What Aaron Sorkin’s screenwriting Masterclass teaches us about storytelling everywhere

163 Aaron Sorkin Masterclass

Music: [00:00:00] Molly,

Mikey: you can't handle the truth.

Molly: What does he say after that? You can't

Mikey: handle the truth. Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller's Study Club, aka the Screenwriter's Study Club. Molly, today we're breaking down something that we are now masters in screenwriting because we watched Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass, where he teaches screenwriting.

And we are going to talk about it.

Molly: Yeah, that is right, Mikey. We are, you're joining us here in the masterclass classroom with professor Aaron Sorkin, who would love to meet in person one day, but Mikey, I've been talking about this [00:01:00] particular masterclass for months and months, because We talk about storytelling, we talk about the rules of storytelling, science of storytelling, and great screenwriters have all of those things mixed in together and Aaron Sorkin, the, you know, writer and director of many, many famous things.

Namely, A Few Good Men, The Social Network, Moneyball, Newsroom, West Wing, all of these incredible, like, iconic, award winning pieces of TV and film has something to say about how to write a good story, and it was really, it was Several hours of content. That was pretty fun to breeze through, Mikey.

Mikey: Yeah. And why do we, why do we care about this as presentation people?

Molly: Yeah, totally. I mean, we're not, I used to be a film school student, but like, why are we here talking about this on presentation thinking you might ask? Great question. We believe that storytelling is all around us and learning from different mediums can help us apply it to our presentations. If you're a product marketer [00:02:00] developing.

A new narrative, if you're working on some personas, how to connect with an audience, if you're a keynoter, all of these storytelling roles and storytelling skills found from other mediums can help inform your presentation and storytelling skills. Mikey, anything to add with that?

Mikey: I agree. No, like we know from studying the science of this stuff, everyone says.

If you just package up, if you just like dump information on somebody versus packaging it up as a story, it's 22 times more memorable when it is packaged, framed up as a story, so. As business people were like, well, what the hell does that mean? Are we telling fairy tales here? And no, like there's some people who've studied this.

They talk about the rules of story, what is or isn't story. And for that reason, we all, I shouldn't, I think all of us here. We've watched a TV series, you know, and we know that like they've mastered the art of engaging us, gripping us in with a good hook right from the beginning, making us care [00:03:00] about these characters.

So, yeah, we think it is really important to open the lens. Like, don't just look at other power points for inspiration. Let's look at the universe of people who've. Really, like, finessed and like studied the art and have built movies that have won Academy Awards and you name it.

Molly: And I mean, Mikey as Mikey opened this episode, there's iconic lines from Aaron Sorkin's writing that you, you know, it probably, dear listener, that you might not even realize Aaron Sorkin, right?

If you're not someone that's like, I don't know who. Who's names are what in Hollywood, sure, but I guarantee you, Eric's work has touched you. So he's one of those writers that's very prolific and it's worth looking at the experts that have creating like the reason people get awarded awards in this industry is for ultimately good storytelling.

If you distill it all down to something, I mean, Mikey, you said it, but one little piece of. Aaron's advice that I think immediately we can just kick off with is like, if you think about the, your favorite books, TV [00:04:00] shows, movies, like think about, you can even start interrogating just like why, why do you like them?

Or why didn't you like something? He, Aaron offers like being a diagnostic tician, what's that word? And, uh, kind of analyzing what works and what doesn't. And that's what his whole class is about.

Mikey: I love that. Like, he says, like, it's so easy to just to dog something, like, oh, that movie sucked and to be snarky.

He says, like, if you want to be good at a craft, if you want to be good at presentations or at screenwriting, watch, or at comedy, watch an SNL skit. If you decide it was funny or it wasn't. Don't just comment. Why don't you try to figure out what worked about it or if you hated it? What did not work about it?

He thinks that makes you a much better craft person in the end because you're actually Diagnosing it and so and then once you find those rules that were adhered to Then you, it all starts to click together and he talks a lot about rules, doesn't he?

Yeah, yeah.

Mikey: Can, I wanna like tell you, so like, I didn't know much about Aaron Sorkin, little background if, if you were [00:05:00] like me, 1961 he was born, he, I saw this little thing on HBO, he talks about how His first exposure to storytelling was behind the stage in Broadway.

His buddy's dad was like some famous actor in Filler on the Roof. And um, so he's kind of hooked, like, that was his first foray, right? He saw it. Such a

Molly: New York introduction. Yeah, he

Mikey: grew up in like Manhattan or something. He went to Syracuse University, thought he wanted to be an actor. But really, he's, you know, he was like film drama major, learned all about the rules and all the great plays, and he, I think he said like, once he started writing, he found like this crazy confidence writing dialogue, and dialogue now is like what he's, he's really known for, even though like the length of his screenplays are longer.

Almost like double what other people's traditionally are because he has so much dialogue or narration.

Molly: Very snobby.

Mikey: And so then he was kind of like, wanted to, to maybe write a play. At the time he read this story about some, something happening down in Guantanamo. [00:06:00] You know, got death in the military, blah, blah, blah.

