Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 729: How to Create Story & Character Conflict with Eileen Cook

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IFH 729: How to Create Story & Character Conflict with Eileen Cook · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hussle
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Podcast, Episode number seven twenty nine. The scariest moment is always just before
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the start. Anonymous broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie
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Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an
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indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host,
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Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast.
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I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by
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That's film bizbook dot com. Now, guys, today on the show,
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we have best selling author and screenwriter Eileen Cook. She is a multipub award
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winning author with her novels appearing in nine languages. Her books have also been
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optioned for film and TV. Her best selling book, Creating Story Conflict is
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a must for screenwriters and I really wanted to have her come on the show
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to break down how to create conflict with your story and your characters, because
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without conflict, you have no story. So without any further ado, please
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enjoy my conversation with Eileen Cook. I'd like to welcome to the show,
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Eileen Cook. How you doing, Eileen, I'm doing good. Thanks for
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having me. Oh, thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate
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it. You are. You are calling us from the Great White North,
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which is an envious place nowadays, apparently briefly over the border. We're building
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our own wall. We're doing good safely. You know, it's just a
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it's a it's a you know, for multiple reasons. It's a very envious
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place to be currently in the world as we as we speak here today.
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But we're here today to talk about writing and helping some screenwriters understand conflict specifically.
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And you wrote a great book about conflicts. So can you give me
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the definition of what conflict is in your point of view? Sure, conflicts
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friction at its most elemental level. And I should probably tell people like where
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I come from and sort of start out with is I'm a counselor by trade.
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That was my day job before I turned to writing full time. And
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so conflict is the bread and butter of why you have a counseling trade.
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If people don't have conflict and problems, then they're not coming to see counselors,
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and we don't make a living, so that's never a good thing.
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So conflict is friction. It's standing between you and whatever it is that you
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want, and you have to figure out some way to get through that friction.
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And in terms of any kind of book or screenplay, it's what keeps
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people watching at its most basic level. Just think of when you used to
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go to coffee shops. Go back in time, years ago, years ago,
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years and years ago. Right, you would go to a coffee shop,
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and you know what's more interesting sitting next to somebody just calmly reading their
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book or writing their screenplay on their laptop, or a couple having a fight,
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Like you're interested in the couple having a fight. That's the people you're
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your eaves dropping on. But let me ask you a question, though,
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so because I mean, my wife's my wife's a counselor as well, So
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I have I have from I have a little bit of understanding, just the
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same way she has a little understanding about what green screen is. I have
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a little understanding about what she does. What is it in our psyche that
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is drawn to conflict on just an evolutionary stample because you're you're absolutely right,
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Like, it's much more interesting to watch you know, breaking bad than about
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him becoming a meth dealer than him teaching. Yeah, it wouldn't be a
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good show really if it was like I got up and I had a great
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day. So what is so what is that think inside of us on almost
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a reptilian you know, in the back of our reptilian brain, that causes
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us to be attracted to conflict. I think it's partly because conflict is partly
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how we make change. So when you even say, you know, the
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term evolutionary, So if you're going to go beyond where you are, you
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have to stretch yourself. You have to do something different. So let's take
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a basic example of you want to learn to run. So if you're going
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to learn to god knows why. But let's say you know, you decide
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to take up jogging. If you're going to do that, you know the
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first few days that you're going out, it's hard. You have to push
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through that. There's friction, right, it's staying in bed is more comfortable.
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You have to push through that in order to evolve into a writer.
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If you're wanting to write, it a screenplay. Everybody knows that feeling when
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you're sitting down in front of the screen and the cursor blink blink, blink,
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and it's easier to turn it off, but you have to push through
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that in order to actually end up with words on the page and hopefully an
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eventual screenplay. So change is intrinsically linked to conflict. And when we talk
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about character arcs and wanting to see characters change over a story, they have
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to usually go through something in order to make that change. They're put to
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the test, to the metal. There's that saying you never really know anyone
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until you know kind of the shit hits. The fan idea is that when
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we put people under pressure, they either move forward and evolve, or they
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retreat or they break. So it's on an almost veryuristic standpoint, we're looking
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at conflict. We watch movies with conflict or books or shows with conflict because
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we're seeing, I guess, examples of how we can eventually break through our
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own conflict. Because if we don't have conflict, we don't have friction in
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our life. We can't grow. So, just like a seed has to
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break through the soil to get to the light, that's friction, that's complon.
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That's they have to actually kind of crack through in order to get the
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light, which will then make them grow and grow and go. So that's
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I mean, that's an analogy. It just came out of my bat with
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and it was good. That actually sounds pretty good. Yeah, Like I
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want to see the image of like the tree growing through the sidewalk and all
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that kind of stuff, and yeah, I think we want to watch it
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because it is that idea that we learn. So I write and have written
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a number of young adult novels and people always say, oh, I worry
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about kids reading about sex or violence or these various things, and it's like,
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well, they're not necessarily going to do it. I don't think that
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that's the way it is. You read that because you want to see how
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someone else navigated that conflict. Right, So, if you know your conflict
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was you were going to, you know, do a hike through someplace.
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The smart person says to somebody like, well, what did you wear,
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what kind of hiking boosts? Do you have a map? What did you
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bring with you? You want to kind of guide to get through that.
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And I think observed sing other people in conflict automatically gives us that chance to
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say, you know, what would I do, which is kind of what
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we're trying to do in film or in any kind of story is let the
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reader or the viewer experience it, but in a safe way, right,
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So we all want to imagine that we'd you know, storm the best deal
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and we'd be you know, the ones to do that. I do a
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lot of presentations with kids and I say, like, let's be honest,
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like if you were living out the Hunger Games and somebody pulled your siblings name
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out of the hat, like, how many of you would be like no,
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choose I I volunteer as a tribute, versus being like, oh man,
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I'd like that's a shame. Can I have your room? Like?
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Do you know what I mean? Like, we're not likely. We want
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to see other people do those big and glorious things and fight back against conflict
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because it kind of gives us a feeling like maybe if I was then under
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the wire, I know how to do it. So in a lot of
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ways, you know, And I always talk about being inside your comfort zone
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and being inside that that comfortable place and if you if you're comfortable being comfortable
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is kind of the worst place to be if you ever want some sort of
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evolution of growth. It truly is like, if you're like making one hundred
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and fifty k a year living in Kansas somewhere has a nice house, you're
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not really trying to rock the boat at that point. You're like, you're
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not trying to grow as a person or trying to, you know, put
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more tools in the toolbox to move to another place in your life. You're
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good. But when you swim, like you said, when the fit hits
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the shan, when the fit hits the shan and you're at a place where
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you have to move because it's getting so bad that if you don't move then
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you're going to die or some sort of version of death in your world.
