Hey, what's up everyone? Lee Lowell here from smartoptionsell.com. How's everyone doing today? It is Saturday, January 21st 2023. We're back for another edition of our free YouTube options strategy videos. We're gonna we're gonna carry on with the the put selling Tutorials that we started last week for 2023 are bread and butter, which is selling options mainly selling put options So I'm making these new new videos sprucing them up getting them refreshed for 2023 Not a lot of new information because the strategy really doesn't change But you know, I like to like to make these new videos. So we're moving on here We're selling put options if you didn't see our video from last week Please go back into our YouTube channel here and look for the video from last week I'll actually put it on at the end of this video. You'll see it'll pop up on the screen there So you can just click on it and watch last week's video if you didn't catch it So we're talking about selling put options and in this week's video as we do I like to give you these this free information Use some of my 30 plus years in this business We're gonna be talking about what kind of account to sell these put options in should you be using a cash account or a Margin account when selling put options. What's better? What's the difference between the two? So we're going to talk about that for a little bit But before we do that as you know at the smart option seller calm We're all about selling options. We're all about selling put options. That is our bread and butter So please do yourself a favor go to our website smart option seller calm and get a free copy of our put selling basics E-book right here this thing right here right in front of you go to our website Click on the put selling basics header at the top scroll down You could read a little bit more about the the description and then put your name and email address in here We will send you an email that contains a link for the free copy of put selling basics is all about why we love selling put options What makes it such a great strategy and why I've been doing it for 30 plus years with a lot of success So do yourself a favor get that and and once you're done doing that look at some of our services here We got our smart option seller newsletter a vertical spread trader newsletter These are our paid newsletters that we have and the way we are we have our one-on-one coaching if you need a little help Getting to that next level of your options trading skills. All right, so let's go on back to our lesson for the day and In this PDF here, I have the cash account or margin account for selling put options. What is the difference? Why would you want to use one over the other so let's discuss each one So if you remember or if you know if you're just new put selling is all about Selling a put option contract to the other party, which is the put option buyer And when you sell a put option contract, you're actually doing two things number one You're getting cash right up front for the sale of that contract and number two You're actually obligating yourself to potentially buy a stock of your choosing at a price of your choosing sometime in the future So as I mentioned last week in last week's video if there's a stock out there that you that you would like to buy But not at its current price You want to try to buy the stock at a cheaper price because you want to get a better deal on that on that stock You can sell a put option Using a strike price at a level where you would be comfortable potentially buying that stock So the example we gave you know the stocks at you know $100 a share and you don't want to buy it at its current $100 share price You can sell a put option contract that say the $70 strike Which means you're obligating yourself to potentially buy that stock at $70 not $100 But at $70 if and only if the stock actually falls from 100 to 70 within the expiration period So you're giving yourself $30 a buffer right there to potentially buy that stock You may not end up buying the stock because the stock has to fall that far Within the expiration period for you to buy that stock But in the meantime in the meantime while you're waiting for that stock to potentially fall $30 Someone is paying you for your time and effort That's what happens when you sell an option Someone pays you money for that option. Basically what you're doing is selling insurance to somebody on their holding So if they had bought the stock at 100 and they want to get out of that stock by selling it at 70 You're going to be there to take that stock from them to buy that stock from them That that would be called you would be getting put the stock At $70 that and and the process is called getting assigned. All right, so When you sell a put option you're on the hook to potentially buy the stock and I say potentially because there's no guarantee It'll happen But what is guaranteed is that you will always get the premium the money that the option buyer has to pay you You will get that and so that's an income stream that you can have over time If you sell these put options with a lot of cushion in between these strike prices You can just continuously make this money without ever having to buy the stock So that's one way that people You know create an income stream for yourself But if in fact you really do want to buy the stock well Then you know you hope that the the stock price falls and then you'll get to buy the stock but In order to make those transactions you have to do it in in an options account an options trading account And you do that with your broker now a broker offers two kinds of accounts a cash account And a margin account and the difference is and right here just kind of scrolling along looking through what I've wrote here a cash account which is also called selling cash secured puts means that You will have the the full cash on hand at all times if and when you have to buy those shares of stock So let's look at our example here if you sold a 50 strike put option and And in the end at expiration the stock actually falls down to $50 from wherever it may start from You'll have to buy the stock and that outlay would be $5,000 of cash You know you got to buy each option contract is worth 100 shares of stock So if you sold one put option contract you're on the hook to buy 100 shares of that stock Now if the strike price is 50 right here You're on the hook to potentially lay out $5,000 at expiration if you're called upon to fulfill the contract now When you make the trade You know months prior if the stock's at say 70 or 80 dollars at that time You're still required to have $5,000 of free cash That's going to be held aside by your broker at all times While the trade is active whether you end up buying the stock or not You don't know that until expiration time. You're still going to have to have on hold off limits to you $5,000 that's called a cash secured put menu You're going to have that $5,000 of cash on hold ready to go at all times Now is that the best way to use your money? You don't know if you're ever going to buy the stock at $50 But your broker in a cash In a cash account is Going to require you to always have that $5,000 of cash on hold now Let's just say you have a $10,000 account And all of a sudden you have to have $5,000 of cash held aside now You've used up 50 of your your account value just For the potential to maybe buy these shares at $50. You don't know if it's going to happen until expiration So that's the one way that's the first type of account a cash account now in the in the u.s in the united states Retirement accounts have to be cash secured puts if you're going to sell puts in in in a retirement account You have to hold 100 of that cash at all times. That's just the rules in the u.s I don't know how it is outside the u.s But here in the u.s If you're if you're selling puts in a retirement account it it will be a cash account So you will have to hold those that full cash 100 of that cash value On hold at all times now if you're doing it in in a non retirement account Then you can choose either the cash account or the the margin account. So let's move on to the margin account Now if you sell these put options in a margin account You don't have to have the full 100 of the money on hold at all times It's only going to be a fraction of that amount and and most of the mainstream options brokers here in the u.s will only have I'm going to scroll down here a little bit The margin it's called the margin requirement in a margin account The margin requirement is the amount of cash that you're going to hold aside and most mainstream mainstream brokers in the u.s Hold roughly 10 to 20 percent of that full five thousand dollars Okay, um as the margin requirement So roughly you were talking $500 to $1,000 of your free cash balance will be held aside If you're using a margin account, that's 10 to 20 percent of that 5,000 you multiply 10 or 20 by 5,000 And you'll get your 500 to $1,000 of cash that needs to be held aside Uh minimum at all times while the trade is active. So you're in my opinion You're using your cash More efficiently in a margin account.  