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This is number eighty-one in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, RIGHT? For the most part, that would be the answer given by nearly every native English speaker if asked what the verb tenses are. I say “native speaker” because almost all English as Second Language (ESL) students are taught all the proper uses of the different tenses, while Americans generally skip all that. It went out with diagramming sentences in fourth grade.
The truth is that we use the twelve basic tenses all the time, but often use them incorrectly. If you know no better, then it’s all okay, right?
When writing for public consumption (rather than your private journal or a text message) it can be helpful to understand the different tenses and what they imply. It helps in clearly communicating to the reader. It might even be one thing that differentiates between humans and artificial intelligence. I’ll talk about the latter in a future post, but not today.
My writing of the Team Manager series was interrupted a few years ago by a new character introducing himself unexpectedly as I was driving along US 95 south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
“Hi. My name is Bob. I’ll be your demon this evening.”
Suddenly I had a 4,000-year-old happy-go-lucky (mostly lucky) demon on my hands who demanded that I tell his version of the past four millennia of human history.
Whatever you say, Bob.
But writing Bob’s story, also involved determining the point of view. (I wrote about POV in my post on 9/15: “Put Your Butt Behind You.”) It was simple to declare it would be Bob’s Memoir, and thus be written in first person. Beyond that, though, I needed to decide if I would record it as if it was happening in the present, or would I write it as being in the past. The first sentence implies a first person simple present tense: “I’m Bob.” But the second sentence implies a simple future tense: “I’ll (I will) be your demon this evening.” In the same paragraph, Bob switches to a present perfect tense: “We’ve (We have) prepared a delectable array of vices…”
They are all typical usages in speech, but we lump them all together as just past, present, and future.
In the end, I let Bob decide when to use which tense, as it was his story. All three volumes of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon are available individually or as a collection at Bookapy.
I’m an expert at all this English language stuff because I have a bachelor’s degree in English, right? Ha! I don’t even come close. So, I turned to English professor Sarah Avery, writing as Dr. Pretentious, for the definitions of the twelve tenses. If you like contemporary and epic fantasy, check out her breakthrough novels in that category that got her out of academia and into noveling full time.
Dr. Pretentious broke the tenses down with a simple chart. Yes, there are past, present, and future. Let those be the labels for the rows. In the columns, we have simple, progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive.
Simple past, present, and future are the tenses we all think of immediately: I did. I do. I will do. We can substitute nearly any verb in these three places and have a sensible statement.
But what if the statement involves an action that is continuing? The progressive tenses are all about duration and began before the moment being discussed, continue in the moment being discussed, and may or may not continue beyond the moment being discussed. Past, present, and future progressive: I was doing. I am doing. I will be doing. Note that these all require a verb ending in “-ing” (a participle).
The perfect tense is used to talk about the relationship or sequence of two moments in time. The action occurred and was completed before the moment being discussed. Past, present, and future perfect: I had done. I have done. I will have done. Isn’t that easy?
And finally, the perfect progressive tense describes both duration of the action and the relationship of the sequence. Past, present, and future perfect progressive: I had been doing. I have been doing. I will have been doing. Notice that these also require a verb ending in -ing.
And there we have the simple description of the twelve tenses in the English language. Why do we make it so complex?
The biggest problem for the author is in switching tenses in a story in a way that doesn’t make sense. This is often the case in colloquial speech. For example, “He shouted an insult at me and then he just leaves.” Both events described in the sentence happened in the past, but the second action was written as though in the present. While you might use this construction in a conversation at the dog park, it just doesn’t work in writing.
On the other hand, don’t change construction that distinguishes past action from present state of being. For example: “I walked to Jitters this morning and ordered my usual decaf quad grande Americano. I like my coffee hot, strong, and black.” In this instance, the past tense verbs of the first sentence indicate an action that happened earlier. The present tense verb in the second sentence indicates a present state of being. As long as I have not stopped liking black coffee, it should be present tense.
