Wright Thompson: Learn Storytelling in 63 Minutes | How I Write

Wright Thompson is full stop one of the best nonfiction storytellers in the world. right now. So he shows up to my place and immediately I'm like, I really like this guy's vibe. And so we start talking and turns out I love Guinnessero and he loves Guinea Zero. So we crack open a beer.

And we just talk about the writing process. How do you tell a great story? How do you nail an ending at the end? How do you use details to bring a character, a person to life? What do you do to tell a great story? That's what this episode is all about. And it's a heck of a lot of fun too.

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Uh why is writing so hard? Why is it so hard? Well, bad writing is so easy. Hm. You know, bad writing is the easiest thing in the entire world. I sort of like I don't think there's such a thing as writer's block, but there is writer's vomit. Like where you just can't stop writing, you know? And like uh so like I find it's hard I feel like you get in your own way. I feel like, you know

I think the process of learning how to write, you put a bunch of tools in your toolbox to try to like strip away the mystery and make it possible. And then I feel like that gets you to a certain point in your career and then you have to start unlearning all of those things.

And like because you've sort of Put this artifice in between you and the thing you're trying to write when really all writing is is trying to say something new that's true, that is both specific and universal, and that helps the reader understand something they didn't understand before, preferably about themselves.

Hm. When you say specific and universal, like how does that show up in a piece? How do you think about that? Well, you know, I think uh Michael Jordan at fifty is trying to imagine what do you do when you used to be Michael Jordan. And that's an extreme version of something that everybody deals with, which is What do you do when you start to think that your entire identity is built around something that has a shelf life that is so rooted an exterior understanding of you that you've almost

feel like you're starting to lose some essential part of yourself. There's that great John Updite quote that I love that the mask eats the face. And like, you know, I just think that I think that that's so I think that happens to people and I think it happens to everyone. I have this realization periodically that, you know, I have two kids and they're the coolest and I love'em and uh but you know, I'm here.

And I'm not home. And And so like you aren't you aren't who you say you are, you are what you do. And so I think, you know, watching somebody so extreme as Michael Jordan, who is experiencing all of this ratchet ratcheted up to twelve, I think allows everybody to try to see pieces of themselves in you know, other people's struggles. I mean, I I certainly do that all the time. I mean, I think every great profile is a little bit about the writer. Mm. Working out your own.

your own and just trying to think about it and and I mean honestly like people are gonna remember a couple of these stories but like that's it And so, you know, it's inherently dangerous for me to have so much of my own identity and self worth wrapped up in the fact that I go write these stories and other people like'em. And so, you know, I don't have a great answer for that. I instinctively understand that it's dangerous and I need to get away from it. But like, you know

I also like am not gonna do that. Like, and I love doing this. And I I, you know, the happiest I am is when I'm writing and it's going well. And so it's, you know. I think writing these stories about people is the way to try to unpack all of them.

It's funny'cause you're talking about that and like when I saw you almost felt like you were skipping when you were talking about today, you were like, Yeah, you know, I'm working on this piece, pull out this piece of paper, like, hey, I work here. And then you said something interesting. You said, When it's going well, I'm moving every two hours. And I was like, What? I thought moving is like sort of the antithesis of momentum and progress.

So I like I like if if it's going really well, my writing day will be I have an office sort of way out in the country, probably like ten minutes outside of Oxford, Oxford, Mississippi, where I live. And so I uh I take my oldest to school and her drop off is like seven twenty. And then it's ten minutes from the school to my office. I usually stop at the Little John's country store and get like a sausage biscuit or a big cup of coffee and a styrofoam cup. That's a very southern thing.

And uh and I'll go to my office and uh right till eleven and then I'll go to the town square in Oxford and sort of start moving. I'll go to Proud Larry's, I'll have like half a Guinness, I'll go like down to the Spring Street cigar store. Oh, you're like a midday pie kinda guy. Oh yeah. And I'm like like uh I'm on this terrible diet where I'm allowed to have twelve ounces of alcohol a day of of beer a day'cause I'm trying not to be so aggressively fat and uh

Yeah, you could have it whenever. Like uh uh and if you've never have you had the Guinness Double Zero? I've had every single kind of Guinness that's made. So it's the non alcoholic Guinness. It's very Very good. It's very good. You want to know the greatest feeling in the world? Have one of those motherfuckers for breakfast. Do we have the Guinness Double Zero? Let's have a running. 这就是这就是这就是这就是这就是这就是这就是这 is what I'm talking about Just I need you to acknowledge we got the proper Guinness cuts.

Look, if you're not going to turn something into a fetish, what is the point of doing it at all? All right. I feel pretty strongly that this is the way to do it. Let's go. Yes. Yes, exactly. It's like this. Unlike every other beer. That's right. You pour like this and then you get the proper This is also like one of the great The great things is to watch the freshly poured Guinness turn black. Aria. Thank you. They go let us settle. Let's go. So I like to move.

You know, and uh so I yeah, I like the f I like the movement and it's just exciting. When it's going well, it's a really great day. You know, I'm in the middle well, we were talking about this earlier, like I just sat Yeah, I want to say that. I want to say that.

Yeah, I'm writing I'm just writing longhand at this point. Uh I'm in a very important part of this thing I'm writing. And so I uh Anyway, I just need to Why do you do long hand like this? don't I almost never do that. And so I just this morning Well, that and like I have a timeline that I've created that took a long time with sort of documents from a bunch of different places. And so I wanted to sit down with that timeline that I'd written and just

Like write it. And so I felt like I'm gonna go somewhere and sit and quiet and do it. And then I don't know. Like I I I feel like writing is problem solving. And I feel like like I don't wanna I don't wanna have I don't want the tail wagging the dog. I don't wanna I always write in this place at this time and I always do this. I just feel like every day is a new problem and what is the best way I can solve?

