? How did this horse suddenly come out of it? But also it's the inciting it that starts the story. Now we see Ah Some crazy stuff is gonna happen that's gonna pull him through to to a resolution.

Yeah. Tell me about animals, the symbolism of animals. Like why did you choose a horse? There's a mystery about them, sensitivity. Sensitivity about them. Um I know you're getting at a sort of a principle, a storytelling principle of mine, which is that the child carries the divine. Is it kind of a principle of mine. And uh Children or animals who are innocent, naturally innocent people in stories almost always carry the divine element of the story. Um

for in in the case of this horse I'm talking about in l in the Arcadian, the horse is sent by heaven, by God, by somebody to restore justice to the world. And the reason I picked a horse is because it although it could have been other animals, it could have been an eagle or something like that, but horses are kind of magical creatures.

that ha right, their heart is f five times, four times bigger than the human heart and they they have because they're flight animals, they're sensitive to to uh moods and emotions and everything in the environment. So A horse is one of these creatures that can, you know, like the flying horse, Pegasus and all those guys, that can bring again the div the element of the divine, the element of the supernatural.

And uh it applies with children too in stories. Um where um they're the often the one that like the Emperor's new clothes that sees truth and that will open their mouth and say, But the Emperor's not wearing any clothes, right? So it's I again when I'm kind of writing a story, if I if I have a child or an animal in there that just comes sort of naturally, like I feel like I need some kind of an animal in here, when I'm when I switch over to my left brain and ask myself, what's going on here?

A lot of times, if not always, that child or that animal will carry some kind of element of the divine in the s in the story. And again, I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it does seem to be a principle that is true, not just in my stuff, but in anybody's stuff. How does this show up in biblical stories? The story of Moses, the story of Jesus. I pulled this from the book of Luke. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you should call his name Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of this kingdom there will be no end. Well that's I hadn't even thought about that, but that's probably the classic instance of the child, Jesus.

bringing the divine into the world. Think about Moses, right? He was floating in the bull rushes in a little basket. Almost all the great heroes, you know, Theseus, Heracles, whatever, they have a a moment of their birth. That is that is sort of miraculous. There's a sense of hope and possibility even whenever you pick up a baby or you see a really young baby, you're just like.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Their eyes are seeing everything for the first time. They're totally haven't been screwed up by life yet. just like you and I when we were babies. Yep. And uh but I I am thinking about here's another movie that your readers will never know'cause it's too Far the past. Shane, do you know that one? I've never even heard of it. Oh, great Western starring Alan Ladd as a gunslinger that comes into this

threatened environment of um sodbusters in a in a kind of range war against cattlemen. And Brandon DeWilda, who at that time was like six years old. He was the innocent. He was the child in that thing. And at the end of of the movie, the last beat that became famous of the movie is Shane has to leave the valley after killing um Jack Pallance, the bad guy. And the child calls after him, Shane, come back, come back, Shane, come back.

What is the Michael? What is Michael Michael Corleone? I think it's from The Godfather, and there's a long quote. Where basically what happens is in these stories, there is what is going on. Something happens and now the stakes are bigger. The story's really taken on a new form, a new meaning. Tell me about that. Okay. Okay. Um, there's a moment usually in act two midpoint in movies and in and in books too, where uh like the the the moment in the Godfather, the first godfather, is when

Marlon Brando's character has been shot, he's in the hospital, and the bad guy, Virgil Solazzo, has reached out to the Corleone family. Let's have a meeting, you know, and we're gonna somehow settle this out. and the scene takes place kind of in the in the office of the Godfather, and Michael, Al Pacino, is sitting in a chair in the center of the room and at this point in the story

He's really been not a member of the crime family. Remember if you remember, he's a decorated Marine officer from World War II. He's married to a uh uh all American Mayflower girl, not definitely not. an Italian crime family future for him. It looks like he's gonna be my professor or something like this. And in fact, Sonny Corleone, James Conn, and Robert Duval, as um Tom Hagen, they treat him as kind of uh, you know, outside the family they're trying to trying to protect him.

So in this scene he has this moment where he says Let's shut the meeting. Get our informers to find out where it's going to be held. Now we insist it's a public place, a bar. A restaurant, some place where there's people so I feel safe. You're gonna search me when I first meet them, right? So I can't have a weapon on me then. But if Clemenza can figure a way to have a weapon planted there for me. Then I'll kill'em both.

And that is the moment everybody goes they go, Hey, you know, forget it, you know what I in the army you shoot somebody two hundred yards away, it suddenly says to them, Here you gotta go right up, it blows your brains all over your nice Ivy League suit. But this is the moment uh a turning point moment where the hero takes sides. And at this point and the stakes rise, right? And at this point Michael Corleone goes

from being outside the family to inside the family. And now he really has said, and it's setting up the the whole arc of the story that he's going to be the godfather, right, in the end. Where he says, then I'll kill'em both. In other words, he's in he's made his decision. I'm not with Kay, my wife, my fiance. I'm with the family. And I'm gonna stay with the family for the whole thing. And everybody is sort of chilled by this, but also it's a thrilling moment.

So anyway, I look myself when I'm writing, I kind of ask myself, do I have an act two midpoint like that when my hero uh chooses side? It's a it's a thrilling moment for the audience'cause you really feel like the movie or the book is gaining another gear here, you know, and now we're gonna anyway. Well so that's the Michael Corleone moment. As you were saying that I was thinking of have you seen the the talented Mr. Ripley? Yes. Remember the Mac Damon. Killing in the boat?