In attempting to be right in tense usage (or in trying to increase word count, or to sound more sophisticated and educated, i.e. pretentious) authors frequently resort to complicated sentence structures that require a certified grammarian to understand. We could invent all kinds of tenses to explain these.
“If he would have been elected…”
I think this might be called a past perfect conditional, but what would separate that from the more easily parsed past perfect? (Also called 'pluperfect' by some.)
“If he had been elected…”
When in doubt, use the simplest form that is clear.
Sometimes, people learn a rule in the English language and write all kinds of convoluted sentences to make it work. It’s not necessary to work so hard at it. Next week it’s something “Up With Which I Will Not Put.”
Enjoy!
This is number eighty in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
IT WILL COME AS NO SURPRISE to some of my readers that my education was not specifically in writing. My double major in college included English, but my real focus for my BA and graduate studies was theatrical design with a secondary emphasis on play writing.
While I did my master’s work in Minnesota, I designed and built 24 shows in 24 months and had two of my plays produced. Hooray for teaching assistantships. I ended 1978 in a state of total burn-out. I left my job, my marriage, theatre, and almost everything else in my life. I decided, eventually, to go into something low-stress.
Like publishing.
Ah, well.
Nonetheless, I carried a huge amount of theatrical training into writing and publishing. One of the things that has stuck with me through the years is simply that Friday night at 8:00 the curtain goes up. There comes a point with every novel at which it has to be released to the audience, even if the leading actress is still being sewn into her costume! It’s showtime!
This is a good time to mention that books, like plays and blog posts, are not necessarily written in chronological order. The first Nathan Everett book published by Long Tale Press in 2007 was For Blood or Money. I always planned to continue this as a series, so I wrote the next two volumes, Municipal Blondes and Stocks & Blondes, in the next two months after I finished the draft of For Blood or Money. But they weren’t published until much later!
Instead, I went back and wrote the first book in the series, For Money or Mayhem. Eventually, I wrote the second book in the series, For Mayhem or Madness. Then I published the final two that had been written years earlier. Confused yet? Maybe someday I’ll write other volumes in this popular cyber crime series.
But as my first published book, For Blood or Money had problems in it that I really needed to correct before I brought out the second edition in 2013 when I was ready to release For Money or Mayhem.
One of those problems was a theatrical no-no referred to as “Breaking the Fourth Wall.” If you look at a theatrical setting, you’ll readily see it is intended to be viewed from the front. Of course, there are thrust stages with the audience on three sides or theatre in the round, there is still a performance area and a “fourth wall” between the action and the audience.
Breaking the fourth wall involves crossing that boundary between the action and the audience. A character comes forward and talks directly to the audience members instead of staying on the stage, behind the wall.
The most typical way this is done in writing a novel is in the narrator using comments directed to the reader with words like, “You know…” or “If you walk down First Street…” We use these expressions all the time in speech when we are talking to other people. It is a kind of universal ‘you.’ But it seldom works in a novel unless you are specifically writing in a second person POV. In my humble opinion, that seldom works anyway. In a first person or third person story, it breaks the connection with the reader rather than enhancing it.
I think this is often done to try to heighten the personalization of the story, but it can often backfire… even in the character’s dialog. For example:
Dag: “Imagine your husband is cheating on you.”
Jen: “I’m not married.”
Dag’s personalization of the hypothetical experience backfired on him. In the same way, if I use the pronoun “you” in my writing, I stop telling a story and attempt to personalize it by addressing the reader. That, except in rare occurrences, will also backfire. I did this a lot in For Blood or Money, and realized that it most frequently shows up in first person narratives.
The entire Seattle Noir Cyber Mysteries collection and the individual eBooks are available at Bookapy. Paperbacks are available online.
You will notice (See how easy that was?) that I break the fourth wall in this blog all the time. That is because I am not telling a story independent of the reader, but rather am telling you, the reader, what I’ve learned about writing and erotica over the years. Since this was not learned in a formal course on writing novels, the ideas sometimes are out of order and seemingly random. However, I find they help me in my writing as I dredge things up and review them in my current work.