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That's what drives you to move. So that that comfort zone is a dangerous
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place. And I think a lot of us fall into that comfort zone so
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many times. I think that's why when you see conflict, we'll be right
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back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. That's
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great. It's just like it just draws you in because you want to get
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through it a little bit well. And I think I give the example a
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lot when I talk to people around if people are going to make a change
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just because of one of two reasons, and they're either going to get pushed
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or they're going to get pulled, and to kind of understand that example,
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I say, I want you to imagine that we're going to take a field
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trip to New York City, and I'm going to take you to Simon Schuster,
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which is in Rockefeller Plaza right there on Avenue of the America. So
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we're going to go way up There's a nice little rooftop deck up there,
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right, so I forget what it is. We're going to say, one
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hundred and ten stories your way the heck up there, right, like he
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maybe thing's t tenny down on that ground right, And I say to you,
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like, you know what's really interesting in one corner of this building,
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which is in fact true the other building is only about five and a half
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feet away. I just got chills, And I could say to you,
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like, Alex, you know, you look reasonably fit. I bet if
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you had a good run and start, you could make that jump. Now,
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assuming that you're remotely saying, you'd be like no, like, I'm
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not gonna do that. What's behind, what's going. But if I say
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to you, like regretfully, this building is on fire and the flames,
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I've already come up the stairwells. There's absolutely no way down. It's too
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windy for a helicopter to push, you know, basically lift us off the
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ladders. Don't go up this high. You either need to jump or you're
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gonna burn here. Most people will try and make that jump, right,
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But this is because there's no choice, because it's well, you can you
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can just sit down, and there are people who do right. There are
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people who are like, well, I guess this is my time. This
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is my time. But it's either you choose to die or you take the
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chance that the hope and that you're going to survive. But the worst happens
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if you don't make it, is you die as well. So either way
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you're going to die, either a fiery death or plummet to your death.
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It's up to you how you feel about both. Why do you want to
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go? Now? The other way that I can get you off that rooftop
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is if I put something on the other rooftop that is so compelling that you
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feel the need to do it. So if I said to someone, let's
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assume that Simon and Schuster becomes the Hunger Games of publishing, right, And
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they say, there's a movie, but isn't it already kind of So if
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I say to here, there's a million dollar book contract on that other roof,
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and whoever's willing to jump over there and get it can have it now,
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there'll probably be a lot more people who are like, no, it's
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it's not worth it. But I know a few writers who I'm pretty sure
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would be like, you know, I took track in high school, Like
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I bet I could do this, So they will try. And you can
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see that in books, so you know we're laughing and joking. But zombie
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books are the great example where people will push through and do things because there's
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something behind them. They're being pushed to try things. Romance stories are almost
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always about pull, right. It's the idea that wow, I could have
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this person in my life or I could be this place if I wanted to
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do that, and it will pull them forward. But you need a push
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or a pull for people to change because otherwise, why wouldn't you stay safe
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on the rooftop? That's human nature. We are, we evolved not to
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do things that are difficult. We don't seek out friction typically, and that's
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the thing, is like, but if you don't, and I looks I
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have I know people who've never looked for friction, and they live in the
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comfort zone their entire life, and they had one goal and that's the goal
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that they wanted. And once they got that goal, I'm like, I'm
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coasting until this is over. I don't want any shifts at all in my
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boat. I just want to smooth. So I know, I know a
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person like that specifically I'm thinking about right now, and they're happy, though
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at least the externally they seem happy. What happens, you know, like
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maybe I should have written that book, maybe I should have traveled more,
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maybe I should have done this, But you know, it's it's it's really
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interesting. But there are people like that in the world. But generally speaking,
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though even in the comfort zone, you do eventually, just like you
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said, get bored. Usually you will, but certainly without a doubt.
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Like and this is always again the difference between real life and any kind of
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fiction. There are a lot of people who will coast. Now, am
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I gonna go watch a two hour film of a guy who coasts No,
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no, no, it's I'm like, oh, we're an hour and a
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half in and he's yeah, he's come back home and step back down.
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Yeah all right, Like we're only going to watch that movie to see that
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person thrown out of that space. So you're going to have to make them
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uncomfortable to keep my interest. Now they may not be seeking that out.
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So again, we may take your guy who's in the nice, comfortable place
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and all of a sudden, I'm gonna have oh, I don't know something,
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I'm crazy, like a global pandemic that's kind of suddenly take out.
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You know, certain things where all of a sudden, he can't do what
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he did before and he's going to have to do something different. Now I'm
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interested now I'm watching, right, you know, someone knocks in the door.
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I'm like, I'm your son. Yeah, and all of a sudden
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his entire world is thrown upside now boom overnight, it's then then happened.
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You can see those kind of techniques used in so many stories and so many
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movies with someone's just which is it's the whole Joseph Campbell, it's the ordinary
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world. Yeah, and look, real people like to be safe, right,
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and there are I mean, there are people who seek out challenges and
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you know, you can argue they have more exciting, more fulfilling lives because
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they put themselves through that friction. You can argue that, you know,
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they're crazy, that they should just stay. You know, I feel like
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we're slamming Kansas and I'm gonna end up having some like people are like,
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oh, I love Kansas, Sure, it's beautiful. Why no, now,
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somehow they hate you. So that's great, Faomi, it's not the
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con California wherever, any state you like. Yeah, like you know that,
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you know, if you stay in that place, they're happy. They're
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good with that. But again, in fiction, what I'm what I'm paying
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to see, and it's important to remember that we're asking people to pay for
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a product, is we want to see someone go through a struggle. We
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want to see them overcome that or you know, if you're wanting to receive
16:33
a tragedy, then you're going to watch them, you know, fail.
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But I think one of the problems is that sometimes as writers, we don't
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like conflict in our own lives, and we we go easy on our characters.
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And that's a mistake. So so so a lot of the things,
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a lot of these examples we've been talking about it has been external conflict,
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which is to push in the pull which were like external fire coming in,
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you know, or the million dollars. It's an external pull. What are
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some examples of internal conflict. So there's a great book by Donald Moss who's
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a literary agent, and he wrote a book called Writing the Breakout Novel.
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And he has an exercise in there where he says, tell me what it
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is that your character wants more than anything, and then write down what the
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opposite of that thing is, and then figure out how your character wants both
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of those things. And initially I was like, well, that's crazy,
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right, But let's just take it at a very basical thing. Like if
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you say, you know what, I want to be fitter, I want
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to you know, lose some weight, you know, get some better cardio
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going, all that kind of stuff. External conflicts are rarely the thing that
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get in your way with that, right, Like we all kind of know
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like, oh, I should probably eat a little bit healthier. I need
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to you know, get out and move more, need to do these kinds
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of things. That's what I need to do. What gets in your way
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is the internal thing, which is that you also want to sit on your
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butt and watch Netflix. And sometimes you want both of those things at the
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same time. Right, you want the cookie, I want cookie, but
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I also want the rock. I want six pack, Yeah, you know,
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And the problem is that you cannot have those things at the same time.
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You want to be the partner in your law firm, and you want
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to spend more time with your family. So it's often not the external stuff.
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It's that internally you're fighting between yourself because you want both things, so
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you want to be So let's use an example from a movie. Is there
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a character in a movie that had you know, a classic character in a
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movie that you can think of that has internal conflict that has those two opposite
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things, Like I mean, I'm thinking I always go to Star Wars because
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it's like the most you know, it's very well known, like Darth like
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Luke. Luke wants to travel. You want to he wants to break out
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of his little, you know, farm, and but I don't know what
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the other like the opposite, what would would the opposite is being safe?
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Right, like he wants to keep his butt on peace. I want to
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be safe, but I also want to be a starfighter. Yeah right,
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Like, I mean, even look like he has the classic call to adventure,
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which is a literal a literal call. Right, Hey, you know
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you want to go with me. We're gonna you know, save the princess
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all this kind of stuff. And he's like, I can't, And he
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says he can't because he has to stay and be a moisture farmer. Like
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let's just have a moment where we say, George, George, moisture farmer.
