31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Dr. No

A government man named Strangways is killed and carted away in Jamaica, and the word goes out for James Bond, who is playing Chemin de Fer at his club. He flirts with a girl and asks her name. She says, “Trench, Sylvia Trench.” Mimicking her, he calls himself, “Bond, James Bond”, just as he lights his cigarette. They flirt and make a date for the next day, then Bond is called into the office. Bond’s boss M gives him the job to find Strangways. Bond returns home to find Sylvia in his apartment. He tells her he has to go but agrees to stay a bit longer. 

Why Bond might be hard to identify with: At the casino, Bond is playing a game with no element of skill and winning through sheer luck, and indeed throughout the series he will be a pretty terrible spy that relies on luck a lot (You’re not supposed to tell everybody your real name!)

Believe

• He has strange but consistent habits. He’s called into the work in the middle of the night and casually strolls in in a tuxedo, saying, “Good evening.” His boss responds, “It happens to be 3 AM, 007, when do you sleep?” “Never on the firm’s time, Sir.”
• He’s a man of particular tastes, including in guns.

Care

• His boss likes to cut him down to size.
• He’s given a mission that will mean he’ll have to cancel his assignation, then he has his manhood taken away from him in another way: An armorer comes in and M says to Bond: “Take off your jacket, give me your gun. Yes, I thought so, this damn Beretta again, I’ve told you about this before.” Then the armorer says, “It’s nice and light …in a lady’s handbag. No stopping power.” Instead, he’s given a Walther because, “The American CIA swear by them.” Bond doesn’t like to defer to American tastes. It’s a humiliation.
• M even tells him he’s not allowed to flirt with his secretary Moneypenny on the way out.

Invest

• We just look at his back and hands for a while, including showing him playing two winning hands at the card game. We don’t actually get to see his face until he says his famous line. That always fascinates us.
• Somehow Connery seems like the epitome of both English class and rough Scottish manliness at the same time. Nobody has ever figured out how he did that.
• He’s good at flirting: “Tell me, Miss Trench, do you play any other games?”
• Moneypenny also wants to sleep with him. “What gives?” “Me, given an ounce of encouragement.”
• M tells us he has a license to kill.
• I’ve stopped talking about rising above one’s job, but Bond will, not for the last time, do it literally. Trench is waiting for him in his hotel room in just a shirt and high heels. “You picked the wrong moment. I have to leave immediately.” “Oh, that’s too bad, just as things were getting interesting again. [kisses him] When did you say you had to leave?” “Immediately. [she kisses him again] …Almost immediately.” We then get a classic Bond cross dissolve to the next scene, and we all know what that means.

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: American Hustle

In 1978, we meet Mel as he’s deeply in trouble, running some sort of sting operation for the FBI, under threat of prosecution himself. We then flashback to his childhood, when he would break windows to help his father’s glass business. We then jump ahead to when he meets the love of his life (and partner in crime) Sydney. 

Why Mel might be hard to identify with: Sydney says why she wasn’t attracted to him at first, and we agree: “He wasn’t necessarily in good shape and he had this combover that was rather …elaborate...” 

Believe

• We start with a specific time and place: “April 28, 1978, Plaza Hotel, New York”
• A classic “I understand you” moment with his love interest: She’s wearing a charm bracelet with pictures of Duke Ellington. “Is that Duke Ellington on your bracelet?” “Yeah, as a matter of fact it is.  He died this year, y’know?” “I know. I doubt anyone else here knows or cares about it.” “Well, I care about it, he saved my life many times.” “Mine, too.” 
• We begin by lingering over Mel’s elaborate comb-over and toupee ritual, which is fascinating…

Care

• …then Mel gets in a fight with his FBI handler, who decides to escalate things by messing up Mel’s hair. Hurt your hero in a way that would only hurt your hero.
• As his modern day situation falls apart (with the implied threat of jail if he can’t fix it), he leads us back into the past by saying, “Did you ever have to find a way to survive, and you knew your choices were bad? I learned how to survive when I was a kid.” He’s been behind the eight ball his whole life.
• Victimizing parents earn sympathy for a hero’s bad behavior, but so do victimized parents: “I would rather be on the taking side than the getting taken side any day of the week, especially when I saw how my father got taken. I mean, seein’ that scarred me for life. I became a different type of guy from my father, I became a con artist.”