Breaking the fourth wall is not unheard of in third person narratives, and is even more jarring. For example:
“He examined the contents of the bag and pulled out a pocket knife, a role of duct tape, and a ball of string. Then he reached for one more thing. You never know when chewing gum might come in handy.”
In the last sentence, I stopped telling a story and gave an aside to the reader. (I also switched tense!) That was the kind of thing I needed to correct in the Seattle Noir Cyber Mysteries and in everything else I write. My editors are also very good at spotting those things and reminding me to correct them.
Another lesson I learned from my time in theatre, was that plays are performed in a black box. The designer needs to give an indication to the audience regarding where the setting ends. Most theatrical settings do not have ceilings because the lights need to be directed downward in order to eliminate obnoxious shadows on the background, or even to prevent lights from shining in the audience’s eyes. The tops of walls and edges of the set need to be defined so the audience knows where the action stops. “Nothing to see above here.” My rather famous design advisor in Minnesota told me bluntly that I needed to ‘finish my walls.’ This was done with a border, a capstone, a partial ceiling, or other finial that would define the top of the set so people knew that anything above that was not part of the play.
That is more difficult to apply to a novel, but I find it is necessary. I need to know and tell the reader where the edges of the story are. In dramatic works, especially tragedies, playwrights are still paying lip service to the concept of Aristotle’s three unities.
Unity of Action: The action should be consolidated in a single plot.
Unity of Place: The play should take place in one location.
Unity of Time: The entire action should take place in a single daylight period.
Of course, these 400BC ‘rules’ were not dug out of the extant works of Aristotle until the late 1500s, so there are many examples of plays from greats like Shakespeare that do not follow them at all. While Aristotle’s suggestion is way too limiting for a novel, it is still a good reminder to focus on a single major plot. A novel is typically vastly longer than a play, so the unities of time and place are not as strongly adhered to. But a conscientious writer will still know the boundaries of his story. This is the beginning, this is the middle, and this is the end.
I try, often unsuccessfully, to follow that pattern.
Did you know there are twelve defined tenses in the English language? I didn’t get around to talking about that this week, but next week I’ll tackle “Tense and Pretense.”
This is number seventy-nine in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
IN KEEPING WITH last week’s theme of expanding your tool chest, I came across a concept that was pounded into me as a child. Picture, if you will, a small boy with a nail apron and a hammer, tapping on a nail. That's me.
Remember I quoted Abraham Kaplan as saying, “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find everything he encounters needs pounding.” I received my first literal toolbox for Christmas when I was five years old, and I set about ‘helping’ my father put an addition on the house. My first and favorite tool? My hammer, of course. That was in 1954. I could have been the inspiration for Kaplan's quote.
Now imagine that small boy on his hands and knees with a block of wood and a nail in front of him, tapping tapping tapping on the nail and making little progress. You see, at that time I was still putting the wood and nail between me and the hammer. So, my hammer was facing my body as I tapped.
My father, in all his wisdom and love, said, “Boy! Put your butt behind you!”
I don’t know if it was blind luck or instinct that led me to figuring out he meant to swing the hammer away from me instead of toward me. I did figure it out, eventually.
So, it strikes me that we often have writing tools at our disposal but haven’t actually learned how to use them properly.
My most popular series of novels is Living Next Door to Heaven. Its chapters have been downloaded over two million times. It was published in three parts on SOL and ten parts in eBooks. (Bonus question: Which of the ten books did Amazon declare didn’t meet their community standards because of the cover?)
Much of this series is based on my memories and fantasies of life in Mishawaka, Indiana (where the first photo above was taken). And it was narrated from a first person point of view (POV) by Brian Frost. Many of the background experiences were from my life, the way I remembered it (or wanted to remember it). Delivering newspapers, going to a dude ranch, demonstrating on a televised cooking show, and many other background events could be illustrated from my photo albums.
On the other hand, it is fiction! It isn’t my autobiography. And I had to learn the difference in order to use that as a tool in telling the story. As the narrator, I started out using the names of people I knew in my neighborhood while growing up and people I went to school with when I was very young. Oh no! Not if I was going to publish it to a broader audience than those who subscribed to SOL. Someone might recognize themselves!
