I guess I just think of them more in contextual Like broad contextual terms first instead of like formulating them into a you know a series of clauses But but even if you weren't to think of them as a question I assume that you wouldn't approach it in a one-sided way. You you'd be thinking what about this What about that aspect of this one theme? Uh, maybe it probably depends on the theme Uh Because in the same vein he would never have done that had he not asked a question I don't believe I don't believe any human thinks the justice system then goes I know exactly what I want to do and it doesn't involve any ambiguity whatsoever Like really the justice system is no ambiguity at all That's often the really good treatment that since dune is on his shelf Like so frank Herbert used to give advice for prospective writers to say that one of the best things to do just to generate ideas Is to take say the top 10 bestsellers of the week or the month or the year or whatever it is And just take them part look at every assumption they make so in other words Look at the themes that they represent And just unpack those and then turn them on their head and then create something which Sort of questions or at least begins by questioning that theme But actually translates into making an equivalently definitive statement about the thing just in the opposite direction So dune is quite explicitly premised on a questioning of asimov's themes in foundation Like this idea that you can save humanity from a dark age by your faith in Rational scientifically minded people to control grand human populations And set them back on the right path and then Herbert looks at that and says well That's not my experience of life control tends to lead to chaos So i'm going to invert that and sort of satirize or parody Uh foundation and dune is going to be beginning with the question Is that true before i start writing it come up with a theme which is no it isn't and therefore by explaining my theme It's the opposite is the truth, but you're still making a definitive statement You're not actually having theme as question. You're just beginning by questioning somebody else's theme. Yeah Because I I do think that one can make an argument for every form of theme exploration If someone said never start with a question always start with a statement You'd be like what why and you go well because from the statement We then explore how true it is or how false it is You know like yeah by stating it in the form of a statement You know it gives you a sort of path way to follow and it doesn't let you And make sure you don't wander too far away from the original point and get too wishy-washy and ambiguous And then was it tell you about yourself when you hear it as a statement that you agree with it or disagree with it Where does that lead you and should you inspect that part of yourself and thus your story? You know, I mean like you say like it's decent advice for like a starting writer I think you can have this video in every permutation Like the best thing to do with themes is actually to have five of them and then throw You know a dart at a board because you should never choose based on what you want to do You should also go with like a broad set of what you want to do and then let fate decide So it actually has you exploring things that you may have felt were uncomfortable. It's like that's okay Like yeah, I guess you could do that A lot of these you could just do That's true. I agree with that. I mean there's multiple ways of thinking about it and like there's pros and cons to all of them I think that the most important thing is to just be fluid with the whole process and be as open as possible to like Exploring facets of whatever it is you want to write a story about. Yeah I think like like a lot of things the virtue is in the balance between two extremes So like one extreme is I have this thing I'd like everyone to know So I'm going to write a book so that everyone will know how how correct I am in having this opinion And then the other extreme is like, oh, you're just exploring a topic But you never really settle on any answers And so you just kind of wander aimlessly through some ideas But don't really maybe you wander off the trail like rag said and then you don't really You don't come to any conclusions in the end. I think this is kind of extremes in both directions Exactly. Yeah That just thinking of it strictly as a question definitely there's that risk of getting lost in the weeds But then also if you think of it as a statement, you might be provoking yourself to think Well, is it though? Is this theme like this this way? Maybe it's the other way, you know Well, if someone said like what is what is killing justified? And this one says when they kill your whole family and then everyone on the table agrees like yeah, and then some guy goes is it They're all like What if they had it come in the past I just mean like he's literally paid to just say is it whatever there's a conclusion Is it though? Means that large chunks of your story really do write themselves That's something I agree with in hyper isolation So there we go The party story can very much write themselves when you get everything in place So that second story I suggested that's true. I agree with hitler when it comes to the Volkswagen and the autobahn so you see in hyper Hyper fixated in specific areas. Yeah, sure. It can work about justifiable murder Justifiable murder this is a much stronger story conceptually because the entire story now has one question it revolves around Are there situations where murdering another human in cold blood is morally justifiable? No because murder is murdering It is necessarily wrong So even if you you replace murder with killing because that's what he means. Um, I don't think that's all of cicario No, I think at this point we're supposed to not think about cicario at all.   It's just something that happens.  It's not, you know, he's got like stuff popping up on screen with text and like trees Splitting apart.  This is weird It's not just that it it doesn't map on perfectly It kind of contradicts his whole point because he's talking about oh, you need to pick a specific theme And hone everything around that get rid of all the stuff that doesn't fit And it's like well What you're showing me on screen is a movie that doesn't do that and it's exactly what's cario is about more than just one thing It's mostly not about that actually. Oh, it's mostly not about This specifically no Yeah, that's what I yeah Yeah, I agree And as I design the story this theme this question is the skeleton around which I build it can Man, that's a really nice.  You don't mean like what specifically lungs a very prominent lungs Freaky cartoon skeleton. He should have had jack Skellington, you know He should have had a skeleton from a movie Well, but now it's throwing me off because if you're like wait, do the organs come So what are the lungs skeleton then the flash then the skin, you know Is the lung the theme or is the skeleton the theme? Yeah, the the organs of the theme and the skeletons the characters like oh god No, the skeleton is the plot and the flash characters To the left lung is the protagonist the right lung antagonist the theme is the spine they need each other I mean you could exist without one, but I mean it's nice to have both I build it constrains me because now I'm not bouncing around and throwing in all kinds of just random Characters and scene ideas that are vaguely to do why are you showing me good fellas? Yeah good fellas has a lot to say Come on the topic of justice, but everything is now all about assisting the exploration So justice Where good fellas failed untouchables succeeded it's like Yeah, I assume that's not a point he wants to make I I would be stunned if it was So let's go through the thought process. We obviously want the main character to have a murdered someone in a way That's morally gray.  I think I was gonna say I think somebody would be like, oh come on leave below It's like he is a writer and he's talking like writer talking about writing And and I mean he's decided to make it about the justice system. So yes more specific and correct. Yeah This is like the worst time to get this wrong Yeah, there's no such thing morally gray murder. It's like no murder murder is immoral. It's baked into the definition Running at him with a knife and it was self-defense. That is too easy to justify But he didn't die. So it's not even a good example. He just got impaled. That's true Like these visuals are just this you've seen many films you can find Angel tripped like angel didn't do anything. He tripped over it. Like it's a terrible example This is an example of heroism being that he was gonna just tank the knife to save the kid This was about how cold and blood Let's say perhaps that someone he loves was horribly killed But the justice system failed at dishing out. I I wish you would have said killed horribly Wait, wait, what did he just say? He said somebody loves has been killed, but the justice system fails It's like wait, isn't that exactly what we showed in the initial? Remember the one two three We actually reintroduced Yes, we're getting very broad now He's already screwed up. No, we're getting too broad. It's a topic. No I was horribly killed But the justice system failed at dishing out proper justice Meaning the villain mostly just got away with the crime So why did you say a villain getting away with crime and show a black man? What what do you mean by this? I actually don't know this film. So I can't even He's already screwed up He has already screwed up because these things are just Like intertwined This is that high accuracy low precision element where it's like a lot of those things surround That one particular theme. They're very linked a lot of them will be on the border of it That's something that straddles both of those themes simultaneously by its nature That's just crazy to me that he said You can't have a story that explores an innocent person being framed and a guilty person getting away and and also Somebody commits a justified killing So in my example The hero's you know wife just got killed and the guilty person got away with it. Therefore. He goes after them So dude, you have to wonder whether it's justifiable. You're like, hmm Just reincorporated one of the themes that you said you wanted to get rid of and he has no idea Is it like by his own argument the story he's now telling is less tight than the story he thinks he's telling Yeah, this is a terrible trailer Oh the protagonist hunts him down and submits him to a gruesome death for revenge And I just accidentally came with the concept for law-abiding citizen. Didn't I Anyone here seen that other than me?   Yeah, it's not a very well-regarded movie I don't know why you would use this as your example I don't know if he's about to say that mate. Well, no, he can't because he just built all that up as a good thing Yes, he's a good thing. So he has to be praising it Um, this is not a very well-written movie. Yeah, my issues with this film are plentiful But um, I just I really hate how it ends. It's one of like things. I've never forgotten about the film Which we don't need to talk about it's just that It's it hasn't I the film clearly has an idea. It just doesn't do it very well I think I'm seeing most of gerard butler's movies because they're just hilarious schlock But that's one I haven't seen is 300 is on I'm using that film for b-roll from now on But where is an intuitive place to have this question addressed in a courtroom? So that's our setting He's on Just like that Yeah, the question of whether or not it was morally justifiable for him to kill someone Who killed his wife and was not addressed by the justice system correctly We've already skipped over several important questions. Have we not? Was he properly justified given who got to judge whether or not he was given the correct, you know Treatment by the justice system Like well, I guess that's what's being discussed in this court case It's like no, I'm pretty sure they're just addressing him killing the guy I mean, I have to rewatch the movie. What I'm getting at is just that there are so many topics that could have been explored But he's already treated all of those as a given and we're moving on to the main topic of They're not a given Well, it's like this is the setting to explore. It's like, why did you say that? What do you mean? We can explore that You could have the setting just be the protagonist and the guy who did the crime like in a room having a conversation about I don't I don't think he's saying this is the only one but it just Is that what the film does? Yeah, I could have sworn he said it was it made sense to do it here He said it was the most intuitive It's just it's I guess he's just saying it's a straightforward place to start at least I mean, that's that's how I heard it, but maybe I miss I mean I guess here's the question Is it the most straightforward place to start in if the premise for why the crime was committed in the first place? Was that a guilty person was let free by the justice system or the failure of the justice system? Yeah, if the justice system has failed, maybe that's not the best place to explore the question of whether it's right or wrong in that story That's true You could you could just do the story of he's trapped in a room with you know, an ex-judge a police officer Ed Evel Punisher talking on the roof. Exactly. Yeah, that could be the most appropriate Except for Laura Bidingcetizen didn't I I guess I'm using that film for b-roll from now on But where is an intuitive place to have this question addressed in a courtroom? So that's our setting Yeah, the the funny thing here is that I think that's much more agreeable than what we may have thought he said until you realize that The premise here is the justice system failed so it's not intuitive at all. It's actually the opposite He's on trial for this and the defense is making the argument that murder can be justifiable sometimes And by nature we want to balance this out with another viewpoint We want the antagonist the prosecution to argue no the law is absolute No one is above I don't feel like that was achieved in that film at all But I guess he's just using an example. So whatever it's murder is always wrong Stop using I mean, I thought a lot. Yes murder is always wrong. Yes. That's why it's called murder We want our two main sides to have two diametrically opposed dances on this core thematic question I don't like the implication here, but we'll let him go further because uh, you know, like the That may be true. I'm not even sure we can judge this based on the film anymore You'd have to go with his theory Yeah And I'm not a huge fan of it so far because it sounds like he's saying that's the appropriate thing to do is to have them Be diametrically opposed like you can you don't have to do that To have the best story of your story You're telling and what we need to do is in the end after a great deal of exploration Both prosecution and defense have their closing statements about their perspectives Something happens, which is the final nail in the coffin for one side of the debate and the jury makes their verdict And what decision the jury makes combined with the judge's punishment is the answer to this Not necessarily I thought why not just have them both give their closing arguments so we don't see the resolution of the I'm so glad you said that rags when I watched the verdict for the first time Uh as our main character was giving his closing speech I was wondering like, hmm, you know, we could end without seeing the verdict Like we could end without knowing what the uh the answer to the question is and it would still be totally Fine. It could be isn't I mean, I I love the film Isn't that a movie though? Isn't that the