He was inspired. He wrote A Few Good Men. As a play, he said he wrote 25 drafts of that play. And then it got in the hands of some famous Broadway producer, Robert Whitehead. So he's 20 something he's picked up on Broadway, which is. Yeah. Unheard of. Mostly. Nicole Kidman's in the play. Like she, she's out in the audience.

She sees it. She goes back to her husband at the time. Tom Cruise heard of him and she's like, you have to play this part. You know, becomes this smashing Hollywood movie and kind of the rest is history.

Molly: Yeah. Yeah. And that was in 1992. Like imagine opening up your career with such a. Such a smash that the story resonated with Nicole Kidman so well that it ended up on the big screen.

Basically.

Yeah

Molly: Just wild and you can tell like I have coming from a theater background I think some things you can tell are like written for a play versus the screen So it's really interesting that that his first because yeah his he got his start in [00:07:00] theater So it just is like a testament to like that first original medium that works so well for

Mikey: him It's so cool.

And so the second chapter in this, his masterclass is intention and obstacle. And I've, I love these, these two terms because to me, it's like whenever I'm making a presentation or someone's asking us like, Hey, how's my story? These are, have become like two of those pressure tests that I look for and he really sums it up well, like drama is basically two things, like somebody wants something really bad.

But something standing in their way of getting it. And if you have that, then you have conflict, you have like desire. And when a character wants something, generally the audience wants them to get it too. So you also have a little bit of stakes or skin in the game and engagement.

Molly: Mm hmm. Yeah, I have the, uh, the class guide PDF pulled up here with us, Mikey.

So I'll just share little snippets of Aaron's words. He says, it's not until you introduce the intention that you've really begun the story and what you said there, like [00:08:00] a character wants something, but it's having a really hard time getting it. I've said it before on the cast. It's like what my screenwriting 101 teacher said again and again and again, so many times that that's like the phrase I think that's like, you know, shared universally in the industry.

And, you know, if we're thinking about presentations and like the stories that show up in marketing campaigns and different ways that a company tells a story. You need to get right into what you want and what maybe your audience wants and how they meet and what's in the way of that right away, because otherwise you're just ambling, you're walking, you know, if you're doing too much world building, you're just hanging out in your cool, cute, new branding, it's not going to mean anything like you have to get that intention there.

What do you want? What does the audience want? And what's in the way of those things. So I, I even like, just like love the abbreviation I& O. Think of an intention, an obstacle with every new piece of like medium you're creating. It's very helpful to still I'm running

Mikey: out of places to tattoo stuff on my hands.

Like, cause

Molly: I have

Mikey: Emma Stratton's VBF and [00:09:00] Smit. But I think one hand could be intention and the other obstacle. But I mean Yeah, cool.

Molly: And we'll and sign. I like that. Yeah,

Mikey: and he says it can't be like, okay, uh, he, he has so many little kind of hilarious. You can tell he, he even admits he's like, I kind of swerve all over the place.

He's like, I'm a lot tighter on paper than in real life, but I'm going to go for it. So he's hilarious by the way. So he's like, gives an example of like, what's a good intention and obstacle. He's like, say someone wants to write a movie about this cool road trip I went on. Yeah. All right. We, where are they going?

Hey, yeah, like we want to go to LA cause um, we'd never been to a Dodgers game. He's like, you got to press on that. Like,

Molly: yeah,

Mikey: people don't really care.

Molly: Yeah. Be like, this is the daughter's game with this dad. They've never done it before. It's the last opportunity. Like it's, you need to put some higher stakes up in there.

Mikey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that a lot. He says like the, they have to want it so bad. That they're willing to jump through all these hurdles to get there, right? Because that's where their story really happens.

Molly: Yeah, you need to make the, the [00:10:00] goal, the end goal clear and obvious that it's important to the character right away.

So that's the, you know. He's like, yeah, people are going to go in on this cross country road trip and they need to get somewhere for a job interview. Like someone's getting married, right? How often do we see like people racing to a wedding, racing to the airport, racing to finish a trip? That's like the vehicle of a trip itself is movement and it's a point A to a point B.

And that is such a literal metaphor for storytelling, right? We're like, we're getting you from one point to another. But what's in the way and he says right away, he's like, you got to introduce that right away so that people don't lose interest.

Mikey: Totally. And he says, once you've established a great intention and obstacle, he calls it a, it's a taut clothesline for which you can hang everything else.

Right. Like, all right, now you can have those like funny little like side stories that happen, blah, blah, blah. But like, character to gas station, yeah, is I, you know, right from the start. And then you, you actually can proceed with a story.

Molly: Yes, absolutely. So I loved it. Yeah. I mean, it just like [00:11:00] resonated in such a clear way right away.

And then he gets into the next chapter, I believe is story ideas. Yeah. So about like, yeah, what's, you've got that taut clothesline and now you're going to hang stuff on. If you are listening and you're, you may be a product marketer and you've, you've got some story narrative to add, maybe a fresh new narrative that you're introducing for a product.

That's, that's your idea. Those are, those are the things you start hanging along the way.

Okay. Mm hmm.

Molly: And that's, that's what takes something from just being a series of events to a connected, cohesive story.