In fact, one of the people from our old neighborhood did read the series, after I’d edited it and changed the names. We talked about it and with the simple name changes I made before publishing it in eBook, he didn’t recognize anyone.
“You mean Joanne is our Joanne next door? Oh! You know when she went to Purdue where I was, we finally managed to hook up. It was unbelievable!”
But that was one of the things I had to learn in using the first person POV and dragging my own experiences into it. Don’t follow history too closely! Let the characters you create tell their story, not the characters you knew in real life. I did much better with two other series loosely based on my life: Wonders of My World and Photo Finish.
The individual eBooks and entire Living Next Door to Heaven collection are available at Bookapy. And book seven, Hearthstone Entertainment, is free! So take that, Amazon!
I believe it is more likely for an author to fall into the trap of conforming to real life experience when they are writing from a first person POV. It’s very hard for an author to use the word “I” without actually seeing himself in the picture.
However, there are also pitfalls in using a third person POV that might need to be overcome when using that tool.
The first big problem is in head-hopping. For me, that is the trigger for saying “Put your butt behind you!” Head hopping is commonly a feature of the third person omniscient POV. From this viewpoint, the author can record what a character was thinking when he said something and in the next line record what the listener was thinking about the speaker. In one line you are in the head of the speaker and in the next line you are in the head of the listener.
When I read something that does this, I’m instantly confused as to who is thinking what and who knows what’s being thought. Here’s a quick sample.
“I think I know better how to do this than you do,” Brad said, smugly denigrating Lisa’s abilities.
“What an asshole,” Lisa thought.
Brad was offended.
Wait! What was Brad offended by? He couldn’t know what Lisa thought, could he? Who knows what? Whose head am I supposed to be in? Now try extending that to a group scene:
Tom secretly agreed with Lisa’s opinion.
Everyone knew that Alice thought all men were assholes.
“I’d like to show her what a nice guy is really like,” Bill thought.
I don’t even know what the subject is any longer, let alone whose head I’m in!
Even in a story in which the narrator knows everything, it is more effective to limit what is being talked about to the perspective of one or another character. In the next scene, go ahead and switch perspectives to a different character, but try to maintain a single character focus in each scene. This is sometimes referred to as third person limited rather than omniscient.
A small deviation from this rule is found in most contemporary romance. In the typical boy meets girl romance we know there will be an attraction, it will be fought against by at least one of the characters, they will part in a seemingly irreconcilable way, and eventually they will get back together. The reader expects to get a glimpse inside each character’s head, often seeing how they respond differently to a situation and to each other. But to use this tool effectively, the author needs to show clearly which character is the focus and how the emphasis has shifted from one to the other. Otherwise, the reader will be confused and in doubt.
So, even with POV in my tool chest, I need to learn to put my butt behind me in order to apply it correctly. Then I can really swing that hammer!
I’ve an idea for next week’s post regarding tenses and the third wall. No, they don’t have anything to do with each other, except that I’ve had to deal with both in one book. Let’s call it “Theatrical Design in the Novel.”
This is number seventy-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“WHEN YOUR ONLY TOOL is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.”
That’s my rephrasing of an adage passed down through the sixties by the likes of Abraham Kaplan and Abraham Maslow. Kaplan referred to it as the law of the instrument. He says: “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find everything he encounters needs pounding.”
I prefer to believe that all through the sixties, the underlying message was not only to recognize different kinds of problems, but to expand your tool chest. Certainly, one might expand the uses of a hammer as well. Pull nails, act as a doorstop, be a murder weapon, weigh down a stack of paper, etc. But most of those could be accomplished by using a better tool.