I know if that's the same, but that's sort of what happens where you have Matt Damon who's jealous, and then there's the killing. And basically, my sense is that in the first, let's say one-third of the movie, there's been a story that's been set up. And we see what's going on, we understand the social dynamics, but now there's the murder and the entire story basically goes じゃらららら

And and it gets bigger and it gets deeper and the stakes get higher. Uh and it's like I don't know, it's almost like a new beat comes into the song that gives it a whole new tempo and rhythm and dynamite, you know? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, that may be it exactly. Certainly there always is we're always looking for that moment, right, where the story hits another gear and from the reader or viewer's point of view they realize, Oh, I thought this was gonna be about this.

But it's really about this, and this is even better. You know, I'm you know, I'm even more on board with finding this.

Tell me about the all is lost moment. Uh uh what it is. Yeah. This is uh kind of a staple of Hollywood storytelling. That uh I remember as a young screenwriter

you know, being in a meeting and somebody would be looking at a p a piece that I had submitted and they say, Well, what's the all is lost moment? And I would go, Well, what what what is that? you know, and somebody had to like take me aside and explain what it what it is. But the all is lost moment comes about three quarters of the way through the movie or the book.

And it is a moment when the hero has been trying all through the story to overcome certain obstacles. If it's a detective, they've been trying to solve the case. And at this point they reach a b a beat where everything falls apart and it's like, We're never gonna get out of this. We're all gonna die. We're you know, everything I believed in so far, you know, and this this is kind of a crucial moment.

that the hero has to kind of overcome. I'll give you a couple of examples here. Here's one from Rocky. I'll go back to Rocky. Here we go. If you remember okay, he's gonna fight the champ, Apollo Creed, right? And the middle part of the movie with the theme from Rocky that Right, he's training. And then three quarters of the way through the movie, there's a moment where he's home in bed with his girlfriend Adrian and he gets the fight is the next night.

He gets up and he goes down by himself in the middle of the night to the arena. And he goes in and he looks and he sees all the seats, he sees a big poster of himself, of Apollo Creed, and the moment sort of hits him, the the scale of the oh my God, I'm f my what have I gotten myself into? And he goes back home to Adrian, gets back in bed and and he has his all is lost moment. Can't do it. Thank you. What? I can't be. I've been out there walking around thinking

I mean who am I kidding? I ain't even in the guys' league. What are we gonna do? Yeah. So that's his kind of all is lost moment. At that moment usually the hero has to kind of switch gears and switch from kind of an ego orientation to a greater orientation, and then it's a question of, um, can the hero rise above whatever it takes to uh To proceed to the climax.

If you look at almost any story there is that moment, or even myths or, you know, legends, things like that, it's really important that that thing be there. You were talking about how we get out of it. Did you uh have more to say about it?

Yeah, I do. Okay. Uh because usually what immediately follows the all is lost moment is an a what I call the epiphanal moment. An epiphany, the the um the hero has a kind of a breakthrough. Like go back to Rocky, the moment I was just talking about before where Rocky's lying in bed with Adrian and he says, Who was I kidding to get into this thing, this fight, this guy's the champion of the world, he's gonna kill me in the ring, you know?

And then he makes a sort of a shift in his head just in a one second and he says, But you know what? He says, if I can just go the distance with If I can just last to the fifth I don't care what he beats the hell out of me. If I can if I'm standing at the end of fifteen rounds, then I'ma know for the first time in my life that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood.

So he makes a shift from, Oh, I thought I might win, I might do something to if I can just be standing at the end of the thing. And so in other words, a lot of times in the um in this epiphenal moment, the hero kind of faces reality. and sort of accepts it. And it's usually a kind of a it's it's a little bit of a downer in the sense that he had some dream or she had some fantasy and they go, Well, this is not if I can only you know

So there always is that moment afterwards. And it's really kind of a writer's challenge a lot of time to say, well, how am I gonna I wanna make the worst possible all is lost moment for my character. And then how am I gonna get him out of that? moment. Like I'll give you another all is lost moment.

Another from an old movie from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh yeah. Well Jack Nicholson is this guy who is uh kind of a uh live wire, high energy guy and he gets sentenced to um an insane asylum, right, where all the people are sort of really down and he kind of energizes everybody, you know, but he runs the foul of nurse Ratchet, uh the bad nurse that runs him and the all is lost moment is

He does something and they take him into the into the operating room and they lobotomize him. And he is he is brought back into the ward with his other guys who had believed in him. He was their hero and they see the two scars. and it's like he's basically dead. And that's the all is lost moment from the from the movie. And what comes out of that is there's another character called the chief, an Indian, big strong guy who doesn't believe in his strength.

and when he sees the Jack Nicholson carry, Randall Patrick McMurphy, in this terrible state, he takes a pillow, he smothers him, puts him out of his misery, and then he, the chief, gets a hold of his belief in his own strength, and he throws this giant heavy thing through the wall or through the window, and he escapes. So the switch was that the chief who had been Yeah. not believed in himself, suddenly does believe in himself through this

There's another thing that's sort of like this. Maybe we were going to talk about this: the turn in your badge and your gun scene. This is another sort of principle that uh I think about that's sort of like an all is lost moment. Like um In a lot of cop movies or detective stories, there's a moment when the boss says to the detective, Turn in your badge and your gun, you're off the case.

