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Look Out, Kid: The Book Architecture Method in Miniature

 

And speaking of The Book Architecture Method, sometimes the simplest demonstrations are the clearest. In this case, let’s focus on a song that I, personally, think kicked off the 1960s. Well, the good part, anyway…and that is “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” by Bob Dylan.

Now before you go stating that song lyrics aren’t literature, let alone poetry, let me just say that October 24th is a national holiday in the Book Architecture offices. That is the date in 2016 when Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Validation for many of us — despite tweets like Jodi Picoult’s (“I’m happy for Bob Dylan, #ButDoesThisMeanICanWinAGrammy?”) — that few Americans have had a greater impact on arts & letters than Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota.

Glad that’s out of the way. To study a song or poem in the context of longer-form literature, begins with an appreciation that poetry was the first language art. Long before writing existed, in fact, poetry as an oral tradition helped human beings remember their mythologies and their histories — even their laws — because their rhythm and repetition helped early humans commit things to memory.

This rhythm and repetition is at the heart of The Book Architecture Method’s focus on series: the repetition and variation of a narrative element so that the repetition and variation creates meaning. For a song, this repetition is often centered in the chorus. In Subterranean Homesick Blues, there is no chorus, but there is an important clue…

We interrupt the unfolding of this piece to let you know that if you would like to read the lyrics of Dylan’s song, you can find them here. If you would like to listen to the original you can find it: here. If you want to listen to a bluegrass version where the lyrics are even clearer, you can go: here. And if you want to listen to 11 versions of the song in the same playlist compiled by some fanatic, you can go: here.

So, where is the key repetition and what does that series tell us about the theme of this song? Each of the four stanzas has a section that begins, “Look out kid.” The singer is positioning himself as a kind of elder who is giving the listener advice, even if they don’t necessarily want to believe how bad things have gotten. (Timely song alert.) 

What the kid needs to look out for is different in each stanza. “It’s something you did / God knows when / But you’re doing it again,” (if you listen you can almost hear Dylan smiling through these lines). This progresses to “Look out kid / Don’t matter what you did,” just so we’re clear that the paranoia of the burgeoning counter-culture in the mid-1960s doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Then we get, “Look out kid / You’re gonna get hit / By users, cheaters / Six-time losers.” And finally, in the clearest formulation: “Look out kid / They keep it all hid.”

These four repetitions of the Look out kid series point to the theme of the song: Don’t follow leaders. The scenes in this case are the other data points present. On the one hand, as the poet thinks about the government, we get someone with a badge looking for a payoff, the “heat” (slang for police) planting bugs and tapping phones, a DA who has to make a bust in a certain timeframe, plainclothes policemen, and a law enforcement capable of training fire hoses on the protestors of the Civil Rights movement.

But on the other side, we have you, kid. You probably know to avoid scandals. You may even strive to keep a clean nose. But even more importantly is that, as the listener, you trust their own perceptions. “You don’t need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows.” And of course that you watch your parking meters.

In four stanzas of 18 short lines each, less than 325 words, we have a central series which repeats and varies, and points up the pyramid (see image for link) to the theme, and down the pyramid to the scenes, or symbolic manifestations. We have a voice which reaches its audience through the agency of tone, which includes shared referents and values. Is it easier to pull this off in a condensed carousel of largely surrealistic images? Or is it easier to organize and deploy your structural elements over the course of 300 pages? Or is it the same, provided that you work with scene, series and theme to keep like with like, and introduce movement to get your point/s across? 

As we like to say at Book Architecture, “These are the questions.”

Clients Crushin’ It: Bjarne Tellmann

When he’s not teaching, contributing articles to various publications, or running his consulting and advisory business, Bjarne Tellmann is writing books. Earlier this month, Madison Utley spoke to him about the publication of his second, Law in the Era of AI: Clients, Firms, and the Future of the Legal Industry. 

MU: To start, can you tell us a bit about your background, both professionally and in terms of your writing journey?

BT: I came off of a 30-year legal career, 18 of which I spent as general counsel of several large companies. It was a long journey that took me to many different parts of the world leading big teams. In 2014, I joined a company called Pearson. They were going through huge disruption and that was my first forced education with technology, process optimization, and thinking about running legal departments as a business. That was also the first of several times I’ve led teams through times of disruption and change.

Writing has always been a big part of my job. Lawyers write a lot. They read a lot. And then I wrote my first book back in 2017 called Building An Outstanding Legal Team off the back of the Pearson experience. I just love writing. It’s a great way to think deeply about something. 

