The Secret to Writing Strong Themes

Today, I want to talk about writing strong themes, because there’s a lot of misunderstanding around the concept of theme (which is why I wrote the book Writing Your Story’s Theme). When we think of theme, we often think of a one-word or short phrase aphorism. For example, maybe the theme of the story is “love” or maybe it’s “overcoming a sense of unworthiness” or something like that. While that is very possibly what the story is about and what the theme is pointing to, that isn’t necessarily a good roadmap for helping you learn how to write strong themes. It’s valuable to look a little deeper and to understand how theme actually operates within a story, what its function is, and therefore how you can use the other elements of your story to consciously create the theme you want to create.

Can You Write Strong Themes “On Purpose”?

Writing Your Story’s Theme (Amazon affiliate link)

In the past, a common statement that has floated around the writing community is that “writers should never consciously write the theme.” There is some truth to this (which I’ll talk about in just a second), but ultimately, I adamantly disagree with this idea.

What this is really pointing to is the truth that writers never want to preach at their readers. You don’t want to try to start with some message you’re trying to share about the world and then shoehorn that into your characters’ mouths or their perspectives of the world and try to prove it through whatever is happening in the story. You don’t want to come into a story to prove, for example, some political statement. Readers don’t want that. It doesn’t work within the story because it isn’t organic or it doesn’t flow. It feels, even if the author isn’t actually preaching at you, that they’re trying to jam some specific moral message into a story that doesn’t fit.

However, I think this unfortunate effect most often happens simply because the writer has an idea of theme but doesn’t understand how it actually works within storyform. If you do understand how theme operates, you’re much less likely to end up with fragmented themes, in which your story is saying one thing while you’re trying to say something else with the theme. Likewise, you can also avoid the problem of getting to the end and realizing what you thought was your story’s theme doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what’s actually happening.

In either case, you can end up having either stories that seem very disjointed, or even two different endings that are trying to individually address the plot and the theme. This creates a story that doesn’t feel cohesive and resonant.

However, if you understand what you’re doing and how story creates them, then you can accomplish two things.

1. You can consciously create anything you want to create within the realm of your story.

2. Perhaps most importantly, you can double-check and troubleshoot what isn’t working. If you get to the end of the story and you feel your theme is off the rails or nonexistent, you can go back and check what happened by asking, “Where do I need to work with the story in order to make the theme more powerful and pertinent?”

What Is Theme, Really?

The most important thing to understand about theme is that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not its own thing within the story. It’s part of the greater whole. Specifically, it forms what I call “the trifecta” of plot, character, and theme. These three elements of story create each other; they do not exist by themselves in isolation. One necessarily creates the other.

We sometimes hear the idea of plot versus character, as if they were two totally separate things, when really they can’t be. The plot has to create the character, the character has to create the plot. Theme is the third part of that.

Here’s the thing: if you have a functional story that’s working, what that means is that all three of those things—plot, character, and theme—are working. Even if you’re not conscious of theme—even if you didn’t do it on purpose, so to speak—if all three are in cohesion with one another, that’s what you want. If you can bring consciousness to your administration of theme, then you can do it on purpose.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you come up with an idea for a plot. Necessarily, there must be characters in that plot. Although it may take a little time, as you flesh out that plot in your mind, you will begin to understand what kind of people are driving this plot. What kind of people are interested in going to the places and achieving the things that you want to see happen in this plot?

This works in reverse as well. If you start with an idea for a character, obviously you don’t have anything for them to do until there’s a plot. So pretty soon you start getting ideas for what these characters will do. What are they interested in? How are they interacting with other people? What do they want? What are they moving toward? Suddenly, you have a plot. Plot and character are not separate. One necessarily creates and brings with it the other.

The same is true of theme.

How Plot and Character Arc Create Theme

Creating Character Arcs

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

The interaction between plot and character is the engine that creates theme. We talked about in the last video about the Lie the Character Believes and how that creates this entire arc of the character’s evolution as they change their perspective, as they evolve into a new way of being and a new identity within the world. That’s character arc. And this new understanding of the world is something that has to be acted upon. It’s not just something happening in the character’s head. Otherwise, there’s no reason for the change to happen within the plot. It will be just an expression of philosophy, not a story. You have to bring this change of perspective into the action of the plot. Show what the character is going through, dramatize it through the events of the plot.

The events of the plot and the arrival of the conflict prompts the need for this change within the character. And then the change inside the character also allows them to evolve and grow what they’re doing in the external plot. If they remained the same, then either they wouldn’t be motivated to go on this story’s adventure at all or, depending on the type of story, the events of the plot will destroy them. They’ve got to evolve in order to survive. They’ve got to evolve in order to reach this next level of whatever it is the story wants them to achieve, whether that’s a relationship or a new job or saving the world or whatever the case may be. Some quiet literary stories really are just about changing that inner landscape. Whatever the case, this change must be proven in some way. It must be acted out within the plot.

Using Your Plot as a Thematic Metaphor

I like to think of the plot as a metaphor for whatever the character is changing internally, for the story’s Lie and Truth. Let’s say you start with the character’s Lie and Truth. And from there, you ask yourself what can the character do physically in the world that would dramatize and show this inner transformation from Lie to Truth.

An easy example of this would be The Hunger Games, in which the protagonist Katniss Everdeen follows a Flat Arc. This means she doesn’t change her perspective; she doesn’t grow from Lie to Truth. Instead, she uses her understanding of the Truth to change the world around her. In this case, that Truth would be her understanding that “oppression is no good,” that this Lie that has been fed to her country Panem by its oppressive government is that “their control is necessary to protect them” and the brutality of the Hunger Games is also necessary. Katniss begins her story understanding this is not true, as many people in her world do. What makes her an interesting character and protagonist is that her story gives her the opportunity to act on that Truth.

Specifically in this story, we can see how the entire premise of the Hunger Games—the entire scope of the plot in this story—is a very specific dramatization of her story’s Lie and Truth that allows her to go out and actively battle this oppression. She’s basically put in a cage and has to fight her way out. That’s a very explicit example of how your plot can operate as a thematic metaphor.

how to write a flat character arc the third act

The Hunger Games (2012), Lionsgate.

When you’ve got plot and character working together beautifully, we might say one is proving the other. From this, we get a theme. Even if you try to paste on a different kind of a theme, the events of your story and how your character responds to them and interacts with them is what inevitably creates the theme. That is the point of your story; that is the message of your story. The thematic Truth that will be proved by the end of your story is whatever is shown by the events of the story. Whatever is effective in your story is your story’s Truth. This can be something very practical such as a skill, but it can also be just an effective perspective that the characters hold of themselves or the world (e.g., self-worth).

Using Plot and Characters to Identify Your Story’s Theme

When you approach a story from the idea that plot, theme, and character are all equal members of the equation and that necessarily one creates the other, it allows you to make sure you’re creating a cohesive cycle. And also, when you’re running into problems, it allows you to stop and check.

Let’s say you’re having problems with your theme. “I don’t know what my theme is.”

Look at your character’s arc and specifically at the Lie the Character Believes. Look at what they need to overcome by the time they get to the end of the story and therefore what Truth they’re moving toward. That Truth is usually a very specific and easy way to sum up your story’s theme.

You can also look at the events of the plot.

  • What are the characters doing?
  • What is happening?
  • What is challenging them?
  • Where do they fail?
  • What do they have to do to succeed?
  • How do they have to change in order to become someone who can succeed in gaining the plot goal within your story?

This is where you can start looking for a theme and vice versa.

Using Theme to Create Your Plot and Character Arcs

Let’s say you start out knowing you want to write a story about “love conquers all”—that’s your theme, that’s what you want to write about. There’s no reason you can’t start with just that. Now you have a map for determining what kind of characters and what kind of character arc will help exemplify this.

  • How will they be challenged to grow into this?
  • What Lie might oppose this idea?
  • What events of the plot will be an interesting way to explore all aspects of this idea?
Story by Robert McKee

Story by Robert McKee (affiliate link)

Deepen Your Themes With the Thematic Square

This is where it can be really helpful to bring in a technique that Robert McKee wrote about in his book Story, which he called the Thematic Square. Start by examining your story’s thematic Truth from multiple perspectives. This prevents it from being just this simple black-and-white approach, i.e., “this is the wrong way to do it, and this is the right way to do it.” That approach is simplistic and can be on the nose and ultimately unconvincing to readers because that’s not really how it works for most of us most of the time in real life. If it was that simple, we’d always think, Ah, truth. I want to do that.  I pick that one because obviously it’s better. It’s obviously going to be more effective and help me get what I want, what I need, and what’s good for me.

But it’s not that simple, right?

There are many shades and complexities to this evolution of perspective because the Lie and the Truth are actually never black and white. Rather, they represent an evolution along the spectrum, from a limited perspective to a broader perspective. Ideally, you want to be able to explore the complexities around this idea.

The Four Corners of the Thematic Square

You can do this, via McKee’s Thematic Square, by creating a square with four corners that represent four different sides or points of the thematic premise you’re exploring.

The Positive Thematic Statement

First and foremost, you have the Positive corner. Positive represents the story’s Truth. This is the good stuff you’re trying to posit in your story, i.e, “this is the way we should be”—whether the character embraces it and succeeds or fails to embrace it and fails within the story. This is the positive Truth you are suggesting is the best way for the characters to behave in this story. Examples of this would be Respect or Love. These are good qualities. These are things that we recognize as something we want to to embody in our lives, because they will help us to be more effective in whatever we’re doing.

The Contradictory Thematic Statement

Opposite that is the Contradictory corner. This represents something that is directly contradictory to the story’s positive Truth. At its simplest, this is the Lie. This is what stands opposed to the story’s Truth. In simple one-word explanations of what these might be, we have in opposition to Respect, Disrespect. In opposition to Love, we have Hate.

The Contrary Thematic Statement

Those two are obvious; they’re an obvious polarity. From there, you can start moving down to the bottom corners of your square and think about, first of all, what would be an element within this thematic exploration that would be Contrary to the Positive.

The word contrary always makes me think of somebody who’s being contrary: they’re just being annoying. They’re just being stubborn and refusing to see things. It’s not necessarily that they represent or are directly opposed to the argument, but they’re just refusing to do it. They’re opting out, saying, “talk to the hand,” as we used to say. The Contrary perspective wants to bypass the whole thematic argument. In some ways, this makes it more dangerous than the contradictory aspect, which at least is looking at the Truth—looking it in the eye and doing battle with it. In contrast, the Contrary aspect just wants to skip it. It doesn’t even want to engage with this Truth.

An example of this for a theme of Respect, could be Rudeness. Rudeness is passive-aggressive. “I don’t respect you, but I’m not actually doing you the service of coming to your face and telling you that either.” For Love, the Contrary aspect could be Indifference, which in many ways can be more painful than Hate in some relationships. We often say love is hate flipped on its head, with the idea being that if you can dig down there in the hate, you might be able to find love in the shadow and integrate it. Indifference, however, says, “I don’t care about you. You don’t exist to me. You’re dead to me. I don’t think about you at all.” And this can be more painful and certainly more difficult to move through toward that more positive Truth.

The Negated Thematic Statement

Finally, we have what McKee calls the Negation of the Negation. This is the  Lie taken to its farthest extreme. It’s taken to such an extreme that it’s as if the Truth doesn’t exist. It rewrites reality. Over the course of the story, a Negation character will be given an opportunity to see the Truth and how it could potentially positively impact their life. But for whatever reason, they reject it and end up in a worse place than when they just believed the Lie or the Contradictory aspect.

In our example of Respect, the Negation of the Negation would be Self-Disrespect. Usually, even if someone disrespects someone else, there’s that place within their own ego where they are still standing within their own sense of identity and pride of self in opposition to something else. However, with Self-Disrespect, they can’t even respect themselves. If there isn’t even that ego container to hold their own identity, that is, in many ways, a worse place to be than if you’re just this egoic person disrespecting everybody else. It’s an almost plague-like effect. The seed of the Lie takes over the person’s entire being and life and perhaps beyond depending on the type of story you’re telling. The example McKee uses as the Negation of Love is Self-Hatred. Again, the Negation sees the character moving into a place where love doesn’t even exist in their universe.

How to Implement the Thematic Square in Your Story

Creating Character Arcs

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

One of the best ways to explore the Thematic Square is to have your protagonist represent any one of the thematic corners with the antagonistic force representing the polar opposite. Depending on whether you’re telling a Positive Change Arc, a Flat Arc, or a Negative Change Arc, your protagonist may or may not represent the Positive statement.

You can also use the Thematic Square to deepen this thematic complexity by looking for ways in which multiple characters—at least four characters—represent the different aspects of the square. This gives the protagonist a chance to interact with all of them, to be challenged by all of them, and to see the pros and the cons of each one so that they’re challenged. Their exploration of the theme will no longer be a simple binary choice between, “Oh, the Lie is bad and the Truth is better, so of course I’ll choose the Truth.” Rather, they have to move through all of these shadow aspects of the Lie and the Truth, to explore them, and to be challenged by them.