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I love it. Moisture farming. That's what he's doing. Like really,
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when when you ask me, I think, like I think I'd pretty
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much rather do anything than be a moisture farmer. But you know, at
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the moment when he's asked, it's like, well, he still wants to
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be safe. He doesn't want to rock the boat. He doesn't want to
19:48
do any of those things. He doesn't want to turn off the guidance system
19:52
and use the force. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
20:02
and now back to the show. Because everyone around him, I mean,
20:07
I just love imagining that you're the head of the rebel forces. You're
20:12
facing down the biggest thing. It's called the death Star. Like it's not
20:17
exactly subtle, right, Like it's a bad thing, right, it's called
20:21
the death Star. It can blow up planets. You are throwing everything that
20:26
you have at it. This is a one like. If you don't take
20:29
this thing out, the rebellion is done, the universe is done. And
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everybody gets taken out except the kid who was a moisture farmer an hour and
20:37
a half ago. Who you know. It's basically saying, yeah, I
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never heard, you know, piloted a starship before, but I used to
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have a land cruiser. And it's kind of like shooting those wamprats, right.
20:51
It's like, no, dude, it's nothing. It's nothing like that,
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right, it's nothing like you're not gonna put somebody in a stealth fighter
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who like I used to have before me, he used to shoot squirrels.
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It's just like that, right. And it's like this guy's like, you
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know what I'll do is I'll take the only decent thing we have, which
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is the guidance system, and I'll turn it off, right exactly. So
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that's actually a pretty good example because you're right, he does want both things.
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And and then you go to the opposite Darth Vader. You know,
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in his arc he wants to be, you know, the bad Darth Vader
21:26
guy, but he also wants to connect with his son. Right, So
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there's that those opposites. I've never really thought about internal conflict like that before,
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because if you start analyzing all these kind of amazing characters over the course
21:38
of cinema, many of them will if you start analyzing, they want two
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things, and they're generally on the opposite, which is what makes them interesting.
21:47
That's why a villain that you know, he literally just early on like
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twists his mustache as you know, like who you know, and he's like,
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you know, he's got the girl on the on the on the train
21:56
tracks and the trains coming, and like I'm evil just to be. They're
22:00
very boring, very very boring villains. But then you got someone like Thanos
22:06
I'll use some more current, who's a complex villain because he wants actually he
22:12
kind of wants to save the universe and help the universe, but the way
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he's doing is a little off. That's a matter of perspective, right,
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But we're talking about here, there's an interest, and I think it's just
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important to remember that external conflict is a matter of problem solving. Right,
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So if you have to get through you know, this obstacle course, you
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know, and you have to do it in order to diffuse the bomb.
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And that's what I've set up for you that you have to do. And
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so you're going to have to figure out, you know, all these little
22:48
puzzles in order to get through that. That's just an exercise and problem solving.
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And most people, you know, if we set it up, they
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should be able to hopefully get through those things. The real friction comes internally,
23:02
which is what's getting between you and them to solve that problem. Right,
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So I think it, I mean, I this is why I'm not
23:11
personally in law enforcement for a whole host of reasons. But running towards day
23:18
part of what law enforcement is about. Right. So if someone's shooting,
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you think, oh, I'm going to run closer to that, my internal
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thing is like, no, you're on your own, no sorry? So
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what is it inside yourself? So? Is it a desire for safety,
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which is often a very fair thing that would keep you from wanting to have
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adventures. Is it feeling guilty about leaving people behind? Is it you know,
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what is it that's kind of inside of you that you may not even
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be aware of. So there's the obviously the greatest Christmas movie of all time,
23:57
die Hard. I mean it's just long May it rain? Yes,
24:02
it's obviously a fact. We've done many podcasts about this. I'm not going
24:06
to argue. No, So that Diehard is a perfect example of really insane
24:12
external conflict, you know, which is he's constantly being pushed throughout that movie
24:19
by the bad guys, by Hans and by all the terrorists and trying to
24:22
save people. But if you take away the internal conflict that he has,
24:26
which is now he's going through his divorce or breakup with his wife, and
24:32
now his wife has been put in jeopardy, so like he wants to he
24:36
wants to save her, but like, so what's his internally? I just
24:38
love to hear your point of view. His internal conflict with her is that
24:42
he wants to keep that relationship going and she doesn't, So there's that kind
24:48
of friction. But yet now he has to go save her as well.
24:52
So what's the intern in your opinion? And I think it's the two parts
24:56
of it. So I think there's one part of it, which is part
24:59
of what he wants to do. Obviously beat Hans Gruber because he's a cop
25:03
and that's what you do. But part of him also like he could probably
25:07
sneak in, grab his wife and get her out of there, right,
25:11
you're right, right, like comfortably before anyone knew who she was or anything.
25:15
He could have probably just done in, boom and get But then that,
25:18
first of all, that's a horrible move. Yeah, yeah, in
25:22
case someone's like, I never thought of that, right, It's not that
25:26
he is right, so he's he's you know, having to juggle both of
25:30
wanting to save his wife, right, but wanting to save everyone else and
25:34
to be true to who he is, which is partly what caused the friction
25:38
in his marriage, is that he puts so much time and efforts into being
25:44
a cop, and she felt there was never any time for her. And
25:48
he also has to learn to trust her, right because at the end,
25:51
she's the one who is truly able to help him, and he's not someone
25:56
who trusts other people, so he, uh, he has to trust the
25:59
guy outside who's gonna, you know, help him, and he asks to
26:02
learn to trust his wife in order to really defeat Hans Gruber, he wouldn't
26:07
have been able to do it on his own. Very cool. Now speak,
26:11
we've been talking a little bit about conflict in regards to story and characters.
26:18
How should you or can you discuss the I guess we have been discussing
26:23
the main difference between the conflict of a story and the conflict in characters.
26:27
But how should characters respond to conflict? I think this is fun because you
26:33
get to have some decisions about this because people respond in sort of all different
26:40
sorts of way to conflict. Right, So I think we tend to think
26:42
of the two most basic, which is fight or flight. Right, So
26:48
if we look at it again, like, and I'm coming at this from
26:51
sort of a psychological point of view, in the animal kingdom, you don't
26:56
get, for example, a buddy rabbit who's like, oh yeah, mister
27:00
coyote, bring it, Like do you know what I mean? Like the
27:03
rabbit will run period because periods, evolutionarily speaking, the rabbit understands it's out
27:11
gunned and it will choose survival. Right, you have to be a little
27:17
higher up the food chain to choose fight, because you're choosing fight if you
27:22
feel like you have a pretty good chance to win or you have no choice.
27:26
Right. So again, this is where you see someone who, yeah,
27:30
like the bunny will come out you know, pause, a flappin' or
27:34
whatever you want to call it. You know, the spinning teeth, ready
27:38
to go if he's corner, because there's no choice for him. It's either
27:44
fight or you're gonna die as well. Fight. Yeah, So you can
27:47
think in terms of, you know, where's your character at, and you
27:49
know what would they choose to do right And they're not gonna necessarily choose to
27:53
fight right away, so you might have them trying to kind of avoid conflict
27:57
or get a round conflict until they can't avoid it anymore. But there are
28:03
also a couple other options that people don't think about. So one of them
28:06
is freeze, which is a lot of times in the face of danger,
28:11
you will just freeze, right, So the obvious examples animals do this.
28:18
Goats goats the freezing. Everyone listening right now, go to YouTube after this
28:23
interview and type in goats scare and you will you'll be laughing for quite some
28:30
time. I've never but when I first saw it, I couldn't believe.
