3 enduring lessons from the writer of The Princess Bride

When I was a young film student, the most universally recommended books on Hollywood were William Goldman’s memoirs: Adventures in the Screen Trade, and his follow-up, Which Lie Did I Tell?. Goldman was the screenwriter of the beloved Princess Bride, as well as classics like All the President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He was revered as an acerbic truth-teller.

I devoured both books. Like his films, Goldman is razor sharp and magnificently entertaining. The pages are chock-full of wonderful Hollywood anecdotes and astute professional advice.

Almost twenty years later, there’s wisdom from those pages that’s not only stuck with me, but has only felt more true with my own age and experience. Three things in particular.

In a pithy section about writing original screenplays, Goldman articulates an idea that I remember hitting my young mind like a ton of bricks:

I’d never heard storytelling, or art, described in exactly this way before: as needing to be both “surprising” and “inevitable”.

On the last page of Which Lie Did I Tell?, he repeats this idea:

He claims that these are “Kubrick’s words — he denied them, so who knows, but somebody wise said it, maybe it was me”.

In the intervening years, I’ve seen this phrase about good stories as “surprising and inevitable” come up over and over.

Some people attribute it to the novelist Flannery O’Connor, who wrote that “what makes a story work” is “an action or gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected”.

Other people source it all the way back to Aristotle who, writing in Poetics about “the ideal plot”, observes that tragedy is:

I’d imagine that Aristotle, in Goldman’s view, qualifies as “somebody wise”—and Aristotle was specifically taking umbrage with dramas of his time that resolved their endings with the convention of deus ex machina, whereby actors playing gods would literally be lowered onto the stage “by a machine” and tidily wrap up all the loose ends of the plot.

Anyway, the description of good art as “surprising and inevitable” is one that I’d argue applies equally well to games, music, or any media.

Surprise is a powerful element. “In a sense,” Goldman says, a story is “a series of surprises… But for a surprise to be valid, we must first set the ground rules”. He compares it to a magician’s trick: just as critical as the illusion is the preparation. Or, as he puts it: “screenplays are structure”.

Goldman writes about a fascinating story during the production of Marathon Man in which Sir Laurence Olivier came into conflict with the director, John Schlesinger. Olivier kept pausing before delivering a line, and the director didn’t want him to. The director wanted Olivier to interrupt the previous line being delivered by Roy Scheider.

Scheider’s line was: “I know that sooner or later you’re going to go to the bank”, and Olivier is supposed to interrupt him by saying “Perhaps I have already been”.

But Olivier kept pausing after Scheider says the word “bank”.

Olivier’s explanation is revelatory:

Olivier’s solution is simple, but elegant:

Goldman’s response:

I agree, the story “doesn’t seem like much”—but like Goldman, I was floored. It genuinely exploded how I thought about speaking and writing. How I order words, basically.

In all my years of “subject, predicate, object” grammar lessons, or “thesis, body, conclusion” high school essay writing, I’d never thought deeply about the way I arrange my words.

I’d never actively put myself in the position of the person receiving my words, and the understanding that they have from word to word. Every word reveals new information, and the order matters. Often times, you might want to put the most important information last—like a punchline. But not always. Like the Marathon Man line.

It’s such a trivial anecdote, but Goldman called it the most memorable incident of his movie career. I’ll never forget it, either.

Goldman’s most legendary phrase, and the phrase for which he’ll likely be remembered forever.

Goldman had a particularly dim view of Hollywood studio executives, but the principle is true of every industry, and every person.

Timeless.

Rest in peace, Bill.

Related posts:

Think about it. If you don’t have any fun on your daily basics, you’ll feel stressed and eventually get depressed. When you feel better, you think better and make better decisions. And if you choose…

The many benefits of home organization are secret to none. From making your home more beautiful and inviting to helping you better utilize your available space, home organization is a crucial part of…

The Real series of colored contacts fully simulates the texture and color of the pupil, allowing you to restore pupils of other colors to the greatest extent. This is a very authentic style from the…