If your project uses characters to represent all four aspects, this also helps you develop and deepen the opportunities for your plot. Make sure every character’s actions, everything that’s happening, any opposition the protagonist faces from antagonistic forces is all thematically pertinent.

No thematic position in your story should be random. If the protagonist is trying to move toward a thematic Truth of “Love,” you don’t want another over here focusing on Freedom and Slavery. That’s a totally different theme. Of course, there can always be crossover—because ultimately everything is interconnected in real life. But applying the Thematic Square to your story can help you recognize which ideas don’t support the point of your story. If something doesn’t support the plot’s throughline and doesn’t support the protagonist’s individual arc, ask yourself how you could repurpose it so it informs the central theme.

Find Your Theme by Examining Your Story’s Ending

When thinking about how best to integrate theme into plot and character arc, look at how your story ends. The ending of your story—your Climactic Moment—will prove what your story was really about. This means it will prove what your theme is really about.

The decisions your characters make in the end, the perspectives they use to inform their choices and actions, as well as their ability to gain their plot goal—all of these things reveal your story’s theme. Examine the questions your story raises and the answers it ultimately ends up giving.

This does not mean that you need to end with some kind of moral of the story or with the mentor character coming out and giving a little speech about the lesson to be learned or something like that. Your story’s “answer” is simply whether or not the characters were effective and how they end up.

  • Did they end in a better place physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally?
  • Or is it a worse place?

If it’s a better place, then the story’s Truth (i.e., the “answer” to the questions that have been raised throughout the story), is “yes, this is an effective way of being in the world. This is a good course of action.”

If the characters fail, either ambiguously or definitively, then what the story is saying is “this is not a good way of being.” Such a story becomes, even without any need to create a moral of the story, a cautionary tale.

Find Your Theme by Examining Change and Consequence in Your Plot

Finally, think about how your story will develop change and consequence.

Change, both within your story’s character arcs and within the context of how your characters are able to enact change in the outer world of the story will prove what the story is really about. It will show you how your theme develops, what thematic questions are at play, and what answers the plot ultimately posits.

Specifically, think about consequences. Consequences aren’t always something negative. From a causal perspective, consequences can be something good. However, more often, consequences reveal a hard pill to swallow. Not only can consequences sometimes prove that “oops, the characters did not choose the best way of being. They did not choose the story’s Truth,” but consequences can also offer a resonant way to drive home that this path of change, this path of evolution that we’re all on within our lives, isn’t easy. It’s not cut and dried. It’s not black and white.

Again, if theme was simply “Lie versus truth—this is worse and this is better,” we’d always choose the right thing. There would be no need for stories because we’d always choose the right thing. Stories show us that there are, in fact, consequences even for choosing the right thing, for choosing what’s best for us, for choosing something we believe is in the best interest of ourselves and our communities and our world. Stories show us life isn’t simple, that there are always sacrifices, that letting go of a Lie or dealing with people who aren’t ready for us to let go of the Lie—it’s not easy. Embracing the Truth is often difficult.

Examining the consequences your characters face or could face if you deepen your story can be helpful in showing you not just your story’s theme, but how to deepen it and then explore all of the depth of it. Go into the shadows and explore the profundity of change. Ultimately, that’s what theme in story is about.

Admittedly, theme is an abstract concept. Zooming in and thinking of it in terms of plot and character makes it more concrete and easy to master within your story. Again, I’ve written a whole book about theme. So if you want more, you can check out Writing Your Story’s Theme.

Happy writing!

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What do you think is the most challenging part of writing strong themes in your stories? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

___

Love Helping Writers Become Authors? You can now become a patron. (Huge thanks to those of you who are already part of my Patreon family!)

The post The Secret to Writing Strong Themes appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Go to Source

Author: K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland

A Touch of the Madness: Creativity In Writing And Filmmaking With Larry Kasanoff

How can you balance creativity with business when it comes to writing — and filmmaking? How can you access that ‘touch of madness’ in everything you create? How can authors pitch their books for film? All this and more with Larry Kasanoff.

In the intro, Paid ads with BookBub, Facebook and Amazon [BookBub]; Blood Vintage cover reveal; Unter dem Zoo out now in German; The entire ARKANE Thriller series is back on Audible, as well as Spotify, and you can get 50% off at JFPennBooks.com (65+ hours of thrillers!).

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Larry Kasanoff is the CEO of Threshold Entertainment and has made over 200 films as a producer or studio head. Some of his credits include Mortal Kombat, True Lies, Terminator 2, Dirty Dancing, and Academy Award-Winning Best Picture, Platoon. He’s also worked in the music business with artists like Michael Jackson and The Rolling Stones.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

  • Why are creatives more scared to express themselves now?
  • Tips for starting out in the industry
  • The timeline differences between getting a book published vs. a movie published
  • How to state of play and positivity can help your creativity flow
  • Balancing creative decisions with business decisions
  • Tips for longevity in a creative career
  • How to pitch as an introverted author
  • Generative AI in the movie industry

You can find Larry at LarryKasanoff.com and his new book at ATouchOfTheMadness.com

Transcript of Interview with Larry Kasanoff

Joanna: Larry Kasanoff is the CEO of Threshold Entertainment and has made over 200 films as a producer or studio head. Some of his credits include Mortal Kombat, True Lies, Terminator 2, Dirty Dancing, and Academy Award-Winning Best Picture, Platoon.

He’s also worked in the music business with artists like Michael Jackson and The Rolling Stones, which is like, wow. He has a new book, which is A Touch of the Madness: How to Be More Innovative in Work and Life . . . by Being a Little Crazy. So welcome to the show, Larry.

Larry: Thank you. It’s really nice to be here.

Joanna: Oh, I’m so excited to talk to you. Let’s just start with a really obvious question. You are so successful in film and music videos—

Why write a book at this point in your career?

Larry: Well, there are two reasons. First of all, we had a year last year where there were strikes. The actor’s union struck and the writers’ union struck, so we couldn’t actually work, couldn’t make movies.

More than that, over the last few years, I’ve seen in a way I never have before, people, not only in my industry, but in every industry, scared to move on their creative ideas or their entrepreneurial ideas. I’ve never seen it like that.

What if it’s wrong? What if it fails? What if I get canceled? What if someone doesn’t like it?

I was whining to my brother one day about it, and he said, “Why don’t you do something about it? Write a book.” My brother’s a writer, and so I did.

It was really just to inspire people that that creative idea, that that nutso thing that your wife, husband, father, mother, daughter, boss will think it’s too nuts, that’s the one that you should embrace and go for it. So that was really my only purpose.

Joanna: We’ll come back to that, but—

Why do you think people are more scared now?

Is it that the environment is more difficult, or do you think something has changed, like, I don’t know, since the pandemic, like the personality of people?

Larry: In a way, it doesn’t matter why, but I mean, my opinion is the world ebbs and flows. We talk about how conservative political correctness was in the last five years. You know, after the Italian Renaissance, a few years later they covered up the Botticelli’s because it was a whole movement that they were too racy.

So this is just part of human nature, it just goes. I think this one is a little bit worse because social media and technology and communications means anything that happens gets broadcast immediately all over the world.

So I think it’s the political correctness that has instilled fear of speaking out in people.

Joanna: I mean, that is a challenge, and we’ll come back to some of these challenges. First of all, just the challenge for you in writing a book. You have written a lot of different mediums, screenplays and visual and audio things.

What were the challenges you faced in writing the book?

Larry: It was really fun because the book is really all stories that happened to me, which I used to illustrate my points on why you should embrace the madness and how to do it.

So honestly, once I decided to write it—these are stories I tell my assistants, and I torture everyone with—it only took me 10 days to write the whole book. So it was actually very lovely. It was fun.

I mean, I was just remembering things, and every now and then I would call on my brother and say, “Can I tell this story?” He goes, “No! That’s too much!” you know, if I was offensive. It was really a fun process.

Then when I was finished with the book, I called a friend and said, “I need a book agent. I know agent agents, but I don’t know book agents.” So he introduced me to a guy named Greg Reed. Greg introduced me to an agent named Bill Gladstone.

I mean, I had one call with Greg. I had one call with Bill, and we hit it off. Bill said, “I love it. Send me the book today.” That was a Monday, and on Tuesday he said, “I want to rep you.”

So we got on the phone with our publisher. He read the book by Wednesday, and by Friday, I had a signed deal. So the whole thing was really very lovely and fun and quick and easy, the writing of the book.

Joanna: I love this. I just want to point out to everyone listening, many people would be like, oh, that’s all right for him. I’m looking at your career, and a lot of people listening are just starting out.

The reason this was easy for you to get a book deal and an agent—and you know, we’ll come back to the writing—but you have worked for decades to get to a point in your life where people want to work with you, right?

Do you have any thoughts for people who are just starting out, in whatever industry?

Larry: Well, you know, first of all, everyone says that to me, “Oh, it must be so easy now.” Imagine you’re a professional boxer, and you’ve done well, and you’ve won 30 matches. You think in your 31st, the guy in the ring is going to go easy on you because you won some? That doesn’t happen at all.

So I would love to think that, gee, when I call everyone wants to work with me, everyone says yes, no one doesn’t call me back. It’s just not true. I still have to sometimes slug my way through it, and it still doesn’t go.

So that skill of persevering, and one of the things I say in the book is that one of the absolute tenets is ask, ask, ask, ask. It never goes away, and you always have to do it.

There are directors you can find who are in their 70s or 80s even, who still have to go pitch their movie. So to the people starting out, I would say learn this skill because it’s like exercise. It’s going to stay with you your whole life.

You can’t just one day say, “You know what? I’ve exercised for 10 years, I’m 30 years old, I’m going to stop.” You can’t really do that, and same with this. It just always goes.

So I think the reason people wanted to publish the book is because I found two guys, my agent and my publisher, who also have a touch of the madness.

What I did have was a bunch of stories, and the stories are fun, and the stories are relatable, and the stories are fortunate that they are on movies that people have now heard of. So I did have that body of work to draw on.

I didn’t get any breaks because I’ve been around for a while. Gee, I wish. I would take it in a second, but it doesn’t really happen.

Joanna: Yes, well, let’s come back on the, “It was so fun. I wrote it in 10 days.” I’ve read the book. It’s great, and as you say, you’re telling stories. So the style itself lends to a more storytelling way of doing it. It’s not like a business non-fiction, where it’s research and chaptered. It’s lots of stories, which is great.

When I was reading it, it is very your voice as well. Not that I know you, but it reads like your voice. So did you dictate that? Did you type it? Tell people, how did you actually get that down? Then did you edit it into an order?

What was your writing process?

Larry: Oh, so I first wrote just an outline, like a chapter outline. Then I thought, how do I really do this? I never thought of how I’d really do it. My brother said to me, you have to use some sort of a framework.

So I came up with what I call “create, ask, play.” There are three things you have to do. You have to create your idea on how to do that, you have to ask, ask, ask, and you should always do it with a playful mindset if you can.

Once I did that, the way I always write when I write scripts is I just write. I don’t think about it. I write quickly. I don’t edit myself. I try to get everything down. I write on a laptop. Then I leave it, and I come back later on, and I read it.

Sometimes I’m shocked, like, hey, that’s pretty good, or it isn’t. Then I go through it again, like painting a barn door. Then you just keep doing coats.

Then sometimes you think, well, this story doesn’t work, or I need more stories here, so I kind of have to go think over something. I just try to write as quickly as I can. I do try to write like I talk, and I try not to edit myself in the beginning.

Joanna: So when you got the publisher, did you get a load of edits that took you away from your original vision?

How was the process of publishing?

Larry: They were great. I mean, by the time I sent it to them, I had finished it and polished it a little bit. I gave it to a few people to read who I trusted, and they only had a couple of little comments. They had great copy editing comments, which I loved and thought improved things. The whole thing was incredibly nice.

Joanna: I love the way you work! I wonder if it’s also because you come from a collaborative industry. Like you said about getting notes there, you’re presumably quite used to doing notes, giving notes, getting notes, as part of a film making process.

Larry: I mean, the point of the book is to inspire people. So what I didn’t really put in the book are some of the, let’s call them harsher stories of the movie business.

When I compared the notes we get from studios, relative to the notes we get from these lovely, erudite, smart publishers, oh, my goodness. I mean, you should see the stuff we get in the movie business. So I think my comparison is crazy.

We had a script once, the whole script took place at a bar, kind of like Casablanca. A studio called us and said, “Oh, I love the script. You got to come down, we’re really interested in the movie.”

So I get down there, and all the executives are there, and they said, “We just have one idea for you.” So I said, “Yeah, sure. What?” They said, “Well, maybe there could be some sort of like a bar in the movie where they all congregate.”

The whole movie was about that, like clearly they hadn’t even read the script. So we get those kind of notes all the time.

So relatively speaking, I think notes from publishers are much—at least in my experience—are much more helpful and much more constructive.

Yes, one of the things about the movie business is it is incredibly collaborative. You have a thousand people, and you have to march them all into the same creative vision. It’s a massive operation to make a movie.