And this is usually like three quarters of the way through the movie, just kinda like the all is lost moment. And in fact it is a kind of an all-as-lost moment. In Silence of the Lambs, um Clarice Starling gets stripped of her badge and her gun to pursue this case. in the French connection, Gene Hackman and uh Roy Scheider have to turn in their badge and their gun. Even in Lade Runner twenty forty nine, I know I'm citing movies or whatever, the Ryan Gosling character, Kay,

is told turn in your badge and your gun, you're off the case. This is a bit like the all is lost moment for these characters. The stakes raise again, it's like, are they going to keep going or are they going to crab out? And of course they always keep going. And at that moment they go from being a character to being a hero. In fact I would say in terms of a screenplay, if you were trying to attract an actor, big named actor,

You have to have a great moment like that. Because the actor's gonna wanna play that moment, you know? They're gonna wanna be they're gonna be the hero. They're gonna wanna be up against it and then rise above that.

What did I see about the second act belonging to the villain? That's a that's a principle uh that my friend Randy Wallace, who wrote The Braveheart, taught me. And um it was that the first act kind of introduces the hero But in the second act, the villain has to come forward. In other words, the obstacles that the hero has to overcome. If you're a writer, you sort of need to say to yourself, When I look at my second act,

There's the bad guy big in here like Riffy Frank. Think about the Godfather, the first godfather. In the second act, you have Solazzo, the villain. He guns down Don Colleone outside the the thing, then everybody has to go to the mattresses. There's the big kind of warfare through the whole thing. And the villain really comes to the fore as um the obstacles that the hero has to overcome. So it is true the second act does belong to the villain.

How is the relationship with the world for a hero and a villain different? Uh like the hero, what are they trying to accomplish? How do heroes generally see the world versus villains? How are they Yes. That's a great question. So what we're talking about really here are like the principles of of storytelling, right? Wh which if we're writing a story, we want to ask ourselves of our story, is it adhering to these principles?

So the one of the differences between a hero and a villain is that the hero is capable of self-sacrifice. And a lot of time where the villain is not. Many times the in the all is lost moment or in the final climax, the hero will give his or her life or will give up his hopes of uh happiness or something like that for the greater good.

Whereas for a villain it's always kind of a zero sum game of if if i I'm I mean the villain, if I'm gonna gain anything I have to take it from you. Yeah. So, um, like one of the classic cases of uh uh a hero giving up something is in Casablanca, where the Bogart character at the end of the movie gives up the love of his life, Ingrid Bergman, right? He puts her on the plane to Lisbon.

with her husband, she's gonna escape and then he goes off to fight with the free French. And what he the decision he has made is better to uh spend yourself in the for the common good, in other words, fighting for the Allies, fighting against the Nazis, than to grab your own selfish good, in meaning running away with the girl you love, you know? So he sacrif and of course there are many, many

stories where the hero sa literally sacrifices his or her life. So Yeah. That's one of the big differences between a hero and a villain. Another difference between a hero and a villain is that the hero is capable of change. And in fact, that's kind of the what a hero is. The the story in almost any book or movie is the hero changing. Yeah. Right? Starts at point A, ends at point Z, right? A different person. Whereas the villain never changed.

That's another question that we do have to ask ourselves as writers. Is our character, our hero, changing from beginning to end? Like in the Bogart character in Casablanca, he starts out, he's the owner of this uh uh this I would call it a restaurant or kind of a in Casablanca where a lot of expatriates gather and the Nazis are there and blah blah blah. And when he starts out

He's completely in it for himself. Like he has a couple of great quotes. I'm the only cause I'm fighting for. He does it does a couple of things in the beginning of the movie that shows he's only looking out for himself. He doesn't give a damn about anybody else. And by the end of the movie he's completely changed to the point where he's giving giving utterly of himself. And that's why the movie is so satisfying and is so many times picked as the greatest movie of all time.

As you're thinking about genre and conventions and these principles, like implied here is lean into these things, learn from them. And then the fear that I have is then, oh my goodness, if I'm gonna do this, I'm just gonna write trite cliche. How do you work through uh that tension?

That's another great question. Because you sort of think, and I did too, when I first heard some of these principles, I thought, well, I'm not going to write this formula shit, you know, you know, A B C. But you realize that these moments work. You know? Well you know, that if you have a hero who doesn't change and you read the book over, people go

Uh, whatever. Didn't you know, so you have to say this is this is a true principle. If I look back at the Iliad or the Odyssey or Shakespeare or anything, legends, you know, the hero does change. It has to change. And um So the the trick is can you do it do these timeless principles in a new way? You know, can you put a spin on it or do it some way that's just slightly different? Like um

A g and here's another classic example of things like that. The Big Lebowski. Yeah? You're familiar with that one, right? The dude, Jeff Bridges. If you think about the Big Lebowski, the genre of the Big Lebowski is a detective story. โอเค Right. The dude is kinda given an assignment at the start by a rich guy. Here's the million dollars I want you to give it to save my wife who's you know been kidnapped.

the dude is kinda like a detective. He's kind of solving what happened to the to Bunny, et cetera, et cetera. There's even a Femme Fetale played by Julianne Moore, that becomes kind of a love interest a little bit for the dude, just like in every detective story. But the spin that the Cohen brothers, who wrote it and directed it, put on this thing is normally in a jet detective story, the hero is a hard bitten detective like

you know, a bogey or something like that. But to do it with the dude, you know, a a stoner that's, you know b you know, that's the spin. So that makes every scene every genre scene that we've seen, another one of the like in detective stories, the detective always gets beaten up a bunch of times. And if you think about the big Lebowski the dude gets beaten up over and over and over, right? Yeah. And but it's always new because he's not the hard bitten detective. He's you know, he's the dude.