Invest

• We see young Mel throwing a rock through a window as he says, “My father had a glass business.” He’s always working some angle.
• Confidence is a superpower: Here’s Sydney’s full quote: “He wasn’t necessarily in good shape and he had this combover that was rather …elaborate, but he had this air about him, and he had this confidence that drew me to him. He was who he was. He didn’t care.”
• You can reveal a hero’s own qualities and values by having him compliment those things in others: “She was smart, she saw through people and situations. She knew how to live with passion and style. She understood Duke Ellington.”

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

When Malcolm is still in the womb, his mother holds off Klansman from burning down her house by showing off her pregnant belly. Malcolm is born and becomes one of eight children. His mother is a half-white West Indian, the product of rape. His father is a very black Georgia man who preaches for Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement. Eventually, a Klan-like group kills his father and leaves him on trolley tracks to be cut in half, and the family must find a way to survive. 

Why Malcolm might be hard to identify with: At the time the book came out, many readers, especially white readers but also some black readers, would have found him to be unreasonably angry and resentful, but today we’re all more realistic about acknowledging America’s longstanding race war, and the book is universally beloved.

Believe

• The bizarre murder-by-trolley, committed by men in black robes, not white, feels uniquely terrifying.
• He remembers lots of odd details from his childhood, like having his own garden before Kindergarten when he grew peas the family would eat.
• He uses lively language with personality: “The day was to come when our family was so poor that we would eat the hole out of a doughnut.”
• His father gives him a motto that will take on different meanings throughout the story: “Up, you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will!”

Care

• His family is the victim of constant racist violence from hate groups, culminating in the murder of his father, but the institutional indifference surrounding these events is almost more offensive to Malcolm. The firemen just sit around and watch their house burn down. The insurance company insists his father committed suicide, clubbing himself on the head then laying down on the trolley tracks.
• Casual use of the n-word surrounds young Malcolm, until he wonders if that’s his real name.
• Malcolm is also the victim of extremely ironic violence at home. His father beats all of the siblings except for Malcolm, because, despite his teachings of race pride, he unconsciously favors his whitest child. His mother, on the other hand, who hates being reminded of her rapist father, beats Malcolm the worst. Malcolm finds deep ironies like these everywhere.

Invest

• Malcolm already evidences lots of superpowers, most obviously his extreme intelligence and self-confidence, that will serve him throughout his life (and also endanger him constantly.)
• Malcolm’s whiter skin grants him greater access than anyone else in his world. Being his father’s favorite, only he is taken to the Marcus Garvey meetings. But his father’s superhuman strength also flows in his veins. (“His body was cut almost in half. He lived two and a half hours in that condition. Negroes then were stronger than they are now, especially Georgia Negroes. Negroes born in Georgia had to be strong simply to survive.”) Malcolm comes off as a kind of demi-god, astride so many worlds: Black and white, urban and rural, Christian and Muslim, prisoner and world leader, and many more.

Strength / Flaw (they’re not really flip sides here): Intelligence / Criminal inclinations (he keeps getting in trouble for shoplifting and other petty crimes, ending up in reform school.)

The Annotation Project: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Download this here!

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Superhero Week Concludes with Guardians of the Galaxy

We begin on Earth in 1988. Young Peter Quill watches his mom succumb to cancer, then gets sucked up into a spaceship. Then cut to 26 years later, where Peter is now “Star Lord” an intergalactic thief stealing an orb from a desolated planet. Killers led by a man named Korath come to stop him and he barely gets away.

Why Peter might be hard to identify with: Not much reason. He kicks some cute animals. When he’s crashing around in his ship, he forgets his one-night stand is in his sleeping quarters, but even that comes off as rogue-ishly charming.