Mikey: I like in the story ideas too, he admits, like, He's like, I'm not a genius freak, like Quentin Tarantino, who's just an idea machine.

He just sits in his pool and these ideas come to him, you know, like, uh, Sorkin reads the news. He looks, he reads other books and, and comes up kind of like, how can I dramatize other people's ideas? And I think for a product marketer, a customer marketer, a CMO. Gosh, you have so many [00:12:00] customer stories in there.

You don't have to invent this shit. Like read those really, really important, awesome breakthrough customer stories and play those up, tell those stories.

Molly: Important to say, this is also where you find that conflict. So. If the intention and the goals have been set, then there's also something that's in the way, like what is the headache, like you're doing these systems manually, maybe there's not like, you know, and your and your service or software is able to like, kind of streamline all of those things, like what is that pain point in the conflict that your character, your audience is like working through that they really, really would like to get to the other side of and you can kind of dive into that a little bit more like what's the, What is the cost of that conflict?

Like, how can you showcase that? How much, how much money are they losing? How much time are they wasting? Those kinds of questions to work in. I think those, I'm naming those ones as common ones for marketers, but it could be anything. Could be anything.

Mikey: So Molly, the next two chapters were about like [00:13:00] character development and then research, which I'm going to admit, like I didn't dive into these.

Molly: I like that one. It's funny. Okay. Because I really liked the research one. But yeah, first, first you've got to develop the characters. Yeah. Yeah. And I loved his, I'm thinking of the one I know best of Aaron Sorkin's work is the social network. Okay, so this is the story if you haven't seen the film about Mark Zuckerberg and the early aughts and his little Harvard cronies.

Developing the initial first Facebook and it started from this kind of like pretty misogynistic scene of him, like, you know, getting rejected by a woman and he's mad and he's like, he's like creating this kind of like who's hot or not kind of thing. It's like a face comparison software and it's like different and he figures out how to do it with.

Different women on campus and Aaron's whole point of sharing this, but this part of like, that's where you first meet Mark in this film is in this interesting, pretty emotionally charged moment. And so, you know, [00:14:00] you, you're kind of like entering at a time where you're immediately going to have your, your audience, like kind of hooked in.

Getting to know a lot of information about this character and then you're kind of understanding the pain of the, in the conflict and like the goal is maybe he wants to be accepted, he wants a girl, he wants some social, social, um, acceptance, et cetera. So there's, you can glean a lot by entering into an interesting scene that way.

What do you think about like with this kind of building a character in the marketing and presentation world? Mikey, where does that show up for you as someone that's been on stage? Yeah,

Mikey: that's a good question. Um, and I am reflecting on that now too, cause he, he talks about the showing, not telling, right?

Like it's, it's tempting for novice new screen writers to be like, he says, if you ever have to use the words in dialogue, well, as you know, blank, blank, blank, cause it's like your spoon for you in the audience. Right. And I think that is an interesting. Opening scene, because you do reveal, he reveals so much about [00:15:00] the, like you said, like what Zuckerberg was after, was it fitting in, getting into this really good, you know, prestigious club or fraternity or whatever, and, and then he's kind of like downcasting his girlfriends, like she got what, she went to like BU or something, and he's at Harvard, and he's like real dismissive of her, yeah, so Molly, like in the marketing context, crafting a presentation, right, I think I've always loved kind of these day in the life stories where instead of giving like a point and click demo, building a persona and kind of saying like, you know, this is Molly.

She's a demand gen like marketer. She really needs to grow revenue, but she needs to do more with less. I think you can kind of create these personas that are easily relatable. And while I think some people dismiss that, like as a cheesy tactic, that's like, you know, what, some fictional character, I've actually seen that to be really powerful because if you develop a character just enough, like reveal a [00:16:00] little bit of that desire that they have, it's relatable, you know, and if, if you can actually use something like a demo deck, which actually has narrative structure around it and like characters.

I think it's really cool because you can change their title so that it's reflective of whoever you're pitching their title or their industry or their location, you know, it's like, it's interesting what you can do to help that audience see themselves in that character.

Molly: Yeah, you're trying to make it relatable.

And it's about writing the identities, you know, he emphasizes, like, you don't need to go like, we'll get right into this with the research, but like, you probably have a cache of customer stories. There's some demographic information. You can take all that. Those are the biggest of nuggets of truth. So you can create something from that.

That's a little bit fictionalized. I think can go a long way so that people can carry that story with them instead of just hearing the demographics like rattled off. So I think there's a time and a place, you know, it doesn't always have to be like, Has we, we've done this, Mikey, like, yeah, Pete, the product marketer has [00:17:00] like gone on, you know, he's been, he's stuck in all these iterations.

It's very frustrating. Everyone's coming to him for like one quick slide. And that's a good story, but I don't think you always need to do that. I think there's ways in which characters and like looking at personas can be viewed kind of as a character too, where they each have a slightly different priority, a CMO or a CFO and a.

You know, mid level manager will all have different priorities and intentions and obstacles, if you will. So it's important to iterate different versions of that story for each character and persona. So that's kind of how I see it too. Is like, there's different, that's where the lanes kind of start to split is where, like, if you're one of those companies that has a lot of different people you are building towards.