MU: In both cases you went on to write a book, what was it about the topic that made you feel you needed a longer form format than the articles you also write?

BT: I’m a very curious person. If I find myself immersed in something that I’m interested in, I want to get to the heart of it. I don’t know a better way to do that than to write something in long form. Once you pick a topic, you unpack and unpack; you do more research than you can actually put in the book, so you have to pare it back again. It’s that process of layering, research, and then paring things back. Constructing an argument, and then backing up all those arguments. It’s like a masterclass in whatever you’re doing. I enjoy that process immensely. 

I also enjoy trying to make complex things feel simple. I want to explain them in a way that someone who doesn’t have background context could say, “Yeah, I understand,” while at the same time, keeping the writing at a level where people who are in that space feel like it contributes something to their work. 

MU: With your global background and being based largely in Europe, how did Stuart get brought onto your Book Two team? 

BT: I had an amazing editor for my first book. She was incredible, but this time around she wasn’t available and so I had to find someone else. Stuart was working as an editor for a friend of mine, Michele DeStefano, and she put me in touch with him. I’m very glad I found Stuart. He’s absolutely brilliant at what he does. Truly, he’s a genius. 

When you’re writing something that is based on the deep understanding of a specific profession or area of knowledge, it’s so helpful to have someone who isn’t familiar with those things to go, “I don’t really understand what that means.” It wouldn’t even occur to you that someone wouldn’t, and then you realize how deeply in the bubble you are. So it was Stuart’s honesty and fresh eyes I so valued. He’d push back and say, “This is redundant. This doesn’t make any sense. This is good; double down on it.” That is so helpful. If I attempted this on my own, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to what it’s like having worked with a knowledgeable third party. 

MU: Artificial intelligence (AI) is obviously a hot topic right now. What do you have to say to people who are terrified of what it might mean for them and their work? 

BT: I’ll talk about it in the terms of my book. Legal work is not really one body of work. You can break it down into a million little chunks. Each chunk is a discrete task. Some tasks require human judgment. Those are usually the tasks at the top end of the pyramid. The 30-year partner who weighs in and has instincts and good judgment in a world of uncertainty. Then there are the tasks at the other end, the things anyone could do. The question is: which of those tasks could be done by technology? Of the ones that could be done by technology, which ones could be done better by technology? The answer is that a large number of those tasks actually can be done better by technology, and that can be a scary notion. 

But I think the interesting and optimistic message is: tasks change. As technology evolves, new tasks emerge. If you think about going to somebody in 1798 when 98% of America was engaged in agriculture and you told them that in 2026, 2% of Americans will be engaged in agriculture but we’ll be producing 10 times as much, they’d be panicking. “What are all those people going to do?” But it turns out there are all these jobs they never could have conceived of–virtually every job we have now, really. So I’m optimistic that as we head into the new era, it’s less about machines taking everything over, and more about machines taking over certain things and freeing us up to do new things. It just takes time for those things to emerge, but I do believe they will come. 

MU: What do you have to say to other professionals who are interested in writing a book but might feel they don’t have the time or the specific expertise necessary? 

BT: I have a friend who has written a couple of books and the advice he gave me before my first was very helpful: start with an outline. Start with your table of contents. Just that one page. And then break the table of contents into subchapters, and then consider what are the sub subchapters?

Before you know it, you have the outline of your book and then it’s paint by numbers. Once you start getting into the flow, you’ll realize you know more about your topic than you thought you did, and you’ll become absorbed in all the intricacies of learning it top to bottom. In other words: think big but start small.



Spring Workshop: The Book Architecture Method

Our second FREE workshop of the year will be held on May 20th at 4pm Pacific. The topic for this Spring will be one near and dear to our hearts: The Book Architecture Method. 

Maybe you haven’t heard of The Book Architecture Method, our proprietary process for structure and revision. Maybe you have one of Stuart’s books and would like a refresher course plus the opportunity to ask questions. 

Designed over a decade ago, first in Blueprint Your Bestseller and then elaborated on in Book Architecture (our self-titled second album), “The Method” has more than stood the test of time. In fact, it continues to draw new devotees every week, if our DMs are any testament. 