what the anthony hopkins and um, what was it rye fracture Well, he's rags, technically correct. You never see the result of the case that we assume very strongly Yeah, uh, whereas in the case of but yeah, like that's um, you can end your story without providing an answer And it could be that the answer is wrong Yes, um, I mean like what does he believe that in like to kill a mockingbird That the guilty verdict is considered the story saying like yeah, they got they got that one, right, you know Like is that That would be pretty funny Plenty of examples, but just on top of I hate the theory here of like You you have both the ideas prevented presented and then one of them defeated is like And therefore if the jury or the judge decides Yeah, they win then the story is saying ah see they got that one right not necessarily sometimes. Yeah Sometimes no Sometimes the point is that they got it wrong Sometimes it's that we don't need to know whether they got it right or wrong Yeah, that's the whole thing with like crime and punishment, right? Where like the the verdict is reached but the the guy did the crime feels like He he upset the moral order of the of the universe somehow and he's never going to be at peace with himself despite The court system saying that oh, it was all fine Like this this idea of like if there's a court in a movie and they reach an outcome That's like that's the message you're meant to draw like it's silly It's kind of weird that Mordor is a portmanteau of moral order. That's odd And the jury makes combined with the judge's punishment is the answer to this thematic question Not to say this is the only way to write this Okay, thank god But I'll set the potential way to do it well everything I just laid out. That's the problem with your whole video, man Everything is a potential way to do it well that you've covered Out there was honestly quite effortless for me I'm good for you Okay, Jesus because when you get super specific with the theme you want to explore Large chunks of your story really do write themselves. All I did was go the all right Time for me to push back now because I was agree with it early It was like way to set like where do you talk about writing For yourself like there's some outcomes that feel so appropriate considering everything that you've built up in the first place You're like that is too perfect for me to think about doing anything else that sort of stuff But like saying large parts of your story is already written for he's like no Getting dialogue down and pacing down is a huge problem that that doesn't write itself, you know Oh man, I really wish that more people were aware that the actual like nuts and bolts process of crafting Of just writing the words down and making the flow of the words sound nice or That the shots are well composed and well, uh cut together or that the music is good That all all of these Individual components of what you can have a great idea and ruin it with like terrible execution on all fronts Your idea is only so far a huge amount of what it is that we respect about the craft of storytelling Is the craft of storytelling not just coming up with the ideas But finding ways to get ideas your brain as an abstract sort of set of concepts in your head It's just something that you can present to anybody that they'll be able to take something away from it Yeah, it's the it's the difference between some guy and a talented filmmaker Exactly all of the parts that make that idea tangible And that doesn't address the problem of let's take which is going to sound bizarre at first 2001 versus Deadpool Where you have a film that is so specific and unified in terms of what point it's trying to make and doesn't give a Shit at all about how entertained you're going to be in the individual pieces as it goes along It's not going to sacrifice anything of its vision Which creates a hell of a lot of people who find it absolutely boring and almost like meaningless to them This is a Deadpool where you might end up saying it's mostly meaningless because you're just kind of watching a funny thing But each scene by scene piece by piece dialogue by dialogue action by action is so entertaining But by the time you hit the end it's like I don't even know what I really like got from that But I had fun Like it was you know, I mean it's like two sides of the same coin in the sense of someone could find a thing meaningless because They just didn't even catch what the meaning was or someone find it meaningless because they weren't engaging at all because they were so bored by the pieces that connected it but that The artist's goals can be so different just that the whole like it writes itself. It's like I almost don't want to tell anyone that anymore I think it would be as silly as saying the game will code itself.  No worry You have to actually do the work The game still designs itself It might be like the most important thing to understand about pursuing any creative enterprise It's like saying the pitch will draw itself.  Like, yeah, that's not a good movie though He also didn't write anything He didn't write war-abiding citizens He narrated about writing something. He wrote about writing. He didn't even create a trailer The fool in shoot the direction The good thing about having a theme is that it sort of lays this line out Where you can construct a story Along but like you still got to do all that work The the thing all that happening on its own is such an overstatement like of course it doesn't work like that You gotta You got to think about it and do it carefully and it's not easy Just because that line is there, you know Chunks of your story really do write themselves. All I did was go the intuitive direction story would need to go They really do I don't like this at all I do not like this appeal to letting intuition drive where the story goes because that is a great way To write the shittiest Awful garbage story that civilization has ever wrought Do not you cannot rely on intuition when it comes to this kind of craftsmanship There's also a very good way of losing track of what your theme is supposed to be, right? I mean give the theme that we are supposed to have started with the story that he just Didn't tell is innocent man Justifiably kills Person that's that's the theme that he wanted to Explore and in the course of writing intuitively He has re-added the two bits that he had to cut out in order to write this story to begin with And he would have spotted that if he hadn't been relying on his intuition so much because he wasn't paying attention So we've we've actually progressed from man justifiably kill someone to does legal system Acknowledge the rightness or wrongness of moral acts of killing or is the legal system too restrictive that that's like That's a different plank of your theme. You haven't cut that out. You just Found the wrong tool is wrong tool for the job The intuition in your brain in your ape brain did not evolve such that it allows you to create naturally good stories That is that's not what it's there to do. That's not its job Don't not wrong tool for this job Not left to its own devices or if not relied on entirely because I'm gonna train it I guess It's one. Yeah, it's one thing to like feel things out to do it to give the old to to give it a smell test to sort of Uh to go by vibes. Those are still ambiguous, but less so than just saying just let intuition Do its thing it just it writes itself the game designs itself the the the portrait paints itself like when people say these things It's it like you kind of know what they mean by that but you can't use that as the advice you give It's almost like something that happens once you've acquired the talent. It's something that happens You don't give people who haven't acquired that thing The advice to do the thing that they'll maybe get once they know how to do the thing As the advice of what they should do I think I follow that I think I do I'm half and a half Chunks of your story it works better for different aspects of storytelling I think the intuition can be a fairly useful and the idea that it writes itself It can work if you're saying like if you're solely concerned with plot and you've got point a in mind and you've got Zed in mind and all you have to do is chart how your people get from point a to point z And if it's like an adventure story Then yeah, it logically follows that you have to go via this set Route and one, you know You might find yourself going to a place in the course of your story that you didn't originally plan to go to But then you put your characters in a new situation And if your characters are reasonably well fleshed out in your own head Then you can sort of say it's intuition that the character will do Certain things in response to the situation you hadn't planned for them to be in but have found that they're in That's all kind of fine But I don't think it works particularly well for theme especially just because Theme is supposed to be this single unifying message And if you are relying on intuition to keep track of that Then you what you well, you could very easily go quite badly wrong and end up writing a very different story to the one You thought you were writing You can also, you know just code of like free you can sort of free write a first draft But you're not going to publish that you're going to go back and look at things analytically You're gonna set the intuition aside at that point But you know if you if you follow your intuition as like just to get material on the page You know, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with starting from that point And isn't stream of consciousness writing that as I used and say like psychotherapy If someone asked you to do right just your stream of consciousness The whole sort of point of that the utility of it is it's supposed to allow Some therapist person somewhere to look at your stream of consciousness and work out from your intuition What your actual problem is yeah, I haven't been able to do that Just say just write whatever comes to mind any thought that just comes to mind just write it down Just whatever comes in your brain say it. Tell me say it out loud I've yeah, I've heard of that being a way to sort of find out what's going on inside Give an example with bad movies and then a good movie of how as well Intuition could be like fucking you over from what you assume The audience would like to see and even when you're correct Not necessarily what you should give them If you look at tfa and rebel moon right they both Awful and they both end with our what's going to be probably a trilogy or at least a series of films hero Defeating the villain that they're going to fight again and again And it's like probably not advisable Just saying it's like yeah, but you the hero beats the villain at the end of the film You're like no, I know but like you should probably take care of the fact that like an investment will be paid off there that you can't Then like rebank But yet they do in tfa tlj and then they do again in revenge Rise of the fucking Rise of the sin Um, and it's just like it's like be careful with that intuitive like oh, this is supposed to happen because that's how it happens And that's just the thing that happens and even if it's the whole the whole audience in the room with you saying yes Yes, yes, yes make that happen.  Why didn't he do the thing that you would expect him to do? You know It's it's like yeah intuitively he would do the thing you would expect him to do but that's not at all what the story was about and uh I don't think that you should change that even if 99 of people in the world say you should Because that could be fine If you believe in your story Then you should follow through even if that runs contrary to intuition And then you'll be like we have seen that before like really though And it's like isn't blade runner and the thing kind of examples of how they they're telling stories that people just at first Just were like nah, this isn't right. This is all wrong.  They fucked up They got it wrong give it time tlj will be seen the same way Oh, yeah, that's right any day now that's like we'll do any day now Any day now, but I don't I don't think intuition is of much or any use without wisdom You know like um if you think you've got a totally skewed idea of what the world is Like your intuition is not going to be an accurate thing to follow It's not this core incorruptible thing that everyone has and can tap into you know, you got to you got to inform it with yeah wisdom and experience intuition can lead you to bad I mean using intuition can lead you to incorrect results. I mean you could use intuition to Uh conclude that the earth is flat, right? It's Rick and Morty came up earlier, didn't it? So one example of like bad intuition is the head that arrives And they create a whole religion based on intuition because they're just correlating things that don't actually have any causative link whatsoever But you know intuitively it made sense to them I want to leave you alone Intuition is often good at keeping you alive in the wilderness. It's not necessarily good at you know Creating you know like making a film It's kind of the challenges of like being a human right a lot of things that were beneficial to us when we were hunting gatherers Living out in the savannah is not necessarily useful to us navigating the incredibly complex world that we've created Yeah Really do write themselves. All I did was go the intuitive direction The story would need to go in order to address that question properly and suddenly I've created a protagonist You said address it properly, but you also said that's one of many ways you could do it Yeah, exactly. So is it proper or not? Or is it just one of the many proper ways? And also the proper way could also be terrible depending on the execution too. So Well, what's funny is I don't like it all like I said how this ends Is the opposite like in terms of I don't know why I'm avoiding spoiling it. I wouldn't recommend the film so The bad guy loses Like drastically in this film when I always felt what watching I was like he should have just fucking won to be honest with you It didn't mean that the film has to sign off on his point of view It would just mean that um It makes you think about a lot of what his point of view was and I didn't think uh capsity person I guess we could Have input on this, but I didn't think jamie fox the character they'd built in that film was smart enough at all to defeat him No This movie has that problem of like, oh, there's a villain who's like planned like a billion steps ahead for everything And like we're watching his like plan play out perfectly and Yeah, I don't know. I don't like the movie at all An antagonist a setting and I know pretty clearly what the end is gonna look like Here is why forcing yourself to say your theme in the form of a question is a powerful way to write stories For one by the very nature of what you can be sure Question is it forces you to get specific No No, it forces you to explore Uh a variety of different thoughts that you may have on a on a subject Art of exploration It invites you to explore would be what I would say over it forces you to be specific like not like blade runner What does it what does it mean to be a human if you wanted to say that's a question that asks like well, shit I mean, you know Yeah, that's actually not Not only blade runner would if you're interpreting it in the way that I would would expand your perspective on what it means to Be a human in a way that's kind of interesting Uh challenges a lot of preconceived notions and potentially replaces them with new ones Uh and and if he's talking from a writer pov I'd say that what it does is kind of invite you to ask a lot of questions that may inform The way that your story will pan out Like if you view the questions that you're going to ask yourself For the process of writing the story may well be different to the kinds of questions that the viewer's going to take away from it You know or interpret and then start to think about If we had two writers one says what it means to be human that is my theme Okay, and the next guy says Well, I've watched a video actually that gets you way on a better path than this He's like what do you mean? He's like well, my theme is uh, what does it mean to be human? The question mark on First guy's like, okay. Well, like I feel as though I'm addressing the same thing as like how you haven't even got a question I'll hit his head and go, of course Ah, why didn't I think of that one like I'm not trying to be a dick to the guy who made this video, but How do you not ask yourself questions when your primary theme is what it means to be human? Of course, you're asking yourself questions like the implication is if you don't write the question mark Are you even asking questions? Like Come on man Yeah, the foundation of course Also the phrase I will ask myself a question Is not a question So like it's a really weird way to Really wait explore it It's so silly framing it as just like this is the definitive way to think about this Like everybody's brain is different and it's just whatever best facilitates writers um Way of thinking about an idea most deeply Like just go with that whether you want to think of it as questions or statements or whatever Is it forces you to get specific?  