28:33
And it was just that one goat like basically, you just scare a goat
28:37
and there was a herd of them and they all froze at the same time
28:41
and just dropped to the floor on their side, frozen, and I was
28:42
just I couldn't stop laughing. It is it is so brilliant. But yes,
28:45
they do that well. And also, how do you get away from
28:48
a t rex? Everybody knows this if you've seen Jurassic part they tell you
28:55
don't move, don't do anything because they yeah, right, So animals evolutionary
29:00
that sometimes learn like, well, if I can't run, maybe I'll just
29:04
free solid for a second and hope it didn't see me. And people do
29:08
this. You've been in situations where you'll see a guy in the living room
29:12
or whatever and his wife comes in and she slams the door the kitchen and
29:17
he'll just go totally silent, right, Like, maybe if I just sit
29:21
here, one of the kids will find her, right and they'll take the
29:25
brunt. Yeah, how can I like just not be seen Like they're doing
29:30
a goat, right, They're just just freezing right where they are and hoping
29:33
it passes by, right, right. So that's another response that your your
29:37
character can have is they can sort of hope that it passes by them,
29:44
and the other is fawn, which is a nice way of saying kissing up.
29:48
Right, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
29:56
now back to the show. So, and you certainly know people who do
30:03
this, who will throw someone else under the bus. I don't know,
30:06
Try and think of I don't know, some politicians or something who may have
30:10
maybe you know, sacrificed another politician or a coworker. In corporate America,
30:15
that happens constantly, you know, like where they're just gonna they're gonna kiss
30:18
up to the bad guy because I'd rather be on the bad guy's side than
30:22
than not. Oh, it's like in Diehard that that guy, yeah,
30:29
I forgot that, the baby, let's work, baby, I can help
30:33
you one. And the cocaine guy I forgot his name, but the most
30:37
perfectly cast guy. Yeah, so perfectly cast that guy. But yes,
30:41
so similar to that. You know, he's gonna he's gonna kiss up,
30:45
and he's like, I'm going to get on these guys, notd I'm gonna
30:48
do that. You will see, you know again, if we take the
30:51
same you know, wife who's come home really angry. You know. One
30:53
option might be to go out there and be like, you look so beautiful
30:57
today, let me rub your shoulder, you know, let's distract you by
31:02
being really kind and effusive kind of things. So there are different ways that.
31:07
Yeah, smart people have a way of dealing with conflict, and you
31:11
want to have a range of tools at your thing. And I think when
31:15
you're writing characters is to sit down and figure out how would my character respond
31:22
in this moment and kind of running through the four different options can give you
31:27
some different ways of looking at it, Like what happens if they freeze?
31:30
Is it possible that someone will be distracted again? You can think of all
31:34
sorts of scenes and Walking Dead where that's basically what they're doing, like just
31:38
don't move, don't make a sound. You know, you throw a rock,
31:42
you're trying to basically put it onto something else. It's kind of hard
31:48
to really fawn over a zombie, though, I guess if you smear yourself
31:52
with other things so you smell like them, they feel like they're one of
31:55
the crowd, I guess would be the best example of fawning in that.
31:59
But certainly, you know, there was a lot of things in Walking Dead
32:00
of people sort of kissing up to people who were taking power. So it's
32:07
like, well, if this is the seat of power, then I want
32:08
to be close to it, and I'm not going to fight it because that's
32:13
going to be hard. Fight is hard, that's what writers. And no
32:17
one ever kisses up in Hollywood. That's not something that happens here in La
32:21
So publishing that I have no understanding. I have no understanding what you're talking
32:25
about. It's so funny, like when you see, you know, I've
32:29
been a director for twenty odd years now, and you know, when you're
32:32
on set, I can see like those new people coming on set who try
32:37
to get closer to the director because there's that perceived power on the set,
32:40
and it's fascinating. It's fascinating to watch how people act. But yeah,
32:45
it's just that's almost instinctual at this point. It's almost evolutionary. If you
32:51
look at a wolf pack, basically, you know, you know there's one
32:54
who's the alpha. So we're going to make the director of the alpha.
32:57
So you can kind of see yourself now as alpha wolf, right, So
33:00
yeah, why not enjoy it? Well? Alas right, and then you
33:04
know what you have as a group of other wolves who are either going to
33:07
work with that they're going to roll over and show their belly, right,
33:12
They're going to find a pecking order. They're going to you know, work
33:14
towards that that one wolf, or they're going to have to strike out on
33:16
their own, and that is risky and dangerous. A wolf on their own
33:21
is much more likely to get injured. If it does get injured, it's
33:23
much more likely to die. So again, when we think of characters,
33:28
who are you know, doing a Bruce willis dire, Like, that's some
33:34
risky stuff, right, and you have to really push someone to do that
33:37
kind of thing. Now, should you you know, what should you focus
33:43
on more? Should you focus on the stories conflict or the characters or the
33:46
characters conflict? Can I have both? Again from the beginning like having both.
33:53
So when you're constructing a story, do you construct the internal first or
33:57
the external first? I think actually this is a writer choice because I think
34:01
there are stories that come to us in different ways. Right, So you
34:06
come up with a story idea and either sometimes you'll hear particularly you know,
34:10
people who are doing novels will say I'm either doing a plot driven story,
34:15
or I'm doing a character driven story. So sometimes they have a character and
34:19
it's like I really want to write about this person, and then you're trying
34:22
to figure out what's the situation that would most kind of push that character or
34:27
you know, evolve them into a different place. Or you've come up with
34:30
a great concept in terms of like I have this great thing, like,
34:34
now, who's the best person to put into that story to really stretch it
34:38
and make it seem interesting. So I think you can tackle it either way.
34:43
But the fun thing is to then see how those things are going to
34:47
interact with each other. So how as my internal conflict that I'm dealing with,
34:53
how is that going to make dealing with the external conflict maybe harder?
35:00
Is there something that if I could resolve my internal conflict, that that's what
35:05
I need to do to solve my external conflict. I think some of that
35:08
is when you think of I think it's John Truby who talks about want versus
35:13
need if I'm remembering correctly, So yeah, like if you think of you
35:17
know, the external being the want or the external conflict, that often they
35:22
need to resolve the internal conflict in order to beat that external. Yes,
35:29
So in regards to plot versus character, I always find it fascinating because most
35:34
a lot of people say, oh, I want to write a you know,
35:36
really, I'm a plot driven writer as opposed to a character driven But
35:39
if you look at films over the years, you don't generally remember plots.
35:45
You remember characters, like I can vaguely tell you like the plots of Indiana
35:49
Jones. I mean probably the first one because I've seen it more. But
35:51
other than that, you know, they're vague. It's not the memorable thing.
35:55
You know, when you watch Last Crusade, the memorable thing is his
35:59
dad, and in the conflict between those two, that's what drives that story.
36:02
I think out of plot, like sixth Sense is probably one plot that
36:07
I kind of remember, and even then I just basically remember the ending,
36:09
you know, so that was the thing that kind of stuffs, so you
36:12
don't really stick, you know. I think for success, for successful storytelling,
36:15
and you tell me, you know, character has to be you know,
36:20
plots are obviously important, but people remember character much more than they remember
36:22
plot well, and because part of it is where character meets plot. Right,
36:29
So if you have a scene or a plot like this is a story
36:34
about bank robbery gone wrong where they hold a bunch of people hostage in the
36:40
bank can they're trying to get out, So that that's your plot, right,
36:45
And then it's it's who you put in that that becomes interesting day afternoon.