So if we can follow these principles, but put a spin on them each time, make them just a little bit different, then everything is is okay.

Tell me about the film Fetale. Ah. Well there always is a femme fatale. Now we're talk we're I know you're gonna talk about uh uh another principle, which is the female carries the mystery. Um and uh If you think about detective stories. Almost always there will be the detective is almost always a male.

and usually when he's hired to do the job or whatever it is, there's always a kind of a beautiful, mysterious woman. You know, it there's always a a femme fatale and a femme fatale or she might be less more of a vulnerable character. that carries the mystery, I say, for instance. in Chinatown, when um Jack Nicholson, the detective, first meets Faye Dunaway,

She's the one who knows all the answers, right? What he's trying to find, you know, he's trying to get dig up what's behind the murders of this and that and the other, and she knows already. And she's trying to hide those because if it becomes revealed, bad things will happen, she thinks. And so the climax in a lot of these stories is the female suddenly reveals.

What's happen like the famous scene of where Jack Nicholson slaps Faye Dunaway and she says of her of her the the young girl that she's trying to save I said I want the truth Sister and my daughter! Ha ha ha! Please, go back. Oh god's sake, keep her upstairs. Back. My father and I Understand? Or is it too tough for you? All of a sudden the the whole mystery comes forward at that time. So that I find when I'm writing something I ask myself

Who's the female in this in this story? And uh and does she carry the mystery? It doesn't have to be uh a literally a woman. For instance, we were talking about this earlier, David, in Moby Dick, which has no female characters at all, the C is the female. And if you think about the sea carrying the mystery, the sea is into the depths which Moby Dick dives. A whale can go

sound incredible depths and the sea is the place that Ahab searches all over the whole world for the sea. And when we in the end of the story, when we sort of look out over the surface of the ocean, it's a complete mystery. It's like You know, what what is this thing? So it stands for who knows what, the unconscious or whatever. And but it is a mystery. And the mystery are always things like birth, death.

creativity, the things that we can't answer. Life itself, being, you know, every story sort of comes down to that, you know, of a question we can't answer. We just can only kind of stand in awe of it. And the great works all always do that.

And tell me about the inverse of this, which I would guess is the male solves. Uh. The mystery? Yeah. So the male i he you know, the in the um the idea that the hero has to overcome obstacles to reach his or her objective, we'll say male because it like a detective to solve a mystery, the the military guy to carry off the raid, whatever it is. Um, they're trying to solve a mystery. Like you were saying before, this sort of inciting incident kind of plants an idea of who c who is the murderer.

Um, are we going to, you know, kill Hitler when we get to the bunk that kind of thing. And so it's sort of the the male And I think this is really a sort of a primal seminal aspect of male versus female or male as yin yang with female. It's the male energy that's sort of trying to seek the answer to this mystery. And um Usually in the end, the mystery is unsolvable and the and the character, the male character just at least comes face to face with it.

I'm presuming something, but Would it make sense that if there's a detective or something and say that they're working on a case? Would it make sense that in a lot of these stories they solve the case. But then there's something bigger behind it that remains the mystery.

That's really good. That's exactly right. That's shown up over and over. There's there's the story. And then at some point in the story we we realize that there's a story that's bigger than the original story that's been presented. Yeah, yeah, that's really a very insightful. There's like a mega story behind it. Yeah. Like at the end of Chinatown, um Jake Giddy's Jack Nicholson has kind of solved the case. You know, he figures

The the old man, the bad guy, played by uh John Houston, is the father. He raped his daughter, bump it bumped bump. But The case is not solved. He's not arrested. There's gonna be no accountability. It's gonna then and the greater scheme that that John Houston character have of of bringing water to Los Angeles and making himself millions and millions of dollars that kind of c continues on, right? The ca the detective has solved the story, but he's come to face face to face with an even bigger

thing and that's when a a great story works, that's how it works, you know. It opens up to something even bigger. And leaves you, the audience or the reader, with a little, you know, sadder but wiser.

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Now for us, Basecamp is a place where we can track what we're doing with how I write, when episodes are being recorded, where we're recording them, the publishing day, all those sorts of things in one place for our entire team to look at. And I had the founder of Basecamp, Jason Fried. He came on the show and I noticed that he really cares about writing. He cares about manifestos. He cares about great copy. He cares about

telling a great story and him and his co-founder, they've written five books. And I can tell you that they bring the same care and attention to detail to their books as they do their software. So if you're thinking about work and you're asking, hey, how can I be more productive? How can I make my team more cohesive? Well then I recommend Basecamp. All right, back to the episode.

In uh in the Arcadian, you have a cursed character that's central to the story. How do gifts and curses work together? Oh that's another great. Seems like a lot of gifts. Bye. They uh they have a curse. Uh Ha in fact. You know, the character in uh in the Arcadia in my new book, has been doomed for crimes he's committed in the deep past, to live lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, always as a soldier.

to kill and be killed and and and he wants desperately to end this cycle of lifetime after lifetime of of this of this thing. But the reason why I think a character that's under a curse is interesting, and this is another sort of principle that I haven't really thought about as deeply as I should, but I think it's really true. Yeah.

We're all kind of under a curse. If you think about think about um the idea of original sin. I was about to say that. Right. That we were now this is a very Christian idea that we were born with this sin, or think of the Garden of Eden. like when God casts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he curses them, and he says, Henceforth shalt thou eat thy bread in the sweat of thy face.