All right, so that's really the difference on A cash secured or a margin account now in the margin account The amount of money that's held aside is what's called the margin requirement So just a term that you might need to know So let's look at a you know, like a real life example here and see what happens when you sell a put How much money you'll get and what the margin requirement may be At your broker you may have to call them and ask them or chat with them online Say, hey, what's the margin requirement when I sell put options if I have a margin account? so We used amd as our stock last week when we're doing the put selling example And I'm gonna I'm gonna go along with amd again. So I have this pulled up This is interactive brokers interactive brokers is an options broker very mainstream very popular around the world I use them personally So this is the the one of the screens that comes up when I want to look at options trading and and how and how much Options are paying when I sell put options. So we got amd here and we're looking at the april 2023 april 21st 2023 Expiration period that expires in 90 days and we're gonna use the you know The 50 strike put because we've been talking about the 50 strike put in the example here And when if and when you want to sell amd puts or whatever puts this is not a recommendation. I just want to make sure this this is just example only So amd finished friday yesterday January 20th at $70 and 10 cents. So we're looking at the 50 puts now again if you watch last week's video You know, I have that 20 buffer rule which you take 20 of the the stock price and then you can choose your your Strike price. So that would be about 56 56 dollars So we're using the 50 strike which which meets and exceeds that that buffer that I usually choose when i'm selling put options So we're using the 50 puts as our example and we want to sell this put option Okay, we want to potentially try to buy amd shares at $50 a year right now they're at 70 So we have you know $20 that amd would have to drop by april expiration in order for us to have to Follow through and and you know make good on the contract and buy the hundred shares So we don't know whether amd is going to fall to 50 in that time period But we're taking that we're taking that risk. We're stepping up to the plate and say, you know what? I'm good with potentially buying amd at 50. So I want to sell this 50 put So for the april expiration, it's went out 77 cent bid at 80 cent offer So we're going to just try to sell this thing at 77 cents and see if we can get filled now in order When if you if you use interactive brokers or not in order to invoke a trade We sell or we click on I should say the 77 bid you can just click on it And it's going to bring up an order line to Make the trade so in this case here, this is where the order comes up Okay, we're going to sell a amd 50 put right here And we want to put in a price we're going to put in 77 cents That's how you invoke the trade if you're if you're using interactive brokers And it's probably very similar with any other broker that you use if you want to sell an option You click on the bid price and you can always change the The price that you're looking to get in this case We're going to go right to the bid price and sell it at 77 Now in order for you to understand, you know, what your margin requirement may be if you're using a margin account You can easily tell what the margin requirement is ahead of time before you actually put the trade through And we're going to click transmit here. It's going to bring up another window This is the this is the window that shows you All the details about the trade. Okay, this is the amd april 50 put and we're going to sell it one contract right here And what's going to happen is is that we're going to get 77 dollars Once the trade executes and here's your your potential commission costs right here 61 cents to a dollar 54 that will depend on You know the exchange the option exchange that your order gets routed to and whether you're actually You know making a better Price in the market if you're if you're if you're tightening up the spread or if you're just taking out the bid Then your your commission is usually a little bit higher, but That's what's going to happen once you sell the trade here is what where you really need to pay attention to This is well This is where it's going to tell you what your margin requirement will actually be once you make the trade In an interactive brokers. Now. This is a paper trading account. This is a fake account Anyone most brokers today have a simulated account So they usually start you with a million dollars, which is very nice But in this case here is the your account value before you make the trade A million 47,655 after the trade you're going to get roughly 75 dollars into your account So you'll see that your account balance actually goes up Roughly 75 dollars post trade. Okay, so you're going to sell it for 77 dollars You're going to get a net of 75 so your account value increases by 75 dollars Down here these next two numbers is what the initial margin will be the initial margin is what the margin requirement will be As soon as you sell the trade as soon as you sell that option This is how much money is going to be held aside as the margin requirement in your account. You can see it's 702 dollars Okay, that's your initial margin requirement 702 dollars now if we take that and Let's just see what the percentage is Remember the maximum is $5,000 that you'd have to to kick out but right now your broker is only requiring 702 dollars 702 I have my calculator here divided by 5,000 Is 14 percent so that margin requirement is right smack in the middle of that 10 to 20 percent that I was mentioning 702 dollars of your free balance is going to be held aside as the margin requirement. That's 14 percent Now down here the maintenance margin $586 is a little more than 10 percent that that means that this is the minimum amount of money that will be held aside Regardless of what happens with the trade now the margin requirement can fluctuate over time based on where This price of amd moves to now if amd starts ticking lower over time while you're in the trade from 70 You know the 65 to 60 and it looks like hey You know you may have to end up buying these 100 shares of stock at expiration and kick out the $5,000 So what the broker is going to do is the the margin requirement is going to increase on you right now It's 702 dollars So if amd starts dropping down in price and it looks like it it's it's more likely that you may have to buy the stock The margin requirement will increase from 702 to maybe a thousand $1,500 $2,000 the more that amd falls the the higher the margin requirement will go up Because your broker needs to know that you're good for or you have the funds to potentially buy Those 100 shares so as if the stock drops the margin requirement will go up now if the stock goes up higher The margin requirement could fall But will never fall below this $586 The the broker needs to know that you have some skin in the game because they need to know that you're there to potentially You know buy the the 100 shares at $50 a share in the end But they're not going to require you to keep that $5,000 Here's the here's what you'll get right at the outset of the trade. Okay, so that's where you find out How much your margin requirement will be? If you have a margin account, okay, so we're not going to put this trade through we're going to cancel So all you have to do is if you want to know what the um I'm going to get rid of this one If you want to see the margin requirement, just you know, click on the trade See the that that account box and it'll tell you. All right. So that's really about it Let's go back to our um, where's my Here's my pdf right here. So that's really much much That's really about it on how to use a either cash or margin out now some people I want to say that let's move myself out here a little bit Some people like to use a cash secured put why because they always Or I should say a cash account because they always want to know how much money in the end They're going to have to pay out if they're assigned on their put options Now let's just say you sell lots of put options on lots of different stocks lots of different strike prices And all of a sudden, you know the market craps out and all the stocks drop at the same time And it looks like you're going to have to follow through and buy all these shares of stock at the same time How much money will you need? To Potentially buy all those shares of stocks. So some people would rather use a cash secured type of account knowing that They'll always know at all times how much of their account value is going to be used to buy all these stocks at the same time Now if you're if you're if you're selling lots of put options in a in a margin account You and everything, you know drops at the same time. Let's say like right during covid You're going to be on the hook to potentially buy all these shares of stock and you and your account may not have All the cash necessary to pay for all these shares of stock.  You don't have enough cash in your account We're going to need you to either deposit more funds into your account or we're going to start liquidating some of your other positions That you may not want liquidated. So just Here's the warning is you know, be careful know what you're playing with know what strike price you're using Know how many contracts you're selling if you sell five contracts That's 500 potential shares if you tell one contract one option contract.   What's their approval process? That's that depends on the broker. They may have they may see how much money you have They may ask you questions like how long have you been trading options for do you understand the risks? So it all depends on how you answer the questions If you're not approved Then you're going to just have a cash account and then you'll have to have the you know the 100 percent Hold the side at all times So you have to figure out how to open a margin account if that's what you want All right, so that's all for today What you're going to see at the end here is you're going to see last week's video pop up about selling put options Uh for 2023 our method Once again, don't forget to go to our website, you know sign up for the free put selling basics ebook And um, you know, that's it for today Leave me a comment if you wish give me a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel. Send me an email I always answer. I love to hear from you guys and I hope this has been has given you some good value All right, that's all for me today. I hope everyone has a great weekend and a great trading week ahead This is lee lull signing off


I don't think there's a lot of difference. We approach things in very much a similar way. Marines are very kind of professional, they're all about getting the mission done and there's a similar sense of humour there as well. I really enjoy working with the Marines. More and more we tend to find that we're operating with fellow NATO forces when we're away in conflict areas around the world. This just helps us to ensure that we're both operating to a similar sort of level. Any training that we can do before we actually go and do it for real is obviously very important. It mitigates the risk to the troops that we're flying in the aircraft and it means that we can actually achieve the effects that we want more effectively and more efficiently. I saw the crew chiefs for a little bit of a visit. Some of the similarities came out during that. I think that people have a similar sort of mindset in terms of this organisation is very professional, they're very dedicated to get the job done just as we are in the Royal Air Force. They look to each other to get the job done. It's not a single process as in I need to achieve X, Y and Z myself, it's a team effort that runs both through the US Marine Corps and the Royal Air Force.


Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Edge 2015, brought to you by IBM. We're back. Marie Week is here. She is the general manager of IBM's middleware business. Marie, welcome to theCUBE. It's good to see you again. Terrific to be here. Thanks again. So Edge, this is our fourth Edge. I really like the diversity this year. It's not just the storage show. It's obviously middlewares part of it. A lot of Z, a lot of power, so that's good. Expanding division, a lot of thought leaders. How's it going at Edge? Actually, this is my first Edge. Obviously, lots of other IBM conferences, but this is the first time we've brought together the whole systems view between the server, the storage, and the software. So I'm really excited to be here. We've had some great client conversations on how they're really trying to drive their digital transformation and how they see the synergy. A lot of the customers I talked to said they're delighted that they're now seeing IBM relate to them the way they're organized. That they have all of the infrastructure elements they are bringing together, systems of engagement and systems of record. And now our systems team is really mirroring the way they are bringing things to market themselves and it's a great fit. I was going to ask you about that. You were talking this morning in the kickoff about IBM's organization, you know, the moves that Ginny made in middleware could go into different groups. And so I was personally pleased to see the synergy with the traditional Z and power and storage group. But so obviously you're pleased, clients are pleased that it's working well. You're starting to hit that flywheel effect. Yeah, I mean, what we really tried to do was align with the new solution units around buyer agendas and where people were really investing their time and investing their resources to drive this kind of synergy. And we brought together a good part of the web sphere, the rational and the Tivoli teams into middleware. And it really means that you have the whole life cycle effect covered in one team and covered in a more digital sense. Not just build, run, manage, but how do you really now think about design and really design thinking to drive really compelling digital experiences for your end users, how you then can build and deploy those resources using the cloud, whether that's hybrid, on-premise, public, and how do you manage all of that and optimize it consistently. So we really now become that life cycle platform, that management infrastructure for all the other digital units and engagement models, whether it's cloud, whether it's analytics, whether it's social or mobile, we're really the underpinning of that. And we're seeing a lot of synergy from it. Well, that's an innovation discussion, isn't it? Because you kind of had to go to market before, you could pick and choose and provide the basket, but from an R&D perspective, it changes the equation, doesn't it? And we really are focused on integrating those aspects in the same way we're talking to our customers about decomposing their services, making, we talked earlier about microservices and the API economy, how do you really break down the core capabilities that people need, expose them as services, and allow you to flexibly assemble them as needed with the delivery model you want? Whether that is on-premise the way you have been and we've optimized for Z and for power, or whether that's in a public or a private cloud setting. So it sounds like the promise of SOA 10 years ago, what's changed in middleware in the last decade? I like to think of it as SOA 3.0. We really extended all of those services and now exposed it to the cloud and to the API economy. And much of what we're doing in our middleware, whether that's our new integration bus, or whether it's our API management capability, or whether it's our hybrid cloud services, we're taking all of those web services that people have already created and exposing them directly as RESTful APIs and allowing them not just the technology, that's only one part of the story, but how do they think about the business drivers? How do they monetize those services? How do they think of it as a revenue driver or as a customer satisfaction accelerator? So really getting to the right meat of what's the right granularity of those services, which are the ones that are unique for your enterprise versus ones that you could get from somewhere else. We've launched things like API Harmony on Bluemix where we can actually now discover for the type of service you're looking for at the best match so that you can actually get greater reuse, use other people's services, build out the ecosystem, and it all requires that really robust infrastructure, but it also requires you to be participating in an open ecosystem, the whole community model, how we can expose and share these and drive that real innovation, I think comes from diversity, not just diversity of thought, but different functions, different partners in your ecosystem that can help accelerate what you're doing. So Stu, that's a whole new twist on IT. The IT is a cost center. You're talking about IT in terms of a profit center. And as a growth driver. Yeah, so Marie, we've been trying to help our community understand kind of the new modernization of applications. Some people talk about cloud native applications and the PAS discussion's been going on for more than five years, it seems to every year or so kind of reinvents. Bluemix actually got a lot of people back talking about PAS, so when David Floyer and I were sitting down and it's all about the application life cycle. So Cloud Foundry Summit's going on this week. I know IBM has a very large presence there. Can you help explain to our audience how does kind of the middleware discussion that we've been having in PAS kind of come together what's the overlap, what's the difference? And again, I tend to think of whether it's infrastructure as a service, platform, or SaaS. It depends on who the user is and where they want to deploy the workloads, those services, those digital models. When we're talking about the platform as a service capabilities of Bluemix, it really has energized all of the development community. And it's not just about developers, but we're taking those same middleware services that are in our on-premise offerings that people know and love. We've got thousands of users around the world, and we're exposing them as the core services in Bluemix. So whether it's the Liberty profile, whether it's our support for Node, whether it's our MQ Lite capabilities for robust messaging, whether it's how we're actually driving monitoring and analytics in the life cycle or supporting DevOps, all of those same services are the same core technology, the same skills that you used over those last 10 years, now exposed in a new channel, in a new way, that provides you with really rapid innovation options and reach, because we've also got our community partners, members of that as well. A great example, Pitney Bose is one of our customers and partners, but has offered new services in Bluemix that provide the ability to do address checking and verification as part of the connection that you might drive when you're doing shipping and commerce. All sorts of great opportunities. So I think of, I'm going to simplify it, I look at infrastructure as a service plus, and I say, okay, that's sort of one segment of the market. I see SaaS minus, where the, in the first, the infrastructure kind of defines the past layer, and the latter, it's the packaged application that defines the past layer in your world. It seems like the application development piece defines the infrastructure layer, and it's a different angle on... It really is all about the workload and who wants to use that workload. So we are trying to make sure whether it's exposing core capabilities as an API and a service that a developer could use in Bluemix, or whether it's taking the entire function, the entire workload, our business process management offering on the cloud has the entire environment hosted on soft layer as an infrastructure as a service offering. It's essentially a pre-built managed service that is there for you in the cloud. And we have SaaS offerings that the end user can instantly onboard for process automation, which is critical in the whole digital realm with things like BlueWorks Live. So at every level, whether it's the end user at the SaaS layer, whether it's the developer at the Bluemix layer, or whether it's somebody who's using those infrastructure services in the full workload with infrastructure as a service, we've got all of the pieces. And we're trying to make those options of how you deliver and how you consume them. And we're trying to make that not just again a technology statement, but a business model statement. So this week we announced new pricing models so that we really feel we have the most flexible cloud pricing in the industry. If you want to buy our software on-premise upfront, we can do that. You want to provide it from a monthly perspective, we can do that. You want to use it on a consumption basis in Bluemix, we can do that. So any way you want to take it, we do not want the pricing model or the cost to be a barrier. And this whole notion of an open source plus model that you can have access to all of our technology for free use to develop your innovations is what we really want people to understand. That's interesting. So I was listening to you talk about the current strategy. We've sort of seen this movie before with WebSphere at IBM. I mean, you're going to school on that and I was going to ask you what's changed. And obviously the cloud has changed. The pricing models are changing. So I'm hearing it's not a one size fits all pricing model and you're competing and differentiating with that flexibility for clients. Exactly. If you want just a support model, if you want a monthly model or you want to buy it all upfront, those are all options. However you want to consume it. And customers want to consume differently. Exactly. Some guys don't mind capex, banks. We got a lot of money. And some people really want to focus on just what's the minimum OPEX model that they can predictably address. And we can do that too. Yeah. So Marie, one of the biggest challenges at IT is typically people don't want to change.  