Before we get into the formula, I want to pause a bit. And I want to introduce some complexity. Now, I know I like things abstract. If you made it through the first module, you know that. But I know not everybody likes abstractions. Some people do. They like to know, well, where is this getting to? But other people feel, let's keep it simple for now while I get my feet you know firmly planted. So appreciating that, I'm going to give you an option here, a choice. If you want you can go ahead to lesson three. Watch right through all the videos, put this one on hold. Watch all the videos through lesson three until we get to the lesson pushing each unit, thinking in circles. So, watch all the way up to that one, then come back, watch this and then watch that. It will all fall together seamlessly. But if you like, abstraction and complexity upfront, if you want to know where the whole plot is ended, let's keep watching this one now. So, I'll just pause a moment here and have this, my coffee, while you figure out your strategy. Okay, now, if you're still with me, I want to apologize but I want you to indulge me even more. I want you to remember I'm an English professor and I want to give you a little lecture here. So I first started reading, really making books part of my life when I was a junior in high school and I remember grew up in the New York City. I remember being in a central park and discovering two authors. One was Jean- Paul Sartre the great a existential thinker and the other was Raymond Chandler, who is a crime writer of the 30s, 40s and 50s. And Raymond Chandler is very amazing writer. He started writing cheap what was called pulp fiction because it was printed on such cheap paper. And he went on to become a major American author, he really went beyond crime to discover a voice. And he created a great character. Phillip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective, played wonderfully in the movies by Humphrey Bogart. So, Chandler's stories were collected in a book called Trouble is My Business. And this book has about five stories, they're really readable, and it has an introduction that he wrote about looking back and thinking about how he was learning his craft. And I find that introduction really important, to understanding in plain speech, how a writer learns to write. And for our purposes, how a presenter learns to present. So I have it up online. I want you now to take a minute. Download it or get it up on your screen. Go on, take a minute and I'll wait. Another sip of coffee for me. Did you get it? Okay, good, so I have it here. And I'm going to read a section of it to you. And I'm going to have to put on my magic glasses again. Here we go, so, I typed up three of the paragraphs from the introduction. The introduction's about 20 pages or so, and I typed up three paragraphs. I'm only going to read to you the paragraph in bold. So if you'll follow along, we can read together. This is Raymond Chandler writing in 1950 about his stories from the 20s, 30s and 40s. Really the 30s. He writes, as I look back on my stories, it would be absurd if I did not wish they had been better. But if they had been much better they would not have been published. If the formula had been a little less rigid, more of the writing of that time might have survived. Some of us tried pretty hard to break out of the formula but we usually got caught and sent back. To exceed the limits of a formula without destroying it is the dream of every magazine writer who is not a hopeless hack. There are things in my stories which I might like to change or leave out altogether. To do this may look simple, but if you try, you find you cannot do it at all. You will only destroy what is good without having any noticeable effect on what is bad. You cannot recapture the mood, the state of innocence, much less the animal gusto you had when you had very little else. Everything a writer learned about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say, I love that passage. Now Chandler's a writer and he's talking about the formula for crime writing. You're going to be a successful presenter, and you're thinking about Kuskin's formula for presentation, so they're two different things. But what he says is important, it gives us a lot of insight. The first thing he says is he would wish he was better, everybody wants to be better. Again that point of self judgement, we all know what we could be if only we were a little better, but that's okay, because he's a genius and he wishes he was better so we'll do our best. Everyone, it's human to wish you better. Second, and underline this line, he says to exceed this limits of a formula without destroying it is the dream of every magazine writer who is not a hopeless hack. Everyone works with a formula. Shakespeare works with a formula, he has a formula. In Shakespeare's case, it's the formula for comedy or for tragedy. But everybody tries to exceed that formula. Push it a little bit more, push it. You can't destroy it, if you destroy it, you're no longer playing the game. You're outside doing your own thing and no-one wants to hear you. But if you flex that formula, you can come up with something brilliant. And people will understand it, because they too know the formula. The formula's there for a reason. But if you push it, you can be tremendously creative. And then he says, that, to go back would be wrong, because at the very moment. At the very moment when he wrote, there was a mood. There was a state of innocence. There was animal gusto. So what he's saying is that writing itself is like a performance. Successful presentation is a performance, too. The point is nothing is perfect. The perfect formula would be wooden, it would be nothing but the tricks of the trade. What we really want is to push the formula, to bend it, to inflect it, to make it your own. So in that case, again, the words don't matter so much. The content, it doesn't need to be overwhelmingly detailed. What matters is you use the formula but you exceeded to capture who you are, to capture the mood, the state of innocence and the gusto. So this brings us to Kuskin best practice number 7. And that is the secret ingredient to the formula is creativity. Creativity is not magic. Creativity is simply pushing the formula without destroying it. Creativity is capturing the moment when we're all in the room together and we're all at a moment and people are following, following that presentation. And they're believing in it because they trust you. And you push them one extra step. And they were there with you. And maybe you could never do it again. The secret ingredient is discovering that moment. That discovery Is you.