Believe

• His Walkman with great songs we vaguely remember from the 70s/80s songs is a personal talisman that strongly bonds us to to him.
• Morag is a unique looking planet and he’s got a unique looking uniform.

Care

• He watches his mother die and he feels he’s being cowardly about it. He won’t take her hand, but regrets that when she dies
• He’s humiliated when Korath has never heard of Star Lord.

Invest

• He’s a space adventurer with super-cool gadgets, including boot jets.
• He dances to a great song on his Walkman while he works. He’s clearly not as cool as he thinks he is, but he’s still pretty cool.
• He handles himself pretty well in the fight.

31 Days of Believe Care Invest, Superhero Week: Captain America

Young Steve Rogers tries to sign up for the army but gets rejected because he’s too puny. His friend Bucky takes on a double date to a World’s Fair, where he tries to enlist again. A German-American scientist is impressed by his determination and reclassifies him 1A. 

Why Steve might be hard to identify with: He’s a bit of a sad sack…

Believe

• …but he does still have a personality with his friend Bucky. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.” “How can I, you’re taking all the stupid with you.”
• He has a catchphrase, “I can do this all day,” which will be twisted ironically a few times in the next 18 movies.
• He has a philosophy. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies, no matter where they’re from.”

Care

• His father died of mustard gas in the 107th infantry. His mother died from being a nurse in a TB ward.
• He’s 4F due to asthma and other frailties. All he wants is to serve, but he’s not allowed.
• He gets beaten up in an alley for standing up to someone who heckles a newsreel.
• His blind date takes no interest in him.
• He can’t compete physically in boot camp, and he’s sabotaged by his fellow troops, who mock him.

Invest

• We see two papers with war headlines, one paper closes and the fit guy who was reading it says “A lot of guys being killed over there, kinda makes you think twice about enlisting, huh?” The other paper closes and a puny guy says “Nope!” That’s our hero.
• We find out he’s been lying on his enlistment forms to try to get inducted.
• He figures out how to get a flag off its flagpole when no one else can, which impresses the girl.
• The general pretends to throw a life grenade into a group of soldiers. Everybody runs for cover but Steve jumps on it to protect everyone else.
• So we’re already thoroughly invested in the guy before he actually gets superpowers.

Strength/flaw: Determined / deluded (but it turns out he’s not really deluded about his chances, so he doesn’t really have a character flaw)

31 Days of Believe Care Invest, Superhero Week: Batman Begins

Bruce Wayne dreams/remembers being a boy, falling into an abandoned well on his estate, and landing into a cave where he’s attacked by bats. He wakes up in an Asian prison camp where everybody wants to kill him. A man named Ducard comes to him and tells him that Ra’s Al Ghul can help him find what he’s looking for. After he goes to Ra’s Al Ghul, he flashes back to his parents being killed, then begins his ninja training. 

Why Bruce might be hard to identify with: We can guess from the intro that he’s really rich. We then see that he’s chosen a life of beating up people of a different race than himself, which is, y’know, problematic.

Believe

• He’s got a motto: “I seek the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.”
• He remembers getting another motto from his father, “Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
• He gains entrance to Ra’s Al Ghul’s world using a specific object, a blue flower he had to track down.

Care

• We begin with Bruce being traumatized by being attacked by bats as a boy.
• Someone is his prison camp then tries to kill him.
• Ducard diagnoses his existential crisis: “You have become truly lost.”
• In this version, his parents die because Bruce got scared and asked to leave the opera early, making the whole thing far more painful. “It was my fault, Alfred, I made them leave the theater, if I hadn’t gotten scared…”

Invest

• The man who attacks him says, “You’re in hell, little man, and I am the devil.” Bruce responds, “You’re not the devil, you’re practice.” The guards throw him in a cell “for protection.” “I don’t need protection.” “Not for you, for them.”
• He then gets bad-ass ninja training, of course.