Using things like open source helps with the pace and change, especially if you talk about applications. I mean, that's what we run our businesses on. You know, it's usually a long commitment.  We're good at that. But today it's about moving faster and delivering that. How are you helping customers? And how are we doing as an industry as a whole at moving things faster? Well, I think the whole notion of Agile and DevOps is really breaking that paradigm and it's absolutely essential and we certainly see on the mobile side of the equation, you know, cycle times that are down to two weeks, you know, some companies that are iterating on their mobile app every single day. That model is absolutely there and mandatory to be competitive, but we like to talk about multi-speed IT. You want those systems of engagement to be updated every day, but you're not going to change your core transaction system.  You want stability, you want to make sure you've got the resiliency to support those transactions, those customers, that engagement information in a consistent way. So one of the things that we really see as a driver with hybrid cloud integration, with API management, the whole API economy thought, that integration allows you the flexibility of this multi-speed, the digital, the systems of engagements, really updating very quickly through cloud, through mobile, but integrating in a very consistent way, it's kind of a gearbox or the transmission for how you continue to leverage all of those investments in the applications and the enterprise systems that are running those mission critical processes. And the ability to connect those is really what the whole notion of our integration is all about. One of the biggest challenges we hear from CIOs that we talk to in our community is, the corner office will say, okay, make this happen, transform this piece of our business, and they'll bring in the technology, they got the skill sets to do it, but it's the business process that is the sticking point. You talked about decomposing components of software. Can we do that with business process? What are you doing? What's IBM doing in helping its clients deal with that business process stasis? Absolutely a critical aspect, and one of the things that we've seen real interest and demand on, both decision automation as well as process transformation, and a lot of it being triggered by understanding the user and the buyer. A lot of the work that we've been doing with Apple around mobile first, a lot of the whole notion of the systems of engagement mandate that you change those backend systems to allow for self-service, to bypass the steps that may have been done by other parts of your organization, and by having all of that capability hosted and available on the cloud and integrated, the average mobile first solution that we've been developing out there, 22 of them now from a mobile first perspective with Apple, we're seeing those apps themselves typically have up to 18 APIs. When we started, it was more like six. So we're seeing a tripling of that, and every one of those APIs invokes a process flow and a call to another set of business services. So again, if you have the combination of being able to expose those, and then choreograph them in the way you want your new business engagement model to happen, you can have results very, very quickly. And we're now leveraging other cloud technologies like our Pure App capabilities, both in the system sense on premise, as software, and as a service on software to enable people to get those workloads up and running in a matter of days. So really accelerating the transformation issues that you're seeing. So you're talking about the API economy, I'm envisioning just triggering interactions with other processes, high fidelity content streaming in real time to a JSON endpoint, really powerful. And so a lot of the inertia with regard to business process changes, the business owners think I don't want to change, but with what you're describing, is mobile apps in particular, is the mandate for change. Do you see that awareness in the majority of customers or is it still the top 10%? I see the whole notion of digital and mobile transformation as an absolute imperative from all of the customers. In fact, this afternoon we're going to talk more about the digital transformation agenda. Most of them don't feel well prepared to do it though. So they see the mandate for change, but they need help in getting there. And that's one of the things that we're really trying to drive on what are some of the imperatives and the best practices and how we can help. We did a new study from our Center for Applied Insight about getting into the mind of generation D, and all about the digital generation and what's really needed. And some of the insights are really amazing that digital engaged both people and enterprises are much more likely to use social, to use APIs, to use cloud services. And if they can really anoint these digital torch bearers for their organization, they can have a big effect. Yeah, we had on earlier Brad, a director of engineering at Boeing. He moved from Seattle to South Carolina to create an incubator. And because he wanted to be closer to younger people, the generation D, it seems like innovation, we've been talking about this all week, innovation is not coming from the silicon so much, even though we've marched to the drama, the cadence of Moore's law for decades in this industry. It's now coming from combining technologies in new ways. And generation D is really suited to do that. You see it with Uber, Airbnb, Waze, they're combinatorial technologies. And so the challenge is education, ideas, being able to execute on those ideas. And but you're hopeful for the future. I'm very hopeful. But I think what we've seen in all of these is it's not just the technology, you really need the people and the processes and the support. So there really needs to be a mandate in the organization where we're bridging business and IT and bringing that kind of sponsorship together. Then you can knock down all of these hurdles and really get rapid innovation. The technology is there. The ability to drive the connections is there. It's really empowering the teams to do it. So you remember Y2K, I'm sure. And it was like a mandate to spend money on who knows if it's actually going to deliver any business value, but we need to do it. I feel like there's almost a Y2K frenzy for the digital economy, except the difference is a much clearer path to business value. I mean, it's a different world and a different time and a different value proposition. But the productivity benefit seems to be much potentially greater than it was, you know, the beginning of the millennium. Well, there's both the productivity and the revenue opportunities. We've seen, in general, 3.7 times more likelihood of propensity to new clients when you're engaging digitally. That's a direct revenue driver. On the flip side, we have seen companies, customers move from one bank to another just because they didn't like their mobile app. So there is both a potential carrot and a stick in terms of that on the operational efficiency, on the revenue drivers, on the customer satisfaction that comes from it, but also the cost of loss if you're not really engaging in the way customers really want to deliver and experience your brand. So, we're getting run out of time here, but I wonder if you could talk about the developer community, something we haven't touched on.  Give us the update on developers. Well, we've certainly been very, very focused on attracting developers to our platform with Bluemix, expanding the support for open standards across the environment, delivering, as I said, the same open source business models in an open source plus way so developers anywhere can get access to all of our core software for that development free of charge, and then having the flexible pricing models to engage as well with continued open standard support, whether that's on the cloud foundry or at the open stack level, whether that's extensions that we continue to provide in terms of delivery options like Docker, which I think is going to be really transformative to me, it has the potential of having the same impact on operational efficiency that virtualization did by enabling enterprise container delivery of the components and services that you're driving, and then continuing to add new support for Internet of Things, for mobile, you know, we really want to be able to reach developers wherever they are and have them leverage the services that we can deliver at scale like nobody else. Yeah, Maria, actually, if I can comment on that, you know, I love server virtualization, what it did, I've worked with it for 15 years, but it actually made us keep our legacy applications because I shove it in a VM, keep it in an old operating system, and I see containerization in Docker especially as to helping accelerate that new application development. Absolutely. All right, Marie, all kinds of interesting stuff going on, innovations, you're in the middle of it. I'll tell you about it. Absolutely. Marie, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE, it was great to see you again. Thank you, pleasure. Keep right there, everybody, Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this, this is Edge 2015, we're live from Las Vegas, this is theCUBE, we'll be right back.