With a book, it’s really you and the typewriter, and then your editor. So it’s so small, it’s so easy to do that.

I recently published, a few weeks ago, a book of photography called Malibu Blonde, where all the money goes to charity, and that’s all photography. So it’s the same thing.

I mean, I worked with publishers in Switzerland, and I sent them a lot of pictures, and they said, “Here’s how many we want to choose,” and they had the right to choose. We went through a few rounds, and it was just such a lovely experience. The book was number one on Amazon in its first week.

So a completely different medium, there’s not like a word in it, it’s all pictures. Again, the simple nature of so few people between you and the audience, for me, was like a vacation.

Joanna: I love this framing because with so many people on my show the discussion is how difficult publishing is. You’re like, oh no, it’s so easy compared to this.

Let’s also talk about the speed because I feel like you have a different perspective on this. So for many people, like myself, as an independent author, one of the reasons we have our own independent publishing companies is so we can get our books directly to the customer with no barrier.

So I can finish, edit, and then I can send it out on Shopify, and people can buy now, and I get the money in my bank account now. That’s how quick it can be now. Obviously, I work with professional editors, designers, etc, but when the book’s ready, it goes out.

Now, you said you wrote this during the strikes, so that’s over a year ago.

How was that timeline between finishing and it going out, compared to the film industry schedule?

Larry: Well, that is different because, I mean, we finished the book, but then they said, “Okay, we’re going to rush it out,” and it was still six months before they got it out, and that was a rush.

So there was really nothing for me to do then because it was just their time, I guess, of printing catalogs and pre-selling to the Barnes and Nobles of the world and things like that.

You know, working in the movie business you have to wait too. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have other things to do. So it was fine. There was no reason it had to be out in March before October, other than my own anxiousness to get it out. So it was fine.

Joanna: Yes, I mean, sometimes movies take decades, right?

Larry: I mean, the photography book, because it’s all glossy and they had to print it, that took nine months from, “okay, we’re doing this” to coming out, too. Again, it was really nothing for me to do. That’s just their process of printing and scheduling and selling. Then when the book comes out, there’s stuff to do. It was fun.

Joanna: I love this. Is this your nature?

Are you just a happy, positive person?

Larry: I try to be. It is a funny time now, especially where the movie business has been struggling with these strikes and everything. Well, you meet people, and they’re so depressed. It’s not like it’s not challenging, I don’t want to gloss over it, but it just doesn’t help.

I mean being negative or saying, “Oh, this sucks,” it doesn’t help. The other thing is, I read an enormous amount of history. Not only film history, but just history history.

In that perspective, so many of these things have happened before. There’s nothing really new happening now. I mean, very few new things happening now.

So I try to keep that perspective and think, well —

How is being negative and complaining going to help me? It’s not going to make me feel better. It’s not going to make my movies or books advance any further. So why do it?

We say, with the photography of Malibu Blonde and with our movies, our mission is to bring back fun. I think one of the things that’s happened in the world is people are just scared to have fun. They just don’t have as much fun anymore.

I mean, even Los Angeles has changed. There aren’t as many parties or events. So, yes, we are trying to bring back fun. We’re having a big party on August 17th in Malibu for Malibu Blonde. The whole thing is to bring back fun.

So, yes. I do think it’s really important, and I think the audience wants it. I think they want it in books, and movies, and TV, and art and music. I think they want fun.

Joanna: I agree, and escapism. Like, for me, I go to the movies, and I like big explosion movies. The movies that you’ve done, I’m like, oh yeah. I want to see guns and explosions and lots of bodies. I write thrillers.

I totally agree with you. We take ourselves so seriously.

We’re artists, and it all becomes a bit too serious, I guess.

Larry: Well, I think that we get that here too with people. You know, I had a student apply for an internship, and she said, “I want to make movies that change the parameters of how people think about art.”

I said, “What’s the example of a movie that does that?” She said, “Oh, that’s a good question. I never thought of that.” So people virtue signal a lot.

One of the things I also try to espouse in A Touch of the Madness is that —

You really have to play it like a game, and remain in a state of play

—which I admit is not easy to stay in all the time—but in a state of play, you will be more creative, you’ll be more receptive to ideas, you’ll be a better problem solver, and you’ll have a better life.

So if you take the same two examples, and you look at it from a state of play or a state not of play, they’re very, very, very, very different.

The first movie I was involved in, it was before Game of Thrones, it was like a Game of Thrones rip off in Italy. I had just been made Head of Production at my new job, and my boss, who was a great guy, said, “We want everything. We want explosions, and violence, and sword fights, and love, and sex!”

Then someone yelled, “And snakes and wizards!” We were like, “Hah, yes! And snakes and wizards!” There were no snakes and wizards in the movie, but we thought that was funny.

So every time we would finish a development meeting with the staff in Italy as they were in pre-production, we’d say, “And snakes and wizards!” And we’d all go, “Snakes and wizards!”

So I get to Italy, it’s my first movie, I have no idea what I’m doing. It was a seasoned producer who was helping me. At one point they say they have a surprise for me that week, and I’m like, great.

They get really excited, and the day comes. Now we’re having lunch, and they’re all in a semi-circle around me. We’re outside of Rome, and I see that we’re looking at the hills, I don’t see anything. Then I see a little dot of dirt, and it’s getting bigger and bigger, and I realize it’s a truck coming.

Now there’s a band playing, I don’t know where they got a band. Then a truck backs up, and it bursts open, and out come a ton of people dressed as wizards who were snake charmers. I mean, like boa constrictors and Burmese pythons.

Remember, there were no snakes and wizards in the movie. We had just forgot to tell them it was a joke. So they clearly had gone to all this time and effort and money.

Now, not in the state of play, I would have said, “How could you have done this? You didn’t check. You wasted my time. You wasted our money. What are we going to do?”

In a state of play, which I was because I couldn’t believe I was on a movie, it was fun. They’d gone to a lot of trouble. In Italy, you have wine at lunch on your movie sets, and also it’s not easy to say no to a Burmese python staring you in the face.

So in that state of play, I said, “Let’s put them all on the movie!” Everyone cheered, and we just threw him in the movie. Now, you know what? The movie’s terrible, but it made a fortune, and the snakes and wizards look great. Not in a state of play, I would have screwed up the whole thing.

Joanna: I love that. So I’m going to come back to what you said there.

I want to talk about this state of play because it does fit a bit with your “a touch of madness.” How do we identify this touch of madness and get into that state of play?

For example, you know, I’m a professional writer. This is my full time job. So I get up in the morning, like today, I worked on my latest novel. Some days that’s great and I’m in the play zone, and sometimes it’s a real slog. So how can I and other people listening—

How can we reset and get into that state of play every time we create?

Is there a way that you recommend we do that? Or how can we access that touch of madness?

Larry: Well, I think if you have a touch of the madness—I think everyone has the potential for it—and I believe deep down, we all know what we want. It’s there.

So I did a documentary a few years ago on mindfulness with a Zen Buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh, who’s recently passed away, but who brought mindfulness to the west.

I met him under these very unusual circumstances. I called this peaceful Buddhist monk to see if he would be a good inspiration for a character in Mortal Kombat, which is hardly a peaceful movie. In so doing, I just became great friends with the guy.

I said, “I’ve been here for two hours. I feel like I’ve been on vacation. What’s your secret?” He said, “No secret. Practice.” I became friends with him, and I started practicing mindfulness, and he asked me to do a documentary.

So for me, it’s getting still, and for me, it’s mindfulness, and for me, it’s the notion that, okay, if I’m starting to drift out of a state of play, stop. Whatever I’m doing, stop if I can. In the middle of the day, go for a walk, play with my dog. I bring my dog to work.

So something to reset yourself because that is the most important thing.

If you’re in a good state of mind, everything else will come.

So one, you have to prioritize your state of mind. And two, you have to get some practice that enables you to control and come back to a still state of mind.

For me, it’s mindfulness. For someone else, it might be knitting or shooting basketball or whatever. Once you’re in a still state of mind, you can access that state of play. Taken from this great expression which is calligraphy to my office, “Be still and know.”

So think of a mountain lake, if it’s perfectly still in the morning, it reflects the clouds and the sky and the mountaintops perfectly. If it’s all choppy and windy, it doesn’t. So think of that stillness and be still, and that will access your touch of madness.

You will say, this is what I really wanted. Now that I’m still, I know what I really want to do is teach cows how to answer the phone, and I’m going to do it. That’s what you want.

Now you have to have the courage to do it, which is what ask and play comes into. It’s prioritizing your state of mind is the most important thing you have to do. Then it’s having a practice which enables you to do that.

Joanna: Well, then how about the difficulty, both in the film industry and with books, where people say—I mean, like you talk about Mortal Kombat, for example, is more like a franchise. It has lots of IP, and people say, “Oh, well, do you know what, we want another one of those.” Or they want Terminator 18.

You’re like, does that really have a touch of madness? Is that a business decision or is that a creative decision?

How do you balance the business side with wanting to do something that people might deem a bit mad?

Larry: So when I started Mortal Kombat, no one had ever made a hit movie from a video game. Everyone thought I was crazy. I mean, it’s easy to look back now, all great ideas are obvious in hindsight.

At the time, people were constantly like, what are you doing? You’re giving up your career. I left this great job. It’s not. So that was a touch of the madness at that time.

The way I balance the two sides is the first thing I do when I look at any project, book, or movie, is I just forget about the business, and I say, creatively, do I love it? Do I just love this, love this?

You’re right. It might be quick like my book, or it might take 10 years like some movies, but I’ve got to love it. Otherwise I can’t get up every day and be happy pitching it, talking about it, working on it, writing it, designing it, and so forth. Then I ignore the business side.

Once I know I love it creatively, I ignore the creative side, and then I look at the business. Can I get this financed? Can this make money?

Can we do this? If they’re both yeses, then I do it.

Part of my goal with the things I do is to succeed. I want a lot of people to see my movies and read my books. So to me, that business part of it is part of the whole thing. I mean, there are some filmmakers who say, “Well, I don’t care if anyone sees my movie.” I do. That’s the fun. That’s the game.

You want people to see your movie. You want to go to the theater and have people lined up to see it and cheer. So that, to me, is part of the game, and it’s fun.

The way I got Mortal Kombat, it was testing as an arcade game in Chicago. It was just an arcade game. We used to go put coins in machines to play.

I turned to the chairman of the company who had it, who I knew from previous arcade games in previous movies, and I said, “This Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. It’s my two favorite genres. I don’t care if it’s never worked before, if you give me the rights, I guarantee you I will produce it in every medium in the world. Movies, TV, animation, by theater, you name it.”

The chairman of the company looked at me and said, “Eh, piece of crap video game.” So he didn’t even think it was worth it.

My goal was to do what you just said, to make it a franchise, which we’re still producing. We’re still making Mortal Kombat. So that was the goal, but it didn’t start that way. It started with people telling me I was crazy.

Joanna: No, that’s great. Then if we could just talk about this idea of quality, which again, books and movies struggle with. You said just a while ago —

“The movie was terrible. It made a fortune.”

This is what’s so funny, right? Sometimes we write these things that we think are really important or whatever, and nobody wants them. Then sometimes something just hits and does really well that is just unexpected. So how do you deal with that in your career and creativity? Like you said—

Are you aiming to try to have a hit, or is it all just a crapshoot? As an American might say.

Larry: No, I’m aiming to have a hit. I’m always aiming to have a hit. So I wanted to be movie producers since I was a little kid. I got very, very lucky and got a great job out of school as Head of production acquisitions and coproduction for an independent film studio called Vestron.

This was in the 80s when home video was taking off. So home video was a boom, like today, streaming was a boom, and people needed content. My job out of school was to run a film slate that needed to deliver 80 movies a year to the company.

Today, a film studio would make 12 movies. I had to make 80, and I didn’t know what I was doing. My instructions were, do whatever the hell you want, don’t lose money.

So in the beginning I was so scared I’d we lose money. So we made low budget movies like the one I just mentioned. Action, rom coms, horror movies and things like that. They were fun.

We tried to make them as good as we can, but I kept remembering, if I don’t make money, I’m not going to be able to be able to keep doing this.

Then I got a script one day for a movie called Platoon. Platoon was not this kind of a movie, it was a very serious movie about the Vietnam War and the psychological effect it had on kids going to it. The tagline was, “The first casualty of war is innocence.”

The actors were not stars. They were stars later, but they weren’t stars in the beginning. We always put at least sort of movie stars in our movies, but I loved it. I thought I just got to make it. I just love the movie.

I went to my boss, and I said, “This isn’t our usual one, but I just have a feeling about it.” He said, “You’re crazy. That’s not what we do.”

I fought, and he said, “Okay, look, you’re head of production. It’s your decision, but if it fails, you’re fired. So what do you want to do?”

I was like, I don’t know, a few months into the best job in the world, and I thought, well, I didn’t join the movie business to play it safe. So I greenlit Platoon.