Strength / Flaw: Badass / Emotionally blocked

31 Days of Believe Care Invest, Superhero Week: Thor

Thor is about to be made king of Asgard when frost giants from Jotenheim attack. Thor leads a forbidden raid on Jotunheim but has to be saved by his father Odin, who strips him of his powers and hammer and banishes him to Earth. He is found by two scientists and an intern who try to figure out who he is. 

Why Thor might be hard to invest in: He might be too much of an arrogant asshole to be likeable, until his humiliation.  

Believe

• We don’t really fall in love with him until he throws his coffee mug against the ground in a New Mexico diner and shouts “Another!” as it shatters. That’s the moment that we realize his default personality trait is delightful. We’re suddenly looking forward to eight movies with this guy.
• This is not a generic fantasy world. It’s genuinely odd.
• He’s got a false philosophy: “When I’m king, I’ll hunt the giants down and slay them all.” It’s in conflict with the oath he must swear: “Do you swear to cast aside all selfish ambition?”
• There’s a joke about him not having a secret identity as Don Blake in this version. This will be a simpler version without some of the silliness of the comics. You might think he’d be more relatable if he occasionally transformed into a human, but I think part of the genius of this movie is that all it said on the poster was: “Thor: The God of Thunder” It’s a wild concept and they’re telling us that the price of admission is that we just have to accept it.
• He has friends, he has history, he’s got a unique way of talking.

Care

• He’s hard to care about at first until he endures a big, outsized humiliation, as his father banishes him to Earth: “That’s pride and vanity talking, not leadership. You’ve forgotten everything I’ve taught you, about a warrior’s patience. You’re a vain, greedy, cruel boy. I was a fool to think you were ready. You have betrayed the express command of your king through your arrogance and stupidity. You are unworthy. I cast you out.” He has his powers, cape and hammer ripped away from him and he’s sucked into a portal to earth.
• Once on Earth, it’s established that he can be knocked out by being tasered and by giving a shot. He’s not all powerful.

Invest

• He swings a big-ass hammer around. He’s the only superhero who has that weapon.
• He can fight giants and almost defeat them.

Strength/flaw: Brave / Arrogant

31 Days of Believe Care Invest, Superhero Week: Spider-Man

Dorky teen Peter Parker runs after his school bus after missing it. His crush Mary Jane gets the bus to stop, but sits with her jerky boyfriend Flash. Peter arrives at a college for a field trip, where his friend Harry Osborn is dropped off by his rich father Norman, who is impressed by Peter. They tour the university lab and Peter gets bit by a spider, then goes home to his aunt and uncle and heads quickly to bed. He wakes up super-strong. 

Why Peter might be hard to identify with: He’s a bit of a mopey sad sack. The main thing he wants is to hook up with the hot girl, which is easy enough to identify with, but also disappointedly unambitious.

Believe

• He avoids saying what he wouldn’t say. When Norman Osborn says “Your parents must be very proud of you,” he neither lies nor says “I’m an orphan.” He says, “I live with my aunt and uncle and they are proud.”
• His aunt and uncle talk like real people, not kindly old stereotypes. “Just don’t fall on your ass.” “I’m already on my ass, May.”

Care:

• We begin with him running after a school bus that refuses to stop for him, then he gets on and no one will let him sit with them. When he’s trying to meet his crush’s eye on the bus he gets tripped by a bully.
• The ultimate care moment. He thinks his crush is waving to him and waves back, but she was actually waving to her friends behind him, and when they catch up to her she points at Peter and tells them he waved back.
• His best friend uses his facts to hit on the girl he likes.
• He gets, y’know, bit by a spider, which seems to almost kill him.

Invest

• He’s super-smart, able to talk to Norman like a colleague. He’s a go-getter, taking pictures for the paper.
• He’s endearingly gung-ho. After he drops a science fact, Harry says, “Peter what would make you think I would want to know that?” Peter perkily responds “Who wouldn’t?”
• He wakes up with super-powers at 17 minutes in.