My name is Katie Piperada and I am a student in the ice hockey scrimmage class at Boston University. I've played with guys literally my whole life. Last semester I was the only girl.  Step this summer too! How many times in your life can you get graded, or not graded, but get school credit to go play hockey? So that's pretty cool.


What's up everybody, Jason here with jaspyscasecase.com. 2023, Panini, gold standard football, just sold out. This is another six box half case break this time, picker team number three from our fresh case. And again, brand new release today, guys. So here are the customer names I bought in straight up. Had to sell 12 teams via a serial number R&B, which we did. There's the names, there's the teams. And fresh case, guys. Fresh case. Kind of fell a little to the sides here, but I can't see the weights though, as these breaks here will be on the side there, and then it's these ones here. All right, six on the left, six on the right, guys. One, two, three for the left, four, five, six for the right. Four, one, two, three, four, five, six. So these six here will be for the next half. Next half. Here we go. Let's get some nice hits here, guys. Good luck. All right, Bijan Robinson to 30, eight out of 30. And then Josh Jacobs for the Raiders. Falcons is Nicholas. Raiders, Jeff. Daniel Jones, Relic. I think he might be out this week, right, guys? I think Tyrone Taylor's getting the start. So Giants, Eric straight up. There's Will Lovis. Didn't see him in the first case. Out of 99, he's another one of those exclusives. Part of the R&B though, and that is 397 out of 399. So seven is going to Alexander. A little Joe Burr, 193 out of 199. Another R&B spot. Spot three, Steve Herrick. Hard of gold. About a little Keishan Boat. Is it Boat? I don't know, let me say it's Boat. 23 out of 49. Patriots, part of the R&B, another one for three. And Steve. And then Quinton Johnson to 199 for the Chargers. Another R&B spot, and another three, 63. Oh my God, that's three straight number threes. Can you believe that, Steve? On the roll, spot three. Kenny Pickett to 30 for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And the Sam Clifford for the Green Bay Packers. Going to Joe. It's a magical number. J.K. Dobbins. Gold Rush for the Ravens. David B with the Ravens straight up. About a little Josh Allen for the Bills. David B as well to 299. And then it looks like we have a redemption. We'll save that. Ooh, nice, how about a little Ty Law? Five out of five, that's awesome. Oldies, Golden Oldies autographs. Five out of five. Patriots, part of the R&B, five. Going to Joe Yu. And for the Rams, Stinson Bennett to 149. Rams for the 12 team R&B, seven. Double seven, how about that? Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Seven is going to Alexander. And Will Anderson, Jr. for the Houston Texans. David B straight up. Rashid Rice, Emily Willis. Tennessee is a one, one is Steve. And Aaron, Chiefs, Cam Akers. What's up, Carl? How you doing? Yeah, we have some OGs here today, yeah. Cam Akers, that's for the Rams, 40-0, Sonny. Then we got it, Jalen Carter and Stinson Bennett. 32 out of 199. That's going to be randomized between the Eagles, which is Willem, and then Rams, R&B. So the Rams win, R&B wins it number two, which is Dennis, it's Eagles, it goes to Will. Jermar Chase Relic, out of two, two, 99. That's going to go to the Bengals. And Spahn 9, which is Dennis. Another redemption, Jalen Hyatt to 149. Giants, Eric straight up, and then another redemption, bam. We got rookie autographs for the Seahawks, Jeff Gordon, running back out of UCLA. Zach Charbonneau. All right, halfway through guys, halfway through the break. So again, guys, when I get back, if we want to try to sell out a couple breaks, guys, we have three more full spots that I can post up right now, actually, because Brian just got two straight up spots in that big MLB playoff mixer. We sell those last three straight up spots in that pack filler that's on the website, guys. We do the break tonight. And that gives away 10 promo spots in that MLB playoff mixer. And then of course, if we sell all that Diamond Icons, which is down to three, that unlocks another playoff mixer spot. Diamond Icons is already an R&B as well. No, I'm doing my break and then I'm taking a dinner break after that for 30 minutes. Not even eating though, but I'm just going to take a break. Getting some delicious, delicious tacos after work, but not in this area though. Yeah, those two breaks, sell them out and sell at the pack filler and then we can break that 26 box high end MLB mixer. Next three. Trenton Simpson to 75 for the Ravens and then Jared Goff tonight, now. Just three full in that filler, Carly, you see on the website. That's what's keeping us from breaking that. It's up there already. There should be three full already. Not let it load, but I just posted three. Yeah, we're basically just three full spots and then that filler that's on the website. That's what's keeping us. I said three on R&B, but like I said, sometimes the website's really slow. So give it a minute or so, unless somebody grabbed another one already. LaVisca Chanel Jr. out of 29, sorry, not out of 29, 29 out of 2.99. Panthers, part of the R&B. Nine, going to Dennis. Chase Brown. 