Yeah, my broaden it out like crazy Well, I mean part of exploration is you know getting to the top of that hill and Realizing there's a whole world on the other side that you have yet to even get into Someone because you could just be a pedantic little shit about it Be like so lord the rings reckons that we couldn't do no one person can make a significant difference You have to team up with other people Be like Couldn't have done it on his own.   You've ruined lord of the rings. Like how could you do this? An issue and also because you've constrained yourself You now have a much easier time realizing the elements you need to cut That's one of the lovely things about constraints in writing As far as I'm concerned like we used to buy the only constraints that ever really generated it by yourself And what you've written prior as in like Your box is only as small or big As whatever you've already said is the case I mean, that's kind of the whole thing he was discussing earlier with cutting out theme one and two because it's better If we only have three because we don't want to get too broad. We have to be super Yeah, that's the thing right if you go I'm only addressing whether or not killing is justifiable and that's my box And so when when it comes up which he literally had come up did the justice system fails like whoa That's outside your box buddy. I'm gonna be going there like really Can I at least nail the box onto my current box? It's a slightly bigger box It doesn't follow on from anything he said so far, but the idea that limitations breed creativity. I think is true Interesting concept. Yeah, I agree. Yeah It doesn't follow on from this point Yeah, you just said just a random correct thing. That's interesting Well, because yeah, you might it's you might be like by box yourself in you'll start to expose places where the box maybe is You know not useful to the story and that you need to expand But no his point is more so the box Has to be there like you need to crush yourself down so that then you'll figure out what you need to have a story be about or something it's like very very specific Which is I guess thematically the point of his video You are always facing a sea of infinite possibility at the start of making any piece of art and it is always daunting um Does I not fuck up his whole video or no Let's hear it one more time. I also want to make sure We're trying to be more and more specific, but he says at the beginning of making any piece of art. We're like Stream with so many Brazilian questions, which is like, yeah So any question you begin with almost has infinite possibilities, but his whole point was that by making it a question We narrow it down Yeah, he's definitely confusing some things here, but I I do think this is a brief tangent where he says something That's just true. I think that you know like okay. I'm gonna write a story and it's like well I could write about anything. It's hard to come up with an idea if you limit yourself to something very specific It's a good place to start at least you might break out of it later The different infinities I was talking about though, right where We started with justice and he was like too broad You need to be like what is justice or or you know vigilantism or when is it okay to kill? And the thing is both any of those choices you have will lead you to this visual where you've got a billion question marks I not necessarily I I do understand that like there's so much you could explore within even these smaller boxes, but having Having um things that like okay, we're not going to talk about all these other aspects of justice We're just going to focus on this. I think that can be very helpful That's been the whole point we're trying to make is that nobody does the I'm going to do all of justice when they say justice In the same way as like if I'm covering depression, they're not going to cover every home I'm talking about like where you start as a genesis for like starting to write in the first place You know that just that having something more specific in mind like putting uh Constraints on what you're going to write about can help you It not be overwhelmed by say well, I could write about anything I could write about all these different things. So if you like give yourself limitations like Oh, I want to write a very very specific type of I don't know short story that can be made into a horror short That I can put on youtube or something like that That's that's it's way easier to come up with something when you kind of Force yourself into that at least to start then I'm going to sit down to write. I could write literally anything I feel like uh Either that those two are just stages of the writing process. They're both within the same pathway or That they if you the like the point I thought was being made here Was that we still end up with almost infinite questions? Which goes counter to the whole reason why we shouldn't be starting with a broad topic, which I think doesn't match the like if this is a problem He's encountering regardless then we should be okay with a broad topic to start for any writer Which I do believe Yeah, I yeah, no, I agree. I don't think this part really follows on from what he was saying before just that I just the broader point just that limitations can help you be more creative At least as a starting off point. I just think that's true I do agree with that notion but the That notion always seems to be expressed under the assumption that you'd think more control more constriction would lead to less creativity But in actuality not necessarily and so you have to agree I assume That complete freedom can lead to amazing creativity as well um well Yeah What I guess I'm getting that is just that like a lot of the lessons in here are very um useless without a lot more context That's definitely my In my own approach to writing stories I think when it comes to like a starting point it can be absolutely anything even if it's like At the broadest level or something really specific like it could be an outfit of characters wearing that you just get an image of Or something or like a piece of music that you're listening to and from that point I Try as quickly as I can to get to a theme that moves me. It doesn't have to be unique like Like i'm working on this story right now and this theme that I have is that a single person can I'll like alter the course of um civilization Like it's it's not a unique theme. I've seen it before but it's a powerful idea and it's It's the thing that I've decided that I want to most write about So right now like I've slotted that into like this is My guidepost like this is the overarching theme that I'm heading towards And then at that point it's just like, okay, let's take some steps backwards I have this theme How do I best illustrate this theme like what and what what characters would be most Um meaningful in that illustration where it's just like oh this character is manifesting this idea. Isn't that like That's interesting And then it's once you sort of come up with that illustration whether it's a part of your climax or a part of your crisis in your story Then it you start going you start thinking about plot Where it's just like okay scene by scene. How do I sort of build up to this moment? And um, that's the way I think about it Like you know, you start from anywhere And then you try and go to theme as as quickly as possible just to give yourself that Direction, but you you can switch that theme out at any time like in because in the process of your story your theme might change Or you know or grow or whatever You know, yeah, and that first idea that spawned all of this might be something that by the end you cut out You're like actually this is getting in the way Right.  I I definitely do agree that like, you know, you could just start with I'll just write anything I'll just have a blank piece of paper. I'll just start writing and see what happens. You can lead to something great as well Like like a lot of a lot of things. I think his sort of Where he goes wrong a lot in this video. We've mentioned it already, but he's like this is how it is for me Therefore, this is how it is for all people. So like when I sit down to write. I'm like, oh, there's too many things I could write about I need to get specific or else I can't write anything I'm overwhelmed by possibilities and it's like, yeah, that's true for some people And so a good advice for them might be like just give yourself an arbitrary limitation to start with Yeah, and then go from there, but not everybody's like that well, because With what John was talking about I was actually triggered to think of like because this can come down to Giving advice and stuff but also like the the advisor could be really wonky because of their own narrow thinking as in if he was to say Hey, Tolkien, I really like the story you're coming up with here But um, you need to box yourself in a little more because now you've got a bit of a Like you're flowing around in a couple places and he's like, what do you mean?  Are we going to do it on our own? You need to you need to you know box yourself in a little bit more and make this a little bit Meanwhile, I just be like, no, you've boxed yourself too far You need to broaden your view on like what the story is trying to say Which is an interesting sort of I guess what we're getting to there is just In the same vein we want to see a story that he submitted to penguin and see if they were right He was right or maybe it was an amazing story and no one will see it now This whole thing would have been much better if instead of making up some stupid hypothetical story from herald That he just talked about his own story with specifics You know So we can see for ourselves if that was the problem. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah Always facing a sea of infinite possibility at the start of making any piece of art and it is always daunting There are just too many things for you to choose from But the moment you throw in a constraint such as a thematic question like is power inherently corrupting I'm sorry Simple concepts right now Yeah, because it isn't so we could move on to the next question I'd be I would disagree with your that rags depends on what we do by all of these things, right? Is power inherently corrupting? Yeah, what does corrupting mean fundamentally? Does it mean it changes your actions because obviously whether or not you feel you've been corrupted is one thing Whether someone else feels you've been corrupted You know, what if the idea is that power doesn't corrupt, but it reveals corruption that was already present in some way, you know This is actually It's not that power corrupts is that power attracts corruptible people which is Yeah, have we not proven how like already Because each of those could then be broken up into a variety of different things Is power inherently corrupting if you answer the question? Yes, then it would be like, okay What do we do about it? You know that becomes like the next question that you need to start exploring Yeah to this point It's slightly helpful in the sense that you know, at least you've elit upon Something around which to structure your inquiries. So like at least we we've ruled out like does cheese taste good Like that's one of the potential infinite things Oh Again, like is the power of cheese tasting good actually corruptible like is that the expression we want to go down We've narrowed it down a little bit. It's just that it's so little that it basically makes no difference Yeah, that's kind of the point. We're trying to make I assume that between the lot of us is that like You know, we're solving the problem of it being too broad too infinite by making it slightly less infinite you know, like And I just you know that's why that's why I'm thinking about it as questions Is stupid because you can always break it down into sub questions and you can break those sub questions into sub sub questions That's why that's why you should think about it as a topic Yeah, that's what I was trying to highlight with like, you know guy Accidentally Burns apartment kills your whole family.  Is it moral you're like, what? This has gotten very very limited now. I don't even know what to say about that scenario You get limited if you get so specific You can get so specific that you're just describing the plot of the movie and it's not really the theme anymore You know somewhere we have to abstract to a broader idea Well, but in the same vein if someone said that's my story and my theme is the morality of the situation You should be like, uh I feel like you've gone really weird like I don't like what else is in the story.  Yeah I think I think people would say it's not would people say that's the problem. There's oddly People say like, I don't know what you think people are going to take from this Or what even there is to take from this like it's there's so many variables that are all very Have you guys seen burn after reading? Yes You know the end Take It's like, what did we learn here palmer? I guess we learned whatever we did not to do it again. Yeah All right One of the most remembered random death scenes from that movie of all film I love that movie.  