When I saw Platoon, when it was finally finished, I’m the only guy in history to giggle his way through that movie, because I thought, oh my god, I’m not getting fired. It was so good. It was so good that it did win Best Picture that year.

A few months later, I ran into the director one night in a bar in New York, and he bought me a drink, and he said, “Kid, I always liked you. You have a touch of the madness.”

I thought, touch of the madness? Does he mean I’m a little crazy? Is he calling me crazy? Then it occurred to me, well, my boss was crazy to let a 25 year old kid run an 80 picture film slate. Oliver, the director, had a touch of the madness by insisting on doing a Vietnam movie the way no one ever had.

Then I had a touch of the madness by betting my career on it. So then I realized, and this is the long answer to your short question, that it’s all attached to the madness.

Bottom line, I can tell you all the things I do, you know, it’s got to be creative, it’s got to be business.

I look at everybody, every script, every piece of art, every casting, and I ask myself, just instinctively, is there a touch of the madness there? If there is, I go for it.

If there isn’t, I don’t. I turn away lots of actors and lots of people who are very talented or very good, but in my mind, they don’t have that touch of the madness. I can look in people’s eyes and see it, at least I think I can. So that is really my determining factor.

That became my touchstone for my life and my career. So when I decided to write a book about this, it wasn’t like I had to dredge around to think about it. I’ve been thinking about this my whole life. It just never occurred to me that that’s what I was doing.

Joanna: Yes, it’s so interesting. I use the metaphor of Plato’s Chariot with the white horse and the dark horse, and can I let my dark horse run? Like is my dark horse running, or am I reining it in?

Larry: That’s great.

Joanna: Yes, too much. Sometimes I know I’ve written things where my dark horse just wasn’t even there. So now I’m more established, I guess.

It’s very hard at the beginning, like you said, that first job when you had to make 80 a year. Not every single film you would have loved or been that involved with. It feels like now you just love creating. So you’re just creating and creating.

Larry: I do.

I love it. I’m as excited about the movie business as the first day.

I wanted to be a producer since I was a little kid. Then when I started doing it, I loved it, and I still wake up as excited as can be. What’s exciting is bringing the projects I have to life.

I think of these characters as my friends. I know them. I think sometimes, “Oh, Lucian,” he’s a character in a movie, “Oh, Lucian would do that.” I love creating, and I love doing that.

To get a movie made today in a conservative Hollywood, you need to raise $100 million and convince a lot of people it’s a great idea. So you have to be in love, or it’s a tough game.

Joanna: Well, then another thing that’s interesting is this idea of longevity in an industry. When you started out, there would have been other people who started with you, and they will not all be around anymore.

This is what we also talk about in the author industry, which is the longer you do this, the more likely you are to be successful, but so many people fall away. So has that happened? What are your tips for longevity in the career? How do you keep loving it after decades?

Larry: Talent is 50% of the battle.

If you don’t have perseverance in any industry, in any game, in any sport, forget it.

As I said, I think I’m really good at discerning talent or touch the madness in two seconds, but whether that person will have the fortitude to stay with it, only time will tell.

Character isn’t made, it’s revealed, and you can only tell that with time. So there are people who just, for one reason or another, drop out.

Now, sometimes people drop out because they determine, you know what, this isn’t really for me. It’s not as exciting as I thought. I can make a lot more money in the family business of whatever, and that’s really what I care about.

If you do love it, there’s really no other option.

That is where I think, especially in creative industries, it should be full of people who really don’t have another option in their minds because it’s just what they have to do.

Joanna: Yes, I feel that.

Larry: You know, the number one way we lose aspiring actors and actresses, lose meaning they go away, leave Hollywood, is by giving them a job.

You would think that’s insane, but there’s an enormous amount of people when you finally say, “Okay, you want to be an actor. We like you. Here’s your shot,” you never hear from them again. Whether that’s the fear so they don’t really want to do it, and I try to inspire people out of in my book. Again, there’s just so much you can do, and it’s not right for them. That’s okay.

Joanna: So let’s come back, earlier you were talking about Ask anyone, anything. It’s in the book, ask anyone anything. The whole section is really interesting, and this is a real challenge for authors who mostly are introverts, who work alone. We much prefer the page, and we’re not out and about.

Like someone said to me once, “Oh, just come to Cannes and pitch at this party.” Like, that’s the most terrifying thing for me, possibly.

What are your thoughts on pitching for introvert authors?

Larry: Well, so I have two thoughts on that. So I had a great professor in college who taught me this. So I’ve been doing this since college, since before I was a producer, and it worked even then.

A few years ago during the pandemic, we were making an animated movie universe called Bobbleheads. It had characters with bobbling heads. We had this idea to get Cher as Bobblehead Cher, use her likeness. Everyone said, again, she’ll never do it. She’s never done an animated movie.

So we called, and I called and called, and long story short, Cher did the movie, and she was fantastic in it. When the movie came out, People Magazine interviewed her and said, “You’ve never done an animated movie, why did you do this one?”

She said, “I never did an animated movie before because no one ever asked me before.”

So if you can imagine Cher, who’s one of the most iconic, famous, most talented women on the planet has never been asked to do something, can you imagine who in your own life you’re not asking because you’re assuming, oh, everyone asks them? Maybe no one’s asked, so why don’t you do it?

So then, how do you do it? You start small. Today, honestly, it’s much easier. When I started doing it in college, there was no email. so you actually had to call somebody or write them an actual letter. Now you can email, text, DM, there’s so many ways to get to people.

Start small. Call Uncle Phil and ask him why he never comes to holidays. I mean, you can do anything. Call your local grocery store and say, “How come you don’t stock this brand that I like?” Just start.

Once you get into the methodology of it and into the habit of it, it gets easier and easier because you realize, well, so what if they say no? What’s going to happen? The sky isn’t going to fall in. I mean, I call people all the time and ask them things.

It’s like your question in the beginning. Well, everyone wants to deal with me. No, I wish. A lot of people don’t answer me or say no to me. I’m like, who could say no to me? You know, my over-inflated ego. The answer, unfortunately, is lots of people. So what? All you need is one yes.

Joanna: I know my listeners are sitting there going, well, but how? Okay, so let’s say I do send an email, and it comes to someone I’ve identified because I’ve spent some time researching them, and I know this person would be interested.

So this might be a producer, I guess. I’m not sending it to an actor, I’m sending it to a producer. Or who else would I send it to? What would be the one thing that’s going to make them interested in a conversation?

Larry: So if you want to sell the film rights to your book?

Joanna: Yes.

Larry: So you’d send it to producers, or you’d send it to agents. Now in the UK, by the way, the book agents and the film agents are acting much nicer than in Los Angeles. So I shouldn’t say that, but they are, and they’re much more literary. They tend to read more. So you have to think —

When you’re selling a book for a movie, you’re really selling the plot.

One of the things you can do in a book is you can obviously write what the character is thinking. In a movie you have to show.

A long time ago when Jurassic Park came out, in those days they would auction books. I was working with Jim Cameron those days, and we were number two in the auction list. So if Steven Spielberg didn’t take it, we got it, and Spielberg took it.

At the same time, The Bonfire of the Vanities was being auctioned by Tom Wolfe. Brilliant book. The two books got huge money, and they were both in production the same time. One is a multi-multi-billion dollar franchise, and it’s still getting made, and the other failed. Why?

Because if you just take Tom Wolfe’s book, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and you just take the plot, it’s about a miserable guy who ruins his life and the life of everyone around him. It’s not so intriguing.

If you take Jurassic Park, Dinosaur Park goes awry, that’s a movie. So you have to think, what is it in your book that translates into the different medium?

You have to understand that because they’re going to throw away three quarters of what you wrote because you’re saying, “And then he thought this,” and you can’t do that in a movie. So the first thing is, okay, why?

Why is your book unique? You need a pitch line.

Again, I mean Michael Crichton, every one of his books almost is just a brilliant pitch for a movie.

So think about, you’re going to hate this, but think about describing your book in one sentence. Think about two things, there’s a log line and then there’s a tagline. A tagline is kind of a slogan. The log line is a line or two about the plot.

Tagline is, if you look at the movie Alien, the first Alien movie, the tagline was a genius one, “In space, no one can hear your scream.” So think of those two things, that’s what people are going to buy.

Then you have to think to yourself, okay, well, what characters do I have in my book? Let’s say my characters are all 11 years old. Well, that’s going to be hard because they’re not a lot of 11 year old movie stars.

So people are looking for star actors, but they say, well, there are three roles in my book for men and women who are 40 years old. You think, oh, my God, this is great. There’s a ton of stars for it.

That’s what you want to do.

Help the producer or the agent, who you might think is very creative, but help them envision it.

Here’s the title, here’s the log line, here’s the tagline, here’s who should play my character. Help them envision it because that’s how they’re going to resell it.

Joanna: You say you’re selling the plot, and again, as authors, most people are told it’s all about character first. It’s so interesting because you’re starting with the plot there, and it’s got to be visual, on the screen. I certainly write that way because that’s the kind of movies I like, so I like that kind of book as well.

I’s very interesting that what we’re told as authors is kind of different to screenwriters and movie people.

Larry: Yes, but maybe for novels, that’s correct. Certainly, you want the characters to shine in a movie, but you have to show what they do. You can’t tell. I mean, that’s the number one screenwriting rule, show, don’t tell. I mean, “He’s cold,” is different than, “He’s in his underwear in the Himalayas in a snowstorm turning blue.” So it’s all visual.

You have to think visually. If you write that way in your books, then you’re in great shape.

I mean, Crichton’s books are like that. They read just like a movie script, so it’s fantastic.

People don’t like to be terribly analytical, and remember, the process of turning a book into a movie is a long, expensive one. You have to hire writers, you have to get someone to do it. Sometimes that takes years and costs millions of dollars. So people are reticent to do it unless there’s something great.

You said something in the beginning of this, I want to challenge you. You said, “Well, I’m not saying it to an actor.” Why not? I mean, I wouldn’t just send it to anybody, but if you think of what I did with Cher, if you think this is just perfect for whoever, Tom Hanks, what do you get to lose?

Again, all you have to do is email today. You don’t have to call the guy. You don’t have to go to Cannes and pitch him. You should, but you can work your way up to that. You can just email. So what if they don’t answer? Try, you never know.

I mean, sometimes people take a shot at things. I get stuff like that all the time, and I’m pretty good if I think it’s interesting.

Here’s an example. During the pandemic, we couldn’t cast like normal. In action movies, I like putting in wherever I can, new people, because I think the audience likes that.

So we found a couple of people, especially one on Instagram. There’s a woman we found on Instagram, and she’s on the cover of my Malibu Blonde book, and she’s now set to star in one of our next movies. We just found her on Instagram, and we worked together. So why not?

If I said to you, like your last book, who’s the star of that movie? Who really should play your main character? Do you know?

Joanna: Oh, well, I’m totally sending my book to Nicolas Cage then!

Larry: Why not? Nicolas Cage has a touch of the madness.

Joanna: Oh, he does. He does.

Larry: Well message Nicholas Cage and be bold as hell. “Only you can play this. I wrote this for you.” You know, people in America assume everyone in in the UK is smarter than they are, so use that.

“I’m an author in Bath, England. I want you to be in my movie, so I had to send it to you first. I wrote this out of passion.” Why not?

Joanna: You’ve inspired me. You’ve inspired me. That is great, actually. That really helps. We’re almost out of time, but I do want to ask you about technology because in the book, you say,

“Let technology serve your idea, not the other way around.”

You and your company, Threshold, have been at the forefront of technological innovation, the first morphing in a movie in Terminator 2. I bet you everyone can picture that in their head.

Now, part of the strikes was generative AI. There’s a lot of AI kind of coming or happening already for video, music, books, writing. So what are your thoughts on how things are changing, the good things that are happening, the challenges with generative AI?

Larry: For the movie business, I think there’s an enormous amount of opportunity in AI before the machines take over. So because I was involved in Terminator 2, you know, we used to think about this in a development way, and now it’s really happening.

So it is kind of unusual, but whether you like it or don’t, the first thing is, it’s happening. It’s coming. It’s a tidal wave. You can’t stop a tidal wave, so you better learn how to surf. So it’s coming.

My point is, if you just jump in the bandwagon because everyone’s doing it, you’re going to fail. If you think to yourself, here’s a problem, and AI could solve it, you won’t.

So for me, my belief is one of the problems and the challenges in the movie business is movies have gotten a little too expensive. So people are more conservative and it’s harder to make money.

All AI does for us in that category is things that we do anyway, just quicker, faster and better.

It’s no different than an assembly line to manufacturing. So in the entire history of the movie business and the whole industrial revolution, I mean, every new invention, everyone thought, “Oh, my God, that’s going to be it.”

People thought TV would ruin theaters, and then home video would ruin theater. It doesn’t. It just makes the whole pie bigger and the slices smaller, but the whole game is getting bigger.

So for me, for AI, we think, well, we can show things, we can do things that we were doing before, just with better technology. So for example, one of the big misnomers about the actor strike was they kept saying, “Well, what if there are digital stunt people and digital extras?”