3.20 out of 2.99, or 3.99. That's another one for zero when it's sunny. Little Jalen Waldo, nice patch there to 24. Golden gear, or gold gear, I should say. Seven. Dolphins, seven. Alexander. And we got Marte Maplou out of 1.99. All right, I swear to God, have we not seen like three Jalen Heights on this damn breaker already? Where are my tripping balls? No, sorry, just two. It's gonna be the second one. There's another one to 1.99. Nice break for the Giants. Also that Marte is a 1.91, one is going to Steve. Hopkins to 75, for the Cardinals, Jerry. The Nolan Smith for my Eagles. Will. Alec Pierce to 2.99. For the Indianapolis Colts, part of the 12-team R&B, 285. Five is gonna go to Joe. Little white gold, five out of 24. Little easy, nice patch right there. Spot five in the R&B. Gonna Joe again. No problem, Carl, thank you buddy. I see more orders coming out, I assume we got some. Yeah, the last three. Unfortunately the filler, nice. So yeah, that filler's done with 11 left, so sell out that filler, guys. We can do that mixer tonight, literally. That's it, no more kneader right there. Kirk Cousins. Also too that Diamond Icons is down to three left too and a free-spot giveaway tonight. Vikings, Pat Wolfe, that's it, Kirk Cousins. And whoa, how about a dual autograph? Amonra, St. Brown and Herman Moore. Double standard autographs, that's 16 out of 25, nice. So that goes to Detroit Lions Travis, nice. And Herman Moore for you, Travis. Woo, look at that patch, three colors. Two out of 49, Sam La Porta, nice. All right, I will say some decent names in this R&B so far but still looking for that big, big rookie. Couple Jalen Hyatt's, you know, R&B's has done amazing though, I will say. I feel like a lot of hits for the R&B. You know, it was 12 teams, Stinson Bennett, but I'm still thinking there's gotta be more guys so there's nothing crazy in this last box, guys. The remaining teams in the other half, especially some of the bigger ones, I think the Falcons are still available. You know, I don't know, they could have some big hits here in the second half, guys. We got Brees Hall for the Jets, 12 team R&B and then Nolan Smith for Maggles. And that's 45, spot five, going to Joe. Nicholas with the Falcons, 181. For the Raiders, Raiders, Jeff Gordon. Joe Burrow white gold, 223 out of 299. And that's Bangles, three, Steve Herrick. Got a little Dorsey Levens. That's eight out of 24, Midas Touch autographs. Packer's going to Joe. And last hit, the Jacksonville Javar for Colton Tank Bigsby to 199. So again, guys, I thought the second half could be pretty loaded. The break, so a lot of big teams that are remaining in the second half, I'll give you guys some time to buy them up. If not, buy the time I get back for my little break. Before I start any other break, I'm gonna random a number block to the remaining teams, sell those teams in an R&B and then we can run this back if you guys want. So we do have to do one randomizer here, but the R&Bs did do pretty well for the most part. A lot of the same numbers, unfortunately, but a lot of hits though, obviously, going out to the R&B. Yeah, second half, I anticipate to be pretty solid. So we have to do one randomizer here, Eagles, Rams, and then we're done, so guys. Roll it, six into two, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Going to the Rams after eight times. So Rams won that one, which is gonna go to the 12 team R&B, 32, slot two is Dennis. Appreciate it, guys. Get into the next half, guys. JaspysKidsBricks.com.


The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Corporatives has implemented an action plan with the view of addressing the agricultural damage caused by the passage of Hurricane Elsa. Anissa Antoine begins the broadcast. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Corporatives conducted an initial assessment on the impact of Hurricane Elsa. The assessment looked at damages on the various extension and advisory services, including the Fisheries Department, Livestock Division and Crop Extension Division. According to Permanent Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, Natural Resources and Corporatives, Barrymore Felicier, losses totaled more than $34 million, with banana and plantain farmers suffering the most, with reported losses of 80% or more of their farms. We're looking in the region of 2,400 acres to 2,800 acres affected and over 600 farmers affected by that in that sector. We also saw to a certain extent fruit trees, root crops, vegetables were also affected in the crop extension area. In terms of fisheries, we saw that there were some damage vessels by the denry area. Minimal losses, though. We also saw CMOS farmers in the areas of Puala became affected, the headline losses of CMOS. In the area of Livestock Division, we saw about 70% damage to sheds, animal sheds. We saw some mortalities in terms of swine, poultry in the livestock sector. So these areas have been affected. In terms of forestry, we saw some slides in the forest reserve, also you would have noticed that there would have been some fallen trees and some damaged trees in that area. Mr. Felicieri iterates the Department of Agriculture's commitment to assisting farmers. He notes that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives is currently working on a support package for farmers. We are here today trying to finalise that support package and it will be communicated to the Executive, to the Cabinet of Ministers for their deliberation and for their final approval. So once that is received, then we will communicate to our stakeholders what that support will be and in what form it will take. Farmers are advised to report their losses to their respective extension divisions. The extension facilities are located in Babono, Bexo, Marigold, Souffre, Vufot, Urge and Rich Four. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anisia Antoine reporting.


