Episode 407: Jean Hanff Korelitz, Maggie Maye, Robert McKee

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• Jean Hanff Korelitz's 'The Plot' Deals With A Writer's Worst Fear

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  The epigraph to Jean Hanff Korelitz’s seventh novel, “The Plot,” is probably the best six-word tease for it. It’s a quote attributed to T.S. Eliot:

  “Good writers borrow, great writers steal.”

  It’s here where Korelitz drops a parenthetical kicker with, “(but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde).”

  It’s the opening salvo in a propulsive thriller that Stephen King has anointed as one of the best novels written about writers.

  Korelitz — best known for her novels “You Should Have Known” which was adapted into the hit HBO series, “The Undoing” starring Nicole Kidman, and “Admission” adapted into the Tina Fey film — is dealing with territory every writer knows all too well and deeply fears.

  “I think that the real secret anxiety of the author is that we ourselves are plagiarizing without knowing it,” Korelitz told WPR’s “BETA.”

  “All writers are readers, or I should say all good writers are readers. All of that language is jumbling around like a cement mixer,” she said. “Sometimes when we write ourselves, that stuff just comes out and we don’t know always where it came from and there’s a terrible fear that we are ripping somebody off.”

  The plot of “The Plot” focuses on a once semi-famous writer, Jacob Finch Bonner, who’s now fallen back on a career teaching writing for a third-rate MFA program. When one of his students, Evan Parker, arrogantly tells Jacob’s class that the plot for his novel is a can’t miss idea, Jacob is curiously dubious.

  After Evan submits his writing sample for Jacob, the professor enviously knows the student isn’t lying. With this story, Evan’s got an instant best-seller on his hands. Before more can be shared, the MFA program shutters and Jacob is forced into further obscurity with a job coaching writers.

  “Jake has slid even farther down the food chain. He’s been forced to leave New York. The MFA program has closed. He sort of cobbled together a career as a literary coach and he’s working at a writer’s subsidized artist colony. He’s really just clinging to the fringes of his former life,” Korelitz explained. “And one day he thinks, ‘Why did I never hear about that novel?’ And he Googles his former student, Evan Parker, and he quickly discovers that Evan Parker has died and not even recently. He’s died not long after their encounter at the MFA program. In other words, there’s no novel.”

  To break from his own morose existence, Jacob justifies writing his own novel based on Evan’s idea. He feels that if it’s his own work following Evan’s plot, he’s honoring a good idea. This mindset proves wrong, when Evan’s boasts prove right. “Crib” — Jacob’s novel of Evan’s idea — proves an overnight sensation. It brings him success and glory and is about to be adapted into a movie with Steven Spielberg directing. A guilt-ridden Jacob cautiously accepts the praise publicly while he struggles internally. Then, he receives an anonymous email calling him a thief.

  In a meta reaction, Korelitz herself says that after the release of her novel, she’s been accused of stealing the idea for this book. The truth might be even more remarkable as Korelitz shares that the idea was an impromptu pitch to her editor.

  “The context is slightly more convoluted in that I was in the middle of another novel, a very different novel that was not working. And I was struggling with this book. And I was literally in the middle of a meeting with my editor at which she was explaining to me why she was not buying the book,” says Korelitz.

  “And, I thought to myself, ‘I cannot believe I’m saying this,’ but I said to her, ‘Well, I have this other idea, too,’ and I just kind of upchuck this whole story about a writer who has a student who has this brilliant idea, and then he dies without writing his book. And the writer takes his idea and writes a hugely successful book. But he can’t enjoy it because he’s afraid that somebody will accuse him of having taken it.”

  With “The Plot” Korelitz crafts a page-turner where Jacob sets off to find who is sending him the threatening emails before they expose him.

  Unlike some novels that deal with a fictious work, Korelitz actually crafted excerpts of Jacob’s “Crib.” These passages take on a slightly different tone from the rest of the novel proper and begin to peel back the layers of Jacob’s journey.

  “It was like having to write a whole second novel. New characters, new places, new everything. So, I wrote all of those chapters afterwards and then I kind of filleted them into the book,” said Korelitz. “Because every one of those excerpts is a clue. I mean, as we read more of ‘Crib,’ we understand more and more what is happening to Jake.”