Well, it seems for you like you really value structure and the architecture of a piece as much as the words themselves. Well, I I think that like I wish someone had told me a long time ago that if you're gonna be a professional writer for decades writing is not gonna be about words, but it's gonna be about architecture. And only when you really understand how things fit together and move can you then sort of

actually be thinking about the words. I mean I feel like I've been doing this for 25 years and I feel like only very recently. Do I feel like maybe I sort of know what I'm doing? Really? Like maybe. I'm just glad a lot of that early shit I wrote is like been scrubbed off the internet. Like No, I I think that it's gotten harder'cause I actually understand like what it is that you're supposed to be doing. And I think that like you have a way of moving the goalpost on yourself. And so, you know, I

You work really hard to learn how to write a seven to eight thousand word magazine story and you do it over and over and over and over again. I mean I I think One of the things that's missing, you know, I I go talk to young writers all the time and I mean, nobody wants to hear what I have to say, which is just it's just reps. You know, Zen is a butt and a seat. There's no mystery. It's just reps. It's just fucking reps. And so

You know, I wrote a bunch of twelve hundred word stories until I really understood what a twelve hundred word story could and couldn't do. And then I wrote a bunch of twenty five hundred word stories. And then, you know, I worked for the Kansas City Star for five years. Yeah. thirty six hundred words. I went over that I think once. Wow. And so I really understood what you could do in a hundred inches. And then, you know, the ESPN magazine stories, it seemed like for a long time without me

I would outline it and then I would write it and it would be seventy two hundred to eighty five hundred words almost every time. And I guess that's just I was thinking about stories in that length. And then they started being twelve to fifteen. And you know, I'm uh two books in and I have two more going right now. you're working on right now. Holy cow. And uh I feel like once you've seen a canvas that size. It's hard to go back.

'Cause you feel like it's weird to think like I've written three hundred magazine stories as prelude to learn how to go do something. But it was just so thrilling. I mean, especially with the barn to just feel like It was really thrilling to m on the days when it felt like it was working. Mm-hmm and it it felt uh

I just loved it. I I loved I loved waking up and doing it. I liked the rhythm of it. I mean, I was writing, you know, I was cutting a lot of them, but I was writing a thousand words a day, every day, no matter where I was. you know, we're on vacation in the mountains, we're on we're at the beach, I'm getting up, I'm doing it. Uh I also think that it's important for like my kids to see me do that. Like this is, you know, back it's a button a seat. Like there's no mystery.

It's just, you know, get up and do it.

So when you're thinking of a story, right? Like you're you're you're dreaming something up. Whether it's a book, whether it's a magazine feature, maybe it's the same, maybe it's different. What are things you're looking for? Are you looking for a good hook? You're looking for a good story that, you know, speaks to your soul or something like that, like a good theme. What is the thing that you're that you're hunting for? That's really changed. I used to want things I was looking for white whales.

I was looking for the story that no one could get. I w uh you know, w wha what's something that'll be very impressive to my bosses and readers? It was very external. I w and uh You know, I think now I don't think there's such a thing as a good or a bad story idea. I think it's something you're obsessed with. Hm. You know, it's gotta be something that I'm really, really interested in and wanna spend that time on. I I mean it

I I find it to be really and I've always felt this way, that it's just a really you're doing a really personal thing in a really public way, is what it feels like to me. And like I don't uh You know, like I love the craft of it. I love thinking about understanding how stories work, which, you know, I sometimes think I really do and sometimes I don't. Uh, you know, I think I think I was very rigid for a long time about the craft of it. I used to say if you're not outlining, you're doing it wrong.

And now I sort of think that Telling someone there's a right or wrong way to do it is the only way of doing it wrong, if that makes if that makes any sense. much of this is things that you've learned that

the way that you do things now you wish you had done at the beginning, like I've actually learned a lot and I was wrong earlier, or how much of it is uh kind of training wheels. Outlines get you s gets you to the place where you don't have to outline. You gotta write external before you can do the internal. Like how do you think about

Well, I think that everything is a process in your learning. I remember I took this uh Art Devlin was an English professor at the University of Missouri and he was one off if not the world's expert on Tennessee Williams. I took this one class that was uh it was interiority in the work of Tennessee Williams. And like my mother who, you know, was an English major from Vanderbilt, I had to call her and be like, what does interiority mean? Ha ha ha.

You know, like I I'm so fucked. There's a word in the title of this class I don't know. My odds of figuring this out are slim and none. And so I think you have to learn that like you know, scenes without interiority are two dimensional, they're origami. It's not a swan. And so like I think they're g it it

You know, you learn a lot from people. I mean, you've had on, you know, you had my friend Tom Juneau on oh yeah, fucking the goat. And like, you know, the best to ever do it for sure. And so he's still learning and he's still grinding. Break down the interiority thing for me. Gary Smith said one time that all a profile is, is figuring out what is the central complication of somebody's life and how on a daily basis do they go about solving.

And almost all of that is happening inside. And so, you know, I think you want your characters characters. You you want the people whose lives you're you have been entrusted with to be as complex in their decision making process. as you are a and yours. And I just think that's the whole thing. Bringing to the surface people's subterranean interior lives. And then doing it where so the things they're doing

if you set it up right, become freighted with meaning. And so that, you know, when you watch a really good friend of yours. do something. And n every other passing stranger wouldn't know that that was important or poignant, but you would because you know them. You know, like Michael Jordan falling asleep to Western. if you know that he misses his father every day and where he feels closest to his father is when you're watching Westerns. If you set that up in not a ham fisted way,

Then you get to come back at the end and describe a human being doing something. And now I am only describing his exterior actions. And yet the story is so rooted in his interior life that I don't have to explain it anymore. Sure. And that's when it feels like it's really, really working. And like that doesn't, you know, that doesn't happen all the time. Mm-hmm. I mean this job is so humbling. Yeah.'Cause it's just hard.

one of the things that really stuck out to me is how how you go about describing people, like in the Tiger Woods profile. You know, it's doesn't take much and you just can learn so much about somebody. Like TW. Both his boats float a few dozen yards away in two of the first three slips.