Strength / flaw: He doesn’t have much of a character strength. I guess gentle / mopey

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins is visited outside his hobbit hole by wandering wizard Gandalf, who is seeking an adventurer. Bilbo refuses the call, but reflexively invites Gandalf back for tea the next day while dismissing him. Gandalf shows up the next day with thirteen dwarves, who mightily abuse Bilbo’s hospitality and ultimately invite him to be their burglar as they attempt to dislodge a dragon from their historical kingdom. He refuses again, but when he finds them gone the next morning, he suddenly decides to accept after all and chases after them. 

Why Bilbo might be hard to identify with: He’s an unusual fantasy adventure hero to be sure. 50 years old, respectably middle class, content in his station, and desiring no adventure.

Believe

• He and his world have a unique look we’ve never seen before.
• He loves two breakfasts, lunch, tea time, two dinners, and several good smokes a day. He has no family, but he has a life he enjoys, which makes him feel like a real person.
• Our hero has two legacies (his mother’s family, the adventurous Tooks and his father’s family, the unadventurous Bagginses) and must choose between them, which is so much better than having a prophesy he must fulfill.
• It always makes heroes feel more real when they interrupt themselves while speaking, which in this case reveals much. When Bilbo talks about the adventures Gandalf used to bring to the village, he says, “Bless me, life used to be quite inter - I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time.”

Care

• It’s always good to hurt your hero in a way that would only hurt your hero, and they abuse something that is especially important to him: his hospitality.
• Nobody ever listens to him, which is a universal feeling.

Invest

• We can see that he certainly doesn’t have the skills he needs for this journey, not having the training nor inclination to be a burglar, but we can also see that he has a good head on his shoulders, handling his guests’ demands skillfully.
• Crucially, though this whole adventure shows up very much unbidden, they then leave him and he has to chase after them when he decides to commit after all. We can put up with passive heroes as long as they get a chance to definitively and voluntarily commit.

Strength / Flaw: Sensible / Unadventurous

The Annotation Project: The Hobbit

Download the file here! BCI tomorrow!

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Mean Girls

Hi, guys, so my book is due on March 1st, and I’ve decided I need a ton more examples. (I’m reading my previous book to my daughter and it turns out that I’ve already talked about Silence of the Lambs and Sideways a lot.) So I’m going do a bunch of checklist-free movies, and some books with just an Annotation and a BCI. And no more E’s. Here we go: 

16 year old Kady Heron has been home-schooled in Africa and is only now going to an actual high school in America for the first time. She finds the experience humiliating. She eventually becomes friends with two “art freaks”, but also gets invited to sit with queen-bee girls called “the plastics”. The art freaks convince her to go undercover with the plastics are report back to them about how weird they are.

Why Kady Might Be Hard to Identify With: She says right away, “I know what you’re thinking, homeschool kids are freaks, or that we’re weirdly religious or something.”

Believe

• A white girl from Africa is unique. Her description of other homeschooled students proves that she’s self-aware. 
• We’d never seen a high school movie with openly gay student that was no big deal, or frankly described groups like “Asian nerds, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything”, etc.

Care

• She doesn’t know anyone at high school. It looks scary with people burning things in the front lawn. She says hi to a tall student thinking it’s the teacher, and the girl then threatens to beat her up. She bumps into the teacher spilling coffee all over her. She’s baffled that a teacher doesn’t allow her to use the bathroom. She’s not invited to sit anywhere in lunchroom at first and ends up eating lunch alone in a bathroom stall.
• When she then makes her first friends, she ends up in a classic bind: “I know it’s wrong to skip class, but Janice said we were friends, and I was in no position to pass up friends.”
• She’s not allowed to be interested in the guy she likes because Regina used to go out with him, “Ex-boyfriends are off-limits to friends. That’s just like, the rules of feminism.”

