Steven Pressfield
Chapter 17 The Joys of Misery Among all elite U.S. forces, the Marine Corps is unique in that its standards for strength, athleticism and physical hardiness are not exceptional. What separates Marines, instead, is their capacity to endure adversity. Marines take a perverse pride in having colder chow, crappier equipment and higher casualty rates than any other service. This notion goes back to Belleau Wood and earlier, but it came into its own during the exceptionally bloody and punishing battles at Tarawa and Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir and Khe Sanh. Marines take pride in enduring hell. Nothing infuriates…
Read MoreI wish I could remember where I saw this (it might have been in a documentary on PBS about Battleship Potemkin) but some master of filmmaking was asking a roomful of students, “Of what does the vocabulary of cinema consist?” I was guessing lamely in my head along with the students onscreen, when the master finally ran out of patience and answered his own question: “Shots and cuts.” Everything else, the man said, is just variations and refinements. The greatest cuts we’ve ever seen Let’s have a little communal interchange. Write in your fave. What is the greatest movie cut…
Read MoreChapter 15 Citations for Valor Decorations for valor, from ancient days to modern, have seldom been awarded for raw bloodthirstiness or the brute act of producing carnage. The feat that inspires witnesses to honor it is almost invariably one of selflessness. The hero (though virtually no recipient chooses to call himself by that name) often acts as much to preserve his comrades as he does to deliver destruction onto the foe. In citations, we read these phrases again and again: “Disregarding his own safety . . .” “With no thought for his own life . . .” “Though wounded…
Read MoreWhen I first started blogging, I wasn’t really hip to the ethic. That, I learned from Seth Godin. A blog is about giving. Or, perhaps more accurately, giving back. A guy like Seth, who has started many businesses and failed and succeeded in about equal measure, has acquired a thoroughgoing education from the University of Hard Knocks. When Seth blogs, he shares that knowledge. He’s not asking for anything, he’s giving. But one thing I didn’t know about Seth was that he has also passed along that knowledge in an extraordinary free MBA program. 48,000 people visited the announcement page…
Read MoreChapter 12 How the Spartans Became the Spartans All warrior cultures start with a great man. In ancient Sparta, that man was Lycurgus. He took the city from a normal society and made it into a warrior culture.
Read MoreWhat I love about Seth Godin is that every time he pitches a new idea to a big company, they throw him out on his butt. “That’s the craziest thing we’ve every heard. It’ll never work, you’re nuts, get the hell out of here!” Then Seth goes out and does it himself and sells a gazillion copies. [Full disclosure: I’m now in business with Seth, in a new publishing entity of his called the Domino Project, partnered with amazon.com. The first publication came out yesterday, authored by Seth, a manifesto called Poke the Box. Take a look on amazon. It’s…
Read MoreChapter 9 The Opposite of Shame is Honor Once, in India, after years on campaign, Alexander’s men threatened to mutiny. They were worn out and wanted to go home. Alexander called an assembly. When the army had gathered, the young king stepped forth and stripped naked. “These scars on my body,” Alexander declared, “were got for you, my brothers. Every wound, as you see, is in the front. Let that man stand forth from your ranks who has bled more than I, or endured more than I for your sake. Show him to me, and I will yield to your…
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago we were talking about the Inciting Incident. I apologize for getting away from it. Let’s get back … The formula says, “The Inciting Incident sets up the Obligatory Scene.” What is the Obligatory Scene? It’s the climax. It’s the scene that, if you don’t have it, you don’t have a story. In The Hangover, the inciting incident is Losing Doug. The obligatory scene is Finding Doug. In The King’s Speech, the inciting incident is when we realize that Bertie has a terrible stutter and he’s destined to become monarch just as Hitler is starting World…
Read MoreChapter 7 Tribes, Gangs and Terrorists Every honorable convention has its shadow version, a pseudo or evil-twin manifestation in which noble principles are practiced—but in a “dark side” system that turns means and ends on their heads. The Mafia and criminal gangs live by rigorous and sophisticated codes of loyalty, discipline and honor. So do terrorist organizations. Does that make them warriors? Do these groups practice the Warrior Ethos? When is “honor” not honor? To answer this, we must consider the nature of tribes. What are the social, cultural and political characteristics of tribes? First, tribes are hostile to all…
Read MoreAre you familiar with what screenwriters call a “log line?” It’s an extremely useful tool—not just for writers, but for artists and entrepreneurs of all kinds. Today I’m going to interview an expert on the subject, Hollywood script consultant Jen Grisanti, who’s the author of a new book that I recommend highly–Story Line. SP: Jen, thanks for returning to the scene of the crime. Our earlier interview—The “All is Lost” Moment–got tremendous response when it appeared a couple of months ago. But let’s get down to business on a different storytelling subject: the log line. Most of us think of…
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