Crime fiction novelist Raymond Chandler once said, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” I read a serial by a popular SOL author back in the days before I started writing erotica. This author was known for his cliff-hanger chapter endings. (Sorry, I can’t remember the name of the author.) (My editor, Pixel the Cat, has made this prediction: I predict you’ll get at least 10 emails with the name—and at least 3 will have the wrong name. We’ll see.) This SOL author had taken Chandler’s advice literally and a man with a gun entering the room popped up at the end of many chapters. An alternative was, “And then the phone rang.” Or, “Headlights flashed through the window.” The interruption to an action sequence that was really going nowhere in a story that had no end was the interpretation for this author.
When you only have one tool, it has to be the solution to every problem you encounter. So, I began working on my tool chest to expand the ways I could create intrigue, action, suspense, and just general good writing. That’s when I encountered the Johari window.
The Johari window was advanced in 1955 as a means of better understanding oneself and one’s relationship to others. The name came from the combined first names of its inventors, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham.
The Johari window is a simple grid of four cells, two across and two down. Across the top the cells are labeled “Known to self” and “Not known to self.” On the left, the cells are labeled “Known to others” and “Not known to others. The upper left cell, then, is what is known both to oneself and to others. It is common knowledge, also referred to as ‘the arena.’ It is where most social interaction occurs.
The upper right cell is things that are known to others, but not known to oneself. It is the self’s blind spot. The lower left cell is what is not known to others, but is known to oneself. It may be referred to as the façade, or the hidden. The final, lower right cell is the unknown. These are things not known by either the self or others. It is sometimes referred to as the area of discovery.
That seemed to be exactly what the structure of a novel or even a good scene could be. We have a protagonist, an antagonist, and what is known to whom.
I think of a famous scene in the 1994 movie Disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Both Michael and Demi know they are in an office trying to have sex or not have sex. Michael knows this is wrong and is having difficulty communicating it to Demi. Demi knows this is a way to control Michael and ultimately shift blame for plant failure from her to him. What neither of them know is that Michael’s phone is still connected to another person’s voicemail and their encounter is being recorded.
That scene was the first that made me think the Johari window could be used as a technique for plotting a scene. We have what the protagonist knows and doesn’t know, and we have what the antagonist knows and doesn’t know. The action of the scene is in ‘the arena,’ or what both know. But the story lies in the unknown. It contains the big discovery that will bring the story to light.
I used the Johari window technique at critical points of the Team Manager series. For example, in SWISH!, the bad guys know someone is spying on them and they believe it was Dennis and his father. Dennis’s father knows it was some girl or small boy who had taken pictures. The action is in that arena. The story, or discovery, however, is it is the sister of one of the bad guys who was spying and taking the pictures.
This concept is repeated in CHAMP! when Dennis is trapped in the coaches’ office as two thugs attempt to sabotage the building. He knows they are there and up to no good. They don’t know he is there. They know they are being paid well to drill holes in the roof. None of them know who is actually paying them to create havoc. Action and discovery, the arena of what both know as they discover what each other knows and the unknown instigator of the attack.
The individual eBooks and entire Team Manager series are available on Bookapy.
While this works well with a well-defined protagonist and antagonist, I’ve also discovered it works in a more general way when I am plotting and writing. I put myself in the picture as the narrator and characters, and you as the reader. There are things that we both know, i.e. what the narration and characters have divulged. There are things the reader knows because the narration has told them, but the characters don’t know. Of course, there are things the narrator knows that the reader doesn’t know because he hasn’t told them yet. And finally, there is the detail of how this is all going to come together to a resolution, which no one knows.
I can’t tell you how often I reach a point in a story where I simply don’t know! But I know how to find out.
Trying to fit every situation into a Johari window is the same as having only a hammer. Many situations don’t work and don’t enlighten the writer. That’s okay. It’s why we have other tools in the big box. We can always have a man with a gun enter the room!
I’ll try to continue the idea of tools next week, but I don’t have a title yet for the post. I’ve been going through papers I wrote many years ago in my Noveling Notes blog, which I have lost access to. There’s a lot of reading to be done. I think the possible title for next week is “Put Your Butt Behind You.” We’ll see.
