It’s not about writing more…

Niklas Göke in Better Marketing

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Apr 19, 2018 · 5 min read
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

Being a writer is hard. In an interview, storytelling legend and

screenwriting teacher to the stars, Robert McKee, explains:

“Your job as a writer is to make sense out of life. Comic or

tragic and anything in between, but you have to make sense
out of life. You understand what that means? Making sense out
of life? And this is why most people can’t do it. Because they
can’t make sense out of life, let alone make sense out of life and
then express it in writing.”

As writers, it’s our duty to live in our heads. And there’s no place
more enticing, more exciting, yet at the same time more
dangerous and more terrifying than the human mind. Time and
again, we have to venture into this place from which some never
make it back. Whatever we bring home we have to process, to
shape, to form. Until somehow, something worth saying
emerges, which often never happens. And so we have to go back.
For the times we do go “oh, that’s interesting,” we then have to
chisel an arrow out of the marble block of messy information. An
arrow loaded with emotion, dipped in reason, and wrapped in
gold. Because otherwise, it’ll never land in the reader’s heart.
And at the end of it?

After all the turmoil, the struggle, and the pain, the best we can
do is fire the arrow into a sea of dark faces. Because even if we
don’t play for the applause, in the end, our fate lies in the hands
of the audience. Always. So the best we can do is show up, shoot,
and pray.

See What I Did There?

If you’re a writer, there’s a good chance that whatever advice I
was going to share next, you’d listen. You might not take it, but
at least, you’d consider it. Why? Because from the first line, you
empathized with me. I’m a writer too. You get that. You agree
that it’s hard. You get me. And I get you. Empathy is the single
most valuable reaction you can trigger in a reader.

We just established how tough a job writing is. Getting your

reader to the point where they’d even consider what you have to
say next? That’s the dream. In fact, if you can’t trigger empathy
in the first paragraph, the first chapter, the first episode, your
arrow will never hit its mark.

That’s the real lesson I learned from Robert McKee.

“You have to feel there’s a shared humanity. Without empathy,

there’s no involvement. Empathy is so powerful, it builds in
long form. Season after season, these people become your
friends. You worry about them. You think about them more
than you do [about] your friends.”
Source

A Bed in a Corn Field

There’s an old, famous German pop singer. His name is Jürgen
Drews. In 1976, he had his big breakthrough with a song entitled
‘Ein Bett im Kornfeld’ (‘A Bed In A Corn Field’). It was a cover of
the Bellamy Brothers’s ‘Let Your Love Flow.’ Right after the
original hit’s five-week #1 run, his German adaptation topped
the billboard charts for another eleven weeks. He performed the
song all over the place. A star was born.

In the 80s, Drews tried to break through internationally, but

never took off. He had a few minor hits, but mostly, people still
wanted to hear ‘Ein Bett im Kornfeld.’ In 1995, he re-recorded
the song, and again, it was a big hit. Since 1999, he’s known as
the ‘King of Mallorca,’ German tourists’ #1 party destination
with lots of cheap beer, light entertainment, and forgettable
events.

Drews still goes there every holiday season, where he performs

‘Ein Bett im Kornfeld’ every night. He gets up to $20,000 for as
little as 20 minutes of showmanship. And he hates it. He’s 73, on
his third wife, and he looks tired.

Jürgen Drews never managed to spark his audience’s empathy.

He built his entire career on one cover song. ‘Ein Bett im

Kornfeld’ is the only thing we’ll ever remember him for. Jürgen
Drews is famous, rich, and successful. But he’s also miserable.
Because he couldn’t make sense out of life.

Divide And Prosper

Here are the first lines from some of my latest articles:

 I met my ex-girlfriend on Tinder.

 “Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world.”
 I used to think beyond 7th grade math is only useful for
physicists and statisticians.
 There is a class of entertainment that is underrated, in spite
of its external success: stories about telling stories.
 “If you’re not a genius, don’t bother.”

None of them are perfect, but all of them offer the reader a
chance to empathize. They’re opinions, experiences, quotes. A
few of which you may relate to, some of which you might
recognize, but all of which you can agree or disagree with.

Rick Rubin says the best art divides the audience. The point is
not to hook the most readers possible. The point is to not end
like Jürgen Drews.

No Such Thing As Writing

McKee says his seminars are no walk in the park. He wants it
that way:

“One of my missions in these lectures is to drive dilettantes out

the door. There’s a certain kind of person who would teach a
subject like this and pretend anybody can do it. ‘Anybody can
do it, all you have to do is some formula,’ and that’s just
bullshit. Hardly one person in a hundred can do it, truth be
told. And I make that really clear to them. You’re in over your
heads. You’ve got no idea how difficult this is. If you love the art
in yourself, you will survive.”

To love the art in yourself is to have empathy when you look into
the mirror. Because that’s where it starts. An old industry adage
says there’s no such thing as writing, just rewriting. What it
really means is forgive yourself.