Invest

• She feels like an outcast, but she quickly realizes she doesn’t have to be. Her new gay friend tells her she’s “a regulation hottie” that can sit wherever she wants, which proves to be true.
• Her anthropological eye gives her a unique POV. She becomes a double agent for the art freaks spying on the plastics.
• She’s really smart. She becomes a mathlete. 

Strength/flaw: Booksmart / Not socialized

Believe Care Invest: Killing Floor

Why Jack might be hard to identify with: He’s a Republican homeless drifter. Who can identify with that? 

Believe

• It’s tricky because he doesn’t have a life: He’s just drifted into town, seemingly for no reason. No job, no friends, no history he wants to talk about. So he doesn’t have much life for us to believe in, but he has a very consistent voice, plainspoken with a lot of periods, and a very unique way of looking at the world.
• I mean, it’s very tricky that a tweedy Thatcher-hating BBC writer with no military or police background (who’s never lived in America) can one day choose to write about a badass Clinton-hating American military-policeman-turned-drifter (who’s never lived in England). And Child insists he does no research! It’s really remarkable that he’s created a believable voice, but it’s totally convincing. He has really channeled this guy, seemingly out of the ether.

Care

• The first paragraph is “I was arrested in Eno’s diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.” We can tell he’s being falsely arrested, and there’s no bigger humiliation than that.

Invest

• We love what he can see, and what he knows. As he’s being arrested, he notes: “The guy with the revolver stayed at the door. He went into a crouch and pointed the weapon two-handed. At my head. The guy with the shotgun approached close. These were fit lean boys. Neat and tidy. Textbook moves. The revolver at the door could cover the room with a degree of accuracy. The shotgun up close could splatter me all over the window. The other way around would be a mistake. The revolver could miss in a close-quarters struggle and a long-range shotgun blast from the door would kill the arresting officer and the old guy in the rear booth as well as me. So far, they were doing it right.”
• But then they make a mistake and Jack convinces us he could turn the tables, but he’s too smart to do so: “The guy with the shotgun came closer. Too close. Their first error. If I had to, I might have lunged for the shotgun barrel and forced it up. A blast into the ceiling perhaps and an elbow into the policeman’s face and the shotgun could have been mine. The guy with the revolver had narrowed his angle and couldn’t risk hitting his partner. It could have ended badly for them. But I just sat there, hands raised.” We believe him.
• As he’s being arrested, he tips the waitress, so we know he’s a good guy. (And he does so in a very manly way: “I crammed egg into my mouth and trapped a five under the plate.”  Lots of cramming and trapping in this book!)
• He gives us lots of news we can use has he describes his arrest. Number one: Never say anything at all, not even to acknowledge your rights. “Again I didn’t respond. Long experience had taught me that absolute silence is the best way. Say something, and it can be misheard. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. It can get you convicted. It can get you killed.”

Believe Care Invest: Gone Girl

Fun fact: There are two of my books that I never did BCI for! Here’s the first one! 

Why Nick might be hard to identify with: We’re invited in this first chapter to assume that he’s killed his wife. By the time we’ve found otherwise, we’ve got lots more reasons to dislike him, such as the fact that he cheated on her.

Believe

• Sure he’s creepy, but he’s creepy in oddly specific ways. Here’s the opening paragraph: “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily.” He’s a thoroughly convincing creep, because he notices things non-creeps just don’t notice.

Care

• “At that exact moment, 6-0-0, the sun climbed over the skyline of oaks, revealing its full summer angry-God self. Its reflection flared across the river toward our house, a long, blaring finger aimed at me through our frail bedroom curtains. Accusing: You have been seen. You will be seen.”
• He feels guilty about everything. He has been seen, and will be seen, which turns out to be prophetic, as he will be the subject of national scrutiny shortly.
• He’s in a bad marriage: “One of us was always angry. Amy, usually.”
• He’s lost all to the modern world: “Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet. I used to be a writer. I was a writer who wrote about TV and movies and books. Back when people read things on paper, back when anyone cared about what I thought. … I had a job for eleven years and then I didn’t, it was that fast. All around the country, magazines began shuttering, succumbing to a sudden infection brought on by the busted economy.” Flynn used to write for Entertainment Weekly, so she’s mining her real-life experience for pain she went through and gifting that pain to her character so that he will be more sympathetic to us

Invest

• He moves home (supposedly) to take care of his mom. He says to his twin sister Margo, “I’ll come back, Go. We’ll move back home. You shouldn’t have to do this all by yourself.”

