- 53 minutes ago
When Dan last spoke to author Soman Chainani, the guy was riding high. His wildly popular "School for Good and Evil" series had just been turned into a movie, and he was perfectly happy to keep churning out fairy tales. But somewhere between then and now, the fairy tales stopped flowing. So instead of playing it safe, Soman wrote Young World, a far more controversial book that he simply couldn't not write. Soman tells Dan exactly why he felt compelled to go there, and drops some spicy literary takes along the way.
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00:00People always talk about, you know, following your passion or your dream, and I've never been
00:05into that advice because I often think your passion and your dream doesn't line up with
00:10what you're good at. Would I like to do something other than writing? Maybe. I can think of many
00:17things I'd like to do more than writing because it would be easier and they wouldn't, you know,
00:20AI would not be coming for my job. Welcome to How Success Happens. I'm Dan Bova,
00:29writer and editor at entrepreneur.com, and I talk to a lot of people who build brands on this show,
00:37but today's guest builds universes. He is the bestselling author of the School for Good and
00:45Evil series, which has sold nearly five bajillion copies worldwide. I think that's the exact number.
00:52It was made into a Netflix flick, but all that's in the past, right? Because he has got an incredible
00:58new novel out. We're going to talk about that and talk about the cross-section of big picture
01:04creative thinking and putting your head down and grinding it out. Welcome, Soman Chinani.
01:12Thanks so much for having me again. It's fun to get to kind of chart where things are four years
01:18later.
01:19Yeah, well, you, I mean, the first time I talked to you, you were quite successful, but
01:25things are good in the Soman universe, I would say.
01:29Well, you know, the funny thing is I felt like there was a peak to that version of my life,
01:35that chapter. You know, I'd written School for Good and Evil for 13 years. There were six books,
01:39two prequels, and then the movie came out, and the movie was kind of this, you know, high watermark.
01:45It didn't, it's not that the movie sort of accurately captured the books in any shape,
01:49way or form, but it brought a whole new readership to it. It just felt like it had created this
01:55self-sustaining franchise that would live on now and was bigger than the author. And it just felt
02:02like it was time to move on to something else. And that's exactly when I met, you know, my partner.
02:08And so the combo of those things, moving to a new place, being with a new person,
02:16kind of blowing up my life and realizing I needed a change, I was being offered so much money to
02:21write
02:21more fairy tales. You know, I just could have been the good Indian boy salesman that my dad wanted me
02:29to be and just kept banking money on fairy tales, you know. And I tried. I was going to write
02:35a series
02:36about Neverland, and that's what I had told everybody. We were already trying to pitch the
02:40film before I had, you know, even written a word of it. And I've made it two chapters in and
02:46then
02:46never opened the document again. Wow. So I did want to talk to you about that. And of course,
02:52what we're talking about today is Soman's incredible new book that we'll get all into.
02:59But I'm so, I'm so interested in that because, you know, whether it's a book or a TV show or
03:08a
03:08business, we all have so many ideas that hit us, you know, day in, day out. And I'm always so
03:14curious
03:14about how someone like you decides this is the one that I'm going to go all in on. And then
03:23what was
03:24that decision like? What, what drove that decision to say, Hmm, I put in all this work, but this, this
03:29isn't
03:29going the way I wanted it. I think I'm lucky in that. I remember hearing Madonna in an interview
03:35when I was younger, I was a big Madonna fan. And she said something that stayed with me forever,
03:40which is that when you are an artist, you are not the artist. You are the manager. The artist is,
03:46you never meet the artist. The artists are the elves inside you that are doing the work. You know,
03:50you are unconscious to the elves. You are just the manager. And so I always kind of never took
03:56responsibility for my own art. I felt like I was just the guy who showed up and wrote it all
04:01down,
04:02you know? And so when I went to work on Neverland, I was writing these two chapters,
04:07but I could feel resistance, this feeling of like, there's no energy here. This is very competent and
04:12this will sell a lot, but it's missing it. Like whatever the fizzy thing is. And so I just never
04:21went back to it because to me, like, what's the point? I'd rather be a plumber or something.
04:25And I think I started to tune in. I had spent 13 years in a fantasy world, escaping the world.
04:30And I started to tune into what was happening in the world. And what I noticed is I had been
04:33on tour
04:35in hundreds of schools over the years and kids were changing. I was noticing how stressed they were,
04:40how anxious they were, how they were reading less, the phones, all that stuff. And I started to have
04:46visions of this neon nuclear orange. And I was like, I don't know if this is a fairy tale. I
04:53don't know
04:53where I'm going with this. And little by little, I started to realize it was the color of a political
04:57party that you had red for Republicans, blue for Democrats, and you had this new nuclear neon orange.