The a hundred fifty five foot yacht named Privacy, alongside the smaller, sleeker diving boat he named Solitude. So we see he's got Privacy, he's got Solitude. And then the whole thrust of the piece is like this guy One of them is that it this guy who's a celebrity and he's had all of these things put on into his life, but he's this weird, strange, introverted guy who's like, What do I do being this celebrity?

And it's also like, you know, the thing you feel so strongly is that I mean, often the people who care for us most screw up. I mean Tiger Woods' father adored him. Tiger Woods' dad gets sort of a bad rap as like a Richard Williams guy, and he just wasn't. You know, if Tiger didn't do well in school, Tiger didn't get to play golf.

Like, you know, like Earl Woods was had a lot of flaws and was a terrible husband, but I think was a really good, involved father, at least with Tiger, not his siblings. And you realize that Tiger signs and he goes up to that meeting in Nike where they come up with his uh you know, marketing plan and they did what any smart person would do, which is they went and found the best practices.

And they pulled a playbook that had just worked very well for Michael Jordan. And nobody in that room, including the person who loved Tiger Woods the most in the world, stopped for a second. to ask, what happens when we take a plan that was designed for an extreme extrovert? And then we just force it onto an extreme introvert. Right. And it's like the most fundamental questions hiding in plain sight to me are some of the most interesting. And this is now the mask fighting the face.

Both. I mean and and it's like, you know, Dale Murphy, the old nineteen eighties baseball player, is one of the only happy retired former athletes I've ever met. And it's because he went out of his way when he retired to like kill the avatar. That he was like, the main obstacle for me enjoying the next fifty years of my life is constantly having to deal with the ghost of the person I used to be. All of these stories.

you know, the few good ones I've written, all the ones Seth Wickersham writes, all the ones that Tom Gino writes, like, together I think these stories are I don't know, like a prayer for empathy to try to understand each other, you know, to understand another human being a little bit at a time and then slowly, thread by thread by thread by thread.

you you understand yourself and and and like I think it's the job of a human being to understand when you're on your deathbed You better feel like you understand yourself and see yourself clearly. Mm-hmm. Like if you're still lying to yourself on your deathbed, like something's gone terribly wrong.

And so I don't know, like I love doing this. Like I love these stories and like uh you know, I don't know how you feel, but like I certainly feel sometimes caught between uh being a receiver and a broadcaster. Hmm. What does that mean? That like You know, the job of being a reporter is to receive information. The job of selling the things you've written is to be a broadcaster of information. And not broadcasting is easy as shit and it's intoxicating.

And it just takes like a little bit of charisma with some arrogance. Those two urges, I feel like, are often in competition for lots of people, especially celebrity athletes. You talk about broadcasting being easy and intoxicating. What then is the fruit of reporting? 'Cause presumably it's hard, it's slower, but there's some fruit that really But it's it's not a

You see you get to see a little glimpse of the world that's true. And we're in the age of misinformation. You know, one of the things Tom Juno said that I still remember, which is the hardest thing in the world to do is to tell the truth. despite all of the things conspiring to keep you from doing it. And so, you know, you asked earlier, like, why is writing hard? Talking as you just say shit. Writing is you say just a little and has to be said exactly right.

And uh you know, I I you know, and I also write really fast and then edit slow. Hmm. Because So your first You just race through it. Flying and like, why do you do that? I don't know. I just is how I do it. And like I've tried to slow down, I've tried to do all sorts of things. I've tried to sort of feel like

You know I have like a super ADD brain. And so the thing that's currently on fire is what gets the attention. Sure. And so uh I try to get it down and then go back and like so I cut things. Like I love to cut. Which is funny considering how long these things are. But like I if everybody's like, bullshit. But no like like I really do like I like the cut.

Uh, tell me about the hammer. The hammer, when you're writing a piece and how the hammer comes at the end, how do you think about making sure the piece is written in a way that when that hammer drops, it is a punch to the face. I always want to know what the ending is. Which a fiction writer, you know, the one the biggest difference maybe between fiction and nonfiction is that, you know, the best fiction writers I think don't know, like they let the world evolve.

you know, I'm not that good. I'm not George Saunders. Do you know what I mean? Like I I wish I could do that. I like to know where I'm going'cause then I like to make decisions based on how to maximize the power of the ending. Right. Uh you know, so like I know immediately when I see the ending of something. Like I knew, you know, I did this Yankee Stadium thing where I knew I was gonna end on the fact

that Lou Gehrig's widow died in the eighties and no one came to her funeral. Yeah. Like I was like, that's what that's the ending. I don't know what the rest of it is, but something has to lead to that. You read an ending of a piece that's really It almost feels like the air gets sucked out of the room and like there's a hollowness. There's a f you you there it feels hollow, it feels echoey, it feels Like I love that feeling.

What I'm hearing from you is that uh a lot of what a good ending can have is it wraps up the piece, but there's something also that opens It's elliptical. That's why like kick kickers are dead. 'Cause like, don't hammer the door shut. A story's supposed to open a door. Like not close it. And like I love elliptical endings.

