The Mystery My Wife Was Hiding from Me
The secret behind my book, my football career, and the real dream I never saw coming.
After finishing the eleventh draft of my second book, I’ve come to this conclusion: it sucks. In an attempt to make it less sucky and closer to being good, I’ve been interrogating myself with the one question every author asks himself when creatively constipated:
What the hell is this thing about?
Earlier this week on my way to and from work I listened to a podcast: How I Write, hosted by David Perrell. His guest on that episode was one of my favorites: Steven Pressfield. David probed Pressfield on a myriad of writing topics:
The difference between fiction and nonfiction.
How copywriting made him a better author.
Universal storytelling principles.
And so on.
But one concept that made me turned up the volume was: the female carries the mystery, which means, as Pressfield explained:
Every story has a secret. Every tale has a meaning, an interpretation of depth.
The protagonist’s role (either a male, or a female acting in a “male” capacity) is to uncover that secret.
In Robert Towne’s script of Chinatown, the protagonist is private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). His role in the drama is to get to the bottom of the “case”—to find out who murdered Hollis Mulwray, who hired him (Jake) and put him on this case, and what greater, deeper, more hideous crimes these first two issues conceal.
Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is Jake’s client. She is the character who carries the mystery. She knows the answers to all these questions.
And, critically important for the story, she conceals them.
Interesting…
If the female carries the mystery then Jo, (the fictionalized version of my wife, Tiffany) most certainly does in my second book. And I think this story’s mystery—not to be mistaken with its theme, mind you, which is responsibility—is…