It's the expression It's Every element that has nothing to do with that question and just like that Realizing what needs or do you've only got three which was precisely what he said we shouldn't have earlier We need one How do you determine whether something has nothing to do with the particular theme? I feel like we've skipped over a its own topic of discussion here Well, so all I need to do is list like 20 things That are very different that relate to power that he would agree are all part of it But then you'd be like, yeah, but okay, I guess we need to be more specific and I'd be like, cool Yeah, let's do it and then I wanted to try and create the same challenge at the next level We said like is power corrupting only related to politics like oh boy. Yeah, we can spend another half an hour talking about how that's infinite, too Doesn't need to be in your story has become a breeze With a story about power's corruption You obviously want to have someone go through a journey where they've suddenly gained power And you fleshed that out with a supporting cast who all believe very different things about the nature of power And just like that from out of nowhere, we've got a pretty clear vision of where this story is going to go It's also a powerful technique because by the nature of it being a question. It's provoking exploration but What where was it supposed to go then from his explanation? What would you have all said we're definitely let's listen to this again And just tell me where do you think the story is going? Suddenly gained power and you fleshed that out with a supporting cast who all believe very different things about the nature of power And just like that from out of nowhere We've got a pretty clear vision of where this story is going to go Now you still have so many to do That's the whole story the story can be basically anything we have barely narrowed down our infinity to the point where that's Like what do you mean? I just know I'm half expecting him to say like of course. He is corrupted by the end You'd be like no and it's like of course. He isn't corrupted by the end. No Like one of the examples on the screen is palpatine, right and palpatine doesn't become corrupt when he gains power So the premise that the story must involve somebody who gains power In order to experience the corruption of power doesn't follow with the example He's just given us on the screen when it's corruption that leads to the gaining of power to begin with Which is a very different story and a different conclusion to draw from your premise Um, is it even necessarily true that to illustrate the corruption of power? You need to have a character a protagonist gain power to illustrate the point I don't necessarily even that This can be challenged like the whole um, we need a supporting cast filled with people of different perspectives It's like not necessarily there's all these things that can be challenged. What if we had two characters and that was it? Or if we had one character and the rest of it was portrayed through like, you know the events of the world You know with a complete disconnection from that person with all of the power They don't realize they're the ones pulling the strings, but that's how we discover the effects of the power Even if you follow down his supposedly clear vision of what your story ought to be like there's it doesn't really get you much further You know like do you like you don't necessarily have to have these characters with different perspectives talk about it explicitly? We can just see it through their actions. Yeah, it doesn't tell you anything about the setting Or the kind of power the level of power You know, yeah, it gets you a little closer, but it's not suddenly Oh, it's totally clear where we're going because we have a map and it's like that's hardly a map No, I mean that that setup that he outlined I mean that could end in a number of extremes like you could have it where you know that make the character who Gains the power becomes a tyrant Or it could be something like conquerors bad fur day at the end where he's got the crown on his head But he feels the weight of it and he's miserable or something like harry potter where he's got the elder wand And he smat he snaps it in half because he realizes Nobody should have this Because there's a lot of directions you can go Yep Power and just like that from out of nowhere We've got a pretty clear vision of where this story is going to go No, he does really just crazy that he said that millions of stories Yeah, I can go in different directions in different pathways, but okay, dude It's also a powerful technique because by the nature of being a question it's provoking exploration We're not writing asops fables here Okay, so what I was trying to bring up earlier with the whole like It provokes exploration when it's a question But not when it's a statement or rather just a word It's like isn't it interesting if I said the word justice just to have everybody say what the first thing that comes to their head is Even if it's not a question It's just Being like a asops fables we ain't doing that shit You're like there's a time and place for this stuff, man It's it's like perfectly reasonable and there's plenty of questions that can come from them I would argue a lot of stories we have in like a contemporary time our developments on top of Very very specifically understood and agreed upon moral standards like don't kill a person Is it is pretty straightforward and then it's like yeah, but what if what if this though? You're like, oh Like that's half the time what we're dealing with in batman stories I mean you could make an estimation Maybe of what's going to happen short term or long term, but like That's typically what an act break is is like it throws everything in a drastically different direction Where it's just like you thought it was going this way, but now we're going this way now like what's everyone going to do now like You can't just Just definitively say the ending is going to be this maybe this is down to how inquisitive a person is But what generally gets you guys to think about a thing more if it's phrased as a question if it's phrased as a statement I mean, I I think this I mean let's um you go ahead Let's put let's put it this way this video is phrasing a lot of things as statements and here we are discussing them Very deeply exploring different possibilities just because he's saying factually and declaratively that things are the way they are So I I don't Isn't everyone's least favorite question in the anything from a job interview to like a family gets together The least favorite thing is tell me about yourself Because like it's so impossibly broad like what what the fuck do you want me to talk about like I'm not even that interesting But I could find any like any number of things posed by your question But you need to give me something to work with otherwise you're kind of holding me hostage here It's much more interesting to be told something about what somebody believes because it structures your inquiry Which is kind of the point he's trying to make but in completely the wrong way If you if you begin with a statement, you're more structured and more limited and more confined and so by his definition more creatively Liberated in a paradoxical sense because you've got something to bounce off of um anyone here see anger management Yes, yeah, yeah a long time ago.  So he just says like tell me who who are you? That he like says his name and where he's from.  He's like, okay. I'm I feel like I'm personable outgoing. He goes.  It's like, whoa, calm down, dude Uh, it's definitely on theme with this video, but I think you know phrasing things as a question can be helpful Can lead to more exploration, but so can saying a statement You know, like both can be the case depending on who you are how you think about things um, the other example that came to mind is Uh, you know that advice that if you want the right answer to a question on the internet, don't ask Just give the wrong one. Absolutely So when you say something like, you know Well, let let if you do it this way is batman an anti hero Which do you think you get more answers for that one or batman is an anti-hero? Batman is not an anti-hero probably more likely. Oh, yeah, all of a sudden you've provoked people Yeah, because they're like, wait, uh, right. Uh, that challenges my notions of this Batman doesn't kill It's so funny because it could come across as like you just try to disagree at every Point it's like, well, no, but this video is trying to disagree with a lot of conventional wisdom I think and the the fact that you'll highlight a question will always lead to more Thought or more exploration. It's just like we know that's not true. It really depends on the question or the statement Sometimes yeah, that's the whole video sometimes which gets more results justice is blind Or is justice blind? It was actually an old thing in generally I think it's called better riches law and it's the statement and any headline that ends in a question can be answered No, because if the person writing the article writing the headline was confident that the answer is yes, they would have Phrased it as a statement Yeah, it's it's more interesting to be presented with a contestable statement. I think than an open-ended question I suppose it is funny because if he said to us like well, when I say is a killing ever justifiable That helps you explore it. You really go and it's like, no, I just say yes A killing. Yeah, but there's almost like depending on the nature of the statement made it has like a built-in adversarial sort of element to it that a question simply lacks oftentimes Almost as if you have a have an opponent in the marketplace of ideas So someone saying, you know batman is not an anti hero. Well get this element of crank it up.    Yeah. Yes This gets back to the problem of giving blanket advice to everyone when people's different temperaments might like They have different proclivities, right? Some people if a really contrarian person Like you tell them like a contentious statement and that's going to really set them off You know, but someone who's I don't know Maybe like they just really like thinking about ideas and like a question might be more intriguing to them You know, like so I wouldn't give one piece of advice to everybody in that sense I don't think it's helpful Yeah, I think the the title of this video is another example of this kind of thing It's like you're writing themes wrong like I'm just not a fan of that Are you why did he phrase it as a question?  Yeah, why didn't he Yeah, why didn't he why didn't he say? Yeah Are you writing themes wrong? It's like as me like somebody personally like put a lot of time writing stories I read a title like that's like you're writing themes wrongs like am I Okay, let's see what the thought that you've put into it. All right. Oh, yeah Well, like a deliberately trying to provoke but like I think I would rather it was Like a statement that was a bit more friendly or You know or poses you could be writing themes wrong. Well, if it was I've been writing themes wrong for years Here's what I've learned or something like that. It'd be like, hmm. Okay Let's check this out. This could be anything but you're writing themes wrong.  I figured it out though. Click my video tick for all the answers. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right, dude We're not writing asops fables here.  All right.  I'd be like, we're not doing that. We're adults like Hang on But like asops fables are just good stories. They are they're good like they're of good quality In the sense that they're very coherent I don't think The this framing works. You could argue that asops fables are their skin rather than their theme is uh Arguably meant for a child audience because I mean, fuck it I watched Lord of the Rings as a kid and an adult and I got a lot from Both experiences in the sense of like if someone said Isn't it like the child vision of Lord of the Rings is teamwork beats the is the dream makes the dream work Or something like that that the adult one is How complicated the nature of corrupting powers can be or something like as we're like well Hang on you can just flip those two in terms of the simplicity or the complexity depending on what you get from the story just because Like if he said to me all you lid is the you should be so overconfident and then you should instead like Just work hard. That's the point of the The tortoise in the hair I'm like we can probably get plenty more out of it. But even if we didn't what's wrong with that. Is it the simplicity? That's that's wrong or the clarity of the message When I say wrong, it's like do you see what he did? He was like we're novelists.   Yeah, I can't write out great jobs I find that cringey as hell by the nature of being a question. It's provoking exploration We're not writing asops fables here. We're novelists and screenwriters writing for an adult audience People don't want parables that hit them in the head with a blunt moral telling them That explains why asops fables have endured for hundreds and you know, indeed Why people have used them as templates for stories When people hear parables like the Good Samaritan, they're like, wow, that's really trite Beating me over the head. He's never got rejected by penguin random house. So, you know The man who built this house on sat he's like look right when novelists here, okay?  A lot of people were like, did you not listen to the dialogue in the film? That's the point it's making and you're sitting there being like, yeah, I know what point it wanted to make I understand that Um, it's stash of troopers is arguably the same problem How clear the message is I really don't think Is indicative of how good the story is And it's certainly not whether or not you find the message agreeable If the message the core message was isn't nice things good or something Uh, we just get into absurdities at this point. I don't know Yeah Stop shitting on ace ups fables naughty If they don't do as the writer says trust me audiences hate that what people We are in an unprecedented era of people hating subversion and deconstruction. Why is that? Yeah, interesting We need more ace ups fables in our lives. We need more variations of them We need more retellings and you know People want to see a superman who is brave courageous and wants to save people As simple as that. Okay. That's all they want to see If you know how people hate tortoise in the hair, I'd be like, no I don't know that that's not a thing. I know I feel like a lot of um Like uh star trek episodes would be about something that's relatively simple and straightforward ultimately and that's totally fine I would like I would enjoy the challenge of it's like making an episode of this tv show But the ultimate message is friendship is magic. I'd be like, all right Figure this out. It should be fine Surely it's about the execution And it because he's saying like it hits you over the head. It's like what that's not necessarily bad Depends right Do I don't think uh simplicity and hitting you over the head are the same thing? That's also true.  It's just a clear illustration of a very important message to extract. Exactly. Yeah I'm like the good it's a good smell and hitting you over the head with the point that you should like be kind to people Like I mean, I guess you could say that it's hitting you over the head But I feel like that would be a bit silly this also It's not like laying out didactically what the applications of these lessons are So the tortoise in the hair isn't hitting you over the head with this is the principle And here's how you should apply it in every conceivable aspect of your life This is therefore an extensive lesson What it's doing is establishing like a mind broadening principle for a child Which you are then free to apply in any number of settings Which just has you thinking about a common thing in a slightly different way than you otherwise might have done Which is sensible and good storytelling. It's not like Also assume because I don't know about you guys But like when this was first taught to me in my Particular areas of school or whatever the once the story is told there was not being like What do you guys think what's what's going on with the story? And one of the things that we we discussed are like at least partial of the stories I've always thought of it as being a part of it is a the nature of a prejudice, right? It's like the hair wins like does it though You're like why do you assume that and it's like well, it's just more capable and you're like well Maybe physically like but there's there's aspects happening here. They're a little bit more You know complicated like what I'm getting at is that this there's more to draw from this story Nessus like in a lot of different ways that may not be completely obvious that may even be considered above child level God forbid I just find this so lame like we're We're beyond asops fables. Okay. It's like maybe we're not I think it's safe to say there's a reason why asops fables have endured for like thousands of years at this point You know, yeah, there's probably a reason why You know the same goes for a lot of our ancient fables and tails and whatnot Like there's a reason why they're pretty enduring and it's because Well, I mean first of all it is like just pretty sound in terms of there's really nothing wrong with these stories I'd be I'd be I'd be curious to see what somebody would say is wrong with like the grasshopper and the ants for instance What's wrong with that story? Well, I think if if you were here, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. I just think that we need to move beyond it I mean do we need to move beyond it when they're pretty essential and eternal sort of Lessons conveyed in pretty straightforward ways. Well, especially if we're gonna I don't need all stories to be asops fables.  