You know, it's funny because you're talking about this and I just got this long uh email piece of feedback on a piece that I wrote. And I'm pretty proud of the piece. And one of the things that I wanted to do is core to the piece is I'm not trying to answer the question. I'm trying to pose a question and I'm trying to say I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with

And I got the long email from someone. This email's clearly c caring, but I opened it and I was sort of skimming it. And I saw that the reader is gonna demand an answer to the question you raised. And I just closed the email. I was like, ah, it's not what I'm trying to do.

do I know but like you know what like the reader gets a vote You know, and uh I mean the trick is to The trick is to have a narrative arc that can lead you to a satisfying ending while also posing other ancillary underlying questions that were in hindsight the point of the whole thing all along. And so like you wanna like you want a story arc that I can have a satisfying ending to.

that also leaves the unresolved stuff unresolved in a way that is authentic to our lives. Hm. Caitlin Clark, that story ends with her career ending. It is about a period of time in her life. And the unresolved things are the questions posed about what's coming for her and her you know one of the sort of sub-arcs in the piece is her understanding and this like flash of self-awareness. A what's coming for her and B what she has to do to survive it and C the ticking clock.

that this has to happen so that can happen. And I don't need that to in fact it can't be unresolved. So the quest the story should answer how did Caitlin Clark get to be Caitlin Clark? And it should pose the question Is she gonna be able to do this?

Tell me about this. You just said no, but the reader gets a vote. Because like Otherwise you're it's just masturbation. Like like do you know what I mean? Like like like you're I'm trying to share a human experience with another human being, and if they're not getting it, it's not their fault, it's mine. Sure, but in some ways the reader gets a vote, but I but does the reader get the vote in every single way? Because fundamentally If you're driving the story.

a friend is a playwright and he talks constantly about his understanding about what the attention span of an audience in a Broadway theater is. And I was really shook walking away for this conversation because I s you know He's a very smart guy, Pulitzer Prize winner, and is really thinking about how to meet the audience where they are. And, you know, sometimes I am not.

And, you know, I'm like, I'm doing my thing and then if they read it, they read it. And like I wonder if they're like the more you learn about writing, the more you have to level up. And so, you know You can hear somebody say something at a point in your career and it doesn't make any sense. And then you hear someone else say the same thing later and you realize like, oh, like there's some fundamental part of this that not only am I not doing right, it's that I don't even know

You know, sometimes you like you hear people are losing a game they don't know is being played. Sure. I think I'm more confident now than I've ever been. I was so much more. Cocky. Before. You're talking about place. I saw Wicked the other night.

And one of the things, you know, we went out for drinks after we were talking about it and the way that we categorized the play was in scenes. Oh, remember that scene, remember this scene, remember that scene. Yeah, yeah. What's important about scenes in a story? Why do you think about stories like that? You know, it's the um one's very cinematic, and you know, the uh there's something beautiful about a screenplay. To read.

Uh like a good screenplay. Like go read this go read the spr the I just did this for something else. I read the screenplay of Sam Peck and Paul's Ride the Hot Country. Okay. Okay. You don't need to watch the movie. It's all right there. It's unbelievable. And it's like in some ways the screenplay is better than the movie. In the way that I think sports is bet I shouldn't say this given where I work.

Sorry, Burke. Uh sports is better on the radio than television because it your your imagination gets a seat at the table. Hm. And so I think every single section, every scene needs to hit a different note so that's not repetitive and then, you know, we can if we really want to get in the weeds, I love to think about second sections of stories.

Skip the way. We like like, you know, uh Seth Wiggersham and I talk all the time. A second section is almost a verb. And it's the Like when it really works. it flows off of the lead in such a way that it feels inevitable and chronological. But actually what you're doing is expanding out this way. And so y you're asking the question in the second scene. in a broad thematic way.

that the rest of the story is gonna answer. And so I I think, you know, I really spend a lot of time thinking about like what's the second section of a magazine story. One of the things that was really difficult for me in figuring out how to write a book is like books don't have second sections. And uh Scott Moyers, uh, who's my book editor who I had dinner with last night, uh, one of the things he said is like that he says all the time is you can't depressurize the cabin.

And so in like a magazine story, I think you're constantly depressurizing the cabin because you you like what does that mean? I mean that like that you break the spell by jumping ahead in time or or or or like getting out like A book you have to like push a ball downhill. and then clear out all the obstacles so it rolls. So I've just you know, I I've struggled some uh with the transition from magazine stories to books'cause I feel like they're actually not

the same thing at all. And uh I just I don't know why I thought this, but I just sort of felt a book would be like a really long magazine story and it's just not.

And now on the scenes point, when you're mapping out the story. and thinking about how this is gonna be. I'm almost imagining like a clothesline and then you got little post it notes. Okay, scene one, scene two, scene three, scene four. I don't know, maybe there's I'm gonna be clear about my theme, the core, whatever. Like is that something that you're conscious of before you actually get into the writing itself?

Yeah, like I have a uh you know I in my office I have post it I mean not post it notes, I have like note cards pinned to the wall. And like so that's like the barn was So what's interesting is I outlined it broadly. But within that I didn't outline at all.'Cause I wanted to have the experience of

section to section trying to feel my way because I sort of felt like I'm gonna have a better idea in the seat of what works than whatever theory I had standing in front of my wall. So I know I need to get from here to here. But I don't what I didn't want to do is storyboard out how to do it.

Uh, I'm working on a book now that is has so many moving parts that I'm scared if I do it like that, I might just lose it. And so I'm actually really nervous uh because I've got to figure out Like there's six sort of narrative arcs that appear at the beginning to have nothing to do with each other and then by hopefully like fourth of the way into the book.

the reader on their own makes the first connection like like I've got to make that happen not on the page. Like that has to happen in the white space. for this to work. And so like one of the things I'm trying to figure out is like at what point do I actually say

When do I get explicit about it? And I don't honestly know the answer to that. That's I think is gonna be a feel thing. But I really wanna like I'm I'm gonna have to storyboard that a lot more.'Cause you know, the barn, the first draft of the barn I just wrote everything'cause I wasn't sure what was load bearing, and then I went and cut all the sh shit that didn't belong. So like the first draft of that was two hundred and eighty thousand words, and I cut a hundred and seventy-three thousand.