05:03And I started to realize this is a third political party and it's going to be the party of revolting
05:08youth. And that's where the idea for this new book, Young World, came three and a half years ago.
05:13Is that a first for you being inspired by a color or do things like that inspire you all the
05:20time?
05:20It was the first, I think, in terms of something so strong, because I think what I was just only
05:26thinking in the fairy tale realm, because I thought that's what I was limited to. And I think my brain
05:30was like, okay, how do we get them off fairy tales? What if we give them a color that doesn't,
05:35could never exist in the fairy tale world, which was, you know, I don't know if you can see it.
05:39It's so funny because the final book is this Dayglo nuclear orange that I'm holding.
05:45And Dayglo does not show up digitally. So no matter how many times I take pictures of it,
05:50how many times I show people to it, you do not understand the color of this book until you see
05:55it in person. And when you see it at a bookstore, you know, anybody listening, you'll be like,
06:00okay, I get it. But there's just no way to capture. I'm staring at it right now. And I'm like,
06:05that looks nothing like what it did on screen.
06:07I can attest to that. Because when I opened the package, when it came in, I was like,
06:12this is going to be something different. And it is. I mean, the writing is amazing. It's funny. It
06:22is diabolical. There's betrayal. There's all kinds of crazy stuff that goes on. And there's also what I
06:30love. And I'll see if I can open randomly to a page. So what's happening inside the book is there's
06:39all kinds of images. There's posters. There's graphs. There's social media clips and stuff like
06:47that. And I was curious, was that a part of your original vision of this book? Or did that evolve
06:55as
06:55you were writing it? I turned in the first 50 pages of the book to my agent in, I think,
07:02January 2023.
07:05And I hadn't told him what I was working on. I think he was expecting Neverland. So I sent this
07:10in and was like, here. And I was expecting a phone call being like, dude, you got to go back
07:16to what
07:16you're good at. I was expecting the yelling phone call. And he called and he goes, this idea is
07:24amazing. But what you've turned into me is very bad. And I was like, I was like, okay. I was
07:31like,
07:31I was like, okay, I can work with that. Why is it bad? And he goes, it's bad because you're
07:36writing
07:36it like School for Good and Evil. You're doing it in third person. It's very lush and sophisticated
07:40and has like a Jane Austen undertone to it. It's very romantic. He's like, you're telling the story
07:45of a teenage boy who just leads a revolution against the government and then leads, you know,
07:50which leads to a global revolution. Like it needs a new tone. This is not, you're, you're,
07:55you're a professional athlete who is leaving your sport to do a completely different sport.
08:00It's got to look different. And that's when I took a few weeks and just kind of tried to clear
08:07my
08:07head and said, okay, if we're going to do this, we're going to do this. What would a teenage boy's
08:11diary look like? And I changed it to first person. It became the diary of a 17 year old teenager
08:16who
08:17threw a series of dominoes, ends up in the white house because of a global coup.
08:23And I realized that it would just be a no holds barred diary with everything shoved in all the stuff
08:30he's seeing, like sort of crinkled in and doodles and stuff. I thought if it was a girl,
08:34a teenage girl who was president, it would be all pros. And it would be like exactly what you
08:39would imagine a diary to be. A teenage boy's diary would be highly undisciplined. And so telling
08:44myself the diary was going to be an undisciplined was the key to the book.
08:48That's amazing. And working with, um, I mean, you've collaborated with people, obviously, or
08:55your books got made into movies and all this kinds of stuff, but what's that process like from the day
09:02one of these are the visuals that are going to be in the book. How do you get that, your
09:06vision
09:07across to them? How do you receive ideas that weren't exactly what you were thinking?
09:12Yeah. I mean, I think it was that it was coming off the school for getting a little movie and
09:16I
09:17went to film school. That's my training, um, before I was a novelist. And so to me, I said, okay,
09:21if we're
09:22going to do this book properly, it's got to feel like you're reading a movie. Like that's really what
09:25it has to feel like. Um, cause a teenage boy thinks visually. So there's going to be a full 120
09:30,000
09:31word novel in there, but there's also going to be a novel happening in separate visuals.
09:36And so I told the publisher, I said, I'm paying for all the art. Like it's good. You know, I
09:41basically spent all my advance on artists. I hired three different artists because I wanted to control
09:46it. I wanted it to be like, okay, this is my, my film. I want to work directly with the
09:50artists and
09:51not have any interference. So I hired three friends, one who's just a great design mind, very classical,
09:57almost cerebral in the way he thinks. One who's a fantasy illustrator, um, who had worked with me on
10:02a lot of school for getting evil stuff. And one who was just like a Gen Z madman. He's almost
10:07like
10:07animal in the Muppets. Like, I don't know what he's good at, but he can kind of do everything.