We’ve been using digital extras for 15 years.

I mean, what do you think, every time you see a Coliseum they got 60,000 people to sit there? Or we used to throw people off buildings, human beings, we don’t do that anymore.

I wanted a panther for Mortal Kombat. When the panther came and looked at this animatronic seven-foot four-arm creature, and said no way. Today, we would never bring a panther on a set, you just do it digitally. It’s just better.

AI for the movies enables you to do things with visual effects that we’ve been doing anyway, just better, faster, cheaper. That’s great because all we should care about, and all you should care about as writers, is the audience.

You don’t work for the producer, I always tell people. You don’t work for the director, you don’t work for the studio, you work for the audience.

Your audience just wants to see a great movie or read a great book or whatever. They don’t care how you did it, and nor should they bother caring, nor should you burden them with it.

I started a new company recently called Supergiant Studios, where any client can come to us and star in a short film with a celebrity, with a Hollywood celebrity. It’s a great bucket list thing to do, and it’s working really well. We just had Tom Arnold from True Lies in one of the movies. It’s a great bucket list thing to do.

One of the things is, because they’re short films and we want to keep the cost as low as we can for the client, if we want the establishing shot in Bath, England year one, we can do that now in these little movies, whereas before, there’s no way we could do that. So it’s great.

Just like morphing was great. Just like 3D Steadicam, which we helped invent, was great. People are just scared because they’re scared.

The final thing is, any new technology has an upside and a downside. Water has an upside and a downside. You don’t want to be around a tidal wave, but it’s great. So I think, just again, it’s just fear. It’s just the fear we have to get over.

Joanna: And creative people will keep creating, regardless.

Larry: You know, everyone forgets this, but when laptops became prevalent, everyone said, “Oh, well, now everyone has access to a computer that can help you with everything. Everyone’s going to be Shakespeare.” Well, you know what, everyone’s not Shakespeare.

Creating and talent is hard, and AI is a tool. If you use it as a tool, it’ll help you be a good whatever you do, but that’s it. I think it’s fantastic.

Joanna: Brilliant. I love that.

Where can people find the book and everything you do online?

Larry: So the book is every place books are sold. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or they can go to ATouchOfTheMadness.com and find out. I’m at LarryKasanoff.com, or @LarryKasanoff on Instagram, or ThresholdEntertainment.com. Any of those places.

Joanna: Well, thanks for your time, Larry. That was great.

Larry: Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.

The post A Touch of the Madness: Creativity In Writing And Filmmaking With Larry Kasanoff first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Go to Source

Author: Joanna Penn

Carl Phillips on Scattered Snows, to the North

In this video from U.K. publisher Carcanet Press, Carl Phillips talks about the themes of memory and reflection within his seventeenth poetry collection, Scattered Snows, to the North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Go to Source

Author: jkashiwabara

Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender by Joy Ladin

Joy Ladin reads from her essay collection, Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender, published by Persea Books in September 2024.  

Go to Source

Author: mshi

Laura Marris: The Age of Loneliness

In this Books Are Magic event with Adam Dalva, author and translator Laura Marris reads from and speaks about her debut essay collection, The Age of Loneliness (Graywolf Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the September/October of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Go to Source

Author: jkashiwabara

Story Time

In Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, published by W. W. Norton in June, author and journalist Annalee Newitz chronicles the ways storytelling can be wielded as a manipulative tool to further political agendas and steer cultural perspective, through advertising, influence campaigns, and mass media. In the first chapter Newitz discusses how Sigmund Freud’s theories help sell products: “Advertisers began to study psychology to figure out ways to manipulate the unconscious minds of consumers,” she writes. “They would lure consumers in with emotional appeals or by associating a product with some political ideal like freedom.” Write a personal essay about a time when you were persuaded by a narrative—whether it be a story told to you by a friend, foe, colleague, family member, or even an advertisement. Were you able to separate from your unconscious mind and gain a fuller perspective on the situation?

Go to Source

Author: Writing Prompter

Tracy O’Neill and Padma Viswanathan on Genre-Bending Memoirs

In this Center for Fiction event, Padma Viswanathan, author of Like Every Form of Love: A Memoir of Friendship and True Crime (7.13 Books, 2024), and Tracy O’Neill, author of Woman of Interest (HarperOne, 2024), discuss their memoirs and how they broke genre conventions to craft their stories.

Go to Source

Author: jkashiwabara

Bret Anthony Johnston on Skateboarding and Writing

“At the heart of it, it’s all about making things.” In this Ride Channel video, Bret Anthony Johnston, author most recently of the novel We Burn Daylight (Random House, 2024), talks about the link between skateboarding and writing, and how they are both “a way to escape yourself” and “give yourself over to something much bigger than you.” For more from Johnston, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.

Go to Source

Author: jkashiwabara

Paterson

William Carlos Williams’s multi-volume, mid-twentieth-century poem Paterson is purportedly inspired by the works of his contemporaries: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Hart Crane’s The Bridge. Through his subject—the former mill town of Paterson, New Jersey—Williams provides a voice for American industrial communities. A launching pad for other artists’ work, the book inspired Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 film Paterson, about a bus driver and poet named Paterson in the city of the same name, and Robert Fitterman’s book Creve Coeur (Winter Editions, 2024), set in the segregated suburbs of his eponymous Missouri hometown—an illustration of contemporary America that mirrors the structure of Williams’s postwar epic. Write a poem that draws on specific observations of your neighborhood to express a wider perspective on life in the twenty-first century. Incorporate street names, local landmarks, and history as well as tidbits of everyday conversation.

Go to Source

Author: Writing Prompter

China Miéville and Keanu Reeves: The Book of Elsewhere

In this Penguin Random House video, China Miéville and Keanu Reeves answer questions from readers about the writing process and inspiration for their collaborative novel, The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey, 2024), based on the comic book series BRZRKR.

Go to Source

Author: jkashiwabara

The First Plot Point (Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 5 of 12)

The First Plot Point is a linchpin in narrative architecture. This pivotal moment thrusts the protagonist into a new and irrevocable direction. Positioned around the 25% mark, it serves as a seismic shift, propelling the tale from the initial groundwork of the First Act into the uncharted territory of escalating tension and conflict.

This juncture marks the end of the story’s setup and catapults characters and readers alike into the heart of the narrative arc. By introducing a significant development (often a challenge or revelation) that forces the protagonist to confront the core conflict head-on, the First Plot Point drives the story forward with a cascade of consequences. As a catalyst that shapes the plot’s trajectory and sets the stage for the ensuing drama, it is one of the most critical cornerstones in storytelling.

From the book Structuring Your Novel: Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)

What Is the First Plot Point?

The First Plot Point signals the transition from the setup of the First Act into the full-on immersion of the Second Act. Up to now, the story has focused primarily on setting the stage and laying the groundwork for what will follow. From here, the story will use this foundation to create the back-and-forth drama of the characters pursuing their goals and confronting obstacles.

The First Plot Point kicks off the main conflict by ensuring that two potent ingredients fuse to create the alchemy of plot. The first of these ingredients is your protagonist’s plot goal. Although the main plot goal may have been explicit throughout the First Act, it is more likely to have originated in this early section of the story as a vague or unformed desire. This could also be expressed to readers by dramatizing circumstances that need to change for your characters.

As the protagonist progresses through the First Act, and especially the Inciting Event, this desire or need will emerge more and more explicitly. By the time the First Plot Point arrives, the motivation will coalesce into a concrete intention that urges the character forward. This intention will continue to evolve over the course of the story as the character arc refines the character’s inner perspectives. What happens at the First Plot Point should create a cohesive throughline of intent to generate this forward momentum.

For Example:

  • In Ever After, the protagonist’s throughline goal is always saving her family’s farm, even as her desires in her relationship with Prince Henry evolve over the course of the story. Her intentions about the farm motivate and influence her every action in the relationship.

Ever After (1998), 20th Century Fox.

In order to create the plot conflict in the Second Act, the second necessary ingredient that must come into play at the First Plot Point is antagonistic opposition. When we speak about the necessity of “conflict” in a story, what we are really speaking about is the necessity of the character’s forward progress toward the goal being impeded by obstacles. When we speak of the “antagonist” or the “antagonistic force,” what we are really speaking of is whoever or whatever consistently creates those obstacles.

The true significance of the First Plot Point is that it is the moment at which the protagonist’s goal and the antagonist’s opposition join inextricably. In some stories, the antagonistic force and its obstacles may be present in full force right from the beginning of the story, in which case it is the protagonist’s full commitment to the goal that initiates the conflict at the First Plot Point. In other stories, the protagonist may be fully intent on the goal much earlier but does not fully confront opposition to that goal until the First Plot Point. In still other stories, neither the protagonist’s goal nor the antagonistic force’s opposition become fully realized until this moment.

Regardless, the First Plot Point signals a shift out of the Normal World of the First Act. It moves your characters into the symbolic Adventure World of the Second Act, in which they will discover what is at stake if they remain committed to their goal. It is important to note, however, that even should the characters at some point regret their decision to pursue this goal in the face of opposition, they cannot go back to the way things were. The First Plot Point is symbolically a Door of No Return.

By committing to the plot goal and discovering opposition from the antagonist, the protagonist’s choice here changes things. Even in low-stakes stories, the characters’ choice at the First Plot Point will permanently change either themselves or the world around them. Often, this will be dramatized by a change in setting. The character will literally switch “worlds” by moving to a new and more challenging setting. In other stories, in which the main setting remains the same, this can be signified by introducing new elements into the existing setting.

For Example:

  • In Legally Blonde, the ditzy protagonist is accepted into Harvard Law School. Up to this point, her attempts to get her boyfriend back didn’t create permanent change in her life. By deciding to follow him to law school, the actions she takes forever alter the trajectory of her life—no matter what happens next.

Legally Blonde (2001), MGM.

Where Does the First Plot Point Belong?

The First Plot Point occurs around the 25% mark, signaling the end of the First Act. As always, this timing represents an ideal and will be subject to the unique pacing needs of each story. What is most important in timing your First Plot Point is ensuring the preceding First Act has enough space to fully develop and lay the groundwork for the story to come without belaboring events.

First Act Timeline

Why place the First Plot Point at the 25% mark? Why here and not at the 10% or 40% mark? If you’ve ever watched or read a poorly plotted story that skipped or postponed the First Plot Point, you probably instinctively perceived the story was dragging. Without the turning point of the First Plot Point, the First Act will drag on too long—or, conversely, if the First Plot Point takes place too early, the Second Act will drag.

If you pay attention while watching a movie, you can time the major plot points down to the minute. This makes film an especially valuable medium for studying structure since you can view the entire story structure in one sitting and precisely identify structural beats by dividing the total running time into eighths. You can, of course, also do this with books. Divide the total page count by eight and note what happens near each section. Just remember that the timing in a book will not likely be as precise as in a shorter medium like film.

>>Click here to read structural breakdowns in the Story Structure Database.

You won’t always know exactly where the timing of a specific plot beat falls within your overall story until you have finished it, although you can create rough projections by evaluating how many scenes will take place in each section. However, once you have completed your story and can evaluate the timing of every structural beat within the whole, you can use the timing of the First Plot Point to evaluate whether the first half of the Second Act is proportionally too long or too short.

People often wonder if the First Plot Point is part of the First Act or the Second Act. My view is that the First Plot Point can more properly be seen as a transitional zone between the two. Continuing with the doorway metaphor, we can think of the First Plot Point as a portal between the Normal World and the Adventure World.

Although considered a single beat, the First Plot Point can comprise many scenes forming a cohesive sequence. Particularly if the events of your First Plot Point are shattering and/or you are dramatizing a large-scale action scene, you may require more than a few scenes to realistically create the event you’re trying to convey. I generally time structural beats at the moment the character changes within the larger scene or sequence. In the First Plot Point, this is when the protagonist’s goal becomes inextricably entangled with the antagonist’s opposition. This is the moment from which the protagonist cannot return, the moment when there is no going back.

The Difference Between Plot Points and Beats

You may sometimes hear the term “plot point” used to reference any moment of change or impact within a story. However, I prefer to use “plot point” to refer exclusively to structural moments of change within the story. Although your story will feature only a specific few structural turning points, it can have any number of beats, some relatively minor, some shockingly huge. Beats are what keep your story moving forward. They mix things up, keep the conflict fresh, and propel your character far away from any possibility of stagnancy.

For Example:

  • The movie Changeling features several cataclysmic beats in the First Act (including the kidnapping of the heroine’s son at the Inciting Event, the return of the wrong boy, and the police department’s insistence that she accept the child anyway) before her decision, at the First Plot Point, to fight back against the corrupt police department.

Changeling (2008), Universal Pictures.

What differentiates a structural plot point from every other story beat is the fact that everything changes for the character. One reason I capitalize terms when referring to significant structural moments in the plot structure is to emphasize that these beats are particularly important. The First Plot Point marks a place of no return for your characters. It is the beat when the setup ends and your protagonist crosses a personal Rubicon.