He was 280,000 words and it ran at 107. And so like I don't want to ever do that again. That feels like that was some like rookie shit. Do you know what I mean? Like I feel like I had a real big idea and I didn't have the toolbox to land it. And so I did it the best I could and it was unbelievably unefficient and I don't ever want to do that again. So I'm trying to figure that out. Me about this. Why

Do you see in so many stories they have a character, they confront an obstacle, they're changed by it. That's the through line of the story. Well, because I I don't want to get like hoo hoo on you, but like Stories exist like gravity. A story, whether it's told around a campfire or in the New Yorker, are following fundamental organic rules that existed

from the v probably before the invention of language. They're just ways in which human beings experience the world and how you know you become yourself. by every one of these obstacles and how you choose to handle it. Story to me, like what a story is exists in the world. I mean it it it you know, you're you're sort of like I think Virginia Wolf wrote about how like the stories exist, some people can see them. You're not making them, they're already there. You're just seeing them.

I feel like when you go find it, that story wants to be something. And I think stories are the best when you were translating that information as opposed to you trying to impose your will on it. I mean I'm really not trying to get like crazy metaphysical about it, but like I do fundamentally believe

More concretely, what I hear you saying is when you go in search of a story, there's something that compels you, something that brings you into the piece. Okay, so now you're in the piece, you're looking for the story. And what you're looking for is almost like a Hmm. Yeah. And it just kind of I'm not trying to make the path. I'm trying to see the path that was there before I got there. Yeah.

Yeah. And like I and like as as hoo-hoo and hippy dippy as that son that that's really it. Is that like there I think you run into trouble when you try to force things. And by the way, I've forced a lot. I mean, you know, they're they're I think it takes a while to feel comfortable with that.

Tell me about in stories a sense of place, how place shows. For me that's the whole like I'm most interested in plays I think so much of who we are is informed by our relationship with home. You know, but Bruce Springsteen in his Broadway show had this thing where he said, You can either be a ghost to your children or an ancestor. You can like either wrap your shit

tight around their ankles like chains and drag'em down, or you can give'em a leg up. And so like I feel that uh Me trying to understand other places are just proxies for me trying to understand my own place and make sense of my own Is that

That's w for me that'd be the Mississippi Delta. I mean, the barn really was if I never wrote another thing in my entire life, honestly, I would feel like it had all been worth it.'Cause I feel like I couldn't have written that book five years ago. And uh And so like I felt like everything I'd ever tried to write was practice.

to go actually tackle the thing that had been sitting there waiting on me all along, which was try to understand this weird place where I'm from that I have very mixed feelings about. And uh you know, hate many things about it, but also have like a deep sense of love for it. And uh, you know, I feel like I'm forever I think, you know What human beings are just forever searching for home? And you know, either Either the home that you didn't know as a child or

or something that was a paradise loss that you're trying to return to. Mm-hmm. You know, I love that Jason Isbel line. Uh was that I thought I was running to what I was running from or like, you know, I mean, I just think that like there's just a constant search for home.

Now when you talk about place, place being important, do you feel like place is a character? Do you feel like it's a stage? What's the metaphor? Well I mean, you know, the the the cliche is New York is a character, you know, like uh ha ha

You know, I think place really matters because I think it really matters to me. I think everybody's interested in different things. I think one of the tricks of like if you're trying to learn how to be a writer is to figure out the things that you're interested in. And so one of those for me, like like I'm like I mean for me the the greatest piece of American art ever made is Absalom Absalom and it is a deep, complex, multi generational history of one piece of dirt. You know, and like

Some ways that the barn is just that stolen. Do you know what I mean? Like it it's like there's something you can learn by excavating the deep, deep history of one place. Mm. And uh, you know, the what the like book editors say you can either go wide or deep. And like I think there's something beautiful about trying to do both. And like that was the idea. It's like I'm gonna write as deep a history as I can and l try to excavate all the blood and the dirt.

And you know, the the the idea that, you know, there's that book, The Body Remembers the Score. The ground remembers the score.

What do you make about the arc of Southern writing? A lot of classic Southern writing that's deep in American culture and American lore. And also right now, dude, last five years, the rise of country music. I mean, I was in LA last week driving through Santa Monica, Uber drivers playing Zach Bryan or something, and I'm like Ten years ago? That would have never happened. And also like I don't know what a lot of these country music singers have to do with the

Do you know what I mean? Like, is Luke Bryan from the South? I've no idea. You know, like some guys are. Like I love Zach, I love Chris Stableton. I love Eric Church. Springsteen is one of my all time favorite. You know, he got a thank you note from Bruce Springsteen. This day you wanna hear that song? You shouldn't sing in public. Well I can't do that. Eric Church voice. And so like, you know, there's a sense that like One of our problems in the South is that we

In a desire to protect the past, we o we prioritize we privilege the past over the present. So if you talk about Mississippi writers, people want to talk about William Faulkner. They want to talk about Udora Wealty. They want to talk about Willie Morris. They should be talking about Jasmine Ward. They should be talking about Natasha Trathaway. They should be talking about Kiesa Lehman. And so like there is a very vibrant Southern culture. We just

sometimes seem so interested in protecting the past that we forget the beautiful thing that's happening in front of us. But I mean, you know, Faulkner gets something so essentially right about the South, which is that It's love and hate. And it is a place where the conflict that exists inside the hearts of every human being.

is played out on the landscape in an external way that almost never happened I mean one of the one of the reasons I think Southern literature has this reputation is it's one of the few places in the world where the interior becomes manifestly exterior. And so you know y you know, if they have the energy vortexes, like people go out to Sedona. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like I think the South is one of those places where

the thing cracks open and this big subterranean human ideas, the conflict in the heart of every human being burst into actual physical action on the actual physical land. And so like again I think the Southern writers aren't creating these worlds. I just think, like Virginia Wolf said, every now and then a genius comes along who can see it. You know, it's like the sixth sense. Well Faulkner could see.

It was already there. And one of the reasons those book re books resonate with people so much across generations. is he is describing something that you have instinctually felt forever, but had never had the vocabulary to do because you couldn't see it. Right. And so like I love like that's one of the things like I love that that Virginia Wolf thing about like That stories exist and some people can see them. Mm-hmm.