Thorns and thistles I shall set before you for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return. And so I think the women are cursed to pain and childbirth and the men are cursed to labor. Right? Yes. I think that's exactly right. But even beyond that, don't we all sort of feel like in a way we're incomplete. or we haven't right reached what it is. We can never write really we're always sort of searching for something. So we all, I feel,

are looking for some kind of redemption. You know, people who are young people, particularly who are looking for their calling in life.

They sort of feel like I have no meaning. There's no meaning in my life, you know, I've gotta if I could only find what I was put here to do, et cetera, et cetera. So I do think I I love cursed characters. Yeah. And I think that um a lot of great heroes bring th uh that sort of curse with them and you sort of ask yourself, Well, what is like a in in an tr in a tragedy

The hero brings some flaw, right? Like back to Achilles in the Iliad, his flaw is that he although he can never be defeated in battle, he's the greatest at whatever it is, but he has an ego. He has pride. And he won't. You know, he won't give in when he needs to give in. And the result he loses his dearest friend Patroclus and practically and destroys Troy, blah, blah, blah.

So that is a kind of a form of a of a of a curse. To go back to Shane that I know you haven't seen, but this was it this was really I think one of the great American versions of a tragedy. We never sort of had tragedy. But in this version the Shane is this gunslinger, and he comes into this peaceful sort of valley, and his intention is to lay down his guns. He wants to just live and be just a normal person. That is his curse, that he has a past.

of being a gunfighter and of killing people. And what happens, sure enough, through the time that he's there is He's he's the only guy in the valley that can save the day because he's the only guy that can use a gun. And so his past follows him. And he c and in the end it catches up with him. And in the then the final there's a great moment at the end. I wish you'd seen this Stephen. I yeah. I've uh one of the great Sixty films to watch before our next interview.

But there's a great moment at the very end, where he's Finally killed the bad guy, Jack Pallance, but he realizes that he has to has to leave the valley, and he says to the little boy who carries the divine, Brandon DeWilde, he says, Matt has to be what he is, Joe. You can't break the moment. I tried it and it didn't work for me. We want you to... Joey, there's no living with a killing. There's no going back for it. Right or wrong, it's a brand. Brand sticks. Let's not go with that.

So in other words, he brought in his history as a gunman and he couldn't get away from it. Surrender in that? Like a like he can't break away. The surrendering to your nature. It's like well, let's put it this way. I think he what what his surrender is at the end is he gives up the dream I'm gonna live and be a normal person, you know?

He's gonna have to find as he rides out of the valley some other way. I don't think it means for him so it's again a kind of a sadder but wiser thing, kind of like uh the Jack Nicholson character at the end of Chinatown. You know, it's like he's now seeing this corruption that he can never unsee.

So in a way he's better off than he was and then he's now living in the real world. He's not deluding himself or anything, but at the same time, it's a sad world that that he ha has to face now. You know As you were telling that story, I was thinking about what people gossip about and gossip as a window into the kinds of receptors that the human mind already has and the sort of highways that people Travel off.

in conversation as they try to analyze the world. And I was thinking about the trope of the kid from a wealthy family. Who has some sort of curse? Uh, maybe they have some sort of crazy learning disability. Maybe they have a really tortured relationship with their parents. And as I was thinking of just gossip over the the last 20 years of my life, this has been a common form of gossip. Brendan, yeah, he's from a rich family, but he's got this problem with his parents.

Sarah, yeah, you know, it looks like she's got everything. She's got that beautiful house on the beach in Nantucket. But you'll never believe what happened in the kitchen one night, you know what I mean? Yeah. And it then seems to just show up all over the place, which just gets me thinking that a lot of these Tropes, the reason that they work, the reason why they feel true is because they're so easy to pattern match onto our own lives and what we see.

I mean, really, literature, books, movies or whatever, where does it come from? Comes from real life, right? So yeah, I mean I'm as you were saying that I was thinking about JFK Jr., right? if he was cursed with anything it was that he was so good looking and brought so much charisma from his father and from the whole family, and

I think in some way, you know, then he he dies in that plane crash. Um I don't know. If I don't know if there's a direct causality there, but you're right that there is people bring some sort of a curse like As we're getting deeper into the weeds, you know, if we go back into into uh ancient Greece, the uh I'm I'm gonna do this even if it's gonna bore people to death. The great trilogy of the Orostia is where

At the start of the Trojan War, the the first play is called Agamemnon. Agamemnon is the king going to Troy, and they are becomed by adverse winds, and so he has to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. to gain the win. So this is the initial crime of that generation. Then he fights the war, he wins the war, but his wife at home, Clytemnestra,

knows he killed my daughter. He killed my beloved daughter. When Agamemnon comes home, the second play of the story, she, his wife Glytemnestor's waiting for him, murders him, And loses him into the bathtub, throws a net over him, kills him. Right? Now we go to the next generation after that, his son Orestes.

now feels like my mother has killed my father. I must avenge my father. He kills his mother. It's a story, I guess, of generational a curse going from generation to generation to generation. You know, you killed my father, I gotta kill you, that kinda thing. is remember that band Avenge Sevenfold? I think that comes from in like Genesis five or Genesis six.

Cain kills Abel. And then from the retribution of that, it's always multiplied by seven. And seven is sort of the number of completion and totality. And then I think it's like if you follow through with this murder because it always the the the violence always escalates. And then basically threat from God or something that basically is like cut it out right now so that it does Yeah. You don't get the avenge sevenfold in the murder and retribution.