This is number seventy-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I CUT MY TEETH in mythology by reading Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander, a collection of his essays on mythology. I believe it was a result of Dr. Cassell’s class in comparative religions at dear old ICC that introduced me to the book, published in 1968. But it inspired further digging into Campbell’s understanding of mythology when I started writing my own myth in Devon Layne’s (aroslav) Behind the Ivory Veil.
And what does mythology have to do with plotting a story and writing it down?
Campbell compared the mythology of dozens of religions on an equal footing. He held that the stories of Krishna, Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus all shared a similar mythological base and that when they were interpreted as biography, history, or science, the story is killed—the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link to universal themes is lost.
His first and possibly most famous book was The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This is where he first began alluding to the Hero’s Journey, a common theme within nearly every religious mythology in the world.
I thought ‘What better work of mine to illustrate the Hero’s Journey than Devon Layne’s Hero Lincoln Trilogy, set in Lazlo Zalezac’s “Damsels in Distress” universe.
The universe was made for stories of heroes, and it is best when the stories are focused on adhering to the rules of the universe and actually following a hero from his calling to his rescue of a damsel to his reward and return to his own world. This is essentially the Hero’s Journey, and you might recognize these elements in the previous posts about the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel beat sheets. But where the latter book focuses on contemporary literature, Campbell’s work takes us back in time to show us that this theme is a constant throughout history.
Set in a remote world where there are harsh realities and a high likelihood of death for would-be heroes, the stories are sufficiently remote from the reality of our world that we can accept the lessons they teach rather than searching for the historical precedents and factual material on which they are based. At that point, we can release ourselves from our disbelief and find parallels to almost everything in our own daily lives. And that is the purpose of mythology.
The Hero Lincoln Trilogy is available as a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy. It is also available as a single volume collection in paperback from Barnes and Noble.
So, how does this journey, derived from comparative mythology, help an author in writing fiction today? Much like the beats described last week, the Hero’s Journey plots the necessary steps that take place from page one of the manuscript to “The End.” I present them here in hopes that an alternative to the beat sheet might be helpful. I have used this outline repeatedly!
1. THE ORDINARY WORLD. The hero is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma or polarities in conflict.
2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE. Something shakes up the situation so the hero must face the beginnings of change.
3. REFUSAL OF THE CALL. The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure.
4. MEETING WITH THE MENTOR. The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice.
5. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD. At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.
6. TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES. The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.
7. APPROACH. The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.
8. THE ORDEAL. Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts his or her greatest fear.
9. THE REWARD. The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.
10. THE ROAD BACK. About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero must get the treasure home. Urgency and danger.
11. THE RESURRECTION. At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.
12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR. The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the ordinary world as the hero has been transformed.
As you can see, the structure is very similar, but has different phrasing than the three-act beat sheets, but significant things occur in sync. Take, for example, 8. The Ordeal. Just as in the beat sheets, this comes halfway through the story and the hero is apparently triumphant or apparently defeated. He must work his way back, facing his greatest weaknesses or demons to actually seize the sword—or the object of the quest—to claim the reward. Even then, the journey is not over. He must find his way back to the normal world, with the damsel, if you will, and bring her across to reality.
What impresses me most about comparing the Hero’s Journey with the Save the Cat! beat sheets is how contemporary literature, on which the beat sheets are based, so closely follows the same pattern that has made compelling myths throughout human history, on which the Hero’s Journey was based.
Joseph Campbell passed away in 1987, not long after filming a series of interviews with Bill Moyer that aired soon thereafter. The series, titled The Power of Myth, goes more deeply into the Hero’s Journey and Campbell clarifies some of his earlier statements, like the often misinterpreted “Follow your bliss.” He comments that he should have said “Follow your blisters.” The Power of Myth is available as an eBook or video. It will help any writer of fiction, in my humble opinion.
I believe I’ll get into a couple of tools I use for determining what goes into a particular chapter next week. Assuming I have a decent map with the Hero’s Journey or the beat sheets, there is still a story to be written. The excitement of the story is what you put around that skeleton. Just for laughs, I think I’ll call the next one “The Johari Window.”
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