Stephen King once wrote a sports column for his town’s weekly
newspaper. When he submitted his first piece, the editor crossed
out a few rumors, fixed some facts, and removed most of the
adjectives. Then he gave King the best writing advice he ever
got:
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he
said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the
things that are not the story.”

You can’t make sense out of life in a single story and you
certainly can’t do it on the first try. It takes compassion to accept
that. If you can’t do that, the best you can hope for is ‘Ein Bett
im Kornfeld.’

Being a writer is hard. But it beats telling the same story for the
rest of your life. Cut yourself some slack. Love the art in yourself.
And if you don’t feel empathy in the first line?

Then you rewrite the intro.

Learn how to apply 3-act structure based on

universal story principles

Niklas Göke in Better Marketing

Follow

Apr 8, 2018 · 8 min read

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

There is a class of entertainment that is underrated, in spite of
its external success: stories about telling stories. Hit shows
like How I Met Your Mother, Suits, or Gilmore Girls and
blockbusters like Ocean’s Eleven, the Bournemovies, and Fight
Club all thrive on their characters’ abilities to launch into
enchanting monologues at a second’s notice.

Whoever asks Barney Stinson about his playbook, platinum rule,

or Valentine’s Day can expect a full-fledged fake history lesson.
Despite what the gang might say, they love it. Because who tells
stories like that?

Sometimes, life throws us the same opportunity to tell a story

however we want to tell it. It might be an essay for a job
application, a speech to your old class, or a new acquaintance
asking about a childhood experience. But we’re not a character
in a movie, so we never have those stories locked and loaded and
often butcher them as a result.

How can we change that?

The Universal Principles of

Storytelling
Steven Pressfield laid out a framework in Nobody Wants to
Read Your Sh*t. He calls it the universal principles of
storytelling:

1) Every story must have a concept. It must put a unique and

original spin, twist or framing device upon the material. 2)
Every story must be about something. It must have a theme. 3)
Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Act
One, Act Two, Act Three. 4) Every story must have a hero. 5)
Every story must have a villain. 6) Every story must start with
an Inciting Incident, embedded within which is the story’s
climax. 7) Every story must escalate through Act Two in terms
of energy, stakes, complication and significance/meaning as it
progresses. 8) Every story must build to a climax centered
around a clash between the hero and the villain that pays off
everything that came before and that pays it off on-theme.

Since reading the book, I have run nearly all my articles through
this framework. This has led to some of my biggest hits so far.
I’ve gathered the cornerstone elements into a template you can
copy:
Theme:

Concept:Hero:

Villain:Act 1 - Hook:Inciting Incident:Act 2 - Build:Escalation:

All is Lost:
Breakthrough:Act 3 - Payoff:Climax:

But how do you use it?

Photo by 贝莉儿 NG on Unsplash
How to Not Forget the Books
There’s a How I Met Your Mother episode in which Ted starts
his own architecture firm, Mosbius Designs. One afternoon,
Robin walks into Ted lost in thought, who responds to her
prompt with the following:

“What if I don’t think of the books?”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s this famous architecture story about an architect who

designed this library. It was perfect. But every year, the whole
thing would sink a couple inches into the ground. Eventually,
the building was condemned.

He forgot to account for the weight of the books.

This company, it’s just me. What if I don’t think of the books?”

Like the library in Ted’s example, any story that doesn’t rest on
the foundational pillars of Steve’s framework is bound to
crumble. And even though accounting for the principles of
storytelling doesn’t guarantee it’ll be well received, a story built
this way always ‘works.’

Case in point, here’s what the screenwriters might’ve put into

the template for Ted’s five-sentence story:

Ted's Library StoryTheme: The flawed nature of human short-term

thinking.

Concept: A project is never just about building what you set out
to build.Hero: The architect.
Villain: His narrow, short-term perspective.Act 1 - Hook: An
architect designs a beautiful library but forgets to account for
the statics of the building once it's in use.Inciting Incident:
The plans pass all stages without the mistake being noticed.Act 2
- Build: A year after the grand opening, problems begin to show
up in the basement, which keep getting worse every
year.Escalation: Year after year, repairmen and investigators
return to figure out the problem.

All is Lost: Eventually, a report shows the building is sinking

into the ground.
Breakthrough: The architect realizes the sinking is caused by the
weight of the books.Act 3 - Payoff: The building is condemned and
the architect is right back to where he started.Climax: An
official tells the architect the building will be shut down. This
leads to the architect sitting over his original plan at night,
all by himself, having a drink and facing the pain of his short-
term thinking.