Interesting. Everything comes back to the Bible eventually. My life. Yeah. But you know, let me go back to the Arcadian for a second. There's a uh th the and the idea of a curse. person here. This is a a quote that originally got me started on this book. And I'm gonna talk about c curses here. And this is from Empedocles, speaking of going back to the ancient world where he says

There is a l and I carry this quote with me for like forty years, because I just knew there was a story in here somewhere. And Empedocles says, There is a law of stern necessity, the immemorial ordinance of the gods made fast forever.

And here's the law. He says, Should any spirit, meaning any he person, born to enduring life, be fouled with sin of slaughter, in other words, killing somebody Three times ten thousand years that soul shall wander, an outcast from felicity, condemned to mortal beings. So In the story of the Arcadian, our c our hero, Telamon, has been cursed

but it to live this lifetime and lifetime. But he comes into this last lifetime when the Christian era has come, and there is a moment in the story where a priest says, Somebody quotes this and says, This guy is doomed and he's got to live this out. And the priest says, D no. He says, Because our savior

has has taken this eye for an eye idea and moved it to another level. Blessed are the poor in spirit, right, for they shall see God. Blessed are the merciful, you know, the Beatitudes, for they shall receive mercy. And so he makes the case that this cursed character is now you know, we've moved beyond that that ancient, you know, eye for an eye thing. So that's again

A way of dealing with a cursed character. How to how do we get him out of an a all is lost moment and into some way that can move to a higher level? Yeah.

Tell me about new self as a result of an extraordinary world. Ah You've done your your research, great. Um In sort of the classic hero's journey model of a story. The uh if we think of, let's say, um, Wizard of Oz, the story starts out, act one is the ordinary world. So it's Dorothy in Kansas, got it out with her dog Toto and bump it a bumpa da. And then when the inciting incident happens, which is the tornado, the cyclone that comes and carries her away.

That's the end of Act One and Dorothy is swept into the extraordinary world or Oz. Because of black and white to technical color. Yeah. Or another one we could say like Rocky we were talking about. First Rocky's in the ordinary world is this crumb bum in Philadelphia. He gets the call to fight Apollo Creed and all of a sudden he's another, a whole other. Rocky right now. He's training. Bum ba da ba da bum bum right. And what's interesting is

And this is we can say this in our own lives. If you and I, if we moved from New York to California, or if we, you know, met uh somebody and fell in love, we go from the ordinary world to the extraordinary world, right? And um And what happens is we become a different person when we cross that threshold, right? Like if someone were to say, let's say they were working as a copywriter in advertising somewhere and they said, I'm quitting my job and I'm gonna become a novelist.

They go from the ordinary world to this whole other world, right? Interestingly enough, they change. They really go from being a character to being a hero. And not only do they see themselves differently, but the world sees them differently. They sort of sense that um, you know, I'm sure we've all had those moments in our life where we've kind of turned a page and to our amazement people saw us differently and we see ourselves differently as well.

And so that's it's like without that moment we don't have a story. That's really what a story is about. Otherwise it's just a status quo all the way through. I would say even in psychotherapy or something like that, where we're trying to heal a wound or something like that. We start as kind of ourselves with our old bullshit story and somehow our therapist, our drink, does something that makes us see. Or if we're, let's say we're have an alcohol problem.

And we hit the moon, we say, I'm s I'm quitting, you know, this is it. You know, I'm going to AA or whatever it is, we become a different person. And in real life, in other words, not just in movies or books.

So in that the core idea that I was thinking about was identity and it seems like a Something that you see in a lot of stories is there's a moment where we see the true identity. strangely enough, I was to give me girls. Uh ridiculous example, I admit. But I was thinking of These stories like Me and Girls follow the same principles as Shakespeare and Homer. reason it resonates and basically what you have is you have the plastics so the plastics are fake

And we know that Katie, when she gets to this high school in Chicago, she's sort of been this good girl from this good family, just moved from Africa, and now she enters this high school. And now she becomes a fake. plastic person so that she can be part of the plastics. And then there's that scene where she's at the she she's she's wearing a crown. Maybe it's like prom or something like that. And she basically rips apart the crown.

After she's basically ascended to the top of the fake game, she rips it apart. She says, I'm not that person. So Why is everybody stressing over this thing? It's just plastic. It's really just Share it. We've been watching this devolution of this high school girl and now we're like, wait, wow, the goodness, the righteousness that was inside of her it actually is now being revealed and that signals a big shift in the movie.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like the end of uh of Shane, if I go back to that, where it reveals his he the world is revealed to him, the reality of his life is revealed to him at the end, and he finds a different identity than he had at the start. And it's always an identity in both stories that they didn't expect. Huh. Right? you'd realize, oh, I'm really this person, you know, and I have to live with it. But yeah, it is about identity and names, yeah. What do you really stand for? four.

Yeah. I mean, isn't that what we're sort of what our all all of our journey is through life we're looking for? What's our calling, right? What are who who are we really? It's like the questions that uh Stanisolovsky acts asks an actor and a who am I, why am I here, and what do I want? Hm. Yeah. Well that's those are the questions that an actor playing a role is supposed to ask himself or herself.

as in as they enter any scene or as they prepare, you know, to to act a scene. Who am I in this scene? Like Michael Corleo in the scene we were talking about.