That's where you can start splitting off for the story because it's a big cohesive narrative, but there's going to be, you're going to talk about it. We were just talking about it today. Like we're going to send a follow up email to an event and they're going to send probably three to four different emails depending on who we talk to and why, you know, so it's like, that's [00:18:00] a, that's a, that's a character, right?

Mikey: Yeah. I love Emma. Stratton talks about altitude, you know, and like. Is it, are you too deep in the weeds for this persona? Are you too high in the sky? What's just right for that one communication? Yes. Yes. And yes, similarly, I like that. So

yeah,

Mikey: once you have these characters, like what's he say about his research process?

And then how to incorporate research. Yes.

Molly: Yeah, exactly. I like this quote on his class guide. He says, you never know where a cool story is going to come from. That's why you want to talk to as many people as possible. And going back to what Mikey said, you don't have to have the killer idea right away. It could come from actually reading and kind of researching into like, what's been going on, win loss interviews, customer success stories, and testimonials.

Some more research in the industry, what's changing in your in your industry. I think a lot can come out of research and he names a couple different types of research. There's like the research for, you know, when you [00:19:00] want to learn about the relationships of a certain person, maybe like the intention obstacle, like we said, of a specific role.

And then he said, he also said that he's like, there's kind of the wandering research where you're just looking for the movie. You're like, where, what's, what'll be my next thing. And then once you know where your story is, there's the research for context. So once, you know, like an intention obstacle or specific role.

What are they dealing with? Yeah, what's the kind of world changing things happening for them? What are the most recent stats about like, you know, are they worried about layoffs? Are they worried about AI? What's going on? So there's the context research. I couldn't imagine like something, you know, he writes a The West Wing and he's written, he's written a lot of a political like roles, the president, the trial of Chicago seven, very legal stuff.

So I couldn't imagine the amount of hours and hours of research he's poured into figuring out like researching our judicial system, lots of like ins and outs, like, cause you, and he got, he even acknowledges like 90 percent of that actual research is not ending up in the movie, but you can't write about something.

And talk about something like we've said with [00:20:00] presenting, you have to be familiar with your content. Otherwise, it's obvious you don't know it. So, I mean, you can't write a presentation on a brand new product that you have nothing, no, you have no knowledge of who's it's going to be for and why you're even doing it.

So that's the key part, even if it doesn't seem, it's the most intangible in a way. What do you, what do you think, Mikey? I mean, you can have pages and pages of research, but it's like,

Mikey: right. You just got to sit with it for a while. I think that's a good, good, good way to put it. Yeah. And I really resonate with.

That what we call story mining, you know, like you're, it's probably the stories in there or these elements, these juicy, like side stories or examples, you're just kind of extracting, you're digging for the, these little gems that you can kind of like, then once you've got all these little gems. You can kind of connect the dots in a way that flows narratively and

Molly: yeah, exactly.

And the interviews he talked, he's done, he says he's done interviews with people and, you know, he says when it's like a sensitive subject, the first meeting might just be getting a cup of coffee. You have to build rapport with people. For them to actually [00:21:00] share their stories. But he says more often than not, people want to share people want to talk to you about their story.

So don't be afraid to reach out. Even after the loss interviews. The like when lost stuff is super, super valuable, maybe there's someone else they can refer you to be like, Oh, I should talk to this person. And another thing I want to call out that I thought was so relevant with this research thing was that you need to research dialogue that's relevant to the vocation.

You know, of course he, he has a clip. about computer nerds in, uh, I forget what movie this is. He was like, the screen says it's an unimplemented trip, but the line says it's system error. And they played the clip in the masterclass. And it cuts to Aaron, he goes, I still haven't, he goes, I've written, you know, countless drafts of this, this film, and I have no idea what that means.

Like he, he's like, I, I'm not a computer engineer, but he's like, I researched enough to know exactly what was happening in that moment and what the phrase was. So he, he doesn't know what that means exactly, but just like, that's like knowing your jargon, speaking the customer's language. [00:22:00] I thought that was so like such a good universal piece of advice that you need to speak the language of who you're talking to.

Mikey: I love that. Yeah. Voice of the customer was kind of a trendy term a couple of years ago, but it is, it's true. Like every time we go to an industry event, half the notes I'm taking are just like. Overhearing the latest jargon or like a type of asset that's working for people or you name it But yeah, it's how are they actually phrasing this stuff?

Yes, if we're not saying it the same way then we're gonna we're not gonna land our message.

Molly: Definitely. Yeah And now a message from our sponsors

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It's a retreat. Three nights, two full days of programming in ridiculously cool Park City, Utah. We're bringing in three premium workshops. There's going to be [00:23:00] opportunities to get up on a stage yourself. There's theory, there's practice, and best of all, camaraderie. It's going to be intimate and it's going to be awesome.

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Molly: That computer nerd quote is from, uh, the movie Steve Jobs. Of course. That was, that's what it was for the, the birth of Macintosh, the computer scientist, Andy, herself. It's system error. So just to, yeah, system error. Just to give a little more context to that.

Mikey: I loved the next chapter eight about the audience and like he kind of highlights, can we get into the audience?