Why Amy might be hard to identify with: She seems a little dippy, and unliberated.

Believe

• Crucially, we don’t hear her speak in modern day, Nick just sums up their brief morning conversation without quoting her, so modern-day Amy is not real to us yet. If we’d heard her talk there, and she was well-characterized, and then we jumped back to the diary, we might have been able to guess that the diary was fake.
• Once we arrive at the diary, we get a totally different voice from Nick, with exclamation points and nonsense words: “Tra and la! I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this. I am embarrassed at how happy I am, like some Technicolor comic of a teenage girl talking on the phone with my hair in a ponytail, the bubble above my head saying: I met a boy!” This is also a thoroughly convincing voice, partially because it is so different from Nick’s.

Care

• We’ve sensed from the title, from Nick’s creepiness, and from the words “The Day Of” that she’s going to disappear in the present day.
• In her diary from five years earlier, she’s embarrassed that she’s surrounded by “real” writers, but she just writes quizzes for women’s magazines.

Invest

• But then she points out that she actually can write: She says in parentheses: “(Adopted-orphan smile, I mean, that’s not bad, come on.)”
• Indeed, she has good observations: “Carmen, a newish friend – semi-friend, barely friend, the kind of friend you can’t cancel on – has talked me into going out to Brooklyn” She’s perceptive in a totally different way than Nick. She’s emotionally and sociologically perceptive, he’s physically and economically perceptive.

TV Checklist Spreadsheet!

The hits keep on coming! Last week, I shared a massive spreadsheet of all of the Ultimate Story Checklists I’d done for movies. That was an update of an old one, but I’ve never done one for the TV checklists, so here it is making its big debut! This one was especially hard to do, because the checklist has changed gradually over the years and I never went back and updated the old ones, so this was a massive pain. I hope you enjoy it! 

Download it here!

UPDATE: I alternate colors for the different sections of the checklist now. 

Reviews Are Always Appreciated!

Hi, has my book/audiobook or the podcast been helpful to you? If you haven’t done so, and if you have a few minutes, could I ask you to review the book and/or podcast in these places? (Preferably, with, y’know, five stars, which is just a handsome number of stars) 

Of course, it’s always important to get lots of Amazon reviews. (Scroll down and click Write a Customer Review)

Maybe you like my audiobook? You can review the book on Audible. (Click on “More options”)

And hey, what about the podcast? You can like and review us on iTunes. (I don’t see how you can do it here, but you can do it by searching for The Secrets of Story Podcast in the iTunes store, then clicking on Ratings and Reviews)

Or you can review the podcast on Audible! We don’t have any reviews there yet. (Once again, click on “More Options”)

Thank you all so much for your support throughout the years.  The book and audiobooks make great Christmas gifts!  The podcast, alas, makes for a crappy Christmas gift because it’s free.  

It’s All Built to This

UPDATED: I realized The Fugitive wasn’t on there!  And I added alternate colors for different sections of the checklist. 

Hi guys. Many years ago, I tried collating all my existing checklists into an Excel spreadsheet, but it was sort of slapdash. Since then I’ve shortened and finalized the checklist and analyzed a lot more movies, and I’ve needed a better resource for writing my book, so hoo-boy, folks, I finally did it for real. 

It’s all come to this. This things really works beautifully. Did our recent Head-Heart-Gut podcast leave you wondering how it works in more examples? Just download this checklist and scroll down to Head-Heart-Gut and you’ll have 29 examples all lined up in a row. It’s a beautiful thing. I know I’ll find it useful and I hope you do too.