10:12So anything we didn't know what to do with, like we just were lost with, we gave to him.
10:17Ah, that's great.
10:18So, you know, we had, uh, we had kind of high art, we had high design, and then we had
10:24insanity.
10:24And so the mix of those three, I think gave a kind of really cool vibe to the book because
10:29every visual is sort of different and you, you have the inconsistency of design in modern life.
10:36Yeah. Oh, it's great. And it comes together so beautifully in the book. Uh, it's amazing.
10:41So tell me a little bit about your, the day to day of it. Like how does, what's a day
10:49in a life
10:50of you when you're working on something like, you know, it's interesting because it depends on where
10:55you are in the process, right? So when you're writing a book, so for the two and a half years
10:58of, of just pure writing, um, I get up in the morning, I go play tennis with, uh, one of
11:05the
11:05kids from the local college teams. So, um, WashU, SLU, Maryville, like, uh, these kids come play with me
11:12in the mornings. Um, because I have a style of, obviously I pay them to show up at 6am, but,
11:18uh,
11:19I also have a style that makes them crazy cause they haven't seen it. Um, and so Gen Z kids
11:23are
11:23like totally mystified by nineties tennis. Uh, and they tend to send their friends to me
11:28cause they're like, you know, it's like being hustled, you know, they just don't know what to do.
11:32So, um, I do that every morning and then I come home and, and play for, uh, sorry. And then
11:37write for,
11:38you know, four or five hours. And then again, I go for a second box of exercise working with the
11:43trainer. And then I write again. And then usually I hang with my partner and go out at night. That's
11:47a typical day that I try to repeat over and over and over again, almost for years until the book
11:52is
11:53done. But I would say the last four months, because this is, you have to remember 13 years,
11:57I was writing the same series. So it was, it was like clockwork was a machine. This, I have to
12:02reintroduce myself. So this was starting over. I have to be everywhere. Um, so I had to go back into
12:07salesman mode mode starting in mid February. Um, and it's, it's, it's just a different job.
12:14You know, you're on the road a lot. You're talking about the book. Um, you're learning how to talk
12:18about the book and you're not getting as much time to write. So, um, that's what it, now it's like,
12:23every day is a wildcard day. I feel like more a CEO than I do a writer because it's like
12:27managing
12:28an operation of trying to put this book out. Um, and so it's a completely different skillset.
12:33And during that time that you are writing, would you describe it? Are you getting into
12:40like a flow state with it? Are you starting and stopping? Like what's it like when you're
12:45in it? Oh, every day is different. Some, you know, you're just kind of slogging along trying
12:51to get to something interesting, you know, and sometimes you're just possessed. The later you
12:55get in a book, the more you're possessed by momentum. But I think in the early days, I don't
12:59work off an outline because I just feel like outlines end up leading to like a flat book.
13:03Cause I know what's going to happen. I like to be surprised as I go. Um, and so I just
13:08feel like
13:09I'm just kind of sculpting it. You know, you just have this big block of ice and you're tripping
13:14away at it and sort of finding things as you go. So it's very intuitive. It can be very frustrating,
13:20but, um, yeah, you're just trying to get to a draft at work. So let's talk about frustration
13:27a little bit, uh, for anyone who's feeling stuck, uh, with whatever thing that they're working on.
13:34What, what seems to work for you? It sounds like physical exercise is a huge part of your life.
13:40Is that part of breaking yourself out of a stuck spot?
13:44A hundred percent. I think you need to get to a place where your whole body has blood flowing,
13:48you know, because we're too, we too often think the answer's in our head. It's not in our head.
13:54It's, it's sort of in there it's in the flow and the flow is in your body. So, um, I
14:00often feel like
14:01when you have the answer, it's inevitable. It's like, it's going to come out no matter what you're
14:06usually just clogging it or restricting it somehow. Um, so I think modern life, especially if,
14:14you know, you live alone or you're alone a lot, it's so easy to fill the silence, you know, with
14:19podcasts or with, um, audio books or something. And you just don't have the space for your brain
14:26to actually give you the ideas. So, um, my partner's farm is about an hour away. Sometimes I just try
14:31not to listen to anything for that hour and find myself, um, kind of drifting into, to getting the
14:38answers I need or, you know, in the shower, just on a walk, like leaving myself space to actually
14:44get ideas. And I think that's something that modern life has restricted and you don't realize it. So
14:50I think, you know, people always talk about getting up at 3am and it's a stress condition. And I,
14:55I always think of it as your brain is just backed up with processing and you haven't given it enough
14:59room. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Um, so in keeping with, there's so much content and voices coming
15:08at us all the time, um, when it comes to writing or kind of any creative endeavor, there's a lot
15:14of
15:14advice out there. And, uh, I wonder you, you brought up one thing, but is there any advice that you've
15:21heard that you think bears repeating and also anything you wish people would ignore?