Examples of the First Plot Point From Film and Literature

Pride and Prejudice: After the ball at Netherfield Park, Darcy and the Bingley sisters convince Mr. Bingley to return to London and forget his growing affection for Jane. Much has already happened in the story. Jane and Elizabeth have stayed over at Netherfield. Lydia and Kitty have become enamored of the militia. Wickham has turned Elizabeth against Darcy. And Mr. Collins has proposed to Elizabeth. Then everything changes at the 25% mark when Darcy and the Bingleys leave. This is the event that breaks Jane’s heart and infuriates Elizabeth against Darcy. It also changes the story’s landscape, since several prominent characters are no longer in the neighborhood for the Bennets to interact with as they did throughout the book’s first quarter.

Pride & Prejudice (2005), Focus Features.

It’s a Wonderful Life: Throughout the first quarter of the story, George Bailey’s plans for his life have progressed uninterrupted. Despite his misadventures in Bedford Falls, he’s headed for a European vacation and a college education. Then the First Plot Point hits. When his father dies of a stroke, George’s plans are dashed. This moment forever changes George’s life, setting the subsequent plot points in motion. As in Pride & Prejudice, the standards that have been established in the story are dramatically altered. This is no longer a story about a carefree young man freewheeling around town. From here, this is a story about a man forced to assume responsibility by taking over his father’s beloved business.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1947), Liberty Films.

Ender’s Game: The quarter mark finds Ender graduating to Salamander Army after a victorious confrontation with the bully Bernard. Ender’s assertion of brains, tenacity, and leadership allow him to claim his spot at Battle School. He makes it clear to himself, the other children, and the watching instructors that he will do whatever he must to survive. This First Plot Point also changes the game (no pun intended) by once again moving Ender to new surroundings. As a member of Salamander Army, he is dropped into a new place, new quarters, and a new set of challenges.

Ender’s Game (2013), Lionsgate.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: After refitting the Surprise and heading back to sea to look for the French privateer Acheron, Captain Jack Aubrey is confident everything will go according to his plans. He is thrown for a loop by the First Plot Point. Instead of the Surprise finding the Acheron, the captain wakes to discover the enemy bearing down on his much smaller ship. Not only is his victory at risk but now he and his crew are in danger of being captured. They scramble to escape, and the game of cat-and-mouse that will comprise the rest of the film begins in earnest.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Miramax Films.

Top Things to Remember About the First Plot Point

  1. The First Plot Point occurs around the 25% mark.
  2. The First Plot Point is an event that changes everything and becomes a personal turning point for the main character.
  3. The First Plot Point almost always changes the story so irrevocably that even the character’s surroundings (either the physical setting or the cast of supporting characters) are altered.
  4. The First Plot Point is something to which the main character must be able to react strongly and irretrievably.

The First Plot Point is one of the most exciting moments in any story. Choose a robust and cataclysmic event to which your characters must adamantly react. Hit readers so hard at the end of the First Act they won’t even think about closing the book.

Stay tuned: In two weeks, we’ll talk about the First Half of the Second Act.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What happens at your story’s First Plot Point? Tell me in the comments!

Related Posts:

Part 1: 5 Reasons Story Structure Is Important

Part 2: The Hook

Part 3: The First Act

Part 4: The Inciting Event

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

___

Love Helping Writers Become Authors? You can now become a patron. (Huge thanks to those of you who are already part of my Patreon family!)

The post The First Plot Point (Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 5 of 12) appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.

Go to Source

Author: K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland

Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Publishing With Thad McIlroy

How are publishers using AI and what are the potential use cases in the future? Why is this an exciting time in publishing for those who use the new tools to expand their creative possibilities? Thad McIlroy and I have a wonderful discussion about the current state of AI in publishing, and where we think it might be going next.

In the intro, Audible tests AI-powered search [TechCrunch]; How to avoid book marketing overwhelm [Author Media]; Top 17 self-publishing companies [Nerdy Novelist]; How I professionally self-publish; 30% off ebooks & audio at CreativePennBooks.com, use discount code AUGUST24.

draft2digital

Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Thad McIlroy is a nonfiction author and contributing editor, writing at the intersection of AI and book publishing, as well as a publishing consultant. His latest book is The AI Revolution in Book Publishing: A Concise Guide to Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Writers and Publishers.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

  • Why is generative AI so controversial in publishing?
  • Ways in which traditional publishers are using AI tools
  • How platforms are monitoring and placing guidelines on AI work
    — and why Ingram blocked his book
  • The future of licensing — and synthetic data
  • The increasing importance of high-quality print books
  • Generative AI search and book discoverability
  • Why Thad thinks this is the most exciting time in his 50 year career in publishing

You can find Thad at thefutureofpublishing.com and his new book at Leanpub.com

Transcript of Interview with Thad McIlroy

Joanna: Thad McIlroy is a nonfiction author and contributing editor, writing at the intersection of AI and book publishing, as well as a publishing consultant. His latest book is The AI Revolution in Book Publishing: A Concise Guide to Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Writers and Publishers. So welcome back to the show, Thad.

Thad: Thank you very much, Joanna. It’s good to be back. I was thinking, did we start talking first maybe 10 years ago, that we’ve been staying in touch?

Joanna: Yes, I think so. You’ve been on the show several times, and I always read your site, The Future of Publishing. It’s so good that we’re on the same page now, I think, with AI.

Thad: We are, indeed.

Joanna: So let’s get into it. I mean, in this industry, we’ve all been using aspects of AI in publishing for years. Like the Amazon algorithms, for example, or Google search.

Why is the use of generative AI, in particular, so emotional and controversial in the publishing industry, when other businesses are adopting it with enthusiasm?

I know my husband’s company is doing it, and there’s lots of companies rolling things out, but in publishing, it seems like a no-no.

Thad: It really does, and it’s such a fraught topic. It is such an awkward time to be talking to folks about technology when it’s just explosive in many ways and suddenly an untouchable.

I think there’s more than one aspect to it, right? There’s, on the one hand, this feeling of having been violated. There’s so much press about AI companies having hoovered up, as is often said, the content. People have this sense —

Authors have this sense, that every book of theirs has already been ingested into an AI system, which is thoroughly inaccurate.

If you’re not following the story closely, and you hear stories of hundreds of thousands of books, you don’t have any sense as an author of the fact that it was actually a relatively small number of books that got into some of these large language models. Regardless, the sense is that everything got hoovered up.

Then I think there’s a secondary sense that I get from some of my author friends where they say, “Well, if my books are already in there, then the AI can recreate books like mine, and that will push me out of business,” that kind of sense.

That’s a hard one to explain exactly why that’s not likely to be true in any reasonable way. Then I get a sense from people, too, there’s a lot of mystique around AI. Giving it a name like artificial intelligence, and all this science fiction, and so on.

So there’s that kind of technological apprehension, which again, you can understand that. Then that leads to this sort of sense that these machines are going to try and take over creativity, which again, is a real sense of violation. So all those things are churning around at the same time.

Joanna: It’s so interesting, isn’t it? Like that last one, ‘will machines take over creativity?’ Or people who leave comments on people like me and other people or use AI saying, “Oh, you should write your own books,” when I’ve got like 15 years of doing this. It’s that somehow it’s taking something away. Whereas I was working with Claude.ai earlier today —

I feel so much more creative when I work with Claude and Chat.

Is that the sense you get? I guess where I’m going with this is, so much of the criticism is from people who haven’t even tried these models in a proper way, like without a terrible prompt.

Thad: Yes. Yes, exactly. I see people, they’ll try ChatGPT, usually that one first, sometimes Claude, whatever. Let’s say ChatGPT, they try it, they do a couple of prompts, and the first one you do, you’re just kind of amazed. “Wow, it sort of talks to me.”

Then you do the second one and the third one and think, well, it’s not really answering the way I thought it would. It’s not very clever with what it’s saying. Then they’ll abandon it. I’ve talked to so many people who’ve abandoned it so quickly.

Ethan Mollick, that guy who wrote Co-Intelligence, which I consider the best kind of starter guide to AI, all round starter guide, he says —

You need 10 hours. That’s his rough rule of the law of how to expose yourself to the technology before you can abandon it.

You know, after 10 hours, you can say, no, to hell with this, it’s not for me. By that point, you’ve exposed yourself, you’ve worked with it. You know what it can do, and then you can make an informed choice.

Joanna: Yes, I think that’s right. To me, the sense of curiosity and play is so important. It’s iterative. I’ve been using the tools now, and I know you have too, for several years now, these generative ones.

I’ve been using Midjourney. I’ve just been playing with version 6.1 which is just being released on Midjourney. Obviously, Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the latest there. Just as we speak today, there’s some beta things from ChatGPT around a massive output.

So this is moving really fast. I know different indie authors using generative AI for different things already. But in your book, you do outline ways that traditional publishers are looking at using generative AI tools.

In what ways are publishers using these [generative AI] tools?

Thad: In the book, I go at it from two angles. One, I have a short chapter where I quote from the Big Five because a lot of people in publishing look to them—not necessarily for guidance, it’s not like they’re going to inform us on the smart way to do these things—but what does HarperCollins say? What does Penguin Random House say? So I got a little section on that. Each of them are sort of tentatively feeling their way through it.

Hachette makes a really interesting distinction, where they say that there are two kinds of ways to use AI, operationally or creatively.

We being a creative house, we banished the use of AI for creativity within Hachette, but we’ll use it operationally. You think, well, good luck with that differentiation.

So then there’s a whole series of use cases, which I think many of your listeners would be familiar with because publishers are using it in some of the same ways that independent authors are using it.

Whether it be editorially for kind of developmental tasks, or in marketing. Of course, there’s lots of interesting use cases for marketing. I think both authors and publishers are doing some nifty things there.

A little bit around production, that seems to be sort of easing in so far. I see it on every side. For a while, it was like, well, it doesn’t do much here, but it does more stuff there. Now it seems that it touches everything.

Joanna: Yes, you mentioned the difference between operational and creative. To me, things like marketing have to be creative. They might mean the writing of the book, but sometimes I feel like they’re saying these things just to not get authors annoyed.

Thad: Exactly. Clearly, that’s what it is.

Joanna: Yes, because I guess on audiobooks, you have a little bit on audiobooks in there, and I can’t remember which publisher it is that’s now using ElevenLabs for some audio.

Thad: I think Simon & Schuster made a little announcement around that, or maybe it was HarperCollins, who knows which one of the Big Five.

[It was HarperCollins.]

Yes, one of them did announce that, and I’m working with ElevenLabs on my audio.

Joanna: Oh, are you for this book?

Thad: Yes.

Joanna: That’s interesting because, yes, I started using them. The biggest problem right now with the ElevenLabs file is even though they probably are the best of breed service for AI audio—I mean, there’s Google, but they don’t have enough voices, whereas ElevenLabs has so many—but Spotify won’t accept their files right now, as we record this at the end of July 2024.

Of course, ACX won’t either, because they still only take human files. So this is my pick—

My pick is that either Spotify is going to buy ElevenLabs or that they will allow ElevenLabs files by the end of 2024. What do you think about this?

Thad: I’m with you on that. I mean, because ACX has partially backed down, right? They’re still sort of publicly pooh-poohing it, but you can do through ACX an automated workflow which they’re reluctantly accepting. Some of those files are now apparently in Audible, so Amazon has stepped back.

I think that all of the companies will see that they have no choice but to accept these files. The whole idea that they’re not good enough is clearly untrue at this point. They may not be quite as excellent as if you spend $20,000 on a top tier production, but they’re very, very good for the average listener.

Joanna: Yes, and actually, ACX officially doesn’t do that, but Amazon KDP has a beta program for US indie authors. So US only, where you can opt in and use their AI generation, but it’s published through KDP, not through ACX.

Thad: Oh, that’s a very important detail.

Joanna: So there’s about 40,000, as of the last press release, AI-generated audiobooks from independent authors in the US right now from that program. I’m actually keeping an audiobook ready to kind of try that. I think that’s fascinating.

Thad: That’s such an interesting detail.

Joanna: I think that has a lot to do with unions, the narrator unions that are associated with ACX. This is what’s so interesting.

Let’s talk about the licensing deals because I guess the famous one is the New York Times suing OpenAI over training data. Now we’re seeing all these licensing deals, including News Corp, which owns The Telegraph. We’ve seen The Financial Times, The Atlantic.

News Corp obviously owns HarperCollins, which wasn’t included in the licensing, but I mean, who knows. Then recently, an academic publisher Taylor & Francis licensed books to Microsoft.

Here in the UK, the ALCS is looking at licensing for authors, and then the Authors Guild in the US.

What do you think about licensing data to the AI companies?

Are people going to just say, “Alright, we’re just going to forget the past. Give us some money,” and it’ll shake out that way?

Thad: All is forgiven, that’ll be the day. It’s so complicated, right? There’s so many things at play here, and there’s not going to be any easy answers. The outcome, I think, is going to play out over years. This is not something we’ll be resolving later this year or early next, anything like that.

For the AI companies, it’s clearly impossible to pay for everything. There’s just too much content out there. Unless it’s a penny a piece kind of thing, there’s no way they can license the whole of the web and all of the books that are out there. It’s just not viable.