The audience wants to participate and he kind of tells this really cool story about this painter who painted with two brushes and one was red, one was blue, and the audience saw a really hard to mix co like version of a violet. He said could only be achieved by kind of this one process. So I [00:24:00] thought it was a cool analogy or metaphor, whichever that is of example of like ways that you can give an audience just enough so that they can actually put the pieces together themselves.

Because like, I think a big just takeaway from this chapter was like, you have to balance not being confusing, so you need clarity, but you also need to not tell them something they already know. And like, that is the razor thin. Edge that you have to walk. And, uh, I got a kick out of that chapter.

Molly: Yeah, definitely.

And that razor thin line is something. We talk about when building a first call sales deck or pitch deck, because it's like, you want to introduce yourself right away and, and, but you need to hold, you need to relate to them first, build rapport, like, what do you want to let the audience in on? And it's important to let them in on some of the secrets, but you also don't want to just be like.

stating the obvious either, like we were working on this one, you know, me and Steve, and it was like, everyone knows that AI, the growth of AI is unprecedented. So it's like, how can we say that in a more, [00:25:00] in a different way that is bringing in this company that wants to be, yeah, included in like the growth and the rise of like what people will be budgeting for in the future of like AI and AI governance.

And it's just, that's a, that's a really tough thing to, to bring in and be like, what's something, you know, but I'm presenting it to you in a new way. And it's going to keep you engaged before I introduce myself four or five slides later, basically confusion will lose them, you know, but then if you let them in on the secret right away, but then enough to keep them interested, like, think about like, you know, I'm watching White Lotus right now.

And that's like one of those stories of a it's a series where you know that someone dies at the beginning, but you don't know who. So what a way to keep the audience engaged, be like, I, I'm spending the whole series sleuthing of like, oh, there's this thing there. This is this thing here, you know, and we'll get into the rules of the story.

But he says that, you know, if there's a gun in the first act. You got to use it in the third act, you know, you can't introduce it without using it. And you [00:26:00] certainly can't use it without introducing like vice versa. So I thought that was, uh, yeah, very helpful. But appealing to your audience, like it's so it's easier said than done because you're like, well, of course I'm appealing to the audience and talking to my, like about the priorities, but you got to think about like, what's coming in from their perspective again, with the intention and obstacle of your specific character that you've hopefully gotten to know through research.

And then what parts do you want to let them in on, you know, before, before the big reveal?

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Tricky. Gotta keep their

Mikey: curiosity. They, cause the human brain is, it is naturally curious and we want to solve the puzzle.

Molly: There's a great little snippet from his class guide where he says, the audience does not want to be a casual observer of the movie you're writing.

They want to participate. They want to be given the same clues as everyone in your film. You're putting things together in their head. If you're able to surprise them with a reversal they didn't see coming, you've given them a very satisfying experience. And not that you need to have the element of surprise in every presentation you create, but you also don't want them to [00:27:00] be so no predicting what you're going to say next that they're tuned out either.

So you're like, again, you need to be packaging things in, in ways that are unexpected.

Mikey: I love it. Easier

Molly: said than done. I'd love to, with that in particular, I would love to, you know, we'll have to watch some of the workshops later on in the masterclass they offer where like, tough, it's so much easier said than done.

Like when to put stuff where, that's a, that's like a whole masterclass in of itself, I think. And with that, the next piece he gets into, which I guess does help a little bit distill where to put what where, is the rules of a story. And he says rules are what makes art beautiful. And kind of opens up dismissing the idea that art is not a place for rules, like with music and sports or anything is made much more enjoyable by certain rules, you like anticipate and expect things like the bridge after the third verse or.

You know, the third act giving you the satisfaction of the big reveal and you knowing who the murderer is, [00:28:00] etc. And, uh, if you don't have that, you're going to have a very unsatisfied audience.

Mikey: I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. He said rules are the difference between art and finger painting.

Music: Yes. Exactly.

Mikey: And the rule book, his rule book, like his Bible is Aristotle's Poetics.

There it is. Yep. And he's like, if you don't want to read a 25 year old pamphlet, I get it. Go be a diagnostician. But he's like, I highly recommend you read it. Yeah, 2, 000

Molly: year old. Yeah,

Mikey: even when he's just like, someone doesn't want to read it, he's like, Mmm, I think you should read it.

Molly: Totally, and if you don't want to read that, we, he has an amazing, I'm at this PDF in the class guide.

At the end, there is a three page kind of cheat sheet for Aristotle's Poetics.

Oh, thank God. And

Molly: Mikey, I was so excited for this. Yeah. I think Aristotle's come up enough, and you and I have said, I think it's about time we read Poetics. Get into some, get into some. Yeah, and then Rhetoric.

Mikey: We're gonna be deep in Aristotle.

Molly: Exactly. But there's some great snippets of this, like, you know, drama is [00:29:00] imitation. It's not exactly real life. It's choosing when to let people in on the scenes that they need to know. Drama is not history. Drama is action. There's just, yeah. So there's the rules of drama, there's structure, and then there's structure continued.