We, alone amongst Earth's beasts, possess a true capacity to create. It is the single unifying thread between every human who has ever lived. Some were hunters, others were gatherers. Some were sailors and others farmers. Some soldiers and others great writers. And we are all of us storytellers. Dr. Philip Foster, Humility and Humanity Welcome to Episode 008 of The Foundation. Today, we're going to talk about the process of writing in SCP. Given the nature of this, as more of a guide, we'll be skipping some of the trappings normally associated with the podcast. There will be limited music and no readings this time around. Perhaps more than ever, the majority of this podcast will contain my own opinions and thoughts about the SCP Foundation, the SCP Wiki, and the writing process. Regardless, remember that there is only one real rule in the SCP universe. There is no canon. Part 1. For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. Coming up with ideas is a fairly simple process upon which too many writers spend far too much time. For SCP articles, it's even simpler because you already have the format for presenting your idea. A common problem for newer writers will be never getting past the ideas phase. They'll pitch the idea to others over and over and over hoping for an enthusiastic response. And if they don't get it, they go to someone else. But that's not the way to develop your ideas into writing and is mostly unnecessary. I mean, I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to pitching an idea to a room. But I'll write a piece regardless of the response it gets. The only benefit I gain is that sometimes people do get excited and talk me through some of the ideas' explorable avenues. However, once you have an idea, you must write it. Ideas are just the nuggets from which you develop stories. Until they are stories, no one can tell you how it's going to work as a story. This is going to depend heavily upon how you execute your ideas. One of the most important things to do at the ideas stage is to distill your idea down to one or two sentences. I personally suggest summarizing your idea in one sentence with at most a single comma and if you can, boil it down to one to three words. Doing so will help you with your narrative focus, which we're about to talk about, and also help you determine what kind of article your story is going to be. Part two, descriptions, emotions, narrations, and characters. Most articles are one of four types. Those are articles which describe an item or person, articles which evoke an emotional response in the reader, articles which focus on a narrative series of events, and articles which present character development. Now we're going to call those descriptive, emotive, narrative, and character-based articles. It's crucially important to realize that no article serves as just one of these, and the best articles on the site will always utilize elements from all article types. Most articles, though, will tend towards one of them at a cursory glance, so given that, what do articles of these types look like? Well, we'll start with a descriptive article. And for this, I'm going to be using my own written articles as references, since those are the ones I'm most familiar with. The article I've written which best falls into the category of descriptive is, perhaps appropriately, since I just did a reading for the channel, SCP-3313. There's very little here in the realm of narrative. The article describes an object which grants the holder reality-altering capabilities. Those capabilities are clearly outlined, and then later in the article seen in action. The trick with this particular article is not that the capabilities presented here are particularly compelling. Wish-granting items exist both on and off the wiki and droves. Instead, this article survives on the strength of its one peculiar element. It's Benjamin Franklin's penis. I should be noted that this is the type of article I am perhaps the weakest in writing, and yet I can give you the least advice on. Of the three or four articles I've written of this type, none are above plus 50 in rating. There's nothing wrong with being bad at writing a particular kind of article, as long as you can identify what you're bad at. Being bad at writing a type of article in this framework doesn't make you bad at writing, or even bad at writing SCPs. Now, for a mode of articles, I think SCP-2213 is perhaps the best example of my own works. See, SCP-2213 describes a doorway which produces mindless humanoids at a rate of about one per two minutes. So far, so boring. The documentation goes on to explain the way in which the humanoids are killed. Now, they're mindless, so any method works. But the ending describes how these are actually sentient refugees from another dimension. And this is driven home by a trick wherein the link to the next piece of documentation is framed as you're deleting all evidence of the refugees being sentient. This not only hits you with an emotional punch, but also makes you an active participant in the conspiracy. Narrative articles tend to create a story structure with a linear timeline of events, though linearity is not a requirement. The article I've written which best fits this description would be SCP-2986. This one describes a cardboard box, which from the interior appears to be a spaceship. The narrative structure tells us that there was a boy who created this place and walked you through how he and several of his friends ended up stuck inside and sailing through an imaginary version of space. It's a simple and short story, but it does inspire a sense of some mystery and features another small twist near the end. The kids eventually grow up, and the world of their imagination is no longer sufficient. Still, now we can move on to the final type of article. A character-based article. Now, I want to make this clear up front. The character you follow in an article's story structure does not have to be the SCP object itself. That is sometimes the right way to go about it, mind you. But it is not automatically the way you're supposed to handle this type of story. Perhaps my most character-focused SCP would be SCP-2913. In it, you're introduced to SCP-2913, a sapient and an invulnerable severed hand. This character has a heavy case of guilt for things his former owner did while the hand was still attached, and perhaps most of all, the hand loves watching television. The character has flaws and changes a bit throughout the article. It's one of my earlier works, but also one of my more successful, because the character in it is something that, despite being a severed hand, people can identify with. So, how does classifying your articles help you? Well, first, there's probably a type you're very good at and a type you're not. Perhaps you're good at evoking emotion in the reader, or maybe you can craft an impressive narrative in the SCP structure. It doesn't really matter. Work on what you're best at until you feel comfortable tackling different kinds of writing. And second, you want to eventually become competent at writing all four types of articles. Now, for a lot of the newest writers on the wiki, the purely descriptive article is all they're familiar with. Some of the earliest and most popular works on the wiki are, after all, essentially item and monster descriptions right out of Dungeons and Dragons. I think SCP-173 or SCP-343. Yet, the wiki moves fast, so 173 and 343 are ancient history compared to what we write now. And if they're one of the first things you've read, they're also the first things that most other people have read, and other readers are hungry for something new. Part three, pacing, presentation, and priorities. Perhaps the easiest ways to improve a middling article are to speed up the pacing, change the order or method by which the information is delivered, or resolve your narrative focus. I'll touch on these briefly, but I should be clear, these problems and solutions are interrelated. Pacing is hard to grasp fully as the writer of the work. Some people will be good at that, and others will never notice that their own piece drags because they are very excited about certain passages. But that's what pacing is. It's the speed at which the work moves through the information. If the information is delivered slowly with a lot of extraneous detail, the reader will get bored quickly and tune out. To that end, everything you include in your work should be important. This is known to writing students as the Chekhov's gun principle, and I'll quote Anton Chekhov here. Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there. This is where classifying your article as a particular type can help. If your piece is supposed to evoke the emotion of sorrow, but includes several small sideline stories which are meant to scare the reader, your piece isn't enhanced by these additions. The reader will become confused by this mentally without even realizing it and turn off from your story. This goes for all other article types as well. A narrative focus means focusing on a single narrative, to the exclusion of events unrelated to the primary narrative thrust. A descriptive article needs to be simple and focus on a single object as much as possible. A character-focused article needs to remain focused on a single character. Obviously, side characters would need to exist in order to facilitate the story you're crafting, but they have to remain side characters. Furthermore, portray that character consistently. Don't inspire anger at him in the first section and then develop a sad backstory in the second half without a clear bridge between the two emotional character arcs. A quote relating to this, often misattributed and perhaps sourceless, says to kill your darlings. This is related to the above principle because often, you will be very excited about parts of your article that are unrelated to the primary focus of the piece, but delete them anyway. Maybe you can save them for a future story, but just because you're excited about a particular passage does not mean it enhances the piece for the rest of your readers. And finally, we're going to talk about something we've only briefly touched on so far, presentation.  