It might have collapsed into a few lines, but since this kind of
thought went into it, intuitively the story still makes perfect
sense. It feels right. And while there are no hard rules here, this
is what I think about for each element:

 Theme: The underlying topic of it all. The bigger the theme,

the more powerful the story. Love, time, identity — every
human has to deal with these.
 Concept: Look at the topic from a new angle, one that few
people would ever consider on their own.
 Hero: Who rides the rollercoaster of hook, build, and payoff?
This needn’t be a person.
 Villain: Who puts the hero on that rollercoaster and tries to
throw him or her off during the ride? This can also be a
mistake or the state of the hero’s mind.
 Act 1 - Hook: The overarching sequence of events that pulls
the reader or listener into the story.
 Inciting Incident: The event that officially kicks off the story.
It usually involves the hero and the villain, and the climax
will bring them right back to it.
 Act 2 - Build: The overarching sequence of events that
escalates the hero’s trauma, known to them or not, until
they’re forced to do something.
 Escalation: The villain’s main act of the show.
 All is Lost: The hero’s lowest point.
 Breakthrough: The moment of insight that forces the hero on
the only possible path: to fight the villain. This could be a
brilliant idea or a sobering realization. It doesn’t indicate the
hero will win.
 Act 3 - Payoff: The overarching sequence of events that
resolves all the conflicts built up to this point by forcing the
hero and villain to face one another.
 Climax: The hero and the villain clash. Whatever the
outcome, it must close all the boxes that have been opened
up to this point.

Whether you sit down with this template before you even begin a
story, think of it as you’re telling it, or use it to review one you’ve
already shared, it will allow you to condense the story into one
coherent web of reason and emotion that connects right with
your audience’s soul.

For example, when I wrote Why Losers Will One Day Rule The
World, I watched and read a ton about The Gambler. Then, I
filled in the template before I started writing.

Why Losers Will One Day Rule The WorldTheme: Learning to accept
our insignificance so that we can start.

Concept: If you don’t know what you want, starting with something
arbitrary will ironically help you get there.Hero: The reader who
says “screw it, I’m already a loser, I might as well go for
broke.”

Villain: The voice in your head that wants us to settle for

mediocrity.Act 1 - Hook: If you’re not a genius, should you
really just give up?Inciting Incident: Gregor Mendel found out
that genetics favor certain traits over others. As a result, life
is naturally unfair.Act 2 - Build: Some people win the genetic
lottery twice, while others lose twice. That's depressing, but
there is a stabilizing element that somehow makes life fair again
for all.Escalation: Examples of genetic lottery winners and
losers.

All is Lost: In face of mediocrity and a sea of mediocre options,

some people choose nihilism. That’s a bad solution.
Breakthrough: Both the genius and the generalist have to gamble
to make it. No one really wins the lottery.Act 3 - Payoff: If you
have to gamble anyway, choose an arbitrary goal, so you can at
least start going somewhere.Climax: We all have to gamble, so
we’re all losers in a way. Only when we accept our loser status
can we be free.

For others, like You Don’t Need An Identity To Have A Life, I

started writing with a blank slate. All I had was the theme. Then,
I used the template to fill in gaps as I went, move around
sections, and drop in ideas. I didn’t have a concept until the very
end, and I didn’t use some ideas at all.

You Don’t Need An Identity To Have A LifeTheme: Identity is

dangerous. You’re stronger without it.

Concept: Hero: Jason Bourne.

Villain: The voice in your head that says, “I am this way and I
always will be.”Act 1 - Hook: Howard Hughes wasted his entire
life playing a genius inventor’s son when that role was never
really his to play. And we all do that. Playing roles that we
were never cast for.Inciting Incident: Jason Bourne finds out his
name, but he has no idea who the person behind that name is.Act 2
- Build: Every day, we’re building more towards assembling a self
and hardening our identity, only to ultimately find out we might
not like what we’ve created.Escalation: Bourne finds out he’s a
killer.
All is Lost: Quote from Denial of Death. Wasting your life in
service of building a conceptual self that may not last, nor be
perceived in any way as what you set out to make it.
Breakthrough: We're like actors on a stage (Counterclockwise
Study). Our identity is like the weather (Jim Carrey).Act 3 -
Payoff: Bourne’s fluid identity is his strength. Justin
Timberlake’s too (muted). More examples? Frank Abagnale! How far
he got! Ending: Bourne says “not really.”Climax: Bourne abandons
his former identity the second he finds out what it was, choosing
his fluid self over any sort of crystallized version in an
instant, in spite of having worked so hard to find out who this
former self was.

I’m far from an expert in using this template and I’ve barely
scratched the surface of everything there is to know about telling
stories. But at least now I don’t forget the books.
Photo by Sylvia Yang on Unsplash

Everything Is a Story
We might not be film characters, but if you think about it, our
opportunities to tell stories are not rare. They’re omnipresent.
We tell stories all the time. In fact, we do little else. A phone call
is a story. A sales pitch is a story. Dinner with friends is a story.
And so is this post.

When Harvey Specter, Rory Gilmore, and Tyler Durden raise

their voices, we listen. Not because they know how to talk, but
because they know how to lead. That’s what storytelling really is.
Human communication 101. We’ll never run as smoothly as
characters on a script, but if we fail at the basics, if we forget to
account for the books, we miss out on a whole lot more than the
corner office. We miss out on making change.
 And isn’t that all we’re here to do?

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