And it's like then you come to you know, like a pixel movie Good picks on it Trying to figure out and it's like what what of asop fables is in the Incredibles versus something as complicated or Rather just more considered like in 1984 in the Incredibles and it's like oh, it's interesting to tear apart But they're both valid Talk about asops. I mean, you know a bug's life is based on asops fables Like a bug's life is based on the grasshopper in the ants Well, that's the thing, right?   We've been describing human You know, we've been anthropomorphizing animals for ages Like the idea that foxes are like trickster animals, right? Or or that like the eagle is noble Or that they are or you know that the bear is ferocious these sorts of things we've been doing for ages And it's no wonder that it's like it doesn't make sense to me But the idea that you'd look down on it's like, yeah, but I mean it's about a tortoise and a a hare That's of no use to me as a human. It's like well, that's pretty silly Right, but there's in a case tortoise and hares they're four people, you know, even though they're about animals They're four people And in the context of this story, there's obvious utility in Choosing those specific animals the tortoise is slow the hare is fast and you're Right, you're using what they are in terms of animals like to Make the point more clear Yeah, you just like I mean it's sort of clear already just with the events of it But like just having that extra layer of like the tortoise is slow the hare is fast And yet the tortoise one like that sort of helps hammer the point home For a younger audience like it definitely helps A young gronious understand it but that doesn't mean it's exclusively for a younger audience.  What's funny is He's just so it's just every every dynamic possible He is wrong because I was like what's one of the what is the theme of the tortoise and the hare You've already got people saying like what was once understood to be the theme was to be the tortoise rather than the hare Despite the fact that There's like a sense of you know like inadequacy about the The hare because he's got negative traits or whatever But it's like the developed version is be the tortoise and the hare That there's aspects to both of them that you need to consider that are important but then like there's A description here from just type it into google is the tortoise and the hare is a classic children's story featuring the themes of speed over confidence tenacity and just desserts like We're already at the point where this has gone beyond what a lot of people tend to think about with the story already You know what I mean?  I want to see what Wikipedia has to say about the ant and the grasshopper And so it describes the fable describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and it's refused The situation sums up moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future Even in classical times, however, this advice was miscontrued by some as an alternative story Represented by the ants industry as mean and self-serving I was like, oh, yeah. No, there's nothing to talk about with asops fables, huh? Yeah We're waiting for adults here. Okay Right. I was saying earlier. It's like a lot of this is dependent on the viewer as opposed to the writer Like what your ability to actually see in these stories and to have said like this is for kids.  Yeah, it's it's interesting what somebody would go to first Do they associate more with the grasshopper? Not the grasshopper. Do they associate more with the tortoise or the hare? Like even that is interesting in terms of which which character is the is the lesson that you're extracting Is it the positive one or the negative one? Um, but yeah, no, we're writing for adults here. Okay Sobs fame was out of here. The the moral of tortoise and the hare is do not do not take a nap if you are in a race That's the moral of this story That's pretty solid advice. I will say that's pretty good. It'll work It's like there's a strong mid-wit energy though about the the kind of people who say things like oh, no We're writing for adults who it must be like more complicated than something like ezebs fable Like the one that comes to mind is it's got to be tlj again the arms dealer It's all there are people who are Morally gray. Don't you know and they do like good and bad things depending on your point of view This is a grown-up message for a grown-up adult audience Like no, it isn't there's way more complexity and nuance and ease up than there is in that sort of portrayal Well, uh, you know the the developed version of that character because he's called dj, right? And it's supposed to stand for don't join I think like the idea is That you shouldn't be on the rebels or the empire side that they're both corrupted They're both a part of a system that's just turmoil and killing people and stuff.  These are morally a fight.  It's like when you think I mean just sum it up in the phrase of yeah We're writing a story for adults makes the last Jedi We're writing a story for kids makes the last wish He's like, okay. Well, huh it goes a bit deeper than that Them that they're naughty if they don't do as the right I almost I almost said I almost said rebel moon there when I was thinking this is this is a story for adults Saxiders riding out rebel moon Every once in a while to keep it every once in a while. He writes, you know He chooses a new color of crayon to write the script just to swap things up a bit. No He's got a pad that he doesn't fill with egg.   Like can we just get over? Oh, yeah, the lady just get over that already. God. No, whatever. She played the uh, herbology professor. I can't remember the actress Right. Yeah, she said can we move on or something?  If you don't like the check they gave you Right.   It has a couple sex scenes in it. Yeah, exactly Like really that might be the only distinction these people have is like is there a sex scene in it? Therefore it's an adult story. No heroes. No villains only tops and bottoms We've talked about like adult themes versus child things that usually just as a matter of if not going to be something The children will be able to comprehend very well if you're talking about uh, let's say like Incredibly complicated political corruption. It's like they may even find it just completely boring Let alone understanding the nature of the world and why we would be in that position. However You can have intros to that the kids in many different ways. Some would argue that the prequels did that Oh, did I just go there? Oh my god. I wish you didn't Moral telling them that they're naughty if they don't do as the writer says trust me audiences hate that What people really want is a nuanced exploration of an issue where all sides of the debate are given their due Not true.  Listen. The only good bug is a dead bug There are times there's sometimes a good story.  Oh, they'll get a hearing. All right, it's it's this right me It's like how could you write this be like audiences definitively want all aspects covered is like no, they don't Yeah, about every last year movie He doesn't do a good good enough job speaking for himself to start speaking so confidently for everyone else true That's the way you create the most provoking themes and if you frame your theme as a question You're setting yourself up to do exactly that She's gotta be a question and he's gonna cover everything Well, I think we skipped over the first bit. I feel which is that some themes are just better than other themes If you have an an ontologically inherently evil force that needs to be Fought against by the forces of good How come the theme of heroism and you know Persistence in the face of all odds. What makes that a worse theme than some Something some theme that's a bit more. I guess just any other theme How could he's just like he's done the thing where he's just saying yeah Some things are some themes are just better than others and you just like snuck that into a sentence The more morally gray thought provoking ones are better than others I guess that's like the client is strong. That's that's the that's based on the the exact verbiage that I've forgotten here It's that's basically the strong claim or the strong implication Either way something that I just don't think you could just say that His quote is saying at one point in this video The harold was juggling too much at once He simultaneously just argued you need to explore every point of view on your subject Good luck. Good luck. Yeah Yeah, but it's difficult. There are quite a few caveats to this technique that if you want to use it I strongly recommend you bear in mind Firstly what you will find is there is a That was so british what the hell Oh, you strongly recommend it. Do you like what have you done like If you've written anything is this youtuber done, you know, written novels or screen titles? I thought you meant what have you done like you've created such a bad video What have you done Oh sure A few caveats to this technique that if you want to use it, I strongly recommend you bear in mind Firstly what you will find is there is a direct correlation Between the difficulty of answering the thematic question and the degree to which your story is thought provoking There is a direct correlation between the difficulty of answering the thematic question And the degree to which your story is thought provoking wrong. No Not always or maybe not even most of the time. I'm not sure I'm trying to I think this can be true sometimes But this is not some definitive law. That's why it's wrong is that he's made a definitive It can be it can't be It's probably Often correlated mostly Often not really Willing to push on that one. I'd rather just say it's uh, yeah, that's why I say it was such with such inflection You put it as a question and that means it's thought provoking. Yeah, there are so many subjects like Between the difficulty of answering direct correlation between difficulty of answering the them a thematic question, by the way, meaning what exactly Basically, is it is the real question here is like is the difficulty of answering any question necessarily more thought provoking which is like I Maybe but I don't know but maybe to the point where I think that I feel like we're tackling a completely different question that's separate now we're getting into the element of parsing out what your sentence means in the nature of these two comparisons Is this the caveat provoking needs to be broken down? I think because I mean like I find the the tortoise and the hare thought provoking in that Like what else can this be broadly applied to? You know like like this idea of being consumed by your ego and you know Being overconfident like and that being your fault overconfidence and rushing creating good outcomes is a possibility And so what would that say in contradiction to an asops fable that relates to it? And maybe the the fable itself doesn't contradict that notion It presents the alternative or something to just develop it like those are all arguably thought provoking But when you say a thematic or the thematic question Does he mean is there ever a time to kill? Like okay, I guess that's a thematic question But how far can we go before it's no longer a thematic question like is bored better than oudie like well You know like for me, uh, maybe not rags, but for me, I'd be like I have no idea how to answer that question It doesn't make me think Because I don't care about the cars at all like I don't I don't even you don't mean like I'm just like what is what? Yeah, it's it's one of those Like there can sometimes be a direct correlation, but not always And if you want to say that just the more complex the thematic question the more thought provoking And it's like I that might be built into the nature of the words you're using maybe If something's more complex, maybe it's necessarily more thought provoking depending on how you want to use those words But now i'm trying to interpret what this sentence means when this shouldn't be a sentence that Is up for that much interpretation This should be a pretty Like clearly defined and easy to understand like boom. Here is the rule Dot dot dot dot. There it is Yeah So, okay Let's say we're writing a story with a theme is is kicking puppies wrong.    I don't know why we have mixed Wait, wait, wait, just like I was just because I was memeing because I'm trying to stay in character But is he actually like you can't think of any morally questionable times and what if a dog is attacking your Child Yeah, exactly Am I supposed to join in and also what's funny is There there are things you can go to but it is actually difficult to make a definitively moral statement. That's like not long But you're like, you know When you choose a word like murder it's much easier because it's all built in What do you say like is it ever bad to push an old lady down the stairs after she's begged you for help? You're like, well, it may be Unfortunately, maybe they could be a time for that is moral It could be I mean these kinds of weird questions could be the premise to a Crazy misunderstanding that kick starts the plot of a story. Yeah. Yes. Okay.  And so now he's like, oh, how am I different? Have you just You just described the killer monster that I've been hunting kind of a little bit didn't I I felt like you did that on purpose, but maybe I don't It was not on purpose. You know sometimes I act happy accidents. Oh, yeah, because you are correct completely correct. That is uh What an awful way to start this sequence, you know, like he's There's a there's he's got a Last bit of the sentence he could pull out and he can retreat. He could be like ha ha. I was just meming But I don't think he is He could have said if the theme is you shouldn't kick a dog that's literally doing nothing to harm you or anybody else And it's just minding its own business then. Yes, that's pretty obvious. But even then though Why that lesson? I mean it wasn't long ago that people thought dogs were actually like automatons That they didn't have a motion. You could you know, it's just it's a basic trolley problem again Like the trolley is coming down and on the tracks you've got 15 like poor People and you've got one dog on the bridge and the only way to save them is to kick the dog off the bridge It's an innocent dog, but it's still probably right to kill it That the dog is on the train tracks and you can kick it off the train tracks Exactly, yeah I gotta kick it. I can't just throw it. That's the quickest way to get Drop kick it You know what he you know what he wanted to say, but he couldn't because it would be retarded. Is it ever okay to kick a jog? To kick a dog jog it. I would like to kick lots of joggers No, no, no notice. Just keep going the sentence would be is it ever okay to kick a dog unjustifiably? That's what he wanted to say Which is like built into the question Yes, obviously what is there to be explored in that question, but if we leveled it up to a far trickier to answer question It was okay Listen, this is a crazy self-report here, but okay Such as you know is murdering people always wrong in it. Nice. Yes Oh, you made it worse It's actually worse. Yeah Because the other one was just the case if there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons why someone might end up kicking a dog If it's like trying to attack them or their family or their pet Uh, but now you've changed it to and it's just wrong. It is. It is Justifiably murder. That's That's why we have the word murder. It's built in that it is unjustified.   