15:27I think it's important that people always talk about, you know, following your passion or your
15:32dream. And I've never been into that advice because I often think your passion and your dream
15:38doesn't line up with what you're good at. I think the thing you should be pursuing is the intersection
15:43of something that you're good at and something that makes time go by very quickly. So, you know,
15:50writing is a pain in the ass. Like would I like to do something other than writing?
15:57Um, maybe I can think of many things I'd like to do more than writing because it would be easier
16:01and they wouldn't, you know, AI would not be coming for my job. Um, but writing I'm good at and
16:07it makes
16:07time go by quickly so quickly that I'm always fighting the clock. And I feel like that's, and I
16:13feel fulfilled at the end of the day. I feel like something has happened. Like there's been some
16:17transmutation, um, that I need. So I always think to find that combination of what are you good at?
16:23What makes time go by quickly? Uh, that's where you should be headed, uh, in order to find your,
16:30your spot. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So you just mentioned two letters, AI, a big issue in the
16:37publishing world. Uh, have you, what are your thoughts? I gather you're not a fan.
16:45No. Um, I mean, look, it was going to happen regardless. There was going to be this time
16:52where we tried to automate it, uh, you know, automate human intelligence. And I was just
16:55talking to a group of 300 high schoolers this morning about the new book. And I was like,
17:01how many of you use AI? And they all raised their hand and I raised my hand too, because
17:04we all use it at some point during the day. And I said, here's the problem at your age,
17:09you're learning how to think. Right. And so AI is meant to replace, uh, that thinking power,
17:16which is why they want you to use it as much as possible to train your brain, to immediately go
17:20to it as sort of a substitute thinker in the way that we use calculators instead of actually doing
17:24everything by hand. The issue is at your age, some of you are going to have an above average moment
17:31in your life. Hopefully all of you. Right. But AI is the average. And if you learn to use AI
17:38for
17:38everything, then you are sort of putting yourself at the average line of humanity. Right. And if you
17:45are going to be below average for the rest of your life in everything, in every way you think for
17:51the
17:51rest of your life, please use AI. It's only going to make humanity better because you're going to be
17:55raising your level to at least some base standard. But if some of you, uh, plan on having above
18:01average moments and maybe having feats of ingenuity or inventing new things or, you know,
18:07finding the full, full realization of yourself, then you can't use it now because it's flattening
18:13out what you're going to become. And we talked a lot about the college essay and how, you know,
18:18the college essay, when you apply to college, everyone's using AI now. So they all sound great,
18:23but they're all very flat. And so ultimately, you know, if you, if you're looking at natural
18:27evolution and selection, what are college counselors going to be looking for? Two things,
18:30one, a distinctive voice, even if it sounds much worse than AI, even if it's something authentic
18:35is going to cut through. And two, they're going to look for something that feels specific and that
18:41has a strong kind of like desire to it. Cause AI loves to flatten desire. It loves to somehow take
18:48it. It's averaging to the mean, right? So it doesn't like hot spikes of passion. It doesn't like
18:52intensity. Right. So, you know, trying to go into these schools and this is what I would do.
18:58I would, this is what I'll be doing with young world when I'm on tour, but I would love to
19:01do
19:01it more. It's just going to schools and talk to kids about how, if you can get your college essay
19:05right so that it reflects you and what you are as a person, I feel like you're going to get
19:10so
19:10intoxicated by that feeling. Then you're going to want to write yourself.
19:14Such a great way to frame it. I love that. Really. That's a, I haven't heard anyone put it like
19:19that, but it's so true. And, and as, uh, as a recipient of something that is AI written,
19:26I don't know why, but we could all recognize it in a second. So you're not fooling anybody.