And this is where he introduces, Mikey, I said this at the beginning, but the idea of thinking more critically, if you don't like something, it very well may be because it broke one of these clear, like, aerosol rules, which he, like, that totally abides by. It's okay to flip something on its head and break rules in that, you know, he shares the industry had never done a baseball film until Field of Dreams, or the industry said, told people not to write about politics.

And of course, like. But there's, you know, hundreds and hundreds of pieces of media about politics now. And so it's, you get to push boundaries, but there are still structural rules that make good stories great or great stories like what they are. So it's worth interrogating what you like about something and start to align it and do like a checklist of like, Structure, the drama, the [00:30:00] character development, and how that all aligns with Aristotle's poetics.

Mikey: It's good. He's so adamant about it. He's even like, if something breaks Aristotle's rules, but it still appears to work, figure out how they pulled that off. And he's like, by the way, um, that doesn't happen. You know, he's all, they all have to come back to Aristotle's rules. So if there's any to worry, I think.

We got to read that next, Molly, and we'll talk about it. Yeah, I think

Molly: it's, it keeps coming up. I mean, Elliot Rayner, big fan of Aristotle. Yeah. The assignment in the class cheat sheet, and this could, that might be useful for listeners, to do with either movies, or maybe to present, like, presentations, or product, like, launch things that you've seen.

Or even just pieces of debt, like, decks from your company. Keep a journal and write down the five Favorite works and then have your five least favorite. So whether that's a movie or a deck or whatever it's going to be, but if you find yourself using the snarky terms, remember that's not diagnosing the script, like understand, like write about start detailing the things you liked about it and that work and then things you don't and you'll start to see those [00:31:00] patterns and that.

Like, if you really were to distill it down, I guarantee you it comes into some of that structural Aristotle stuff, which is fun. So we should give ourselves that assignment as well, Mikey.

Mikey: I'm in. And once you follow the rules, you can lay it all out, lay your story out in an arc, which is chapter 10. He talks about film story arc.

And the difference between drama versus story versus a fact, a fact is the queen died. A story is the queen died and then the king died of a broken heart. But a drama is like the queen dies and then we know the king is all alone. It turns out the queen was the brains behind the operation and now everyone's coming after him and trying to jockey and kill the king, whatever.

So, he talks about In this, I guess, what three act drama, you know, might be, right, where act one, you chase your hero up a tree, act two, you throw rocks at him, act three, they come down, or they don't and they die, but

Molly: Mm hmm. And this is where he does introduce that, what I just talked about earlier, where it's like, if you're introducing something or [00:32:00] you know, you should have mapped out your story by this point, right?

So if you're at the arc of the story, if you're laying the thing, the sticky notes of the storyboard out in a beautiful manner, you need to be introducing, hinting at in the first act, something that might come up in act three. And I'm just using kind of an easy example. I was a huge, huge rom com, rom com fan growing up.

So there's always something where a main character will be like, Mm, well, that's how I, that's how I like my coffee or something, but no one ever makes it for me. You know, there's this like, kind of, there's this little thing that they like, they're like, I always do this alone. Or I always, you know, this is my favorite spot in the city.

And then of course, without fail, that, you know, their true love will share that favorite spot in the city with them, bring them their favorite coffee because they remembered. Et cetera. There's like a meeting of those things. And that's, that's just an easy example. I'm thinking of Aaron probably has some way more evolved examples with his screenwriting, but you know what I'm talking about, right, Mikey?

Mikey: Oh, so satisfying. Yeah. You got to pay, pay, pay [00:33:00] those things off. If there's like an escape, like they have to make an escape at the very end, like. There had to have been a discussion earlier or like sort of a hint as to like, there's only one way out of that castle, you know, like you kind of like, no, going in that and no one's ever done it before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Molly: Without the key or something. Yeah, definitely.

Mikey: Yeah. And he talks about, so is that the two parts are like when you're setting up a story, like you have to have like stakes, they have to be as high as possible. We've heard that from Andy Raskin in the presentation realm, like in the sales pitch and yeah.

Investor pitch round, if your stakes are the urgency, otherwise people are just going to be like, cool, someday sounds good, but don't need it. So yeah, that's the reason, that's the thing that gets people sitting forward and then, you know, more about this Molly, but exposition and then exciting incident, is it like exposition is all the sort of the background, getting everybody up to speed.

Totally.

Molly: Yeah. Once you've, and yeah, you've [00:34:00] got that exposition, you give them a little bit of the rapport. That's the, what I was talking about earlier with that first call sales dives. Everybody knows that AI is growing at a crazy pace or whatever, but you know, I've said it in a new way. We've set up the exposition, but what's the inside, but like, did you realize that like, if you go on without like acting on X, Y, Z for this amount of giveaway, the companies.

But, but if you, if you go on without acting, it's going to cost you this much, it's going to take you this much time. And that boom, like there we go with the inciting incident. In Aaron's example, he discusses the one and only Shakespeare, our logo for the podcast. With uh, Hamlet's father's ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered him.