Not possible, but you could justifiably murder This is what we called the odds Well execution is everything right because in that hypothetical story about The gray area where it might actually be okay to kick a puppy in the face You could execute that really well and it would be more thought provoking Than something like gareth edwards is the creator Which ostensibly is about you know complex notions about Artificial intelligence and what it means to be a person and a human being but it does it so poorly that it leaves you with very little to think about Yeah, I think that's fair Ah trickier to answer question such as you know is murdering people always wrong in every circumstance Suddenly it's a lot more interesting that there's more meat to this issue that we've got to grapple with There's less meat to finish it There's no meat It is a closed It is a bleached white bone in the desert But I can dig out which really isn't a part of it Is the you know that killing the person is justifiable But that could never be proven and thus you will be convicted of murder But will you conduct that moral act anyway? Like that's the I'm trying to find a way in But that really I don't think that's included in what he said because he's nailed it so so tight You've changed it into something different That's what I'm saying like he's he's he's made it so that we can't even with our crazy contrarian hypotheticals come up with anything to save him Right and it's just come to mind for me But Freud or Dostoevsky's crime and punishment has exactly this question as its theme The second thing you want to bear in mind is you should decide I don't know if I would describe that as I I don't know if I would just Yeah, like I feel like you could describe it more accurately I doubt the question is is murder justifiable because I'm assuming Dostoevsky knows the definition of murder Well, not if he's a writer apparently What is it with writers not knowing about words that's kind of weird His crime and punishment has exactly this question as its theme the second thing you want to bear in mind You should assign each of your characters a stance on this theme Whatever start assign them a stance on the theme as opposed to make sure they're built with values Like make sure your characters have wants needs and values like just the simple advice that everyone always gives Because of course what if their position on the theme is going to be emergent from the values Well, what if the character is agnostic on the situation that is they don't have a stance? What if they're und, what if they're undecided? What if it's about them going this way that way exploring not knowing in the end What if you what if the theme is you know what sometimes maybe I don't know is just the way to go Like you've already said I don't know man like you didn't have to Mmm. I have higher expectations from writers Once you give your protagonist you want your antagonist to disagree and the You want your antagonist Agree but disagree on a smaller like subset of it You know like the easiest one is the ends justify the means versus no I don't believe that even if we have the same end goal that we want You could also have an antagonist who agrees but he goes against what his values are for some You know for some particular reason you could hate him personally but agree with his goals, right?  It's like you don't need them diametrically opposed. That's just a potential as one option Whatever stance you give your protagonist you want your antagonist to disagree And the disagreement between these two characters on the theme Causes or at the very least underpins the entire conflict of the story not necessarily You can have the antagonist not know anything about the person who's pushing the story like the protagonist They could just get in the way You know what's interesting is that the tortoise and the hare They agree the tortoise and the hare both want to win victory is good.  Are you calling marriage story melodramatic this? I hope not Is he calling Troy melodramatic I don't know You said that with power. I'm not sure if he's just like Achilles powerful Just not that compelling There's a good chance the reason why is because there is nothing about their conflict that plays into the themes of the story You don't think there's anything about their conflict that plays into the themes of marriage story I I don't know. How do you not? I don't get it I don't understand this is we're coming up with the problem again Like how can I trust you as an advisor when you don't even know what the themes of certain stories are? In a in a in a video about themes for me, I don't know what am I supposed to do with this? I mean the most Charitable thing would just to be to assume that oh, I need a scene of melodrama People yelling marriage story and that he gave it no more thought than that. He didn't consider the implication Even a little bit to call it melodrama is already like oh, that's a big black mark And then also to say that oh the themes. I don't know what's going on. It doesn't have anything to do with anything It's the different uh, did you guys say you had him on your show? Yeah, one at a time Okay So he I was under the impression that he didn't have a body of work that he was just pulling all this out of his ass, but like it's is he like an accomplished Author written stories and he's got a lot of film analysis.  So who knows Yeah, I mean whether he did or not it's fine. It's just I think you can frame all of this in a less sort of Our good way. Yeah. Yeah, you can frame it less incorrectly. Ah, yeah Right, you should make an asops fable about that. I might it will be called Your writing themes wrong you brought Oh He's specific. Ask a question Video titles one thing But then you have like points that are made that are highly contestable spelled out in front of you You know, it's like typed out letter by letter as if it's gospel like I don't know Does it really warrant this um superimposition? I don't know That plays into the themes of the story into the different ideologies the characters represent I'd argue the highest quality conflicts you can have in a story is when there's an Ideological cause to it people give out the advice all the time saying the highest quality conflict that but like conflict comes in so many forms So if he wants If he wants to make a position on like I if he's like, oh, I think that the highest quality conflicts are because of ideological things And then he explains why they'd be like, okay, I guess it's how you feel and that could be interesting But it you have to build that up. You can't just like say it, you know Do the two characters expressing differing ideologies is one thing But one thing that would elevate that is when it manifests in their actions throughout the story that we see You know The easiest one would be maybe the villain has an easier time of it because the hero has uh Like higher moral commitments that make his life more difficult But you need to show that like saying that the characters have an ideological opposition. It's like, okay That's that's a starting point But like it has to it has to play out throughout the whole story You can't just have the character state. I believe x and then villains like I believe y and then they fight Like that's not going to be that isn't that interesting um It's again execution is going to determine just how Interesting it is when the characters have an ideological clash though I do agree, you know, like having characters who actually disagree on things Is just uh, generally worthwhile, but when done well the idea that you can have Yeah, you can have you know a character two antagonists or a protagonist and an antagonist Who just don't like ideology has nothing to do with it. It just might be I mean like I said, they're they're too many testants in a Yeah, what's the ideology of the terminator? He doesn't have one. Yeah, he's a soldier for skynet so Or any sort of man against the elements sort of thing one sports team against another one competitor against the other What's the ideology of the thing compared to all of the humans in the thing? Someone wants to do the thing of like it's ideologies. It believes it should be able to absorb and consume everything. Yeah It's hence why it chose terminator It's like you you're not going to ascribe an ideology to it's it's a robot running on a program of kill this person It's it's as simple as that. It's also that's an ideology. It's like, yeah, that's just broken at this point You make something I don't like the ideology of the t-rex in Jurassic park. I mean Right. Yeah I don't like the idea of like quality of conflict I don't like that term because you can measure that in drastically different ways Yeah Is as a high quality conflict Just the amount that it makes each person on each side go ger at the other person Or is it like because they have such common ground but yet differ on some ideological point You know, I think we've maybe that's a high quality conflict Provided examples of very well-loved storytelling conflicts that don't even require an ideological aspect But now let's go the other direction of what's an ideological complete Disparity conflict that most people thought was like well like iron man and iron monger. It's there's a lot like they are Sold to us as completely diametrically opposed the companies at stake try to kill each other They're so different but they spawned from like a similar area and it's like how interesting is that and it's like Not very by the end. It's kind of uh awkward embarrassing a little bit I mean two people Interpreting a holy book differently is like they have the same ideology essentially and they're gonna be opposed to each other or Like there's a lot of different ways to take this and if he wants to say that he thinks that this is the highest quality thing Is like yeah, it's fine If you have that opinion and you could explain it could be interesting But if you don't frame it as like this is my opinion Then you're gonna have to probably work really hard to say like this is why this is the best You know the highest quality element of conflict that you can have or theme that you can have so I'm eager to hear what he has to say and I hope it isn't just a thing He is posited to just be the case with no justification I wouldn't want to highlight Batman begins too because uh the execution or the realization of their ideologies Batman's coming across as the one that can provoke a lot of questions in terms of execution But razzle ghoul's one is just stupid like the I'm gonna blow up gartham with water expansion. It's like no and so You know you like well What's interesting is they come from the same core, but they've developed and now Dwell the conflicts like the I'd say the better vision of this could be like a civil war where Iron man and cap agree on most things But now presents a situation where they absolutely do not and it's caused a schism now that'll destroy the avengers It's like oh shit That's interesting and they're not even diametrically opposed. You know, I mean I'm just thinking about a family guy bit where peter inadvertently creates an evil clone of himself called retep And he just has inverted clothes and a goatee. It's like I am retep and I Is that a high quality conflict?  No, they don't need to want different things True Dude competitors in a sports competition want identical things Yes The tortoise and the hare want the identical things. They want to win the race To be the rat. I mean rat racing.  They all want the same thing No, people want the ring How many people want the ring? Yes, to be to be pedantic wouldn't the tortoise want them to win and the hare want them to win Are those technically two different things?  I guess we're entirely different It's like well, I never said it about whether or not I would want you to be happy too Like the it depends on how broad you want to go Let's see how he explains it then let's see if he uh, he accounts for the nuance of this subject Advice all the time saying characters need to want different things and it is good advice It's good if you do it But the issue is I've seen one or two people give out this advice in the context of theme And if you try to use mere want as the base for your theme that will fail that will that will fail That will fall flat. No No, no, obviously also, he's Also, he's using a picture from the showdown at the end of the good the bad and the ugly where all three characters want the same thing Well, I guess he's saying that that's all well and good, but it doesn't generate us a theme But like or it's key that means surely by definition. That means you cannot have a theme about greed Well, why don't we just go with all the rings again?   So what's the unifying part of all of these people wanting or whatever the If we take out the one that didn't want it to stay on Topic for this idea What what connects them all and you're like, well, it's too late. You've just defined what they want You can't make that key to a theme is like I can still generate a theme and it can be power I can then you know skew everyone so that they're interested in the power or that the ring corrupts the ring Sort of invites everyone through a notion of power and then thematically speaking You're a fucking you you can write whatever you want in terms of what that represents Or what you want it to answer in terms of a question or explore I don't know why we would say this is this is destined to fail Also, we can we can keep things Uh thematic to this video I mean two you could have a courtroom scene and both the defendant and the plaintiff, right They want to they both want like both those lawyers and everything both sides. They want justice You know like the lawyers do But and they you could have a case where each of you know, they believe that their side is right and they're fighting for justice so It's it's weird to say that yeah, I just don't know Yeah, when you see what they want we go in from how hungry they are or like a want for a notion of an abstract concept Or something more specific like winning in a sport. There's like It's so broad. So does my me and my my my uh my opponent. We both want to win It's competition Even in his example of like super high quality conflict where they have different ideological disagreements Like both sides want their side to win You know, they want to win the argument. They want their political system or whatever it may be You know, but you can still derive them from once You can still derive the theme the sort of clash between different world views from their wants Yeah, ideally you want to boil it down further but like when you're First deciding about a theme to write about desire is not a bad place to start I think as well what is not highlighted is you can write up all of these characters Then you can see at the end what theme is sort of arising out of it because of your writing Then you can go back and change it I've had a brain blast one of the examples he said is you know is does power necessarily corrupt?  