36:51
Yeah, Like all of a sudden, it's who's in that story that
36:53
becomes the catalyst for that, Like because you can do dark day Afternoon,
36:59
or you can say, Okay, it's a nursery school teacher who's you know,
37:02
pushed to her limit, who has no skills in this area at all,
37:06
and so she's going to have to be the one that you know,
37:09
comes through this, right, Like how that person deals with it is becomes
37:14
often what is interesting to us. So it's it's people meeting plot and that's
37:22
what we find kind of enjoyable is to see how are they going to cope
37:27
and deal with that? Like I think some of the bad in my humble
37:30
opinion, James Bond Movies is where where they they lost track of him as
37:37
a character and they were just like, what's the most outrageous situation we can
37:43
put this super spy into? And so they came up with you know,
37:47
more and more, bigger and better kinds of things, but if you look
37:52
at the ones that are tend to be people's favorites, is where he's pushed
37:55
personally as a character. So the situation, the plot is still big,
38:00
there's still things happening, but what's interesting is is he going to choose to
38:04
save the woman that he's finally felt like he could start to love or hold
38:08
on to his duty. Those become the things that we follow and that we're
38:14
interested in so exactly. I mean, because I think James Bond. I
38:17
mean, I was a fan of the old ones with Pierce Broston and the
38:20
Sean Connerys, and they were fun to watch. But when Craig came in
38:23
his his his run, especially Casino Royal, which I still consider probably the
38:28
best bond, one of the best bonds, and that in Skyfall, there
38:30
was just so dance because you actually first finally got into who bonded. You
38:35
made him vulnerable. He wasn't a superhero. That's why it's so difficult to
38:37
write for Superman because he's Superman. Superman. I mean to throw the Kryptonite
38:44
in, but it gets boring after a while, you know, It's like,
38:46
so it's very difficult to write but that's why Batman so much more interesting,
38:50
because he's so much more vulnerable. There's so many more ways he can
38:52
have and talk about internal conflict Jesus. I mean, yeah, the guys,
38:57
he needs a therapist, real bod, he's just that Batcave is sadly
39:00
missing a therapist. He would do well to work some of that out.
39:07
But yeah, I mean I think that's Yeah. Superman is I think a
39:08
great example in that, you know, yeah, interesting character, But I
39:13
don't know if much has been made of like where is he vulnerable? Where
39:16
where are the push points of him? Because that, I think again is
39:21
what we like seeing as viewers is how does this particular person, with their
39:27
strengths, with their weaknesses solve the problem. Will Hans Solo go back to
39:31
help, which is against his nature, right? Or is he gonna you
39:36
know, reach out and find some connection in this moment. Those are the
39:39
kinds of things that we remember and provide us with that cheering moment, right,
39:44
Like, that's what you're looking for is where people are like, yes,
39:47
right, they got up, they did it again after we didn't think
39:51
they would do it. We're looking for that and that's people meeting story we'll
39:58
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
40:05
show. Now, when you are building characters, can you just discuss a
40:10
little bit about what emotional intelligence? I would love to So. Emotional intelligence
40:16
is interesting because it comes from, in my opinion, the very best thesis
40:22
question that was ever asked, which is why is it that smart people do
40:30
stupid things? Which, when you think about it, is brilliant because we
40:34
all know someone who is quite smart but possibly not successful. But until there
40:39
was a theorist to Ravon Baran, who is out of Israel, basically said
40:45
well, look, we know how to measure intelligence. There are several tests.
40:50
There's the waste in the Westler and so forth where we can test intelligence.
40:53
So I can give you a test and say you're in the genius IQ
40:57
or you're not. But it does seem to be correlated to success, which
41:04
logic tells us it should be the smartest people should, in theory be the
41:07
most successful people. But that has certainly not helped helps up at all.
41:15
Oh yeah, so he started saying, well, there has to be something
41:20
else, some other kind of quality, and the term emotional intelligence came up.
41:25
And so it's fifteen different components that look at things like reality testing.
41:35
How good are you at understanding that what you see is not necessarily objective and
41:40
is influenced by what's going on around you or your own personal perspective. How
41:47
well are you aware of your own emotions? That's another kind of thing.
41:52
So he was looking at that ability to understand that, oh, other people
41:57
have other emotions if you want agree. Example, again, remember back when
42:00
we could travel. Yes, it was a fun time. It's a fun
42:06
time. I remember I was headed on a flight someplace and basically the plane,
42:09
the flight got canceled. And so now we're all in this huge lineup,
42:15
all desperately seeking to get on another flight, right, and the conflict
42:21
conflict, and the guy in front of me is tearing a strip off this
42:25
airline worker with like, do you know who I am? And I need
42:30
to be back for this and I'm I'm a very important person and I have
42:36
so many miles on this airline and I you know, And so she says,
42:40
you know, we're doing the best we can, et cetera, et
42:43
cetera. And then I went up next and I said something like, I'm
42:46
so sorry that you're having this horrible day. And I sort of commiserated about
42:50
working in customer service and said, this is you know, I'm actually trying
42:53
to get back. It's my grandmother's ninetieth birthday, which was you know,
42:58
this kind of thing. She says, Okay, well you have to wait.
43:00
Well, if you want to guess who got on the next flight,
43:04
it would be me with the first grade grade, first grade first question,
43:09
you know. So it's that idea of that's emotional intelligence. It's the idea
43:15
that yelling at this customer service worker is not necessarily going to get me what
43:19
I want? Right, So like perfect, You're absolutely right. So that
43:22
concept of being the smartest, because there are people who are, you know,
43:28
high level geniuses but generally can't can't live, can't even can't even work
43:32
within society because they just don't have a high emotional IQ. They have a
43:37
great intelligence, but not an emotional IQ. And adding that into your character
43:44
is really interesting to kind of start thinking about that because someone like rain Man,
43:47
you know, doesn't Hoffman's rain Man perfect example, him and Tom Cruise.
43:52
So let's just if we can analyze the emotional intelligence of both of those
43:54
guys. So obviously rain Man IQ was off the chart and and and he
44:00
had intelligence beyond intelligent. He was almost just basically a computer. He didn't
44:06
know how to apply that information very well. But then you had Tom Cruise's
44:12
character, forgot his name, but Tom Cruise's character, who was all emotional
44:15
intelligence. He knew how to hustle, he knew how to work the system,
44:19
he knew how to you know, but couldn't even come to close to
44:22
the intelligence or the capabilities of his brother. And one was very successful,
44:27
and one was sitting in a room somewhere watching was it Wheel of Fortune or
44:31
People's Court? People's Court? Thank you time for a time for cam Art
44:37
sucks. So that's a really, you know, really a good example of
44:45
adding emotional intelligence to your character. So someone like that, it gives you
44:47
a chance to to sort of play, because we all have areas that were
44:52
better or or weaker in right, you know, we're not all perfectly evolved.
44:58
But the good news is that emotional intelligence typically can grow. Right,
45:04
you can become more emotionally intelligent, whereas tragically, I hate to inform you,
45:08
like your IQ doesn't grow. You may become more knowledgeable, so you
45:13
can learn new things, but you can't become more intelligent. You become a
45:19
rocket scientist because I read a lot of rocket scientists books. I might read
45:23
it, but my mind is not built that way personally. I can't.
45:30
I'm not a science math dude. That's not worth yeah, yeah me.
45:34
And on the creative, on the marketing, on the artistic side, my
45:39
intelligence is a lot higher than in math. That's why my wife does the
45:44
math and I she tries to. She understood that years ago. Finally she
45:50
figured it out. She's like, why aren't you doing your own books.
45:52
I'm like, you don't want me, you don't want to know. I
45:55
once did a budget for a healthcare thing where I taped a penny to the
45:59
form because I could not figure out where it was right. So there are
46:04
you know, there's intelligence that you have, and there's just certain places.