So they’re coming up with these short-term licenses. The way I keep looking at those is that when they’re standing in front of the judge later this year, next year, on the first court cases, they can say, “Oh, no, we respect copyright. We’re doing some of these licenses to demonstrate our respect.”

The judge is going to have to rule on it, and then on appeal, and appeal after that, whether or not it’s a fair use. The initial original sin, whether that was fair use under the complexity of the law of fair use.

Simplifying the fair use is the notion that is it fair for an engine to ingest copyrighted content, not to reuse it verbatim, but to learn from it the way we learn as human beings reading content? That’s the sort of pro argument.

The other argument is no, you’re stealing all this copyrighted content. So when the courts determine on that, let’s assume that the courts side with the AI companies and say no, you don’t have to pay money.

That’s great that you’re showing your willingness to do some licensing, but no, legally, you’re not required to do so. Then the licenses will disappear very, very quickly at that point. I think they’re just trying to make nice at this point during the litigation.

Joanna: Yes, you used the word “fair” before. I mean, what is legal or what is accepted as fair? I mean, fair is so difficult a word.

The reality is with this technology, publishing and books are such a tiny, tiny, tiny perspective of generative AI.

In fact, again this week, Google’s DeepMind just got silver medal at the Maths Olympiad. I don’t know if you saw that, but this is huge for science.

Of course, DeepMind has the AlphaFold which does protein folding. So my husband works for a drug company, so I very much follow drug development, drug discovery, all of that kind of stuff. We’ve got some incredible challenges in humanity that these tools will be useful for.

Sometimes I just think, look, it doesn’t matter. The rest of it doesn’t matter. Save the planet, save us all from all these awful diseases, and you can have your data.

That’s sometimes how I think about it.

Thad: Me too. When you think of how important these medical advances are, and clearly they are enabled by this technology. I mean, it’s unambiguous that they’re getting this enormous value from the technology.

Then you come back to publishing and you say, calm down people. You’re actually kind of small potatoes in the whole picture here.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. Although, obviously, we respect you, and I respect copyright and all of that kind of thing, and we would like to make money ourselves.

The other thing on the licensing, you mentioned that a lot of these licenses for a couple of years. I like your angle around the court cases and looking good.

The other thing is that there has been some papers coming out on synthetic data. Some of the new Claude models originally—I say originally, you know how fast it goes—but people have said, “Oh, the models are going to run out of data, and if they ingest their own data, it’s just a load of sludge.”

That’s old news now. They’re now finding that synthetic data can be very, very good and can replace human data. So I was like, actually, we’ve got a very small window to get these licensing deals because—

Synthetic data itself may replace the need to license human data.

Thad: I agree with that. I bet for your listeners that synthetic data is something that’s over their heads understandably. You allude to how that works.

You use the AI to create more text or more images that are, in fact, derivative of their existing engine, but appear as if fresh, as if new, and can be ingested without spoiling the pool. I mean, if that’s workable, which I still hear some controversy back and forth on that, but it only makes sense that that could be solved as a problem.

So this book I’ve just done on AI and book publishing, they don’t need my book. They don’t need it at all. There’s no reason in the world for them to license my book.

Joanna: Yes, that is a good point, actually. Last year, and I know you referenced it in the book, which I was very thrilled about, my article on how generative search was going to change things. This is one of the reasons I’ve kind of stepped back from self-help books and nonfiction that can be done in other ways.

A lot of the questions that I answer in those books, you can now find through the generative AI. So I’ve moved much more into the kind of writing where you can’t get it from one of these tools.

What I liked about your book, even though you say they wouldn’t need it, it’s still your organization and your take on the industry. Of course, you’ve got a platform and people respect your opinion. So I think in that way, what you wrote was not something that could have come out of an AI system in that form.

I think it’s worth reminding people that it’s still worth writing these books — from a personal perspective.

Thad: Oh, yes. Absolutely. The point you’re raising around nonfiction, I agree with you. I’ve been interviewing a bunch of people and not reporting on it as yet because I’m still trying to figure out exactly how this is going to play out.

Certainly, what we’re seeing around the possibilities of AI with nonfiction is exceptional, is extraordinary. There it kind of loops over into the whole education space.

The amount of innovation on the education side, it doesn’t quite parallel on the health side or on the health and medicine side, but it is closer to that than it is to publishing. We’re seeing some really interesting tech there.

What’s the difference between a child in high school or you and I trying to find out the same information? So I think the education space is quite analogous to the nonfiction trade publishing space.

I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the existing container, as I keep coming back to that term “container” in the book. The way we express our books right now, we have a very particular mental model of the book container, and I think we have to break that down.

It’s not to say that we don’t still have a role as authors in creating content, but we have to get away from just thinking it’s in 12 chapters, 243 pages, that kind of thing. It can’t just be that anymore.

Joanna: I like this idea of the container. What was interesting, there was an article in The Verge by the CEO of The Atlantic, I don’t know if you read that about why they did the licensing. He actually said,

“Thank goodness, we have a print magazine, and thank goodness, we have an email list.”

That just made me laugh because myself, and many other indie authors now, we’re moving into special print editions. So I’ve just done my third Kickstarter of silver foil and hardback, and all the things that traditional publishers have specialized in, we’re now doing in order to change the container.

So, of course, you can still get my book as an eBook, but I also have these more expensive containers that mean I can still make a living. So, I mean, do you see that happening more, is that digital changes, but print just gets higher and higher quality?

Thad: Yes, I see it on two separate directions. Absolutely, print getting higher quality. I’ve been considering that for years because as the world becomes more atomized and digitized, the affordances of print become more precious and more remarkable.

Paying attention to print as a tangible instance of creative expression makes perfect sense.

I’m delighted to see authors thinking through all of these opportunities and deluxe editions, that kind of thing.

At the same time, to me, the de-containerization of publishing should also be towards video expression, more expression with audio, multiple languages. So it’s also de-containerizing within the digital sphere.

Joanna: Yes, and in fact, that’s why ElevenLabs is so interesting. In fact, Spotify has a kind of auto translation function that they’re using for very, very popular podcasts. So you can hear some of them in multiple languages in the host’s voice. I mean, these things are just incredible, really.

Let’s move into search because I think another reason that the licensing is happening with things like, let’s say The Financial Times, which I read here in the UK, is that a lot of people are starting to move their searches into ChatGPT.

So I mainly use ChatGPT for search and browsing. Of course, Bing is taking market share in the background from Google. That’s my main way I find books now is I will go and have a chat with Chat about a various topic, and then I’ll ask for books.

I’ll do that, and then I’ll go by the specific book, rather than starting on Amazon or starting elsewhere. Then also as we record this, SearchGPT, which is OpenAI’s product, is in a limited release. So things are changing.

How do you think this generative AI search is going to change book discoverability?

Because publishers use traditional media and search so much right now.

Thad: They sure do, and I’m concerned. I mean, I’m glad to hear that you’re using ChatGPT in that way. I’m not sure—well, let’s try a different angle.

As you said, to treat ChatGPT, for example, as a search engine per se, is not what it was designed to be. So it’s not designed to be a fact engine, or it was not originally designed to be, let’s say.

Now as they mature a little bit, and they look at the existing landscape, and they see that Google search has been most people’s conduit into the web and there’s no way to take over the world without embracing the reality that people interact with the world wide web via the search metaphor.

People want to be able to ask questions and get answers, which again, I don’t think it’s the optimal use for a large language model, but it is a use when combined with a certain factual database.

So I feel like there’s going to be a bifurcation within the availability of these engines, the features of these engines, some of which will be fact-oriented, and others will be more creative-oriented, or uses of the LLM that are not necessarily fact-related dependent on fact.

ChatGPT, they’re productizing it, as you say, as SearchGPT, recognizing that bifurcation, that search is an individualized function that’s not everything that we want to do. That didn’t answer your question, I realized.

What does this do to book discoverability? I am actually sort of more worried about it for publishers, on behalf of publishers and authors, because of the thing of being able to get the answers they need.

Like you can get a sufficient answer to many of your questions via these SeachGPTs, let’s say. If you can get that answer without having to go to the book, without having to be even aware that there’s a book on that topic, discoverability is going to be a whole different kind of challenge for authors and publishers.

Joanna: Yes, and it’s funny, one example is gardening. So I’ve never been into gardening, but now I’m like, I’m 49, I’ve got a garden, and I decided this year, like seriously, I need to do some gardening. What’s so awesome is you can take a picture.

I took a picture of my very messy garden and uploaded it to ChatGPT and said, “Okay, this is my garden. This is where I am in the world. Give me some ideas for garden design.”

Then from there, I carried on chatting around, “Okay, what kind of plants could I put up that would have flowers and that my cats wouldn’t die of?” and all of this.

The questions I asked, like, “If I go to the garden center, like what’s my list of the things I need to buy?” A couple of years ago, I would have bought a book on gardening, or 10 books on gardening. I’m very aware that my behavior is changing.

Actually, just on book discoverability—I don’t know if you knew this, I put it in my article—but I’ve gone back to trying to focus more on Goodreads because I found that when asking ChatGPT, “Find me books with stonemasons in,” for example, that it would use Goodreads reviews, as well as Amazon, Shopify and book blogs.

It was very interesting how much of Goodreads it used. A lot of us had given up on Goodreads, and now I think like, oh, maybe that’s actually important. [More in my episode/article on generative AI search and discoverability.]

Thad: Well, I’ve done a giveaway on Goodreads with my book. Going on to Goodreads, which I hadn’t been on in a while because I’d pretty much given up on it, it’s a bit of a waste land, in some sense. Like many of my colleagues who were active as I was some years ago on Goodreads, haven’t been for years.

I was looking at my old friends on Goodreads and seeing that they haven’t done a thing. So that was a bit discouraging, but at the same time, it’s really vibrant in other ways. It still is kind of one of a kind. So it has a role to play.

We’re raising several things there too because one of the concerns were authors would say, “Well, it knows about my book.”

It knows about your book not because it read your book, but because it read Goodreads and it read what everybody says about your book.

So that’s how it got to know. So it didn’t actually steal your book, it stole what people said about your book, which wasn’t copyrighted. Or technically maybe it was copyrighted, but in reality, anyone could scrape it. So that’s another aspect of Goodreads.

The other thing I’m thinking of as you’re saying that because you just raised wonderful several issues there, but on the gardening side, you don’t see a heck of a lot of books in bookstores on gardening anymore.

One of the things I’ve been pondering is the cookbooks, right? Because you obviously don’t need cookbooks anymore. I mean, ChatGPT and its brethren do wonderful jobs with recipes. You tell what ingredients you’ve got, and it can give you 22 recipes.

People buy cookbooks because they’re beautiful objects and they’re a beautiful presentation format.

I think that’s something that authors need to ponder still. They buy travel books too. ChatGPT does a great job on travel-related queries, and yet people still buy those books.

So it’s a good provocation to authors to say, well, look at what the machine can do, and then think about what you can do far better than the machine. There will always be things that we can do better than the machines.

Joanna: Yes, I totally agree, and that is definitely the way I’m thinking. You’re right on the cooking. I do that too. I use it all the time for cooking. It is just so useful.

Okay, just going back to the book. Just to read a quote, you say,

“When publishers look at AI, they see few opportunities. When I talk to authors about AI, the world is their oyster.”

So I love that, and you say the possibilities are near endless. We’ve talked about some of those, and I am super positive always on the show. I know there are negative sides, I know there are issues, but I choose to be a techno-optimist.

Many authors are scared, and they’re scared of, as you mentioned, some of the things at the beginning. They also worry about submitting to agents or publishers or competitions around where is the line when it comes to what do they count as using AI?

For example, ProWritingAid and Grammarly, which so many people use as part of the editing process, they are now powered by ChatGPT and AI models.

So if you’re using any editing software, and we recommend that people should, as well as work with human editors, it’s like that is completely different to clicking a button and then just publishing what you output. What do you think as to this disclosure? I mean, most agents and publishers don’t even have an AI policy on their website.

What should authors be thinking around AI usage if they want to submit to the more traditional industry?

Thad: There’s so much confusion. As you saw, you know, Ingram flagged my book for using AI. It was so deliciously ironic that here’s this book that’s meant to be an examination of the use of AI in writing and publishing, getting flagged by an AI algorithm that Ingram uses.

It therefore detected AI was in the book, in a section of my book that discusses on how authors can use ChatGPT interfaces kind of thing. So that false identification shows that there’s a lot of confusion still out there.

So on the one hand, they know that they don’t want this, as you’re saying, this unfiltered AI-generated text. That seems pretty clear that we don’t want that stuff somehow slipping into the ecosphere.

With the ProWritingAid and all of that, you know, how much AI-generated text is there if you run a chapter of your book through ChatGPT and say, “Give me some constructive suggestions on how to improve this chapter.”

You see that list, and then you use your own skills and your own verbiage to make those changes. Well, it is AI-assisted at that point by any sort of definition. Of course, that’s something that the algorithms are not going to be able to pick up on. So all of that, it’s kind of long windedness on my part.