  And the meta layers don’t stop there. While Steven Spielberg may not be in the mix, “The Plot” is indeed slated for a television series adaptation. Korelitz said that she requested to be a part of the writer’s room.

  “It was something I really, really wanted. I’d never done that before,” said Korelitz. “And they said, yes, so I will be part of the writing team. But, you know, on one hand I’ll be the expert in the room. But on the other hand, I’m going to be like the intern. I mean, because I’ve never done this before.”

• Comedian Maggie Maye Embraces The Things That Make Her Different

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  Ever since she was a kid, Maggie Maye has always been trying to make people laugh.

  “That’s all I wanted to do is just make people happy for that moment,” she told WPR’s “BETA.” “I’m not thinking that I’m making someone happy for the rest of their lives, but just for that moment in my sphere of influence, I’m able to make them feel good or forget about their problems.”

  Maye is now a successful stand-up comedian living in Los Angeles. Much of her success has to do with the fact that she embraces the things that make her different from other comedians and other people.

  She said when she grew up in the Rio Grange Valley in Texas, she was the only Black kid in the community. Looking back, she notices how that played a role in her feeling alienated.

  “Well, I guess after the fact, I’m able to see things a little bit differently,” she said. “But at the time, I didn’t really think that, if I did encounter anything, it was a microaggression from usually a kid who didn’t know any better, sometimes adults. But it was definitely a situation where I recognized I was different from everybody else.“

  “I just always kind of understood that’s how I was,” Maye continued. “And the upbringing I was getting and my point of view was going to be very different from people who did not have my same upbringing, did not have my same origin.”

  Maye said she grew up feeling like she was different from everyone else, and it was not necessarily just because of her race.

  In high school, a professor told her: “There is no rubric for which we can measure that you would be considered normal. You are not the normal height. You are not the normal size. You’re not in the normal range of intelligence. You’re louder than normal; everything about you is different.”

  “I felt different from my siblings,” Maye said. “I just kind of felt like a little bit of an oddball.”

  Maye recalls an incident at a church camp that provided more proof that she was unique.

  “I had a friend who had a word from God for me, and she said, ‘You are surrounded by clay pots; everyone is a clay pot and you are a jeweled pot. And while you’re a jeweled pot, you know, you’re wonderful and you’re brilliant and you’re great. But in being a jeweled pot, you’re never going to fit in with the clay pots.‘”

  This idea of being a jeweled pot had a strong impact on Maye. “I’m going to be different and I need to embrace that rather than try to pretend that I’m the same as everybody else,” she said.

  “When you let your freak flag fly, the freaks are like, ‘Oh, there’s one of us.’ And you find people who you’re supposed to find and you find your tribe and you’re never going to be happy unless you just own what you are,” she said.

  Maye graduated early from Houston Baptist University. Her mother suggested she become a pharmacist; at the time, that seemed like a great idea. Maggie wanted to go to the University of Texas pharmacy school in Austin. But she was accepted into the pharmacy school at the Texas Tech Health Science Center in Amarillo. That’s when she realized that she really didn’t want to pursue a career as a pharmacist.

  “I just had to be honest with myself that I really did not want to be a pharmacist,” she explained.”I just really enjoyed Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.”

  Maye has performed stand-up in several festivals, including Just for Laughs, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and San Francisco Sketchfest (as one of the Sketchfest Dozen). She said one of the highlights of her career was appearing on Conan O’Brien’s TBS show, “Conan,” in 2015.

  “That had to have been the best day,” she recalled. “The thing that was the most pleasant for me was that I didn’t have anything else in my mind other than that. Everything went seemingly perfectly.”

  “And back in Austin, I saw pictures later of three different launch parties — my favorite bar was one, some restaurant, and then at another bar that was close to where I hosted an open mic. And so that was also, for me, just an eye-opening kind of thing of like, oh, wow, I’m part of a comedy community and we all very much love and respect each other.”

  As for her future, Maye says she is working on honing her acting skills.

  “I really want to be on a show,” she said. “I like performing. I think that would be a great next step for me.”

• Story Authority Robert McKee On Creating Complex Characters

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  Robert McKee is an expert when it comes to the art of story.