So, Hamlet's attention becomes very clear from the beginning to avenge his father's death. And, but more often. Yeah, and that's, you don't have to wait long for that. You can introduce that right away. And again, that's just in setting up where things are falling within your story. And once you know the end game with the intention and [00:35:00] obstacle, relating to the intention and obstacle of your character, hopefully it can be like pretty, you know, you're like, well, of course this next thing will go here.

So you don't have to spend too much time, you know, even though in a presentation, high stakes presentation keynote, we don't have to like have avenging someone's father or something like that. But, but, you know, the stakes are like, yeah, what is, what's the money that you're losing? What's, what's this pain point that you're speaking to?

And that can be the stakes can be those pain points, I think is what it ends up aligning to. There could be a couple that you're speaking to. But overall, like you can use those as road signs to go along with the way.

Mikey: Yeah. I think one of the strongest presentation building connections. Was from that page numbers can be road signs.

So Aaron sort of talks about screenplays. Generally they're around 125 pages. His are longer because he has a lot of dialogue, but he, this is really, really important. He says the most, the first 15 pages are the most important. And if you have not. Introduced a [00:36:00] protagonist, have not introduced your inciting action, establish that intention and obstacle.

Then it's a sign that, Hey, like you probably are going to lose people, including producers. So he says like the 15 first pages are the most important when you're trying to sell a new, like a screenplay. And I, I saw this completely as like that same presentation connection where it's like, I've gone too far without getting to the, like, here's what I'm about to talk about.

Here's a problem that we're going to solve today. And you set up a

Molly: bunch of stuff.

Mikey: Yeah. And you can look at your slide count and you're like, Oh crap, I'm 40 slides in and I'm still kind of like preambling. So I better get to it. Yeah.

Molly: Yeah, definitely. And if not slide count, because I know we have hardcore harped on the podcast before Mikey about like only one idea per slide, which does increase slide count.

Don't be afraid of increasing slide count. Maybe you can do the timing. It takes to present. So if you know your keynotes going to be 15 minutes and it's taking you eight or nine, [00:37:00] Full, full minutes to like do the whole setup. That might be a little too long and you want more time for the payoff. So it just depends on how you want to set it up.

Or that could be perfect. If you're truly dividing it into three acts, then eight or nine minutes to set it up, introduce all the obstacles and pain points. Then you got five or six minutes to get them down. And I'm using the words, he uses that simple, simple example. Act one, you chase your hero up a tree.

Act two, you threw a bunch of rocks at them. Act three. You either get them down or you don't, you know, very simple, figure it out or not. I have a, I know some people have a hard time with those movies that kind of leave you on the, on the cliffhanger and be like, did he get down from the tree? It's up to you.

That's, that's a little, it's into a little Christopher Nolan, but

Mikey: he talks about like, sure, like to sell your idea of 15 first pages are the most important, but. When the, in the actual end product, your last 15 minutes matter the most if, if they suck, but you had like a banger first two hours, you get, he says, you get no credit for that.

He's like, I wish it were different, [00:38:00] but it's not. If you hit a home run, you're still obligated to run the bases. So he's like your 15 last minutes will make or break the film. And so when you're actually producing it, make sure that's tight, but you can sell an idea and then they'll help you, you know, bring that to life.

But. I think there was a good, strong presentation connection there too, where it's like, I always focus so much on the opener. And then I kind of trail off toward the end, as you know, so it's like, if you can really focus on your closing kind of concept,

you

Mikey: can leave the, that's what the audience may or may not kind of like, that's the impact they'll, they'll leave with.

Molly: Yeah. And I hear so often when people present, they're like, and yeah, that's it. Like, right. Yeah,

Mikey: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Molly: And you're like, wait, oh my God. And I think there is such an opportunity, even if it is, you know, people are antsy ready to go to lunch or the conference break or whatever it is like you can, you can tie back to maybe.

Beautiful, inspiring opening. Do a callback. People love a callback. And then it, you know, it adds to the repetition, adds to the nice [00:39:00] closed loop. Yeah. Like a callback along with your call to action is so much more powerful than like, and yeah, that's it. Uh, come, come find me with any other questions like,

Mikey: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Molly: That's, it's hard sometimes when people are getting cut off too. So it's really, that's, that's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last chapter he gets into, Mikey, and I am in full, full transparency. Didn't finish this, but I think I need to before. This has,

Mikey: this is kind of your jam with the artist way and all that.

Molly: But I, I re I read the class. The, just the synopsis and I love this quote, he says, the only thing that makes me feel good about writing is making progress. And this is, this last chapter is all about writing habits and like what you can do to get off writer's block and that kind of thing. And before he gets into these group work activities that I, that we maybe we'll have to do it at part two for Mikey.

Mikey: Right.

Molly: But yeah, what'd you think about writing habits?

Mikey: Hilarious. And Aaron Sorkin, I appreciate him so much because he is. So self [00:40:00] deprecating and how very funny and he says like it takes him like 18 to 24 months to write like get an idea like actually into a script and he says it's basically like 18 to 24 months trying to think of it and being depressed and he's like.

Like, once I start typing, I can write it in 2 3 months, but it takes him 18 24 months just to like, get the idea and do that research and just struggle. Yeah, thinking about all the hours of

Molly: research, yeah, totally. And even figuring out, it's like, am I the right person to write this? Like, I'm not so sure.