46:07
But your emotional intelligence you can grow and there are tons of And this is
46:12
another piece of advice I would give to writers is check out your local self
46:15
help section of a bookstore, because there are so whatever your character is struggling
46:22
with. I guarantee you there's a self help book on that topic which will
46:25
give you lots of ideas to dig into. But there are a lot of
46:30
great books on emotional intelligence, and there are a lot of online tests that
46:34
you can give yourselves that are kind of give you some ideas of where you're
46:37
strong, so you know, answer them from your character's point of view and
46:40
figure out like is there some place where they're weak in emotional intelligence and they
46:47
have to grow in that area. So going back to Rainman and Tom Cruise,
46:52
Tom Cruise is really good at figuring out other people's emotions, right,
46:58
Like he can figure out and then how to manipulate them. Right. He's
47:01
really good at you know, all kinds of but one of this he's not
47:05
good is his own emotions, right, Like he doesn't cope with those,
47:08
and he can't deal with how he feels about his brother for a large and
47:13
that's actually what he has to do, and when he does that is when
47:15
he becomes a more complete person. So you can kind of push and again
47:21
there's whole books like, oh you want to get better at this aspect of
47:23
emotional intelligence, Well, here's things you can do so you can look and
47:28
figure out like, Okay, is there something that I can give a task,
47:31
something that can be happening to my character that's pushing them to grow in
47:35
that particular zone, right, And someone like Sherlock Holmes, for instance,
47:40
he didn't have very much emotional intelligence. If I remember the classic you know,
47:45
yeah, the Doors, he was pretty, he was pretty just kind
47:51
of like he was much more on the intelligence side, and he actually was
47:53
very awkward in social environments. He just was so beyond everybody else in the
47:59
room. He was so much smarter that he he was difficult. I mean,
48:05
I would not want to deal with a human being like that. And
48:07
I have dealt with certain people that are that kind of level of intelligence,
48:10
and it's really difficult. And they look at me like I'm an oddity because
48:15
I'm like, because I'm able to function very comfortably in a social environment and
48:20
an artistic and very abstract place. I live in the abstract where he lives
48:24
in a concrete One plus one equals too. But I say one plus one
48:30
is the beginning of the conversation. Let's get locked down into two, right.
48:37
I Mean, there isn't a lot of science that's gone into emotional intelligence.
48:39
It says, obviously you need a base level of a basic IQ.
48:45
But assuming that someone has a good basic level of IQ, the stronger they
48:49
are with the emotional intelligence, the more likely they are to be successful,
48:52
because the more likely they are to be able to interact with people, be
48:57
able to change how they interact depending with who they're dealing with, the more
49:05
likely they are to understand like, oh, I see this situation this way,
49:07
but it's possible I'm not seeing it accurately. There might be a different
49:10
perspective here. Those are all aspects of emotional intelligence, so they're good to
49:16
have, and they're fond to play with with a character. I wanted to
49:21
wanted to get your opinion on this because I actually in the book I wrote
49:25
was based on my time making a movie for the Mafia. That's a whole
49:30
other conversation. So I got to deal with at a young age, I
49:32
was dealing with these kind of characters. These creatu were real and I was
49:38
interacting with them. That you know, a mobster. Let's say there's a
49:42
gangster. They have fairly decent emotional intelligence in the sense of how to manipulate
49:49
people, how to read the room, how to move things around. Their
49:52
core intelligence. There essentially many of them, and any mobsters listening, it's
49:57
not all mobsters I'm talking about. We'll be right back after a word.
50:01
From our sponsor and now back to the show. But it's certainly not you,
50:10
mister mister. But but if you look at good fellows and stuff,
50:15
they're not bright, they're not super intelligent, they're very they're blunt instruments,
50:22
but they know how to work within their group and within their society emotionally,
50:30
because I mean, is there I mean, I guess Don Corleone, you
50:35
know as a as a as a gangster or a mobster had I mean Michael
50:42
was probably one of the more intelligent mobsters in cinema history essentially, Yeah,
50:46
you know, yeah, I mean there again the yeah, there's that,
50:50
there's that book smart, and there's when Rubber meets the Road smart. Right,
50:53
those are those are two different kinds of smarts. And in emotional intelligence,
50:58
obviously it can be used and can be manipulated, right, you know,
51:01
some of the arguments is that you know some aspects of emotional intelligence.
51:06
You know, people who are sociopathic are some of the stronger in those areas,
51:08
but not in others. So just for clarity, you know, there
51:13
are others that they will be weakened. But the more that you understand your
51:16
own emotions, how they make you feel, a lot of people confuse their
51:21
emotions like I would argue a lot of mobsters. And again, not you,
51:25
mister mobster. I'm sure you're very in touch with your emotional side.
51:30
But they will confuse things like and you know this is not necessarily a guy
51:35
thing in general, but it's not uncommon that a guy will confuse fear and
51:38
anger. So if someone is emotionally upset or scared, they will lash out.
51:45
So I used to work in the hospital system when I was working as
51:49
a counselor, so I worked with people with catastrophic injuries or illness. And
51:52
the first thing that you learn is that you get yelled at a lot,
51:57
and it's because people are scared. Right, So, you have your loved
52:00
one who's in a surgery. You know you're not sure if they're going to
52:04
come out, and someone will start screaming at you about how the hospital cafeteria
52:08
is supposed to have chocolate chip cookies and instead they have oatmeal raisins, and
52:14
raisins are lousy and no one likes raisins, and you know they'll be screaming,
52:17
and it's you have to know, like they're not actually Matt, they're
52:23
scared, they're really really scared, and they don't they cannot identify their own
52:29
emotion. And that's something really interesting in a character. If you can write
52:31
that into a character, that makes that character much more interesting, because you're
52:37
right, a lot of times it's not about the raisins. Yeah, it's
52:40
usually not about the raisins. It's generally something deeper. So it's just trying
52:45
to create those kind of layers to your character. Well, and I will
52:51
talk about placeholder conflict with people where I say it's what the conflict means to
52:55
me versus necessarily what it is. So a common married conflict is and I'm
53:05
divorced, so this may may say so many things, right, But like
53:07
someone who will leave their sock nuggets, their little sock balls, you know
53:12
when they rip them off the bottom of their feet, and they leave them
53:15
right next to the hamper, like not in the hamper which is open and
53:20
available to receive dirty laundry. Fairly large large ample much ample, much larger
53:27
than a basketball net. Yes, this is a copious Like there is space
53:30
for that sock, right, and they will take it off and they'll just
53:35
leave it laying there like this sad or a GOMMI my nugget my daughter.
53:39
Right. Yes, if someone is yelling at you about that, it's usually
53:45
not about the effort that it takes to pick up the sock and put it
53:49
in a hamper. It's about I feel like you you think this is my
53:53
job? Do you think I'm the maid? You'd like you so cam'py,
53:59
but or you don't about our space, because if you cared about our space,
54:02
you would want it to look nice. You wouldn't leave your socks out,
54:05
you wouldn't put a dish by the sink instead of in the dishwasher.
54:08
Where to the other person, it's like they just don't care, right,
54:13
Like socks on the floor is just like well, I might want to wear
54:15
it again tomorrow, Like I'm just leaving it where it's comfortably accessible to me.