Episode 24: Agency with Parker Peevyhouse

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Episode 24: Agency with Parker Peevyhouse

Parker Peevyhouse returns to discuss when a character should break their own rules, which results in discussion of The Mandalorian, Knives Out, and whether superhero movies suck. Check out this blog post we cite a few times.

Believe Care Invest: Weeds

Why Nancy might be hard to identify with: 

• She realizes the teen she’s dealing to is dealing to 10 year olds, then, to get him to stop, threatens to reveal that he’s gay.

Believe

• She’s hypocritical, saying to the PTA that they should ban sugary drinks from the school vending machines, but indirectly dealing drugs to them. You might think we wouldn’t, but we actually identify with like hypocritical characters.
• The way she talks about race with her black suppliers feels refreshingly real.

Care

• Her husband just dropped dead and now she has to raise two kids.
• She’s cruelly gossiped about by the other PTA moms, “I think she got a little botie between the eyes”
• Nobody respects her. Her supplier Heylia says, “looking in the dictionary the other there, saw your picture sitting up in there, next to ‘dumb as white bitch’” Nancy responds, “Alright, alright, fine, I’m a bitch-ass bitch.”
• She finds out the teen she’s been dealing to has been dealing to 10 year olds and genuinely feels bad about that.

Invest

• She subtly trips the bully chasing her son.
• She’s resourceful in solving her problems, even if it’s distasteful.

Five Es

• Eat: She’s dieting, “I miss carbs”
• Exercise: No.
• Economic Activity: She’s a very active drug dealer.
• Enjoy: She enjoys snarking.
• Emulate: She wears an imitation bag to look like the richer housewives

Rise above

• She cracks down on her dealer for dealing to kids, so there’s some money she doesn’t want.

Kind

• She tries to keep Celia from fat-shaming her daughter.

Believe Care Invest: The Sopranos

Why Tony might be hard to identify with: 

• He’s clearly a psychopath.  We sense that, despite the self-pitying talk typical of psychopaths, he’s not really someone who deserves any sympathy. 

Believe

• He doesn’t admit what he does. He says he’s a “waste management consultant,” then helpfully adds, “The environment.” We see that his behavior is different from what he’s saying, which always makes people more believable.
• He’s fat, and he gets the paper in his robe, not exactly like the blinged-out gangsters we’re used to.
• His mom won’t answer the phone when it’s dark out, which feels delightfully real.
• He describes his attack in a unique way. “At first it felt like ginger ale in my skull.”

Care

• We would loathe him if he wasn’t suffering panic attacks that sent him into humiliating therapy.
• And of course he has an evil mother, which always makes evil characters likeable.
• Everyone disrespects him. Even his likeable behavior, like watching baby ducks try to fly, is looked down upon by his family.
• His malaise is universal: “Lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” Melfi responds, “Many Americans feel that way.”
• As he gets sucked into the MRI his wife tells him, “What’s different about you and me is that you’re going to hell when you die.”

Invest

• Originally Tony engaged in no violence and nobody liked the pilot, then Chase added the scene of Tony (with upbeat doo-wop music playing) running down someone with his car, and people loved him. He’s active and good at his job!
• “Who do you think you are?” “I’m the person who says how things go, that’s who I am!” We always like having a hero in charge.

Five Es

• Eat: They’re all eating all the time. When he finds out his grandma isn’t coming to his party, Tony’s son famously says, “No fucking ziti now?”
• Exercise: He sure gets active when he gets violent.
• Economic Activity: His life is his job.
• Enjoy: He loves the ducks. He loves running the guy down.
• Emulate: He wants to be like his father and feels he can’t. When he runs the guy over, he reveals the real reason for the violence: “You tell people I’m nothing compared to the people who used to run things??”

Rise above

• He decides to see a therapist for his mental (and physical) health, which isn’t allowed at his job, to put it mildly.
• He puts his professional relationships at risk to keep his friend’s business from being ruined.

Kind

• He’s doing a favor for Artie.