How silly is that necessarily like completely destined to fail down it goes Okay, sure. Whatever you say, buddy A far better approach is to have your characters believe different things I mean I mean a belief may manifest in a once for the way that the world ought to be or the way that your life ought to be So I don't well. I feel like in most situations This actually doesn't change anything because a sports analogy team a I believe I want to win The other side I believe I want to win Though a belief is the acceptance of a proposition Yeah, well, that doesn't actually change anything and probably the majority of circumstances You've done very little You can put the word belief after the facts and get a good ideological conflict as a theme as well by saying I want x and believe y is the best way to go about getting it and another character says I want same thing But I believe that z is the best way to go about getting everything. Yes Or The reverse would be oh god, don't lose it Um That they that they believe the same thing or no, sorry that they God, I fucked it up. I lost it You have to believe in yourself believe in yourself That's gonna give you the inverse you have to want to remember Uh, this this by the way, like this feels like yet another video in the notch of you read writing books and didn't understand them or Like it whatever's happened. It's made it's made you actually like less capable of being an impressive writer Did we know you have been brainwashed in a sense and it's kind of uh, it's it's diminished your uh, your your spark Yeah, oh absolutely The the idea that belief is key to theme and had we removed belief and he said all right What is the key to theme? I think in our opening discussion We talked about how it's like well I guess you need to see what the story considers to be the good outcomes You need to see what the outcomes in general even are You need to obviously check what characters want need and have by the end versus what they did By the beginning and I feel like I've covered a lot, but I'm still like no It's probably a lot I haven't covered in terms of what can like divine How do you divine a theme out of out of the story so many elements so many different variables? The idea is like no it's belief I'm just like um Belief can be key to some themes Yeah, I would include it. Yeah. Yeah, but if the theme is uh, the pitfalls of ideology And you can say what belief is absolutely the key to unpacking that as a theme But if your theme is not got anything to do with belief Then belief applies much more strongly to character across all the bases than it does to theme across all bases Yeah, and there is an element to the you know the element of belief that everyone believes things It's just it's not even a thing that you you know decide what you believe So it's not really going to change much. You're just basically saying all those things that we had before Yeah, those are things the characters believe But but it was always that that was always the case Yeah, belief itself could be the theme of something You know people get locked in a you know a perception of the world and just yeah I mean it's about a conviction in like if I just had this thing Or if the world was just this way then this thing could happen Yeah, why do you believe it? You believe how did you get the knowledge to believe certain things?  Okay When you do that it all clicks into place, especially when these beliefs are directly in Disregard everything that we've said. Sorry ladies and gentlemen. Just carry on. You made the word turn green. It's green now It just works. Yeah, he he chatted BTF odus with his green text ignore our discussion prior, please Compatible when this is the case Not only will their differing beliefs cause differing wants which is good because that causes or could their differing wants cause different beliefs Yeah, they're different beliefs will cause different wants What I feel like knowledge is that it's either downstream or upstream, but it's it's gonna be there So you've changed nothing wouldn't one define that um Defined golem by like his want for the ring has basically controlled his beliefs about the world Yeah Yeah, because you're what finds him. He is like the embodiment of just obsession with uh with this item I don't know which comes first a want or a belief Uh, I think it can go both ways. It can be both. Yeah, I think you go both ways too I believe that the bible is true. So I want these things I Want food so I believe I should eat food Or I believe that eating food will satisfy my hunger. Yeah, I feel like it does go both ways Because in a way both of those things are things you can't really change But you can affect your ability To believe certain things or to desire different things so Even though You don't yeah, even though you don't have complete and total control over the things you believe or the things you desire You can engage in conversations You could read books you can put yourself in positions where you will open up to new knowledge That will then change the things that you believe and want. Yeah, they're almost Yeah, this is a weird thing to say I wonder like if you sat down with him and you asked which comes first the one toward the belief I guess he'd just be like, well, obviously comes this way and then you want to Like press him on it. It's like really like Yeah Yeah Like I want to find the answer to the I want to find meaning in life So I picked up the bible and now, you know, I found meaning in my life because God and Jesus and all that is like so It can go both ways Very strange to just say that so um, I mean, maybe he'll elaborate on it here shortly So but it's saying but But like man to say it so confidently like that when like man, just stop and think Is that true? Can you say that so confidently? As our much needed conflict it will also render this fight a proxy for the different belief systems one can have So as they fight we're seeing both ideologies get tested as the story tries to answer Which is the superior one? It's funny he says this, uh, what about the times where Ideologies are fought against each other like in a broad sense for the story But the two individuals representing them have the opposite result in their combat like their actual You know like the person loses the fight, but that they win the war so to speak Well, I mean I was thinking with the luke one isn't this a bad example because Darth Vader won that fight But like in his ideology Is bad Yes, the film is Many I would say most when they portray two different ideologies most stories will be like yeah, this is the bad one Yeah, in fact, yeah, how does he square away like um in any film like how does he square away any of the deaths in saving part of it? Ryan, you know up until like barbie Barbie died so that's right. The orcs had a pointer, right? They're actually on the right side of history Yeah, you can get all kinds of results in terms of the difference between the ideological battle and the physical battle Yeah I don't know if the difference Go ahead. Oh damn now. Sorry. I oh wait People get antsy about spoilers because I don't think about red dead redemption I'm thinking about how like the Well, actually it'll be spoiler free on that one. Um that when characters die In terms of like a representation of ideology It presents both one where the death means kind of like the death of a way of life and an ideology But that another one actually means like kind of the it lives on In a way that's kind of like oh, it's a little bit pessimistic So yeah, there's plenty of examples of ways that like a character dying can represent a lot of different things in terms of its theme Yeah, it's kind of funny that he would put mad max fury road here because I feel like to the degree that there's an ideological difference between fury ossa and um, whatever his name is joe the big one joe Immortan joe, uh, it's very much Once driving things not belief necessarily because the morton joe just wants to control everything You know, I mean he it's not like a strong belief in the utility of like authoritarian. Yeah, like more joe's ideology What is it? It's like well? He wants to be in charge It's a want it's a want. Yeah If you can pull that off that is when conflict is that it's most engrossing Next if you can you want to assign Substances to your side characters You do not need to do this. It is not vital But it can help if you assign all of your characters a different stance on your theme all of which subtly different You will find each scene where these characters interact is suddenly oozing with juicy fun Well, no, that's dependent on your writing it depends. Well, it depends on their stances They could have you could have two side characters that agree But you what I'm also getting at is just like he's he's doing the thing again Where it's like see now that you've made it so everyone has a stance on it. It's like it's good Like well, no now we need to get into like Are you actually Explore character can have a stance that's contradictory to like their life and experiences and the things that they say You could have you just write a character with a shitty stance given the context I'm fine with you Why would you show the Lord of the Rings like Frodo and Sam don't have wildly different ideologies? Unless he's talking about by the time Frodo is corrupted by the ring or something Which is I don't know that feels like it doesn't capture the point. He's trying to make does it? Yeah, I don't really I'm not really sure there's a giant ideological distinction happening in Casablanca either There is I mean But it seems to be more like by the end it becomes a lot more close and resolved. Yeah at the beginning. Yeah Yeah, but like, you know Victor Lazlo is portrayed as like he's the good one He's the one who's you know has the good, you know the good fight in him and so he's who rick eventually, you know Yeah, uh, yeah, that one's closer. Yeah, but I that was actually you you would probably think of it better as The difference between Oh him and the police chief rick and the police chief They end up basically cooperating, but they are they have different like stances The chief is a lot more like he's in it for him And he wants to get you know, he wants to get his and he'll go along with things and he's if anything He's actually not really ideologically, you know motivated by a lot of stuff. He's a lot more pragmatic and selfish in a way Um and a lot of the times he'll just he'll avoid conflict if it works in his favor So but they still but he and rick still end up cooperating. I mean, it's the famous line This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship It's it's two people with different ideologies essentially in the moment working together and cooperating And a lot of it has to do with their personalities Like they have different ideologies, but they have personalities that allow them to mesh and they walk off into the fog roll credits Boom, one of the most famous lines in movie history I mean, you can have basically every result once you execute it well I'm flex because of their ideological Disagreements as a super quick example the matrix has several themes one of which being should you accept reality? Well, wait, what several things that's that shouldn't be doing that, right?     It should have been the matrix not the matrix A matrix Accept reality no matter how dark it is This is shown by neo's choice between the two pills and we have pretty much all of the crew of the nebuchadnezzar believe That yes, it should be accepted with one notable exception that being the character So they failed we need more supporting characters with different points of view That's right. Everybody needs to disagree or at least they would have made the story better. So, yeah That is true if the matrix reloaded, but that's a worse film Well, what's what you can argue is they all have a different perspective on the nature of neo But they don't seem to have a different perspective necessarily on the nature of uh being brought out of the matrix, right? And that's one thing that the movie seems pretty I don't know almost didactic about you know what I mean? It's pretty From his perspective, I might I might agree with that wouldn't he call this happy-handed In how like obvious it makes the the lesson here You know, I mean that you should accept reality no matter how bleak rather than living in a like the comforting lie Well, yes cipher is a cowardly piece of shit who backs tabs everybody and dies horribly So it's yes and all the heroes make the correct decision So is that like a mature exploration of a theme for adults? I guess he agrees with it and that's another problem with theme is uh, You've got to check your own biases and check it against everyone else in the world You can't just decide like if I said working together is always the best thing ever And you could never do anything on your own. There's plenty of people be like, what do you mean? You could never do anything on your own. This is what are you talking about? I'd be like, oh, right? Like uh, I should I should probably you know, you can walk into things Instead of cooperating with the machines and betraying everyone maybe you should You know not do that Well, we work with them at the end of the third one. So there we go.  That's the true There is a fourth one The second and third ones too. I understand me cap some people some people don't even like the first one That's not wrong. Ooh, we should organize him and theo to have an argument. It'll be great And that being the character cipher he believes Ignorance is bliss and this differing belief causes plenty of fun conflict through fun It's just funny to show that one tag again Also, he said that the more difficult it is to answer the question the better the theme is And this is an obvious one that the only person who would make that decision is a cowardly piece of shit Who murders everybody? Yep Could you also not make the case that cipher is that his belief is forming off the back of a want? Like he wants to be peaceful safe and well fed and his belief has formed off the back of that Which makes want the key to the and not believe. Yeah Oh my god It's also the fact that this is not even really the the main theme of the movie, but that's fine It's one of them, but it's not the big one Man This video, you know Throughout this film why why didn't I take the blue pill? Now there has been a flaw in all I've said so far Because I outline all my stories So for me planning for theme isn't terribly tricky But what if you're a pancer where you like to improvise your way through? Well as a pancer you should try to figure out what your thematic question is while you're writing draft one And if you why can't you do it before during or after is it impossible to do any of these?   