Who am I? Well, I thought I was a Marine officer that was gonna marry my all American girlfriend Kay, but now I realize, oh my God, I'm the son of V Vito Coelone and my per place is here with the family, with Sonny, with Tom, with Fredo, mm-hmm and one of the things that came to mind is in that moment of showing true identity there's a sacrifice that comes. Back to the ridiculous mean girls examples.

Then means that she can't be it means that she's not gonna be the top girl in the top little click or whatever. She now has to say, Okay, I'm this person. I have to renounce that, I have to rescind that But I have these values and I'm gonna go pursue those to hell be the consequences. You know, I'm happy to accept them. Yeah. Which is a great ending. Yeah.

In um in a lot of these stories before that big moment, there's like we sort of danced around this, but there's a quiet solo moment, right? You think of the person who's in the bathroom at a party or something before they have to go out. They look in the mirror, they're like, You can do this, Steve. You can do this, David. You know, I got this. I got this. And they have this this private moment. Now in movies We can

see them kind of thinking and reflecting. Once again, back to the Bible, it's sort of Jesus and the Garden of Agasthenemy, sort of praying, basically saying,

I mean I think he's weeping then and he's basically saying, Oh Lord, oh Lord, you know, he's praying for every ounce of strength from the Father. And what are how do those private moments show up where people retreat, they go solo, maybe they go inward, and it's there that they muster the courage to then step out into the public eye and to act with boldness and integrity.

I mean, I think you've hit on something here. I haven't really thought about this, but um it is true that there does need to be that quiet moment, you know, and um I guess it is a moment when we we leave the plane of the ego and we go to the higher plane, the plane, the plane of the illumined self.

or whatever it is before you step into the ring and actually uh, you know, before the third act starts, you know, there is a moment in The Godfather, just before Michael kills the police chief and kills Salazzo.

where he's in the bathroom there and he finds the gun that's been s placed for him behind the toilet tank. He stops and actually the soundtrack is of a subway car going by that goes louder, louder, louder, louder, louder, and he just sort of combs his hair a little back a little bit, you see he's like he's now about to cross the threshold to become Michael Corleone, right, the god the future godfather that he was not before. Listen to this from Tolkien. It was at this point that Bilbo stopped.

Going on. From there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. Ah, that's a great one. That's from Tolkien, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Huh. With Bilbo. Yeah. Happens privately, secretly. and then you step out. And I just it's like the juxtaposition between the vulnerable Scared solo.

and the bold, confident, public person and the way those come together or something. And it's really about fear, isn't it? Yeah. It's about overcoming facing whatever that fear is, saying, Okay, I'm gonna die Or whatever. I've got to do it. The alternative is, you know, unthinkable.

Well something that you'd written about was this idea of beating up the hero. I'm not sure why, but if you watch any of those stories, you know, the hero always gets beaten up in various stories. Innovative, colorful ways. But there's another convention that's sort of like that that my partner Sean Coyne turned me on to, called the The Hero at the Mercy of the Villain scene. Now in a James Bond movie always has that. If you remember there's one scene where

James Bond is captured by the villain and they've got him flat on his back on some table with his legs spread and this laser beam is coming down, you know. That's the hero at the mercy of the villain scene. That that is always a a a staple of a kind of a th the thriller genre.

you know, where the hero's gotta be captured by the villain. And I've applied that myself, right uh what I will say, if I don't have that scene I better have it. In in a man at arms, the precursor to uh The Arcadian, the hero, the same guy, same guy, gets crucified, and they also take a bag of scorpions.

and tie them over his head through the whole through the whole thing. And um but the the this but aside from the torment of it, there's also an element in the in that scene where the hero and the villain

really come face to face and kind of confront each other and they each express, you know, what you know, the villain s gives his speech or whatever it is, and the hero t has his, you know, response to that. And In many ways that that's a that's an all is lost moment too, because we feel like uh the if it's really done well, you say to yourself like it's

The hero is in some enclosed chamber and the water is rising, rising, rising, you know. In Star Wars they were in the first one, they were this crushed garbage shoot and you say to yourself, How are they ever gonna get out of this? And somehow if you're the writer you have to figure out a way to get them out of it. Remio! Creepio! Creepio! Get on top. Remio!

Now, when you're thinking about, I don't know, the timeline of your story, we've talked about all these things. How as the writer, as the shaper of the story, Are you placing these? How deliberate are you about that? I think you're very deliberate about it. And a lot of times I'll find I bet other writers would say this too. If we think of like maybe we have twenty or thirty kind of key scenes, I'll m

after the first draft I'll move'em around. You know, I'll say, Oh, I thought this one should be here, really should be later, you know? That type of thing. But I think most writers I would think start at the end. You look i i I at least I do. Yeah. Or I'll say, Where's the story going to? You know, like if it's Um, if it's Huckleberry Finn, it's gotta be the moment where he's supposed to write the letter that turns Jim, the slave, in, and he says, fuck this, I'm not gonna do it, right?

which was a great ending of a story, right? So then if you would work backwards, you have to say you have to establish that Huck, it's eighteen forty or eighteen thirty, Missouri. He's a complete believer in the cracker white versus black thing. so that and we really have to establish that so that this change at the end is really radical for him. It's gotta feel like he's going against everything he's been told his whole life, you know?

And then we also have to have through the middle of the story a bunch of scenes where Jim, the runaway slave, proves to be a noble, honorable, great friend to Huck. wonderful guy, right? So that the choice of of Huck at the end, am I gonna turn him in? You say he can't turn him in. He's I mean if he was a prick, it'd be another story, but he's not. He's a so the sort of structure of the story is this is the end that we're gonna get to.

