Fuel and Friction (11 minutes)
Happy Friday!
In between rounds of pitching the new series I've been going where the fun is, which means pushing forward on my crime novel. I hit 25k words on Thursday, a little more than halfway. It’s going to be a fairly short book.
When I was learning to write television I spent some time with a remote in one hand and a pen in the other, breaking down episodes to study the structure. Yesterday I did the same thing with the classic crime novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins. It’s also a short book, 30 chapters over 192 pages in the print edition. I broke each chapter down into a simple logline just to see how he moved the story forward.
It really is just a collection of very simple scenes, often no more than two or three characters, heavy on dialogue. Because I was worried about my chapters being too short I had overpacked them with more than one scene or sequence, often with a little transition in between. After studying Eddie Coyle I went back today and chopped those bigger chapters at the scene breaks, which led to me cutting that transitional fat, getting into those scenes later and out much earlier, more like I’m used to doing in a script.
It was nice to hit a point where my skills were transferrable.
I'll update you on any progress as soon as I'm able.
Hope you have a great weekend!
Fuel and Friction
This past weekend I was driving around and listening to an episode of The Hidden Brain on NPR called “The Obstacles You Don’t See.” The interview was with organizational psychologist Loran Nordgren and focused on the invisible obstacles to new ideas.
It starts off with a story about the time food companies introduced cake mixes where you just add water and pop the cake in the oven. Sales stalled out for two decades until they figured out the obstacle. Baking a cake was seen as an act of care and taking that kind of short cut was seen as uncaring. When they changed the recipe to also call for one fresh egg the sales picked up. That one extra step removed the obstacle.
There was another story about a women's shelter for victims of domestic violence. The shelter would see women approach the door, stop, then turn away. They finally realized the obstacle: a sign on the door that read “no pets allowed.” Many of the women fleeing a violent situation didn’t want to leave their pets behind. So the shelter removed the obstacle by creating an additional space on their grounds where the women could temporarily house their pets.
For the next couple of days I was thinking about the ideas in the episode and how they relate to creativity and to this business. Loran Nordgren talked a lot about how there are two main elements when it comes to creating any kind of change: fuel and friction.
Fuel is anything that makes a new idea more appealing. Incentives, emotional appeal, value. Friction is the stuff that gets in the way, acting as a drag on innovation and change.
Getting a rocket to fly higher or a bullet to travel faster isn't just about adding more fuel. It's also about reducing friction.
These two forces are at play in every stage of the process of making a movie or a TV show.
They’re the reason that there’s such a heavy reliance on intellectual property these days. Having a known quantity reduces the friction that stands in the way of a writer or a producer getting a movie made.
Having a popular novel or comic book reduces the friction it takes for the studio to make their money back or turn a profit.
As The Hidden Brain points out, “When Netflix automatically plays the next episode of a series it’s reducing the tiny amount of friction it takes to say, “I want to watch the next episode.” The result, a lot more streaming.”
If you got into the business of writing for film and television because you had original stories you want to tell that is certainly still possible. There’s just a lot more friction acting as a drag on your ascent. It seems like the irony is that the more unique and original story you have to tell the more friction you’re going to encounter on your way up. If you know that then you can at least adjust your expectations and patience accordingly.
You can potentially reduce that friction by coming up with an idea in a genre that’s always popular during the buying season, like a procedural drama that puts a new twist on the legal, medical, or law enforcement professions.
If your goal is to just to make a living as a writer one way to reduce friction is to find a piece of available IP or attempt an end run by creating your own. Of course each of those routes comes with their own layers of friction.
You may find yourself in a bake-off for the chance to write a new series about Jawas. If you’re lucky enough to win the job you don’t own the job, you just get to hold on to it for a while. At any point someone higher up can decide, “Hey, that thing you’ve been in charge of for a year and a half? We think it would be better if someone else was in charge now,” and then you’re back in the bread line.
Launching a new scripted podcast or graphic novel means pitching, or raising money, or supporting yourself while you learn the basics and get it off the ground. Once you make it you’re competing for ears or eyeballs in a saturated marketplace.
All of this may sound a little depressing but the more I thought about it this week the more liberated I felt. It gave me something actionable to focus on, which is searching for ways to reduce friction.
From the podcast, “The intuitive role of the innovator is to have the idea and push for change. A master of influence and innovation is going to understand that through some process of co-design you have a better chance of getting people to commit to those ideas.”
My latest tactic has been to push for as much feedback as I can get when I get a pass. I’m not looking to change my pitch or spec depending on whichever way the wind blows. I’m trying to figure out the obstacle that got in the way of the “yes.”
Once I know what that obstacle is I can decide if it’s an obstacle I can remove for the next potential buyer. Maybe it’s something non-negotiable, or maybe it’s an easy fix. Like adding the fresh egg to the cake mix.
A big part of the job is understanding the people on the other side of this exchange of ideas and taking their needs into account.
I sold REVERIE as “an emotional procedural.”
What the network heard was “emotional” and their notes were consistently pushing us to do what their most popular show at the time, THIS IS US, was doing. “Give us the tears.”
What the studio heard was “procedural.” They were pushing us to solve more crimes because that's something they can sell around the world.
Looking back it feels like maybe we were doomed from the start because I hadn’t taken enough time, either before or immediately after we sold it, to understand each of those partners’ needs. Maybe I could have helped reduce some of the friction which might have led to a better show or at least a smoother process.
When I was in my early thirties I came to an epiphany about myself.
I was struggling with a couple of personal relationships that I valued. What I realized was that I was pushing those people to do things that I thought they should do instead of stopping to listen to or be aware of what they really needed from me in that moment. I had the best of intentions. I thought I was trying to help. I'm a big brother. That's what we do, we push. But what I was doing was pushing some people away.
My epiphany was: “Meet people where they are.”
I let go of my expectations or what I thought was best for other people. Instead I gave them space and support. That approach transformed so many of my relationships. And it made it easier for me to be a friend and family member.
Now I’m realizing that I need to apply a bit more of that to my career. I need to meet people where they are and work to better understand their needs.
Which is not to say that I should abandon my own goals and aspirations, or try to be something I’m not. I can still push to do my own original work, I just to have to be realistic about the amount of friction I’m going to encounter and look for as many ways to reduce it as I can live with.
Because it’s not just about meeting people where they are, it’s about making it easier for them to meet me, too.
No doubt you've got a lot of fuel in your great ideas and scripts. How can you reduce friction and the forces of resistance?
One last takeaway from the podcast that is only kind of related. Loran gave a tip which is, "When you're in a meeting with someone and you disagree about something, never give your counterargument until you get the other person to tell you they're open to what you have to say.
He suggests saying, "I hear what you're saying. Are you open to another point of view?" He calls this a "yes question" meaning that the vast majority of people are going to say "yes" and even the act of saying yes will make them more open to your idea. I loved that.
Hidden Brain Podcast | Hidden Brain Media — hiddenbrain.org Browse and listen to the most recent episodes of Hidden Brain and access the full archive of the Hidden Brain podcast.
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