A Michael Lewis Masterclass

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The premise of Masterclass is experts teach you how to do what they do.

The fabulous new episode with Michael Lewis illustrates both how true and unlikely it can be.

Lewis is the author of 20 books, many of which have been made into movies, such as The Blind Side, Moneyball and the Big Short.

He’s famous for a style of non-fiction that uses colorful anecdotes from little-known obsessives to tell larger societal stories.

As he explains, Liar’s Poker isn’t really about Wall Street just as Moneyball isn’t about baseball.

The two-hour video is loaded with practical suggestions for storytellers.

-Write 1,000 words a day
-Use index cards to map it out
-Write on caffeine, edit on wine
-Avoid distractions (i.e. the phone)
-Write for one person who loves you
-Find a quiet, dedicated space to write
-Quit before you finish and start early the next day
-Make a playlist for each book (Favorites include “Let it go” from Frozen)

There are also big ideas:

-Tell the truth, not what people want to hear
-Know where you want to begin and end
-Focus on the people everyone ignores
-Be curious and follow that curiosity
-Find your inner voice and use it

What separates Lewis from the rest of us, are the lengths he goes to.

This becomes clear when, sitting on the floor, he starts rearranging cards that are color-coded for characters, events and themes.

As he shuffles them obsessively, he explains there isn’t one story that you find and tell. You create the story by selecting the characters and events and order.

It’s a profound insight and one that requires conviction, since inevitably someone won’t like your version. Lewis reminds writers: You are the one arranging the cards. You are the one on the pitcher’s mound.

For the Big Short, he figured there were perhaps 15 people who could be the protagonist for a story about the global financial crisis. He picked Michael Burry, who has since become a legend.

To make that approach work, you need personal detail, which can be uncomfortable for the characters.

In Moneyball, Lewis digs into Billy Beane’s past as a disappointing player. In Premonition, he explores Charity Dean’s upbringing in a restrictive Christian household.

At one point, Lewis asks Dean to poke around her house unsupervised. Inside the medicine cabinet he discovers Post-its with aphorisms about courage.

He is delighted and uses them to great effect. She wasn’t thrilled.

Lewis talks about a low point of his life, the death in 2021 of his 19-year-old daughter.

I assumed it would make him tread more lightly with his characters. Instead, he said it emboldened him. It gave him license to probe deeper into the human experience.

People are the vehicles he uses to tell stories about life.

It’s not about baseball.
It’s not about Wall Street.
It’s not about the pandemic.

Lewis claims he was an unremarkable student and says his teachers would be shocked at how he turned out. Sean Tuohy, a former classmate, couldn’t believe Lewis wrote the books. (Tuohy later became a main character in the Blind Side.)

In Masterclass, Lewis tells you exactly how he does what he does.

But the episode also makes clear how hard it would be for any of us to do the same.

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

ECONOMIC GROWTH: Italy is the surprise. Post Brexit-Britain, not so much so.

WAYNE’S WORLD: There is a reason he’s called the Great One.

SOLAR POWER: Sign of the times.

PLATO WAS SOLD INTO SLAVERY: How insane is it that the person who created the basis for philosophy was captured, almost killed and sold into slavery before being ransomed. Things could have turned out differently.

FRIDA KAHLO: I remember visiting her iconic house in Mexico City in the mid 1980s. It was empty. Now, she’s so famous it’s hard to get tickets.