Tell me about quote. Like you're good first of all, today you've probably said seven or eight quotes, but also I just couldn't believe how good some of the quotes were in your pieces. Like they're just these little stretches of dialogue. So I love dialogue as opposed to quotes. Like I love I think long runs of dialogue are m magic and I think they actually speed the piece up.

Okay, this was good. This is about Jordan. Yeah. In case anyone in the inner circle forgets who's in charge, they only have to recall the code names given to them by by the private security team assigned to overseas trade. Este is venom, George is butler, Yvet is harmony, Jordan is called Yahweh, a Hebrew word for God. That is crazy. And there and it's not a compliment. No, like no, that's like his coat. Yeah, that's guide.

The the details of the whole thing. I mean, like by the way, like we're talking about writing, but really what we need to be talking about is reporting.'Cause like you cannot, cannot, cannot write your way out of a hole in reporting. And when you find yourself doing when somebody says something is purple, something is overwritten, all overwritten really means is underreported. Do you what I mean? Like you just don't fucking have it. And so like I catch myself Were you saying that it was hollow?

Or it's just it's it's it's just you're just s us using words like bullshit and it's not saying anything. Every time I feel like I can sort of write myself out of I can write around a hole in my knowledge, it's just bad. You know, like you go read it and you're just like, Oh my god, like I can't believe it, you know.

And like, you know, the the details matter. Like we ESBN just had this great story by a uh writer named uh Baxter Holmes, and it was about Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan and the genesis of black mamba. Oh, cool. That's an incredible story. And so like A lot of people had sort of heard those whistles. That like that this was a thing. But Baxter went out and found people to tell him on the record with details. And so nothing you could give Jonathan Franzen ten years.

Baxter went and got it. And so like so much of writing, especially nonfiction writing, is actually just reporting. That's still my favorite you know, you asked about sort of moments of joy. Like my favorite is when you find out something. You know, like I have a I have a timel I'm trying to account for uh about a ten month period in the life of uh this person who may or may not be a spy. Mm-hmm. And uh

to make the timeline. It's like ten or twelve different documents and six archives and like the ability to pull all these pieces and then write one piece of paper that has a very simple outline. On February fourth, nineteen forty one, he was. On March sixth, like the joy of that so I don't know if that's writing or not, but like that's the real joy.

Yeah, I'm imagining you're you're sort of sitting there, it's almost like a collage. She's taking all these little things, bringing them together. Oh, okay, cool. It was so like the the feeling of satisfaction when I held up that one piece of paper was like one of the greatest feelings I've had in a really long time. And that was like three days ago. A gray detail do the work.

you know, fifty shitty sentences. And so like, you know, I every time I like every time I'm stuck, it's just that I haven't reported enough or that like I believe my own hype and think I can just write my way out of this and you can't. I'm sorry for this stupid question, but what does reported mean? Like what does that mean? Is reading, is talking to people, interviewing.

It's all of it. It's interviewing people. It's you know, like I was just in an archive in Biorritz, Switzerland that I had to that took me like a year and three or four months to get them to open because it was closed. Be a Ritz France, sorry. And uh so like I have sixteen hundred pages of documents in French. I've no idea what this shit says. I just was taking pictures.

And so now it's all sitting'em and I'm gonna literally have to translate them one at a time. Uh or the internet is gonna translate by. Yeah. Uh and someone's like, Do you speak French? And I'm like, Well, I do now Thanks, Internet. And so uh that's gonna take me if it takes me ten minutes a page. to like think about it and sort take that enough time to sort. So ten minutes a page, that's six pages an hour, that's Sixty pages a day. That's 300 pages a week. Uh that's Five and a half weeks.

to get through all this stuff. But like no idea what's gonna be in there. And so like the joy of that the anti Describe the joy. Describe the joy. It's like a it's like a treasure hunt. Like I have no idea. Each page have no idea. Like I've done a couple of them and there have been like huge or at least what for me in the story are like bombshit.

And I'm just like, so I so reporting is interviews, reporting is archives. I love archives. Like just hanging out and just grinding on archives. I love that. Uh, you know, reporting is You know, I think we I think we mystify it. I think reporting is trying to figure out what you want to know and then trying to figure out who in the world would know that information and then trying to figure out how to get

that person to tell you or how to get access to the place that has the answer. So if again it just feels like problem solving to me. Mm-hmm. And like that's the real job.

to me is like the dig. You know, the writing is the fun part. later. Can you tell me more about secondary characters, the roles that they play? Fathers, friends, people just people in the lives of the Well the characters, the people that you're writing about. Well You know, if if we were gonna write about Guy. Uh ten different people who know Guy from ten different places in his life will have ten different versions of him. And I don't think my job is to sort those out.

I think my job is to present a fractal image of a complicated human being who sits somewhere at the intersection of all of these other people's impression of them. I think we all have a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And then I think there's a story that other people who don't know us tell about us. And I think that the truth lives somewhere at the intersection of those things. Mm-hmm.

Tell me about driving questions, posing a question at the beginning and how a question both propels you through the reporting, through the writing, and the reader through the process of experiencing what you've made. You know, I think one of the things you get better at the more you do it is not being so ham fisted with posing the question literally in the piece. I always have some questions I need to answer. You know, I'm writing about Steve Kerr right now. And

The question I want to answer is what is the work of the rest of his life going to be when basketball is finished? What happens on the first day of the rest of his life? And so like the meat of that story exists. in the undefined period after the actual story ends. And so like, you know, that like I think that's something that I probably couldn't have outlined. I don't think I'm ever gonna say that explicitly.

But like hopefully when you read the piece it'll vibrate with that. You know, I I did a Joe Montana profile a couple of years ago that I really liked because I felt like you were watching him struggle with what to do when Tom was diminishing your most valuable asset. Which was the way people remembered you. And like I f I don't think I ever said that, but that's what it was about to me.

