Black Swans

I'm reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It's an interesting analysis of why experts keep missing the big disasters -- Enron, the subprime mortgage crisis, the fall of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Shah. He argues that we are crap at predicting the future because we love narrative so much. We keep trying to fit the future into the story we've been living. The generals who fought Vietnam kept thinking they were still fighting the Korean War.

Think of a farmhouse turkey. According to his narrative, human beings are benevolent gods that provide an endless bounty of corn.

Then, one day, surprise!

(Until the 1700s, all swans known to the Western world were white. So bird experts knew that all swans are white. Then they discovered Australia, where there's an entire species of black swans. Surprise!)

We are so attracted to narrative because it provides a way to shrink the world's overflow of information into something that will fit inside our brains. We tell the story of how Og survived the tiger attack over and over, so that when we run into a tiger, we only have to remember the two or three things Og did.

I think human beings have evolved to appreciate narrative, in the same way that we have evolved to learn language. What is narrative, after all, but a kind of super-language, where stories, like words, are ways of encapsulating information? We are, I believe, hardwired to appreciate stories.

That's why I insist that you all know, instinctively, how to tell stories. And the more you tell a story, the better -- the more organic, the simpler -- it gets. What screws us all up is when we write a story down too soon, before we've had a chance to let our instinctive narrative talent work the material enough. If you tell your story over and over, you will naturally simplify it, to where the characters are the natural ones for the plot, and the ending is the most satisfying one for the premise, and every beat follows naturally from the one before. You have always had this muscle; you just need to exercise it.

What's Become of Alex?

You may have noticed I'm blogging a bit less, and shorter, lately.

I'm in the middle of a writing room. I have three weeks to break down episodes 4-10 of the pay cable series I'm developing. And rebuild the pilot better, stronger, faster.

It takes a lot out of you. This show in particular is part dysfunctional family drama, part metaphysical fantasy. Mixing mythology and reality is tough, especially within the limitations of TV. Too many monsters and you're hokey. Not enough monsters and you're not really delivering the goods. Every time you give someone a power, you have to make sure it's not something that will overwhelm the plot -- or would overwhelm the plot except you just keep ignoring it. (E.g.: if Superman can fly faster than the speed of light and go back in time ... why doesn't he do that every single time he's in a bind?) But if your characters have only minor powers, what makes them interesting?

It's a fine line. In THE SANDMAN comics, I manage to believe that Dream is an entity of unutterable power and knowledge and age... and he's got the hots for a human witch and gets upset when she no longer loves him. It feels right even though it seems inconsistent.

You're looking for the logic of a fable. There are a lot of great stories you could pick holes in. The trick is, I guess, something like prestidigitation. Don't look over here -- look over there! Sparkly!

How you actually do that is the surprisingly hard work of a story room.

The Three Most Important Things I Teach

Rabbi Hillel was asked to sum up the Torah while standing on one foot. "That which is hateful to you, don't do it to your neighbor," he said. "The rest is commentary."

Apropos yesterday's post, someone asked what the three most important things I teach are:

• The Hook
  
  You need a hook. See chapter one of CRAFTY SCREENWRITING, "The Hook."
  
  
• The Five Elements of Story
  
  According to page 43 of CRAFTY TV WRITING, a good story is:
  
  
  1. a hero we care about
     
  2. who has a compelling problem, an opportunity or goal
     
  3. who faces difficult obstacles and/or an antagonist
     
  4. if they succeed, they (or their world) will have something they didn't have (stakes)
     
  5. if they fail, they'll lose something precious to them (jeopardy)
  
  
  (Some stories have multiple heroes. Some stories have only jeopardy without stakes. YMMV.)
  
  A good screen story has these five elements, and can be told externally, through action and dialog,
  
  
• Pitch your story.

So now you know. Go forth, and don't irritate the neighbors.