54:22
And speaking from someone who's been married now for for quite some time,
54:30
I find that I find that guys are it's just a sock. It's at
54:36
the end of the day, it's just a sock. I'm sorry. But
54:40
on the other side of the fence, they are much more about Oh it
54:45
means so everything you just said. Yes, this is where men are,
54:50
like this is suddenly a marriage helped self help think, dude, it's not
54:53
about the sock, and is I learned that a long time ago, So
54:58
not about the sock. The sock is a placeholder for something else. So
55:02
sometimes asking yourself, you know, what is it that your character is really
55:07
angry about, and they may not be able to articulate it, like they
55:10
may say it's about the fact that I've asked five thousand times to throw the
55:14
sock in the hamper and they just don't do it. So he's not listening
55:17
to me, right, But if you really dig down, like does it
55:20
matter if the sock is on the floor, and it's like, well,
55:22
yeah, it matters to me because of this and you know, my idea
55:25
of what it means to be a wife, or what our house should look
55:29
like, the division of labor, all of this kind of stuff, Right,
55:34
it goes I don't feel like I'm a feminist now because I picked up
55:37
his socks and now I've let down womanhood. Right, So there's a lot
55:42
that is in that sock. And that's for guys. You're still like,
55:46
it's a suck, right, Sorry, I didn't know it was just the
55:51
sock. I'll put the sock in the I'm sorry. Well, and then
55:53
it becomes a placeholder conflict because it's like she won't let up about the sock,
55:58
Like there's all this other stuff going on, and she's going to pick
56:00
on me about this stuff. And then it gets into now I feel like
56:04
you're acting like my mom, and you're saying that I can't be a man
56:07
and put my socks where I want to put my socks. Like I work
56:09
eighty hours a week, I'm going to put my socks. I want to
56:12
put my dang socks. You're not the mom of me, right, So,
56:15
all of a sudden, you're fighting about stuff. It's so not the
56:20
sock, it's not. But when you're writing scenes, think about that stuff,
56:24
right, Like, spend some time and ask yourself, like what can
56:28
I have them fighting about? And then what is it really about? What
56:31
is that a placeholder for? Yes? Without question? Let me ask you
56:37
a quick Do you do you write backstories on your characters? Oh? Yes,
56:43
I wrote a whole book on writing h impact, So then that's a
56:47
hard Yes. That's so because I know a lot of people when they write,
56:52
they just write that kind of you know, when they're writing a character,
56:55
they just kind of do a little bit of research on them or or
56:59
they kind of develop a little backstory on it. But then I've heard who
57:02
was I talking to? Oh, no, it was I was watching the
57:05
Ship's Creek documentary because I just finished watching all of Shit's Creek. But by
57:09
the way, one of the greatest shows ever. Uh, and they were
57:14
talking about it is Canadian. It is a Canadian show. But then there
57:20
was I think it was Levy, Eugene Levy. When his son came in
57:24
to start writing with him, Eugene Levey just kept pounding him. I'm like,
57:28
no, We're going to write a book on each of these characters,
57:30
so like and that's where a lot of their strong all all of his work
57:36
throughout his Best of Show and the stuff he did with Christopher Guests. All
57:38
those characters are so rich and so deep. Is because they just spent weeks
57:45
just writing backstory that will never see the screen, but you can just sense
57:50
it. So what's your advice on creating backstory for your characters? Well,
57:52
first off, I want to talk about why I think it's so important.
57:54
So again I'm putting my counseling hat back on, which is who we are
58:01
is an accumulation of all the things that have happened to us, and then
58:07
the story that we tell ourselves about what happened to us. Right, so
58:10
we tell ourselves a story to make sense of what happened. So you could
58:15
be adopted and tell yourself the story that I was never wanted, and then
58:22
how you go through the rest of your life, the choices that make the
58:24
relationships you have will be based on that story that you tell yourself, which
58:30
is I am someone that people don't want. You could be adopted and say
58:34
to yourself, I'm so good that unlike you who just came shooting out of
58:37
your mother, My mother chose me, she chose to adopt me, She
58:44
went through effort and all this stuff to have me, and then that is
58:47
going to shape who you are. Michael Hay, who's a screenwriter, talks
58:52
about what's the whole in your character's soul, which is fun to say if
58:58
you've been drinking, which is you know what happened to them? That sort
59:01
of shapes who they are. So the easiest way to get about this that
59:07
I think, which is a trick, not a trick, a tool that
59:09
I used with real people but I do with imaginary characters, is just a
59:15
basic timeline. So you're going to draw a dot on one side of the
59:19
page and you're going to say birth. And then you're going to draw a
59:22
dot on the other side of the page and you're going to say page one
59:23
of your screenplay or s page one of your book. And I just want
59:28
you to make a timeline or what are the major events that that character had
59:32
in their life between birth and when the book opens. And if it was
59:38
a positive event you listed above the line, it was a negative event,
59:44
I have people list it below the line. Then as a counselor what I'm
59:49
interested in is where do people list things and what do they see as important.
59:55
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
1:00:02
to the show. So, for example, I've seen divorce listed above the
1:00:07
line, right and below the line, and it's a story you tell like
1:00:13
I'm so happy, I'm free. Oh my god, they left me.
1:00:15
It was the best thing, Like I had to grow as a person.
1:00:17
I needed to do this, you know, this was the most important thing
1:00:22
to happen to me. Anything can be above or below the line in a
1:00:27
lot of ways, because it is the story that you tell yourself about the
1:00:30
event and the example that I give, which is a real person. It
1:00:32
was a client that I worked with, a young man. He was a
1:00:37
roofer in his early twenties. He tripped, stumbled, and basically fell into
1:00:43
hot tar, which is really really bad if you know much about burns.
1:00:49
Burns continue even after you remove from the heat source, and of course the
1:00:52
problem with tar is that you can't full away from the heat source. It
1:00:57
sticks to you. So he was an excruciating agony, so much so that
1:01:02
he ran off the roof, snapping the safety line. He fell four stories
1:01:08
where he was impaled on a wrought iron fence that surrounded the building site.
1:01:16
So he had massive and I cannot underscore massive internal injuries, orthopedic injuries,
1:01:23
soft tissue injuries, on top of having a third degree burns over a significant
1:01:30
part of his body, including part of his face. And I won't go
1:01:34
too details, but burn rehab is one of the worst things to go through.
1:01:38
And when I met him was when he was still in the burn unit
1:01:43
and we were doing this exercise and I was asking him and he listed the
1:01:47
accident above the line, and I had a moment where I left and I
1:01:54
thought that poor blighter's got a head injury too, like somebody get a neuroge.
1:02:00
I saw that. Think he hit his head on the way down.
1:02:00
Obviously he's not right in the head. It's not right. And I said
1:02:05
to him, like, I gotta ask you, why would you lift the
1:02:07
accent above the line? And he said, I'm twenty six years old and
1:02:13
I now know who I can really count on in this life. Do you
1:02:15
know how many people go their whole life and never know that? Holy wow,
1:02:22
what a deep answer what I found answer? And I was like just
1:02:29
so struck by that. And he was like I survived, Like what can
1:02:34
someone do to me? Now? How can I be scared of public speaking?
1:02:37
When I fell off a roof and I impaled myself when I got up
1:02:42
right like nothing, Like, who's gonna stop me now? Right? Like
1:02:45
he's like to know that and to like basically have the worst thing that could
1:02:51
ever happen, And I'm gonna move on. And I just remember when I
1:02:54
left that room, it was like this dude is gonna be fine. Yah,
1:03:00
like you were saying, it's the story he told himself, because that
1:03:02
could have been the below the line, Like my life is over look at
1:03:06
me. What happened? I met again, because I worked in the high
1:03:08
met a lot of people who had really minor what we'd call injuries, and
1:03:13
it would be like, it's over, I can't this, I can't that.