Do you care how well your pieces do? No. No. I probably shouldn't admit that, but I just don't. So what is that? 'Cause here's why. I've had pieces that we thought were gonna kill. That didn't. I wrote this story that I loved, one of the best things I think I've ever written about Archie Manning, that like no one read. And then I'll do a s I did a story about

during the World Series about a rapper from Houston named Cal Wayne where I just went out with him one night in Houston and wrote about it and it like melted the internet. And I'm just like, you don't know. And I think like every time I hear somebody in an analytical position trying to tell me what they think the data says about what audiences want, I just always think post hoc ergo propter hoc, post hoc ergo propter hoc, post like y you y you What does that mean?

It's Latin for their it's for the in for the logical fallacy of after or their after therefore because of. Okay. And so like I I fundamentally think we have no idea what people want to read and why. Uh, so I don't really care how they do. Look, I want them to do well because I want my bosses to feel like they gotta win and like I really like all my bosses. Uh we have the I have the best sort of the way ESPN works is you have like senior like senior vice presidents over like

silos. And so this is the best one of those we've ever had. And so uh his name's Chris Buckle and he's just his relentless investigative journalist and he's really great. And so I care about the traffic to the degree that he cares about the traffic just because like I like him and respect him and want him to feel like he's getting wins. But like basically no, I don't care. So as you think about improving at the craft.

What is it that you look at? Is it like an internal sense of always pursuing, oh, that's good? Is it reading other writers? I think it's like I think you have phases. Hm. And I think you know. Basis as a writer. Yeah, and I don't know what mine are. Um somebody smarter than me could probably go read these stories and like group them together. I wrote a second Michael Jordan story that I love called A History of Flight.

And I feel like there was a phase that it started there that ended with the barn. And I don't really know. I just sort of feel like every single thing I did from that Jordan story to that book. was of a piece. And so now I feel like I'm a little bit still doing this and also trying to find something new. Uh I'm I'm a big believer in the in the like essentialness of reinvention.

And like not like I don't wanna just write the same story over and over again. I mean, I hadn't written I hadn't written a profile for a long time of like a current modern athlete until I did Caitlin Clark and I almost sort of did that'cause I was like I wanna go do one of those again.

'Cause like I feel like I'm missing that. I mean, I think you need I think you have phases and I think like you should. I think if you're still doing the thing now exactly like you did 20 years ago, like that's not interesting at all. I guess some people are probably intentional about that. I don't Like I feel like I'm just sort of stumbling along, you know, and like the patterns emerge to other people later. You know, Jay Lovinger used to always warn me about like repetition of effects.

Yeah, and just like I'd get into things I'm obsessed with and then I'll just like keep going back and back and back and back and back and back. And so, you know, I I feel like you could go read all these stories in order and they would reveal more than I'm comfortable with about what was happening in my own life at the moment they were happening. What's your beef with brainstorming sessions? People coming in on Monday morning. I just think it's fucking ridiculous.

But the idea that we're gonna do something in an office. Like this is deeply personal stuff. Like I don't I like and you know, I I have a lot like collaborative like I I'm I I make a couple of T V shows and I've made some documentaries and those are as collaborative as sort of writing is you in a foxhole with you and your editor. And so yeah. I like to I want to go make things with my friends.

And I want it to feel like it is flowing out of that and like nothing kills that faster than someone trying to play office. I want to go have dinner and sit around and talk. I just like I if I were in charge of ESPN, which again I'm frequently reminded that I'm not. I I would have I would have a rule that no meetings can have chairs. And then like every meeting longer than f fifteen minutes has to have tacos or something.

It's funny that you say that'cause I'm working on a film series right now and we're in the process of writing it. And man So many good ideas come in through the iMessage group chat and so many of the best lines are just somebody saying, Hey, I was here and then I'm like, Oh, okay, you gotta put that in, you gotta put that in The the meeting itself, the structure of the meeting is a mess.

And like the whole artifice of the thing is standing between you and your stated goal. Because everybody's in there and like You want to look good in front of your boss. In most brainst storming sessions, the goal for the individuals in the brainstorming is to look good session is to look good, not to make the thing good.

And so like I think when you're thinking less and you're just firing off text messages, like I do a lot of those uh essays that air, like sense of place essays that air to a broadcast of sporting events, college football, the masters and a bunch of stuff. Like a Tom Rinaldi type. Yeah, so I do a lot of those. Okay. And the uh exactly. And the best one we've ever No, I love Tom. Oh my god He also is the nicest guy in the world and that's real. But the bet we used to do all the open championship.

And so we would go over there and spend weeks doing all this stuff. The best one that's ever aired was written by our cameraman, Kalon Shout. who we were just freezing ass coal in Scotland and we're sitting there and he's shooting one of those really hairy cows and he just turns and goes, Hi, Scotland, where the cows were coached. And we were like, that's on television. And like it still remains like so like the accidental thing done in a sense of collaborative fun and joy is always better than

something on your calendar or a z God forbid a Zoom meeting. And so I you know, uh So yeah I hate those things. What would you call that kind of writing? Those short TV pieces? Well it's interesting because writing for T V is so different than writing writing. Yeah, tell me. Well, that's what I want to do. I want to go writing for TV, writing documentaries, writing books, writing articles, and just get what is the core lesson from those four? So writing for T V is tell don't show.

Because th the camera is showing. Hm. Uh the best writing for documentaries is no writing at all, because if you're writing you failed. Cause it's best when it's just sound. Like every time I'm doing a voiceover in a documentary it's'cause I couldn't figure out how to do it without one. And so uh and again, that is, I think when you're writing for a documentary, I mean I've done that a bunch.