Like, yeah, I've got to figure this out. Can I even get in contact with this one person that experienced this XYZ? Oh, yeah, that I mean, yeah,

Mikey: and he says, like, it's hard, it's good to, like, just start with the first scene, kind of get through it. He's like, I am in a constant state of writer's block. If I have, like, one day more, I miraculously stitch some things together, I feel great, but he kind of talks about, like, Feeling and like if you can have like be in a good mood, then you can write better, [00:41:00] basically like that's kind of his take here and like, so what can you do to be in a good mood is just aim for some progress, like whatever it is, just like one inch at a time so that you are moving forward and you can get stuck.

He said he was talking about like how he's been stuck on his first 15 pages for this new script for. Five weeks. He's like, I'm going to lose my mind, but you know, like just do the right thing, do the next right thing. It sounds, it sounds hard.

Molly: And this is ultimately why I became a marketer, Mikey, instead of a screenwriter.

Is that the, the, that, that's some crazy making shit. But like, thank God there's writers out there.

Mikey: So he wrote, he talks about focus on progress. He was, he's a bartender at a theater. And he said, like, basically he'd, he'd serve everybody their drinks before they go in for the first act. And then he would jot ideas down for a few good men on cocktail napkins.

Then that night. He'd go back home and type it into his first, the first Mac. That's, that's how [00:42:00] A Few Good Men came to be, which is freaking awesome. And, but every little night, every little cocktail napkin gave him a feeling of progress. So it can be that small, Molly, where it's like, all right. Fill up a napkin.

We got progress.

Molly: Yeah, totally. And eventually, if you have like all those kind of, I'm such a visual person, if you have those visual notes of sketches, yeah, I know you're always sketching slides. If you start to like tape those up and see like the visual patterns, what should start falling where, and you start working on like, yeah, this structure and have spent enough time in that research to let the, let the story come to you in a little bit.

I know that's so annoying to say, but. If you spend enough time in that research and kind of plotting land, it can, it can happen for sure. I like his, I'm just looking at the cliff notes here, but he had to listen to music to get unstuck and inspired. I'd love to know. And now, shall I just shift us into the Spice Cabinet here?

What is Aaron listening to? Does he share actually in that little snippet? I got, it's the last 15 minutes, I It's a

Mikey: beautiful little story, and [00:43:00] I'm, he gave us his walkout song. There's one episode of the West Wing called Two Cathedrals that he said, quote unquote, got some attention. I don't know what that means.

I'm sure he won some awards or something, but it ends with this scene with Dire Straits, the song Brothers in Arms,

and he'd heard it and he's like, that would be a really good score for something. And so he kind of like wrote a scene. With that song in mind and he said he's done that all the time like he'll go for long drives And much like me he was like a couple decades earlier But he says I still listen to the music that I listened to in high school and my taste hasn't evolved since then so It's a sign of genius.

I would say But 405 Just drive straight and he'll just drive and listen to music and sometimes he'll hear something like an early Springsteen and he's like, [00:44:00] that'd be a good song. Yeah, so yeah, he kind of gets unstuck with music.

Molly: And he does, I mean, if you think about those movies, like, of course a pretty wide audience, but those are like the people he's appealing to is kind of like, kind of guys his age who are like, yeah, the Moneyball is like baseball related.

We've got some interesting politics, like military. Really strong military story from like that went down and didn't Guantanamo Bay go down in the late 80s.

Mikey: Yeah, yeah, that sounds right.

Molly: But yeah, you and Aaron Sorkin have a lot in common.

Mikey: That's interesting. Yeah, we ramble. What's he say? I swerve a lot when I'm talking.

I like that.

Molly: He said it much more concise on paper and I think that makes

Mikey: sense for a writer. Of course. He, he has that like total writer's, just like I, yeah, just the writer personality. He's so smart, hilarious, I bet he'd be a great hang, but you can tell like there's just so much going on in his head.

Molly: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely loved it. Well, now that we're in the Spice Cabinet, we've got, what Styros Trach song was it? [00:45:00] We've got Dire Straits Brothers in Arms as Aaron Sorkin's walkout song. It sounds like he'd basically, he'd agree, basically.

Mikey: Yeah, I love it. I love any, any, any solid Dire Straits song that would make my day.

Molly: Until we get to ask him ourself, we'll just, we'll just keep that rolling. Yeah. And I kind of want to. Offer this. This is, you know, everyone masterclass does cost money, of course, but highly recommend if like, who would you recommend to take this, Mikey? Like it's, I think if you are the person that ends up writing your company's narrative, does a lot of brand narrative work.

And of course, of course, if you're like a writer that's working on a story, screenplay, anything, this is going to be helpful for you to just get some new perspective and old perspective Aristotle through structure of screenwriting class without. You know, it's a, it's a couple hundred dollars, but it's going to be way less expensive than taking a film, like a whole film class.

So it's worth, I think, I definitely think it's worth the investment. There's enough resources and tools and cool like [00:46:00] assignments and, and, uh, actionable advice offered that. I'd say it's worth it.

Mikey: I'm with it. Like if I was