1:03:15
So for me, it's not what's happened to you. It's not the
1:03:19
backstory in terms of, oh, I'm going to have that my character,
1:03:22
you know, survived a plane crash, or I'm going to give my character
1:03:27
a backstory if they were raised in the foster care system. It's not what
1:03:30
happened to them. It's what's the story they tell themselves about what happened to
1:03:37
them that is going to change how they will react throughout your entire story.
1:03:44
That is that is profound because I just it's deep, because I just I
1:03:51
literally just finished watching Shit's Creak the whole. I binged the entire series in
1:03:54
like a couple of weeks because it's amazing. But when you see those characters,
1:03:59
and by the way, if no one seeing it's on Netflix, watch
1:04:00
it. Now. Those characters, the story that they tell themselves that they
1:04:05
they they're you know, hundreds of millions of multimillionaires and all their money is
1:04:10
gone and now they're stuck in this little town call Shit's Creek and they're used
1:04:15
to hanging out with Oprah and you know, Tiger Woods and all these other
1:04:19
people, and now they're in a motel and their whole life in their mind,
1:04:26
the story that they've told themselves this my life is over. While people
1:04:29
who live in the town they're like, what are you ridiculous? I've been
1:04:31
living here all my life. I'm fine, I'm happy. Like you're like
1:04:35
freaking out because you you know, don't have room services. But it's the
1:04:39
story they tell because other people will look at that situation and you're like,
1:04:43
oh, well, you know, it's only up from here, which is
1:04:45
something that happens to those characters. They all start to change their story right
1:04:51
at the end. They're like, I don't want to go. I don't
1:04:55
want to leave, sort of you know, spoiler alert, but Gena speaking
1:04:59
didn't see that kind of yeah, and not to give you details, but
1:05:02
generally, like some of the characters just just don't want to go. When
1:05:04
given the option even to go back to their old life, they choose no.
1:05:10
I like this this is real to me. And that's so that's also
1:05:15
profound, Like as a character. There's a great nonfiction book called Atomic habits
1:05:21
and I can't remember. Yeah, great book, I can't remember who wrote
1:05:25
it, but a really smart guy. And you know, one of the
1:05:27
things that he talks about is like, if you want to change the habit
1:05:30
that you have, you have to change your self concept and story, right,
1:05:34
And that's part of it as well. You have to change the backstory
1:05:36
that you tell yourself. So if you say, like I hate exercise,
1:05:41
I hate working out, like for a while, you know, I'm no
1:05:45
good at that kind of stuff, I'm not fit all that kind of stuff.
1:05:47
For a while, you can force yourself to change the action. You
1:05:50
can make yourself get up and all that kind of stuff. But if you
1:05:54
can find a way to change the concept of like I'm someone who like you
1:06:00
know, I mean don't like you know, sports or whatever, but I
1:06:02
like to move, I'm a strong person, I'm a flexible person, then
1:06:05
your actions will start to match that. So real people, like our characters
1:06:12
are just reflections of real people. So you want to ask yourself, what's
1:06:17
the story they tell themselves about what happened. So again it's not I think
1:06:20
people get caught up in backstory and they see all these exercise like what are
1:06:25
the five things that your character always has and there refrigerator, you know,
1:06:29
and people will be like blah blah blah, like, well, I don't
1:06:30
care, right unless there's something about that, right, Like, what does
1:06:36
that tell me about them in terms of how they see themselves? What's important
1:06:41
to them? That's what's interesting, because that's what's going to change what they
1:06:45
do in other parts of their lives. Fair Enough, And I'm going to
1:06:48
ask you a few questions. Ask all my guests, what is the lesson
1:06:51
that took you the longest to learn, whether in writing or in life.
1:06:58
Oh, I think the biggest thing that I learned is that I don't actually
1:07:03
care what the rest of you think nearly as much as I thought that I
1:07:06
did. So part of that was the assumption that everybody else was very concerned
1:07:13
about me and watching me and paying attention to me. And you have this
1:07:15
realization like no one actually cared, do you know what I mean? Like
1:07:20
you look back at high school and it was like, oh God, like
1:07:23
did anyone know this? Right? And I was like, nobody was paying
1:07:27
any attention to you at all. And then it's also occurred to me that
1:07:30
there's a lot smaller circle of people that I care about their opinion, and
1:07:33
so I respect their opinions and everyone else. They all have one right.
1:07:38
If you write a book, you can look up any book, and I
1:07:40
always have new authors do this. Look up any book, or look up
1:07:44
any film. The you know, the film where you're like, this is
1:07:45
the best movie ever made. There'll be someone who'd be like, nah,
1:07:49
Casablanca didn't like it. I always tell writers, like, if you feel
1:07:55
if you're feeling bad after a review or something like that, or filmmakers,
1:07:58
I go, I'd been bad review Shasha Ank Redemption, Yeah, Star Wars,
1:08:03
bad review, Godfather, like you just and I've read them and they're
1:08:08
hilarious to read. There's always someone who's not going to like it, and
1:08:11
it's like I can worry about that person, or I can worry about the
1:08:14
people that matter. So fair enough. Now, what did you learn from
1:08:17
your biggest failure that I can survive? I think, which again is one
1:08:26
of those life lessons of you can get back up in most cases. What
1:08:30
was the biggest fear you ever had to overcome when writing your first anything?
1:08:36
I think the biggest fear was, which is a truth, which is what
1:08:40
is on the page is never as good as what's in your head. It
1:08:43
goes through some sort of ugly metamorphois from like this brilliant idea in your brain
1:08:48
to this like Misshape and creature on the page, and that you have to
1:08:53
work with that, that you have to accept that you got to fix it.
1:08:58
It doesn't come out pretty. There's sludge. There's sludge on it.
1:09:01
There's a lot of sludge. And three of your favorite films of all time,
1:09:08
well, shosh Ank Redemption would definitely be right on up there after My
1:09:13
Own Heart, also based on a great short story. So I'm going to
1:09:17
give that all can't go wrong with that. I always watch Apollo thirteen.
1:09:23
That's probably one of my if I'm going to watch like, you know,
1:09:27
a tried and true and I love old class I love the Thin Band movies,
1:09:32
the sin Bad movies, the Old Man Thin Man movie. Yeah yeah,
1:09:36
yeah, I remember those. Yeah. So I love I like an
1:09:40
old classic noir kind of thing, So that would be on there as well.
1:09:45
Very good mix. And where can people find out more about you and
1:09:47
which you and the work you do. Probably the easiest place to find me
1:09:51
is Eileencook dot com. But I'm on Twitter as Eileen cook writer and I
1:09:56
usually have an opinion on something, so you can find me there nice and
1:10:00
and if you're interested in being a writer, I'm on the Creative Academy for
1:10:04
Writers dot com and that's an online writing group. It's free, so it
1:10:09
doesn't cost you anything to join. We have forums for screenwriting. We have
1:10:13
forums for all different kinds of genres and all those kinds of fun things.
1:10:15
We have a good time. We must have you back to talk in depth
1:10:19
about character, even more than any time. As you can tell, I'll
1:10:23
just keep talking if you don't shut me up. I appreciate your time.
1:10:27
Thank you so much for being on the show, you Bett, thank you.
1:10:30
I want to thank Eileen for coming on the show and showing us how
1:10:34
to create conflict with our stories and character. Thank you so much, Eileen.
1:10:39
If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
1:10:42
including how to get her amazing book Creating story Conflict, head over to
1:10:46
the show notes at any film also dot com Forward Slash seven twenty nine,
1:10:51
and if you haven't already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com.
1:10:56
Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out
1:11:00
a lot guys. Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As
1:11:02
always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out
1:11:06
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