So what is all the fuss about? The Book Architecture Method divides a work’s structural properties into three main components:

  • Your THEME, which can ideally be stated in one sentence, and then elaborated in four sentences, otherwise known as your “elevator pitch.” It is an axiom of ours that your book can only one have one theme, which is how it lends unity to the entire work. Unity being the fundamental aesthetic criterion, according to fancy sources like the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics — and which we happen to agree with.
  • Your SERIES, the repetition and variation of a narrative element — such as a character, relationship, object, or scenic locale — in such a way that the repetition and variation creates meaning. You might be used to calling these throughlines or narrative arcs; we call them series, and postulate that 8-12 of them that span the length of your work. When they interact and intersect, via grids and graphs which we will explore, they provide the road map to your book and create complex and powerful emotional effects.
  • Your SCENES, the ultimate building block of your narrative. If there is one theme, and a dozen series, there might be 99 scenes (or 78 or 56…you get the idea). A scene is where something happens, and because something happens, something changes; a scene is where your powers of description and dramatic presentation come to the fore bringing the work to life for your reader through tension and sensuality. These scenes in turn are organized by your series, in the service of your one central theme.

You do not need to be working on a work of fiction to benefit from this hour-and-a-half workshop; it applies as well to creative non-fiction or prescriptive non-fiction. Neither does your current endeavor need to be book-length; The Method works just as well on shorter pieces.

So, what are you waiting for? Email us at stuart@bookarchitecture.com and let us know that you’d like the link.

And whatever you do, please don’t trust AI to structure your work in some reductive and unimaginative way. Come get your hands dirty because by doing so you will get new ideas — for both your form and your content — that you simply can’t outsource.



Clients Crushin’ It: Dr. Bonnie Kane

Bonnie Kane has been a psychologist in private practice for nearly twenty years, but only recently has she turned her attention to writing. Earlier this month, Madison spoke to Dr. Kane about the motivation behind her creative endeavor, how it has felt to harness her voice in a new medium, and what she sees for the future. 

 

What made you want to start a blog? 

The world is changing so much, and people are getting more interested in personal growth and becoming more psychologically aware. I believe that self-awareness makes for a better world, and that the more self-aware we are, the kinder we’re able to be to other people.

That said, there are a lot of buzzwords out there right now like gaslighting or narcissism that I’m not sure people fully grasp the meaning of. I see so many creators misusing those terms on the internet. There’s just so much noise right now, and many people don’t have to have credentials or the background to post online in this space.

I didn’t want to get swept up in that desire for growth being what drove my content. I want more meat in my blogs than is possible in a quippy viral video, but I also want to avoid the information dumps that I see a lot of, too; social media is frenzied right now, and I don’t want to do anything that adds to that feeling of overstimulation. What I do want is to share my knowledge with my community, and this felt like the best way.

Thus far, has the blog scratched the itch of wanting an outlet for your thoughts?

Yes, I do enjoy it. When I was younger I was a much better writer, but then life got in the way. Getting back into writing now — getting to disseminate information I think will help people — feels really good. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily getting easier with each blog entry in terms of the writing, but I am enjoying it more as I go along. I felt a lot of pressure with the first ones, like I was baring my soul. But once I got my first comment, I realized that if what I have to share helps a single person, that’s enough for me. I think that sense of non-attachment has helped me feel really good about continuing to share.

I also love when someone who reads my blog says, “Oh, I’m going to send this one to my daughters. I think this will really help them.” That kind of organic sharing is the best case outcome, as far as I’m concerned.

How do you decide on topics? And who do you consider to be your primary audience? 

The topics for my blogs sometimes come from trends or themes surfacing in my sessions with clients. And then sometimes the content comes from my own thoughts and experiences instead–things I’ve been through, and what I’ve learned that I think could be useful to others. 

Right now, my readers are largely my clients, and that client pool is primarily women in transition. I end up talking about relationships all day long. Relationships with a sister, with a mother, with a best friend, with a boss. When you’re in a relationship, you can’t see it clearly. That’s what my job is, to have a bird’s-eye view of the situation and share how I, as the outsider, see it. As in my sessions, the goal of these blogs is to contribute to that sense of clarity for people who are looking for that. 

How has working with Stuart helped bring this blog to life? 

From coming up with an idea, to making sure it hasn’t been done a million times already, to figuring out the right depth to go with the topic, it takes quite a while to write and edit each blog post. Stuart helps by breaking that work into stages. He’ll give me homework, like: “Okay, you’ve got this part. Now, go figure that out.” And it keeps me moving forward.

I also think Stu really encourages authenticity. Sometimes I might feel embarrassed like, “Does anyone really care about this thing I have to say?” and then I might be tempted to hold back a bit. Stu will let you linger in a little bit of an uncomfortable space so that you can get to what it is you’re actually trying to say, and that’s because he doesn’t want you to write anything that’s not authentically you. But he’s also there to go, “This is good stuff. This has meaning.” And for both of those things, I’m grateful.