We did a webinar back in May, looking very specifically at AI detection and how good the AI-detection software is. It’s good, but it makes mistakes like everything else.

No machine can reliably detect whether AI was used if someone puts their mind to not being sloppy about it.

So it can’t be found, but then it’s like, why, publisher, do you want to find this? Again, it’s that kind of that inkling of fear where they’re, “We don’t want whole books with authors lying about their use of it.” Well, that’s not what’s going to happen, publisher. That’s not the way it’s going to play out.

You’re going to be able to spot those books without a machine.

Just calm down, accept the fact that authors are starting to use these tools very productively and very constructively, and that’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing.

Joanna: It just feels like it’s going to take some time before everyone calms down, and before everyone realizes that they are using the tools.

For example, book cover design, there’s this sort of vocal anti-AI imagery. Now, Adobe Photoshop and all the main tools use AI in their packages.

I don’t even know how anyone can do a book cover right now without using some form of AI. In the same way that these editing softwares have AI in. So it’s almost like the lines are so blurred.

Thad: They are. I’ve talked to a designer, I was on a seminar in Denver a few months ago, and this designer is absolutely fastidious, “We don’t allow AI, blah, blah, blah.” So you see those kind of camps too, where they will not let AI touch any of this or that, anything. Well, like you’re saying, that’s going to change really quickly.

Joanna: Yes, or people are going to have to be painting. Well, then even say you do a painting that you want on the front cover of a book, you still have to take a picture of it, and most of the photo editing software has AI in it.

I also think that maybe with the launch of Apple Intelligence that will be on the new iPhones and the iPads, and which, of course, is powered by OpenAI, and will also, I think, be powered by some of these other models, that’s going to just put it on people’s devices.

So I almost wonder if this is—and I’ve said this before—this year one, this is like sort of 2007 for eBooks. You remember all that stuff. “Oh, these are awful. No one’s ever going to do this,” and the tsunami of crap for self-publishing. It just feels like that time.

Thad: Yes, indeed. Ethan Mollick makes this point that I’ve seen a couple other people make too, this is the worst AI you’ll ever be working with.

So there’s moments where for you and I where we’re going, “Oh, wow, I can do this, I can do this,” and then you hear someone say, “This is the worst that you’re ever going to see.” It’s going to get an order of magnitude better, and you try and get your mind around that at this point. Clearly, that’s the case. This is 2007 in eBooks.

If you play it out three years from now, five years from now, it’s really going to be exceptional.

You also have a point with the Apple AI. Some people are commenting on their approach of trying to make the AI invisible, which in a sense, is what ProWritingAid and Grammarly do. The AI is semi-visible, but it works in the background, as it does with other spell checkers and grammar checkers.

Apple is kind of intimating a future where everything is AI-enabled and nothing is AI-specific.

Joanna: Yes, and the letters “AI” is a bit like the internet. It’s almost meaningless as a term because it encompasses so much.

Our life, and our business practices, and our creativity changed so much with the internet, and they’re going to change so much over the next 20 years with AI.

I mean, I love it. I’m grinning here. I know you’re grinning. We’re both excited about this, and I kind of hope that that’s what people will come away with.

Let’s just keep focusing on what happened to you with Ingram for a minute because this is what people are worried about. They’re worried about being banned by this overenthusiastic algorithm, and not everyone is Thad. You were able to get ahold of Ingram, and they’re helping you sort it out.

For example, Amazon’s algorithm has banned people not actually necessarily over AI use, because you can just tell Amazon that you’re using AI now, there’s a disclosure thing when you publish, but this kind of thing is what people worry about.

If a ‘normal’ author listening has an Ingram issue, is there a process to follow in terms of appeal? Where do you think the lines are?

Thad: Yes, I was lucky in that sense. Although, I would have stood my ground. I wasn’t trying to say to them, you should give me an exemption and pay attention to my problem. I was just trying to raise the issue.

I think every reasonable person accepts that these platforms do need to curate the content that they release into the public. We don’t want hate, we don’t want this, we don’t want that, we don’t want sexual, whatever kind of content. So we accept that there has to be some kind of filtering. Good, okay.

So then these platforms say they’re also filtering around AI, which Ingram claims they’re doing at this point in a less subtle way than Amazon is. So books are going to get caught, and again, as you say, sometimes for AI and sometimes for other things.

The way Ingram does it right now, I got the notice on Friday, there’s a button saying, “Click here to appeal it,” click, register your appeal with a one little one line box in which you can explain why you’re appealing. Then you get an acknowledgment back saying, we’ll get back to you within two weeks.

Then I Googled it, and I could see on Reddit and other places, “I got banned by Ingram, and it took two months to get it resolved.” Well, that’s ludicrous, and that was the big point I was trying to make to Ingram. It’s because you’re so powerful, you have a responsibility that comes with that power.

You cannot just banish someone and tell them that the invisible court of appeal may or may not get back to them within two weeks or two months. That’s not a workable system.

Joanna: I encourage authors to join organizations like the Alliance of Independent Authors, and there are some other author organizations as well, but certainly ALLi has an ethical author policy around AI.

It’s just way more powerful together I think is the thing. An individual author doesn’t have so much say.

I wanted to just return to what you said earlier, which was these platforms don’t want this unfiltered AI generation, and that these are the worst models we’re ever going to get.

I definitely found Claude 3.5 Sonnet, I had a real moment. I’ve had a couple of these moments, I’m sure you have too, when you’re like, oh, my goodness.

It was interesting with Sonnet because I was thinking, do you know what, I already do not consider myself the best writer in the world. It’s never been a thing where I’ve thought, oh, well, I have to be the best writer, because we know that’s completely ridiculous.

If an AI system is a better writer than me, how big a deal is that?

Then I decided, actually, that wasn’t a big deal because it has far more data than me, a “bigger brain,” in inverted commas, and thus it comes to, well, what is the nature of what we do?

It’s about our creativity and about our spark that starts the process. My process is changing, but what I want to create continues.

These bots and agents as they emerge later on this year, next year, they’re going to do my creative bidding, as such.

That, to me, is very exciting, but the reality is there are companies now that are looking at generating to market. So for example—

Let’s say you type in a search term, and then the AI can generate a book to fit that.

That’s what people are scared of. So how are you navigating this? I mean, we talked a bit about nonfiction, but what about fiction and the different forms of creativity people have?

Thad: That is such a great heart of darkness concern. Indeed, when you try to ponder, let’s say genre fiction, because it’s easy to talk about genre fiction, because in one sense, the essence of genre is repeatability. You’re giving people more of what they actually want, in a sense.

They’re reading within a genre, so they want books that fit within that. Sometimes it’s a looser definition, but it is a constraint. The genre defines a constraint versus so called literary fiction, which supposedly has no constraints.

So it’s easier to imagine the machine taking on the challenge of writing within a particular narrow genre, and perhaps succeeding in producing a work that a reader would enjoy as much as they might enjoy something that a human had created within that same genre.

I don’t think it’s possible today, but it certainly is conceivable for you or I to see that two years from now, whatever, a little bit down the road.

For some reason, I can’t get worried about that, the scenario in which all creative writers are supplanted by machines. It doesn’t ring true for some reason. As much as I’m enthusiastic, and as much as I think there’s so much promise here, I just don’t see the human in the loop disappearing.

Even if creative writers rely more and more on these tools, it’s still their unique take on the way they use the tools, and what they accept from the tools, and what they ultimately pull together as the whole manuscript.

That’s going to be human adjudicated to whatever extent, as far as I can see, as we move forward. I’m not afraid of the machine replacing the author.

Joanna: No, I agree with you from the author perspective.

We are the creative ones. We create. We’re never going to stop creating. What is changing is the business model.

If you think about some of the very genre specific publishers who have imprints where they really do have rules that they give to writers, “Follow these rules for this type of book.” You know who they are, we don’t need to mention them, but there are those publishers.

I look at them and I think, their dataset, if they fine tune one of these models. I mean, they’re already paying authors very little money for these types of books. Those are the types of publishers who I think may well be looking at this now.

The business person in me goes, they would be crazy not to be looking at this. So almost like, no, I agree with you. I’m not scared at all. Humans are going to keep doing human things.

Publishers who are businesses, with big datasets, who return money to shareholders, it’s a different story.

Am I being unfair there? They do have big datasets.

Thad: Indeed. I mean, you can see the possibility that some portion of the marketplace is subsumed in that way. When you put it that way, I can certainly see it.

When I think about the issue around—let’s switch it over for a second to book translation. There’s another one where translators are justifiably very apprehensive about the future of humans in the translation of books.

My book I’ve had translated using ChatGPT into 31 languages.

No human who was fluent in those languages has looked at those books. I did some quality checking by doing a reverse translation afterwards.

I translated it into French, and then use ChatGPT to translate the French back into English and compared the English, and it was fascinating actually how close it was and how different it was. It was acceptable, it was good enough, for sure.

So, clearly some portion of the people who work in translation, that work is disappearing. Other work, the higher level translation work, one study I just saw a couple of days ago is showing that that work is actually increasing.

The more talented and more skilled translators are getting more work, while the less skilled ones are getting less work.

So not to be a pejorative around genre writing, I know there’s a lot of arbitrariness in these kinds of distinctions, but you could see that some portion of the writing profession could be curtailed with these tools.

Joanna: Which is why I focus much more on author brand. I mean, that’s what I love about Kickstarter and our Shopify stores now, is that we’re not competing on a marketplace like Amazon. We are going to our customers and doing email marketing and all of this kind of thing.

What you write and connecting with people becomes so much more important.

So as we come to a close, I do want to finish on a positive note, because as I said, you and I both techno optimist. So what are you excited about and—

What attitude will serve authors listening as we all try to surf this wave of change?

Thad: I’ve been working in publishing now over 50 years, which is like saying I’m a million years old, and therefore should be put out to pasture. And yet, this is the most exciting moment I’ve seen in publishing in those 50 years.

I couldn’t be more delighted with what’s going on and more optimistic about the future of creativity, of creative expression, of the ability to reach readers, and to delight readers with creative output.

It takes a really open mind. You have to get beyond the container. As you’re saying, you as an author, you’re redefining your own role. You have to be willing to redefine your role to take advantage of the opportunities that are here, because there are a gazillion opportunities.

Joanna: Yes, exciting times. I hope we’ll keep having these conversations.

Thad: One of the things we didn’t talk about, of course, is that—

I use the Leanpub platform, which not enough authors are aware of.

Joanna: Oh yes, tell us a bit more about that.

Thad: Leanpub is fascinating. It’s mostly technical books that end up on there, which it shouldn’t only be those, but it is pretty much so far.

I wrote the book about AI, which is obviously changing so quickly, therefore you think, well, doing a book is ludicrous. With the Leanpub platform, it allows you to continually revise the work, and people who buy from you on that platform, they get updates that are built into the platform.

So if you want to get the ongoing updated version of the book it is on Leanpub. If you want a print version or a Kindle version, of course, it’s on Amazon. It’s on all the other platforms.

The only updated version, which is the same price as the Kindle version, is available through Leanpub.

Joanna: Those translations you mentioned, are they all on Leanpub as well? Or are they on Amazon?

Thad: Well, that’s another big thing that we’ll do a separate show on. I called up Michael Tamblyn, the guy runs Kobo, and said, “Michael, I’m not going to upload 31 translations on Kobo. You’re going to have to find a way where I can upload once and somehow link these translations,” which is what Leanpub offers.

If you go to the English page for my book on Leanpub, you’ll find all 31 translations there. They’re linked to sort of the mother page. There’s an anglocentric conception there that each of the other languages are adjunct to the English version, which makes sense. It is non obvious, but it does make sense.

So in the short term, to be able to take advantage of this technology and create. I mean, I could have done 50 translations, but I’m not going to upload 50 different files each with a separate ISBN to Amazon. So there’s a big transition going on there.

Joanna: That is so interesting. I think the same for audiobooks. You should just be able to change the voice, change the language, change whatever you want on an app. You shouldn’t have to just take the one thing. It’s the container, like you said. I love that idea.

Thad: Have you used the ElevenLab’s reader? The one they released a few weeks ago.

Joanna: The ElevenLabs Reader? No, I haven’t yet.

Thad: You can have Judy Garland or Laurence Olivier reading your book. So I put my book into Sir Laurence reading it. It is so hilarious to hear his voice, his wonderful accent reading your book. You think, well, what’s the future of audiobooks if you can just read the eBook?

The only thing that’s going to prevent that is DRM, but more and more people are going to say, no, you don’t have to create a separate audiobook, you work with one of these reading systems that does a 99.9% good enough job just taking your book on the fly.

Joanna: Exciting times. I love that after 50 years in the business, you’re still experimenting and trying new things. You know, you’re my hero. That’s what I want to be like!

Thad: You will be. I know you will be.

Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Thad. That was great.

Thad: Thank you. It was great to be back.

The post Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Publishing With Thad McIlroy first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Go to Source

Author: Joanna Penn