And then how do what do we need to set up for this? And then at the very beginning we have like the most basic setup, like we'd introduce Huck Finn and his life and so on. And then and by the way, when we talked about um The uh female carries the mystery. The female in Huck Fan is the Mississippi. The great river that flows through America, right? And these guys are on the raft.

going down the m the Mississippi. And in the end, again, like I said, if you and I were standing on the shore looking out at the Mississippi, we would just be it's a mystery. We'd just be in awe, you know, what it's a river. It's You know, God may understand it, we don't.

And as you're thinking about the through line of your story, setting the stakes. I see how you can set stakes that are really big, but then what does it look like to set, I don't know, more realistic stakes? Because actually the stakes in our lives are

I think actually when you do and I'm guilty of this, you do an end of the world scenario, it's kind of a cheap shot, you know? It's like easy sure to ma but it's much harder to do something like what you're you're talking about. Um but certainly If you can establish

that a certain small thing is super important to this character for whatever reason, um, and then put them in a crisis at the end where they have to somehow choose something, then it can really work. Like Uh, did you ever see a movie called Forty Five Years with Tom Courtney and um I forget who, but it's about a marriage.

uh of a stayed English couple for forty-five years and the ending of the story was just the husband reached to takes her hand and she pulls her hand away. That's the end of the story. And it's tremendously powerful because She's the lead character and she comes they've been together for forty five years and she realizes at the end of this thing that it was all false.

It was all based on on something that wasn't real. And she sort of frees herself from that by pulling her hand away. So it was it it worked great, you know? But it's not a blockbuster. It's not gonna be a George Lucas film or anything like that. But yeah, you're right. mistakes sometimes very small things are life and death to to uh you and me if we you know if we place meaning on certain things.

One way to summarize Everything we've talked about. is that there's five aims of a writer to heighten the drama, make the internal external, give the story meaning, so like a theme, make it universal, and make it beautiful. And you wrote that when we pick a genre and work within its conventions. We automatically accomplish all five points above, assuming that we do a good job.

Ah well that's true. Um but one I just let me just hit on one point which I've been thinking a little bit late lately. The idea of making it beautiful. even the most horrific scenes in in a in f in written in a written word or in movies. are have to be beautiful in one way or another. If you think about um Schindler's List. Yeah. You know?

What could be more horrific than that? But it's a beautiful movie. Yeah. And you know that Spielberg and the cameraman and the lighting, they went to incredible pains. to make up every frame, you know, work. I mean,'cause if it's not beautiful, you know, we're in a world of anxiety. These days, right? With the politics and everything that's going on, ice and all this bullshit. You look at you know, read the news and you're you kill yourself. But I think An antidote to anxiety is beauty.

if we can a song, a piece of music, um, it's all unfortunately it only lasts for the moment, but there is something about and this must God must have built this into the world in some crazy way, that uh It's gotta be beautiful. The prose has to be beautiful. The rhythm has to be beautiful. The framing of the shot has to be beautiful, uh, no matter how horrible it is. Um, and somehow that beauty saves us in some crazy way. I don't know why.

Okay, I get that. Make it beautiful, make it beautiful. But then as you're writing a book, you're writing the Arcadian and you're thinking, Okay, how am I gonna write this? How am I gonna tell this story in a beautiful way? What do you tactically do in order to make that happen? Oh, that is a great question. Um I think that A lot of it has to do with the with the prose, since you're working with words on paper. If it was a movie, it would be a it would be a different thing.

You know, if we were doing Lawrence of Arabia, we would find we would send our location scouts out to find spectacular shots in the desert or or whatever. Um but in in this A story like uh the Arcadian is set in fifteenth century Spain, because our former Roman legionary, the tenth legion of Rome in the in the era of the crucifixion, was recruited from Spain. Spain was a province of Rome at that time of the Roman Empire. It was called Hispanius, nearer Spain.

And so the h my mentioned the horse earlier, the magical creature that draws him back to Spain. It's like if he's gonna be released from his curse, It must be released where it originally started, where you originally enlisted and signed up. So now as I'm trying to write

Spain. I'm trying to make make it really beautiful. And the first few chapters of the story are really about the um The geography of this particular valley, the that it was a place where horses were revered, where the the great landowners raised. cavalry horses and show horses and how everybody in the in the area uh worshipped uh the sangre, the bloodlines of horses.

and even the m poorest farmer would have like one mare that he hoped would someday, you know, and so I'm trying to create a kind of a a magical world. I'm not trying to create Spain as it maybe really was, but a kind of a Spain of the mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In which magical things can happen. And so I'm using in this case

sort of old fashioned prose. I'm I'm not I'm writing sort of like Don Quixote, like Cervantes would have written in those days. So it's kind of formal. And hopefully if it works it creates a little bit of a spell, like rhythm and music or something like that. And and hopefully it could it brings the reader under that spell and into this world where magical things can happen. So that's the the the beauty that I'm I'm trying to produce. Make it beautiful.

Rock. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. There we go. David, thank you very much for the great questions and for really doing such in depth research. You know, we were talking about that show Bookworm and and uh the great you know, interviewer for that show, Bookworm on KCRW, who would read a a writer's entire works.

before he would interview them. And so, you know, I think you did a you did a great job of uh thank you. Getting under my skin and and that stuff. And thanks a lot. This helped me. I told you I was thinking about doing a book that's kind of about this stuff. Yeah. And I'm encouraged, I think I will. I didn't realise there was enough material there. Rock on. So yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Thank you.