An average size paragraph in a book will, on the wiki, appear as a big block of text. So find natural places to break those paragraphs up, because that block of text acts as a visual wall between your readers and the story you're delivering. Unconsciously, the reader will see it and feel a twinge of disappointment at having to slog through it unless your story is incredibly engaging and it probably isn't, I'm just saying. Tone is another key piece here and it's important in all writing, but it has special meaning on the wiki. It's the difference between saying he has three meaty hands and saying SCP-XXX's non-standard anatomy includes three arms. One is informal, the other sounds like what you'd see in a scientific paper. This is as much about perception as it is about accurate clinical tone, so keep your reader in mind when you use a particular phrasing and be sure to find a good balance that allows you to preserve good pacing. Now to touch briefly on black boxes, expungements and redactions, I'd say generally avoid these. A number of established authors still use these for dates and names and places, but this is not a practice I suggest emulation of, including dates and names and places can help enrich your article's backstory. Now early on in the site's history, this kind of thing helped add a sense of realism to the articles, but today they mostly serve as a distraction from the greater narrative purpose of what you're writing. A redaction says to the reader, what's being hidden here is important and it almost never is anymore. This is a case of the unfired gun from earlier. If you cover up something in an article, make it something important and make it key to the narrative. Illusion is not an element that should exist outside of your article's structure. It should be built in. I have 30 posted SCP articles as of this recording, and I'm not yet fine a good spot to use it. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a purpose. Use it only when it matters, or it won't matter at all. Also, use a sandbox page to preview your article's formatting. A fair number of the newest writers will use a Google document to start with. I use a notepad for my initial writing, but once I'm ready to start looking for feedback from others, which I'll talk about more in a moment, I need to know what the article looks like when posted on the site. That includes how the lines are spaced, bolded, italicized, blocked, and pretty much everything else. Visual presentation, including finding a good image, is perhaps the second most important part of an SCP article after the writing itself. Ignoring that can turn a good article into a bad one, and it will turn a bad article into hot garbage. Part 4.  First, the site's forums have an entire section devoted to writing help. The chat server the site uses has two main channels where feedback can be sought, Site 19 and the Critters, but once you get someone to read your piece and tell you what they think, what do you do with the information? You improve the piece using the feedback. I know this is an obvious answer, but I've seen writer after writer completely ignore it. The job of the person giving you feedback is to seek problems with the work that need to be corrected. If you go looking for feedback for the purposes of approval, you're doing it wrong. Critique is not a personal attack on you, and it's not an irrational hatred of your work, and even if it is, sometimes there's a nugget of truth to an irrational critique, so use it. As a new writer, you may have friends who absolutely love your work, and those are good friends. What you want is a good friend who is willing to tell you what sucks about it. In fact, my advice for new writers is never post an article until you find at least one person who hates it. This relates to the primary purpose of critique, improving your work. A person who hates the work, but can provide you with objective reasons why, is more valuable to you than a hundred friends who love it. So now that you've taken the advice on board, what do you do next? Well, if you had to fix a fair number of problems, restructured the piece, or simply had a high volume of initial feedback, go back for more critique. It's likely that your fix has created some more problems, hopefully fewer than you started with. And it's a matter of trial and error at this point, so keep going back for critique until you're satisfied with the piece. Part five. You must be joking. Here's a joke from 1000AD from Britain. What hangs in a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? The answer? A key. So examine the structure of this very old joke. It involves a basic setup and a payoff. It allows you in your head to arrive at an obvious answer before pulling the rug out from under you. This is the basis of a narrative plot twist. I think getting a plot twist as jokes helps me immensely in their execution, but it's probably more complicated than that. First, fair warning. I will be spoiling the movies The Sixth Sense and Signs here in my examination. So if you haven't seen either of those two movies, watch The Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense involves one of the best plot twists in recent cinema, so let's talk about why it worked. In it, Bruce Willis' character acts as a psychologist to a troubled young boy who believes he can see the dead. As the movie progresses, you learn more about the boy and eventually come to the conclusion that he's not just troubled. He really can see the dead. And at the end of the movie, you learn a fundamental truth about the piece that subverts everything you've learned to that point. Bruce Willis' character is already dead. This moment has more than one name, but we're going to call it the reveal here. It's the moment where the entire story is recontextualized. The thing is, that means you're reliving the entire narrative from start to finish in a single moment. The reveal works best at the very end of a story for that reason. The entire work becomes something else entirely. In The Sixth Sense, this makes you realize that no one in the entire movie actually directly interacts with Bruce Willis' character. These key pieces of foreshadowing are easily overlooked, but it makes the entire story take on a different tone. In one scene, instead of his wife's anniversary dinner being a cold, emotionless encounter between two people who are falling out of love, it's a ghost sitting at a table with a silent woman who is trying her best to deal with her husband's passing. But plot twists work best in works that are already great. When applied to a work that is less than stellar, they can feel forced and meaningless. The same writer and director that created The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan, also created the movie Signs. We're going to examine why the twist there doesn't work. In this movie, aliens come to Earth to invade. And at the end, we learn that they're damaged by water. Even the summary feels forced, but there's very little foreshadowing in the movie that could lead to this conclusion, and the plot twist recontextualizes almost nothing important. A successful plot twist needs to resonate with one of the key pillars of the story. In The Sixth Sense, it's the central premise, seeing the dead. In your article, it could be the central premise, the reaction of the foundation to the SCP object, or a character's motivation. The more central the twist, the better it will work. But it can't be something the reader won't accept. Some twists involve leaps of logic that break the piece's narrative structure. In Signs, it's the idea that aliens would invade a world covered in 70% water with water vapor in the atmosphere. Even the water is poisonous to them. This kind of break in the logic of the piece recontextualizes the already mediocre work in a way that makes it worse. So how do you apply a plot twist to your story? Well, this is flash fiction, so rewriting your piece with a twist you didn't think of until the last second is actually pretty easy. But if you write a much longer article, you generally want to have the twist in mind as you write. A twist has to be internally consistent after all, and you want to spread information throughout the piece as either a hint towards the eventual reveal or which will be recontextualized by the reveal. So remember the structure and set up the joke. Part 7, Recommended Reading. This is by no means a complete guide. I could go on for hours and still leave out key pieces of information. You will learn by failing and trying again. Eventually, you will have a solid handle on how to write an article. But until then, here's some helpful pages from the site itself on the topic. And also, links to everything will be in the description. How to write an SCP by the Administrator. A few examples of things not to do in an SCP and what to do instead by Randomini. Essays on Style by various authors. Ideation, a guide to making good ideas out of nothing by Randomini. Rodgett's SCP Writing Walkthrough by Rodgett. Clinical Tone Declassified by a Random Day. Doing the Safety Dance by Valinix. Rules of Thumb by various authors. And Photoshopping your SCP by Famine Pulse. Credits. My name is Christopher Clayton Morris, though you may know me better under the pseudonym Dr. Sumerian. This podcast is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0, Attribution, Share Like, Unported License. All works from the SCP Wiki used or referenced in this podcast are under Creative Commons 3.0, Attribution, Share Like, Unported License, including the following works. SCP-3313 by Dr. Sumerian. SCP-2213 by Dr. Sumerian. SCP-3913 by Dr. Sumerian. Starting to see a pattern here. SCP-2986 by Dr. Sumerian. SCP-173 by Modo42. SCP-343 by an unknown author. How to write an SCP by the Administrator. A few examples of things not to do in an SCP and what to do instead by random meaning. Essays on Style by various authors. Ideation. A guide to making good ideas out of nothing by random meaning. Rodgett's SCP Writing Walkthrough by Rodgett. Clinical Tone Declassified by a Random Day. Doing the Safety Dance by Valinix. Rules of Thumb by various authors. Photoshopping your SCP by Famine Pulse. This podcast contained the following audio works under a variety of licenses. A Human Being by Andy G Cohen. Off the 2016 album Through the Lens. License Creative Commons 4.0, Attribution, Unported. On We by Lee Rosevere. Off the 2017 album The Big Loop. License Creative Commons 4.0, Attribution, Unported. You're currently listening to the 49th Street Galleria by Chris Zabriski. Off the 2013 album Undercover Vampire Policeman. License Creative Commons 3.0, Attribution. Thanks for listening. Also, the quote at the start of the podcast was just something I made up. Plot twist!