  He has lectured on storytelling all over the world. His former students have won over 60 Academy Awards, 200 Emmy Awards, 100 Writers Guild of America Awards and 50 Directors Guild of America Awards. His 2010 book “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting” is considered to be one of the go-to screenwriting texts. He followed that up with “Dialogue” and recently released his latest book, “Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen.”

  In “Character,” McKee explores the various facets that go into creating compelling characters, including dimensionality and complexity.

  “What people really want are wonderfully complex, fascinating, memorable characters. And the story’s just a clothesline to hang them on,” McKee told WPR’s “BETA.”

  In his treatise, “Poetics,” the Greek philosopher Aristotle argues that plot is more important than character. McKee disagrees.

  “The truth is that it’s a ridiculous question to begin with,” McKee said. “You can’t ask the question, what’s more important, story or character? Because they are the same thing. They’re just two sides of the same coin.”

  He said that when a character makes a choice to take a certain action and cause reactions in their world, they are creating the plot through these decisions.

  McKee summed it up his book’s takeaway in one word: complexity.

  “Today especially, and into the rest of the century and beyond, the demand on writers will be to explore human nature in greater depth and greater complexities than ever. And one of the reasons that that demand is being made is because writers are now given more time than ever to tell their story,” McKee said.

  According to McKee, a three-dimensional character during our current era of prestige television is at best a supporting role, while compelling protagonists like Walter White of “Breaking Bad” possess 16 dimensions, and Tony Soprano is not far behind with 12 dimensions.

  McKee uses the groundbreaking TV series “Mad Men” to illustrate how the show’s creator and showrunner Matthew Weiner and his co-writers developed the main characters at three different levels of conflict: their work life, intimate life and secret life. McKee writes that these three levels are equivalent to the social self, personal self and core self. He also added a fourth self — the subconscious self, which pairs with each character’s hidden self.

  “You have a secret,” McKee explained. “And Don Draper’s secret was that he stole his identity from a dead lieutenant during the Korean War in order to escape the war. But his subconscious self finds life meaningless. He’s a very successful ad executive and a star at the agency. He’s got a beautiful wife, children, the whole perfect package, and he finds the whole thing pointless.”

  McKee also explores how to create compelling comic characters in his book.

  “What makes a character a comic character is that they have a desire,” McKee explained. “Something that they want extremely. It’s what we call a blind obsession. And so, for example, the great Larry David in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ has an obsession with propriety. He believes there’s a certain way to behave in public that other people just don’t seem to get.”

  Another great comic character is Basil Fawlty, played by Monty Python co-founder John Cleese in the hilarious 1970’s BBC sitcom “Fawlty Towers.”

  “John Cleese in ‘Fawlty Towers’ is an incompetent perfectionist,” McKee said. “He wants perfection. But he can’t achieve it because he’s incompetent. And so his car breaks down, another imperfection, probably because he doesn’t bother to get it serviced. He talks to the car. And he says, ‘I warned you many times. And this is it.’ And he rips a branch off a tree and beats the paint off the fenders of the car. So we see he’s crazy.”

  McKee had a chance to see himself as a character when he was famously played by Brian Cox in the 2002 movie “Adaptation” directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman.

  One day, McKee got a phone call from producer Ed Saxon. Saxon told him that he was now a character in Kaufman’s screenplay. McKee asked to see a copy of the screenplay.

  “I realized what this screenplay needs is an antagonist, because otherwise it’s just a story about a guy suffering writer’s block, and who cares about that?” he recalled. “And so, (Kaufman) wanted me to be the commercial force of Hollywood, which is false. But I thought, it’s okay.”

  So McKee told the “Adaptation” producers that he would be okay with it under two conditions: “I need my redeeming scene and I need control of the casting.“

  They sent McKee a list of the 10 greatest middle-aged British actors alive, including Michael Caine and Terence Stamp.

  “And I said, ‘Oh, I see what they’re after, some sort of gruff professor type.’ But there was a name that was not on the list. And that was Brian Cox.”

  “I had seen Brian work in the west end of London and I knew that Brian Cox would not do that ‘love me, love me’ subtext thing because I do not want to be loved. I want to be respected. I went to see one of the early screenings with my son and we came out, and I said, ‘Paul, what do you think?’ He said, ‘Dad, he nailed you.’”