Steven Pressfield

All Breakthroughs come with a Fever

By Steven Pressfield |

I first came upon this concept in the writings of Laurens van der Post, the great South African. Are you familiar with him? He wrote one of my favorite books, The Seed and the Sower. The following comes from The Lost World of the Kalahari: It has sometimes appeared to me that fever is designed, in part, to magnify reality, so that the imponderable contribution of the spirit to the malaise which produces fever, can become visible. There seems to be deep within it a rounding-up process of time which brings past, present, and future all lucidly together in the…

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“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

By Steven Pressfield |

We were talking last week about stakes and jeopardy. It is critical in any story, I was saying, that the stakes for all characters be as high as possible—preferably life and death. There’s a further aspect to stakes/jeopardy that might be worth exploring this week. The stakes in a story should always be on-theme. Lemme digress for a minute. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering, “Is this subject of interest?” It is to me, but I’m wondering if getting into such nuts-and-bolts detail about storytelling is only tedious to readers who log onto this blog. Am I boring you with…

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“Have a Body Hit the Floor”

By Steven Pressfield |

A few weeks back, we were talking about this tidbit of wisdom from screenwriter Jack Epps: “You can’t do everything in one draft.” The corollary, we said, is to focus on only one aspect of your manuscript/screenplay/videogame at a time. One aspect per draft. Today let’s talk about stakes. (Ideally you and I should have thought deeply about this before we even started Draft #1. But let’s be real. Most of us plunge in and swim like hell for the far shore. So maybe we need to regroup for Drafts #2 through #15 and revisit certain essentials.) What are “stakes”…

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Opportunities Are Bullshit

By Steven Pressfield |

Have you seen this clip from Harlan Ellison, the screenwriter? I rank it up there with Josh Olson’s all-time great rant, “No, I Won’t Read Your F*#king Screenplay.” What Ellison says is that anytime he has done anything for “exposure,” he has totally wasted his time. I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes “opportunities” are presented to us. A chance to get our work exposed. People will see. It’ll make a difference. We’ll advance the brand. Bullshit. Almost every opportunity I’ve been exposed to (not all, be it said) is an opportunity for the promoter, not for me. I’m expendable. I’m interchangeable.…

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Committed to What?

By Steven Pressfield |

We’ve been talking about depth of commitment for three weeks now. But one question has not yet been asked: What exactly are we committed to? Is it our art, our career, our family, our nation? Lemme take the long way around by flashing back to an earlier era in my own life. For years I was committed to nothing. I mean nothing. I suppose if you tied me to a tree and threatened to bayonet me, I would’ve tried to talk you out of it. But even that, my own life, I wasn’t particularly committed to. I was bored a…

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A Pro Recognizes Another Pro

By Steven Pressfield |

If you’ll forgive me for quoting myself, here is a (very short) chapter from The War of Art: A PROFESSIONAL IS RECOGNIZED BY OTHER PROFESSIONALS The professional senses who has served his time and who hasn’t. Like Alan Ladd and Jack Palance circling each other in Shane, a gun recognizes another gun. I’ve been thinking about this in light of our last two weeks’ posts on depth of commitment. What exactly is it that a pro recognizes in another pro? Skill, yes. Experience, no doubt. But more than any other quality, I believe, it’s depth of commitment. How do we…

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Depth of Commitment, Part Two

By Steven Pressfield |

We were talking last week about depth of commitment. I was saying that the main difference between an amateur and a pro is their depth of commitment. The amateur’s commitment is shallow. The professional’s is deep. The question then becomes: Can depth of commitment be increased? Can we move from shallow to deep? My answer is an emphatic yes. If fact I believe that’s how we all learn. That’s what improvement is. It’s not only an increase in skill or knowledge. It’s a deepening of commitment. I have a friend at the gym named Craig. He’s not a gigantic bodybuilder,…

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How Pro Are You?

By Steven Pressfield |

[Quick note: we’re having a Holiday Gift Special right now on www.blackirishbooks.com. For that special someone who could use a good kick in the ass: 6 War of Art/Turning Pro for the price of 3. Help your friends and colleagues keep their New Year’s resolutions!] The question is, “What’s the main difference between a pro and an amateur?” My answer: depth of commitment. I’ve always wanted to meditate. But my depth of commitment is unbelievably shallow. I can’t count my breaths past twenty. And pain in the knees? At the first twinge I’m up and outa there. It’s pathetic. I’m…

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Built for Adversity

By Steven Pressfield |

Human beings are built for adversity. Probably all extant species are, or they wouldn’t still be extant. But we humans in particular—lacking claws, fur, fangs, etc.—have needed the evolutionary edge of being designed for hard times. Almost every great book or movie is about adversity. Moby Dick, War and Peace, The Hangover. The whole concept of “story,” of three-act structure, is about a protagonist confronting adversity. As Billy Wilder used to say, “Act One, get your hero up a tree; Act Two, throw stones at him; Act Three, get him down out of the tree.” Or Kurt Vonnegut: all stories…

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Major Keys and Minor Keys

By Steven Pressfield |

We were talking last week about thinking in terms of multiple drafts. The corollary is to concentrate on only one objective per draft — e.g., stakes, rhythm, theme, length, and so forth. Another one I like is Major Key and Minor Key. I’ll go over a manuscript or screenplay, for example, looking only for these. I’ll ask myself, How much of this piece is in a major key? Are there moments in a minor key, and, if so, where are they and why are they there? What do I mean by “major key” and “minor key?” Action movies are major…

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