I mean I think one you're writing we call'em skinny tracks, but just like connections between here and there. And then the other thing is that you have to do this really sparingly, but you're trying to inject subterranean ideas

into the thing as a almost like putting some topspin on it or some English on a pool ball. What does that mean? And so like if I have some sort of global idea about how these things are connecting or what they're suggesting about the human experience, I mean it's a very light touch.

But like in a track you can do that and it sort of amplifies, you know, writing, writing, like real writing will Uh, you know, they're very similar, but I think an article, you know, like a magazine story is About like mm one thing and it has to me to feel like a dispatch. Like it's a letter from a time and a place. So it's like it's true right now. Like this is this is a letter from someone's life on this time and this place, planet Earth, and like it's a document.

And I feel like a a book is trying to create a univer is trying to create the universe. It's like a like a a article or magazine story is trying to capture a universe. And I feel like a book is trying to make one. And those feel very different to me essentially. I think it's taken me a long time to sort of get there.

Break down that difference. I think that uh At the core of the barn, the reason I think the book works is because I found this map. Shows. the railroads coming into Mississippi around nineteen hundred. And you know we Manifest Destiny is such an important idea to the American identity. And, you know, I love Greg Grandin's book, The End of the Myth, that like when we lose the desire and the ability to explore and to move, we've lost something essential about our national soul.

And so this idea that one of, if not the last places in the lower 48 that was settled wasn't tombstone. It wasn't out west. i it w that it was in the Mississippi Delta and actually directly underneath the barn where Mid Till was killed, suggests something tectonic about a enormous

misunderstanding of something fundamental, not just to American history, which is about the past, but to American identity, which is about the present. And so the entire book is a thought experiment, but like, what if everything we think about ourselves is wrong? And so like that's not what a magazine story would be. It was interesting. Like I had a great editor at The Atlantic. The first draft of that story tried to do that.

what tried to to hold that whole world. Got it. And it and like, you know, I think her name's Denise Wills from the Atlantic and she's a great editor. And I think she would tell you if she was sitting here that like I was trying to juggle and the balls were falling. And like, you know, if a book is rhythmic juggling, a magazine story is I'm gonna pick this thing up and I'm gonna throw it as hard as I can at that target on that wall. Right. How about a profile?

What is the central complication of someone's life and how on a daily basis do they go about answering? the core thing. like what's the the oh that's football, gentlemen. That's all it is. Do you know what I mean? Hoo a or whatever, I forget. Those movies run together. But like, you know, that that's it. It's the uh I'm doing the Steve Kerr thing and he has four values on the wall of his office. that he wants the players in his building to experience every day.

And it's joy, empathy, competitiveness, and mindfulness. And I feel like those are four pretty good things if you want to be like a professional magazine writer, is the four sort of things to have on your wall. And like every time out are you being competitive? We're all competitive. You know, you better be. Uh are you ha is there joy? Are you having even if the topic is hard, are you having joy in the discovery? Empathy, like, you know

You got to love your fellow human being, or you can't really do this. Uh, and then mindfulness, like you got to be. present. You know, my dad used to say the hardest thing in the world is to keep your m mind and body in the same place. I still struggle with that. Can I show you this? Yeah. You've seen this clip. Steve Curr encouraging Steph Curry. Here's what I'm gonna show you. That's your shooting totals. That's your plus minus.

Alright, so it's not always tied together. You're doing great stuff out there. The tempo is so different when you're out there. Everything you generate for us is so positive. It shows up here, not always there, but it always shows up here. Like I think it really spo speaks to those four things. Like You know, Steph's struggling out there. And he basically pulls together some data and he says, I know that you feel like you're struggling, I see it in your body language.

But there's a difference when you're out there and I'm trying to show you that. And then he says it's something like you're doing well, my son. And it's that competitive, it's that joy, it's that empathy, has that empathy for Steph right there. And it's like twenty seconds, but that really warms my heart every time I see it'cause it's like like the epitome of good coaching.

Well that and and you know, those things are applicable. I mean, one of the things I love about sports is that especially, you know, we were talking earlier about we live in this sort of age of post truth and spin and brand. You are what you do when the lights come on. And that is true whether you were Steph Curry or it's you writing what you're writing. You know, it it it's we all

We all have grand ideas about who we would like to be, and we have ideas about who we think we are and how we wish we were seen. But like all y all you are is who you are when the lights come on. And I love that about sports. You know, uh, there's nowhere to hide. There are no lies. And I I love that. I mean, you know

I've sort of flirted over the years with going and r and writing for like a non-sports magazine, and I just found that like that was just ego and vanity. Like I felt like I should want to do it. felt like that was a next step. I feel like, you know, a response sometimes maybe to boredom. But like, I'm not I don't I what a gift to get to write about sports. I mean, I I like I just feel like everything we want to know about the best and worst of human beings and what we are capable of.

It's visible on the field. Mm-hmm.

Last question. Let's end by talking about endings. So we talked a little bit about hammers before. What else makes for a good ending? I mean a resolution uh A resolution uh shadowed by some elliptical unknown. I mean, honestly. Uh, you know, you don't want a bow on it, but you also don't want it just like sometimes a story will like spaghetti. And it's just a mess of like wet noodles and it doesn't go anywhere. And you like you like I often think that like

It's that thing we were just talking about. You've lost the ability to see your own story. You saw it and then you lost it, and you couldn't land. Uh yeah, I've had things I went through draft after draft after draft after draft. Uh I did this story about three generations of Ted Williams' family, where I spent this incredible amount of time with Ted's daughter, Uh just the baseball player.

Yeah, and she let me into like his filing cabinets and his diaries and I just had like it was crazy. And I wrote that over and over and over. My editor Paul Kicks and I over and over and over and over again because I just couldn't I could see it and then I couldn't see it. Yeah. I think when you don't know what your ending is Like with that one, y you struggle to see it. Um if you can see the ending then it's just you're just following a map, sort of. Rock on.

Hi, man. Thanks. I hope that was all right. Didn't waste everybody's time. Gar Guinness.