Yeah, especially with how Naturally emergent themes can be and how subjective they could be You might be like, you know what I'm gonna write my book and then I like about the halfway mark I'll sit down and I'll really think about themes and I'll think about What's being set up by the characters their motivations their actions the goals The world and the plot and then I'll see maybe I need to work the theme more strongly now that I'm getting into the second Half of the book and where it's gonna lead and what I'm gonna say Like that seems like a totally valid way to write a story I just don't blame people for not focusing on theme ahead of time or even doing I just I I understand To write stories I understand and it's fine And but I you know, I would always advise them to consider and look into it because it's with while but like If they finish this story you gotta get the basics before you start getting into like themes I think It's gotta be right out there who say they don't give a shit about themes that have written really good stories Oh, it's gotta be like it was a that's kind of joking. But like if you write it themes will come I think that's there's a lot of truth to that Finished rough one still not knowing that's okay Just sit back and take a long look at your story to realize what thematic question is the most prominent What's funny about that is why is everything so woefully like just I agree with him, but I'd be like well redraft everything make sure you're checking out all of the things Pacing dialogue the construction of this world What you were trying to get from in terms of the arcs of the characters your themes, of course It's like all of it Why are we just like, you know, just take a look back and make sure your theme is is in line I guess in relevance to whether or not you're nailing your theme is for sure. But again As a lot of us is so narrow and I feel like the more important part even of constructing a theme is to nail it In the minutiae of everything that's happening in your story Remember that a story where a character learns any kind of lesson is a story that inherently has a theme if you're Inherently has a theme do things in Inherently has a theme as complicated That is that's that's a complicated question that I almost feel like we should skip and reframe This there's a story Yes, I think oh my I think it can It could be confused and muddled and even contradictory, but like Those that aspect of the story emerges almost always I would say Yeah, it's like saying kind of Can a story inherently have Han Solo is like yeah, there's a character named Han Solo This story is inherently it has Han Solo in it I think I mean we all pretty much agree that uh It's almost impossible to have a story from start middle to finish that doesn't have something can be drawn out of it thematically One of the big Key driving factors is where the story seems to sit in terms of what the right thing in the world was Whether it be through events or characters so like I guess my confusion was almost like I wonder if it even requires a lesson For a character as opposed to just showing us events and then having a tone for whether or not they were Good events or bad events. Well, that would be the difference again set out right at the beginning between like your theme as the author And the theme which is the takeaway from the by the audience I think the audience will always take away a theme that aspect of themes is inherently in the thing Whether your theme is ever in the thing because you delivered it incompetently or you never realized it while you were writing it I don't think it inherently has to have your idealized theme in it But there is always going to be a theme just because that's the natural way we read stories like you were saying like Does the world seem to confer morality on one set of decisions or another? Or do certain characters meet and ends that could be you know deemed deserved because they've done bad things That's always going to come out of any story in which decisions are made So yes, there is an inherent theme, but it's not necessarily the authorial intended one People will be naturally inclined to extract a singular thing over From a sequence of many things. I wonder if like in the case of movies scenes Right. So and that as in as far as that I agree theme is sort of inherent to Part of a way to help it be understood maybe is the as long as you have Characters doing things there is characterization Right, like some people maybe an author would be like well, I didn't intend for that characterization It's like yeah, but it's there When you have them run away when someone needs help that's characterization You're like no, they're just trying to get out of there.  That's a characterization Yeah, it's not just what they do. It's what they don't do If a theme is a uniting idea then any story that feels like one thing instead of like a random Like mix of things that totally disparate elements that have nothing to do with each other If they have anything to do with each other there's probably a theme in that Learns any kind of lesson is a story that inherently has a theme if your protagonist undergoes change Look there for the fragments of your theme once you've real you can't have a theme with static characters I think you just said that's an option for finding your theme is in character ox Entirely wrong, but like I said you can draw it from I feel like pretty much everything in the story almost What is the theme posed as a question of the first star wars movie? Do you mean star wars episode four a new hope? Yes. Okay. What is your responsibility to reject oppression? Will you also family? Yeah, it makes it so powerful. Um, yeah, it's like yeah, the willy it Probably mostly fairly basic stuff, you know, like You know trying to you know fight back against Oppression and being heroic and well that could even be the thing is the question is that are you a hero? Because most of the the moral content of star wars is carried in by way of assumptions It's not making an argument about the rights and the wrongs of resisting An empire because those things are sort of baked in as the good thing to do Um, and it holds so closely to every step of the hero's journey that the thematic question is really just is luka hero Are you a hero? That's too broad you gotta make it more specific for me I just if you have laia luke and haan they're all from different backgrounds and they all have different levels of approach to Opposing the empire like certain questions on answer. I feel like laia is the most cleanest like yes Everything I do is to destroy the empire haanz is like i'm doing it for myself, but at the end realizes the Better alternative and then luke goes from x to y in terms of learning like I need to be the person who does oppose the empire in the most effective way Like they just feel like there's a lot of journeys that would match it But that there's a lot more going on in star wars and I don't think that they Are particularly heavy about it. I think that that is one of the stories that a lot of people would watch and be like I don't know what the theme was. I was just having fun. I really enjoyed it Does death star is bad?  Like do I just sit here? Or am I driven by revenge? or You know just for the death of my parents or is this about You know Eliminating this giant Evil force that's sort of taken over the The universe slowly Like got to do something about that like what is it exactly that's driving him or and doesn't even matter You know as long as it results in him blowing up the death star um Yeah, I don't know Your theme once you've realized this question revives for that theme cutting out all of the fat Unrelated to it and adding in new scenes and characters that further explore it providing fresh stances on the theme That didn't exist in draft one Okay, well if you did that with the matrix and let's say you took the whole idea of whether you should live in the cold Hard reality of the truth or the comforting lie and you got rid of everything that didn't have to do with that You would lose the main theme of the movie And if you did the opposite if you took the main theme of the movie and you just got rid of everything That didn't have to do with that you'd be cutting out so much of the film Like I I don't think he's accounting for movies that have Main themes sub themes or like multiple themes at the same time His advice seems to be well if you have too many themes you got to just pick one And then you're just throwing out so many good movies I don't understand it. It's really based on how you will personally categorize everything too, right? Like it's What what if you said like there's four themes going on in the matrix and several characters relate to them And someone else says well, no, there's just the one and they all relate to it Like oh now we're where they yeah, we're different themes intersect and And characters that have it on several themes rather than one Yeah, because because I think the one sort of I guess Thing to recall is themes don't necessarily have rigid borders They're very fuzzy on the edges and many themes can sort of converge in the same point. So that's true I do think in the case of the matrix the whole idea of whether you should Live in the bliss of like a comforting lie or the the truth of like, you know Reality as ugly as and are you willing to accept uncomfortable truths? Yeah, that is kind of a bit distinct from the old the other idea about like destiny and fate and all that sort of stuff which Preoccupies the rest of the movie or most of the movie like those They're kind of related there. They all fit the story, but you know I don't I don't think they're one thing. I think they're a couple different things and I think it's a Good movie. So like if you just streamlined it, you'd be cutting out a lot of good stuff Everyone needs to be thinking of theme at some point in the process Look, there are no exceptions to this like There are no exceptions To what end if you're talking about making a good story. I don't believe that actually Yeah, I think you can absolutely make a good story Without considering theme. You could just say you know what necessarily the advisable thing, but you're not necessarily advisable Yeah, but you could totally just be like, you know what? I'm really good at writing plots and characters and world building And you know, I'm just gonna write a good story and the themes whatever they are, you know, that's all right, man Yeah, it's just whatever they want to be if you have a game Um, you know like a reservoir dog style story but in an alien world and someone says so what are the What are the politics of this world and they're just like, I don't care. I've never thought about it and never will and it's like I guess you can do that. Yeah In the same way, there's a lot of things you cannot think about it's just the Like I said the advisable part You can create really good stories when focusing and ignoring portions of storytelling that most writers would tell you not to ignore at all not impossible And I just at this point we're dealing with the comfort level of writers like some writers be like I've just I just don't like writing from a point of view of themes or willed or Some people are like, I hate characters the writer that hates characters. I only talk. I already write in terms of world events Misanthropic depressed, man. It's a story. It's all the characters No, it's funny that you mentioned reservoir dogs So I just watched that last night and like you could I could totally see a movie like reservoir dogs being written without much if any attention being paid to Theme like you could just start off by saying, okay A heist or not a heist but like a robber. I guess heist. I don't know. It's like a they're robbing jewels and it went wrong One guy figures that somebody sold them out because the cops are waiting right outside suspiciously and it's like What do you do with that?  But then at the same time it's like I look at the ending of reservoir dogs and it's just like, oh, okay so it's like No honor among thieves crime. Does it pay that sort of thing like You sort of live this life and everybody just ends up shooting each other like Yeah, um, I don't know what exactly to draw from it But I just really like the ending of that and I can totally see That movie being written without much attention being paid to theme just the plotting of it I'm not convinced that David Lynch has ever like actively thought about the themes of any movie. He's ever made like explicitly He's he's like an all feels vibes guy and sometimes it works Not all of his movies are great, but like blue velvet's a great movie.  Yeah moment from him. He's talking about eraser head. He's like Sorry, my dog's barking in the background. Uh, he says eraser head is my most spiritual film He's like, can you elaborate that and he says no No Right None like like if you do not want to use this specific technique of thinking of theme was a question That's okay. There are what I thought that was the No, but you just said like that's like you the thing of this whole experience the title is your writing theme is wrong That's the theme of this video Maybe he's going to provide us alternatives. Come on a lot of stories out there Which are great stories that don't use this technique But it but you've got to be applying like some he's acting like He's acting like every film that uses its theme as a question Just doesn't have a rewording of it. That's a statement Or vice versa. Yeah, they'll do like that's just that's just that's how language works. There are multiple ways to express the same thought Technique thinking of another family guy bit where he's on jeopardy. He's like diarrhea. Oh, oh, sorry. What is dire? You've got to be applying like some technique here Like if I asked you right now What is your technique for tackling themes as you write and you can't immediately rattle off your reply as to how you approach themes Which other than just oh, I wing it like that is not good enough like I can practically I think you I think he'd be shocked at how many Famous and acclaimed writers don't have like a systemized approach to themes Would the criticism apply to all of it though? If you said I wing it to anything in terms of writing with none Yeah, I wing it. It just I just I just the story writes itself. It's intuitive. You know, I just do it Yeah, but would you not want to advise like don't wing it when it comes to wheel building don't wing it when it comes to plot Right, I don't bring it and it comes to character values don't wing it when it comes to thematic through lines You know like oh, yeah, you can say that Definitely though. He seems to be like if you can't tell me immediately what your system is Yeah, yeah Let's think what system to write a character someone might be like I guess I have all kinds of ways to write a character I'm not entirely sure and he's like wow. What's wrong with you? My brain. Yeah, my brain doesn't necessarily work in terms of systems when it comes up with these things If I'm sitting around and I want to write something or if I'm just entertaining a daydream for whatever reason I don't think about what's the what's the system if I want to if my buddies want to play dungeons and dragons I don't think I don't have a system for making a character. I'm just like well, I just Oh, la di da. I'm just gonna think of things. You know, what could they be? They could be this they could be that like It's not a system. It doesn't have to be a system It could be a lot of writers can pull this stuff off without necessarily You know appealing to their big book of how to do a thing This reminds me of the the the whole thing about where do you get your jokes from? Yeah What's your system for writing jokes? It's like, I don't I don't have one I just think of for I just think about funny stuff Yeah, if I said I think of characters and he's like, yeah, but how you're like Just people well, I just like take templates based off people I know or fictional characters and I think about what to change and then I think about Well, that you like sometimes I don't sometimes it's just a blank slate and I throw stuff at it I don't know. Yeah, sometimes I think about the plot in the world I want to create and then I put all the characters into that You know That world and that plot that I've created and I think well How would the world affect the things that they would think and what they're willing to do and What they'd stop at to get what they would want and then it just sort of happens and it's all this Self-collaborative process remember the dice Last thing I wrote privately it was I think the theme probably emerged Just before the third act Whereas I'd been writing all the time and it's just characters on a journey interacting as characters do to get from point a to point b And there were basic like things that were starting to emerge as I was writing it Not systematically saying this is the theme of this scene But like there were certain bits that were clearly coming through which