Stop Telling Yourself the Last Chapter
Jonathan Wolff is probably best known for being the composer of Seinfeld and that iconic bassline, but he was much more than that. Jonathan was the most prolific sitcom composer in television history. He composed for over 75 primetime network series and wrote 44 original themes. He was able to be so productive and creative because he had set up a studio around a brilliant workflow where he was able to craft the sound of every show and his team was able to work as a single unit to put out over 10 sitcoms a week.
After a brief and unhappy side challenge in the record industry, I was looking to move back into the TV and film world and in 1997 I got an opportunity to work as an assistant composer in his studio. I took this job and all of a sudden I’m working on the most popular shows on television. My first week there we were doing Seinfeld, Caroline in the City, Married with Children, a new show with Tony Danza, and six or seven other shows all at the same time. I was dropped into this whirlwind of sitcoms, and all of a sudden I had to keep the biggest secret in the world.
The Seinfeld finale was the most anticipated television event of the decade. Fifty-eight percent of TV viewers in America, an estimated 108 million people, tuned in that night. NBC made sure the ending was a secret. The table read happened on a closed set. All but one copy of the script was destroyed afterward. A decoy ending scene was shot to throw off leakers. Cast, crew, audience, we all signed NDAs. The whole country was clamoring to know how the show was going to end which led to five months of speculation, magazine covers and watercooler arguments.
One of the things you don’t realize about having a career in television until you have one is that people will constantly be begging you for spoilers that they don’t really want. Everyone you know who watches the show you’re working on wants to talk to you about it. I always have to ask “Where are you in the story, what’s the last thing that happened.” I have to remember what it felt like to be in the audience at that moment, and put myself there because I always know the future.
Every television professional knows how to not give spoilers even when pressured. Most of the time it’s not like Seinfeld, it’s not because the media is clamoring to know. It’s because it’s part of my responsibility to not ruin it for people around me. The whole concept of the “spoiler alert” exists because everyone knows that if you jump right to the end, it ruins the story.
That holds true in life also.
A lot of people sit around in their room and fantasize. “I’m gonna be married with two children and have a white picket fence. I’m gonna run my own company. I’m gonna win an Emmy.” Whatever the end of the dream is, people spend a lot of their time thinking about the last chapter, and the rest of their time thinking that they’re delusional.
But none of those outcomes are actually delusional. Every day people fall in love and buy new homes and start companies. Every year people win Emmys. The problem isn’t the dream. The problem is that you ruin the story if you skip to the last chapter.
Ask yourself, how will you win the Emmy? Tell yourself a good story about the path that got you there. A good story has ups and downs, trials and tribulations, epic failures and grand successes. A good story goes down unexpected paths. And most importantly, a good story is totally believable.
Instead of fantasizing about the day your new company corners the market, fantasize about overcoming the failures along the way that will make that last chapter all the sweeter. Instead of fantasizing about the dream collaborators you’re going to thank in your acceptance speech, fantasize about the guy who got in your way and how you cleverly got around him.
The most important chapter isn’t the last one, it’s the next one.
One of the things that made Jonathan’s incredibly prolific workflow even more amazing (that no one could know from the outside) is that we didn’t just deliver one version of the score for each episode of television. We delivered three or four choices for every piece of music. This might seem inefficient, but it isn’t, for two big reasons.
The first benefit was technical. It eliminated the need for approvals. The back and forth of sending music to the filmmakers to get their approval is a complicated and slow process. But if you show up on the day with multiple versions, with all of your bases covered, then you can skip that entire process of getting things approved. So when we delivered the episodes, we delivered with our first choice of music on the “Main track” and at least two other choices on alternative tracks called “Alt tracks.”
This practice also has a powerful artistic benefit. Forcing yourself to score the same scene over and over forces you to find different musical statements to make. You may put in a piece of music from one character’s perspective, and then another from a different character’s. You may try the scene with joyful music and then with something more restrained. You are forced to see the same story from multiple angles. I call it “filling your alt tracks”. When your alt tracks are full when the director says “I want to feel her sadness more in this moment,” you can say “That option is on Alt track 3.”
You should apply this exact same trick to your internal narrative. Don’t just pick your favorite version and keep telling yourself the same story over and over. Imagine lots of different versions of the next chapter. Fill your alt tracks.
As you keep mulling the next chapter over and over in your mind it changes. It becomes more believable. It becomes more focused, and you become more prepared to navigate the future no matter what happens. I may write the next chapter 10 different ways.
I will tell myself stories where it all works out, and stories where it fails. I will imagine versions where I navigate it well and versions where I mess it all up.Then, when things actually change or go sideways, I have the benefit of having thought through many different scenarios.
Your dreams are not a delusion. But the idea that you’re going to live your story from the last chapter backwards, that is, so dream about the next chapter and fill your alt tracks.
You have to know the next chapter in the story of how someday you are going to get your dream. What are the trials and tribulations that lie between right now and that last chapter you keep repeating in your mind? If you don’t know those, you don’t know the story. And if you don’t know the story, you can’t live it.