19:32So I'm fiction side. I'm not so sure about the nonfiction side. I think there's so many articles
19:37being written with it now that I almost feel like we've gotten used to that sort of dead
19:41kind of froze the dead flat pros. Um, but which, which makes me wonder whether the future of,
19:48um, sort of nonfiction writing in a way is perspectives, almost, uh, having this like
19:54first person, you know, view of a story in order to counteract that feeling, you know,
19:59for young world, I had lots of offers of doing op-eds and, and things. Cause I'm really pushing,
20:04getting rid of the age gate around the presidency to allow young people to run. Um, and I felt like
20:10it's just going to sound like, it's going to sound like a normal op-ed. It's going to be very
20:14hard to
20:14make it distinctive, you know? Right. And so I was like, I'd like to find a place where I could
20:19do it
20:19in first person and make it, make it more personal so that it doesn't feel like AI. And I think
20:24this
20:24push towards the personal, the authentic is going to be super important, which is why I think reading
20:29fiction is important because that's how you start to, to get deeper into character that you can then
20:34bring to your own nonfiction, uh, business job. Yeah, absolutely. And we talk about it all the
20:40time. Some of the most successful people who've been on the show, talk about that your audience,
20:45uh, you know, your audience, your customers, they want an authentic person. They want an authentic
20:52brand that authentically speaks to what they believe in. And, uh, you're not going to get that,
20:57as you said, just equaling out every opinion on earth. That's yes. That's, and that's what it is.
21:04It's every opinion on earth. Um, well, so the book is out in May. What's the exact date?
21:13May 5th. May 5th. So that should be right. Uh, right. As this episode is coming out, I heartily
21:20recommend people picking it up because, uh, we live in a crazy world, but someone has created an even
21:27crazier one. So it's, I think it's, I know it's crazy, but I think it's a solution to everything.
21:32I firmly believe this is actually not a, not a speculative fiction book. I kind of want it to
21:37come true. Yeah, absolutely. So let's, uh, let's get into a couple of speed round questions if you're
21:43ready. Uh, okay. So what is a book you always recommend, uh, fiction and nonfiction? Oh, good.
21:51The War of Art by Steven Pressfield for nonfiction, super short, and it just, uh, teaches you how to get
21:57over resistance to your work. Um, and then fiction. I love a little life by, uh, Hanya Yanagihara because
22:04it's just so immersive. Um, and there's something about that book that is like a fever dream. It just
22:09kidnaps you and then you're gone. What is a classic that you think should have its must read rating
22:15revoked? Oh, that's interesting. I was just rereading, uh, oh man, I have lots of them, but Scarlet Letter,
22:21because I hate the Scarlet Letter. I don't know why they make kids read it. It's so boring. Um, and
22:28then
22:28one that I think everyone should read, especially now that the movie came out is Wuthering Heights
22:31because Wuthering Heights, the novel looks nothing like that movie that just came out. It's crazy that
22:37book. And there's something about, I feel like if you make people read it, they'll think classics are
22:43fun because it's unhinged. That book is more unhinged than anything written, um, these days. Like I, you know,
22:50I remember when 50 shades of gray came out and everyone was going crazy about how taboo it was
22:54and everything. I'm like, has anyone read Wuthering Heights? It's so much worse.
22:59Wow. All right. Well that you just put it on my, uh, my next list. That sounds pretty good.
23:04Uh, do audio books count as reading a hundred percent, but especially with nonfiction because,
23:11um, you get the, I'm, I'm listening to Lena Dunham's, uh, memoir now, and there's something about,
23:17you know, nonfiction read by the writer that is just, you feel it, you know, um, fiction is trickier
23:24because you can get a pretty shitty narrator, but, um, I think fiction, it's better to have your
23:30imagination do it, I think, but anything to get people, you know, reading books.
23:34I gotta say, I'll, I, I listened to a lot of audio books when I'm walking and I've been
23:40listening to like, uh, some like classic noir, um, uh, stuff and hearing a guy like start to
23:48try to give the, the voice of the breathy woman who just came into the office is one of the
23:54funny.
23:55Oh man, that's where it breaks down. I, you know, for the school for the audio book, um,
23:59they gave me all these options and I said, we can't use any of these. We have to use my
24:03friend.
24:04They're like, has she ever done an audio book? I said, no, but you can do every voice on the
24:07planet. And she ended up doing eight books. Uh, wow. Um, 170 characters. I mean, so you just need
24:13someone who can do them. That's excellent. And then finally, what's better the book or the movie?
24:19Oh, I've never seen, let me see if I can actually say that. Have I ever seen a movie better
24:25than the
24:25book? Yes. The Bridges of Madison County, um, with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep is one of the
24:30best movies I have ever seen. And that book is useless. So I think, I think, I think that movie,
24:38uh, was pretty special. Uh, that's fantastic. Well, uh, you know, you're so reserved with your
24:44opinions, but, uh, I'm glad we, I wish I was, but then I'd be like AI, right? I have to
24:51say.
24:51Yeah. Amen. Uh, that's great. Awesome. Well, uh, so great talking to you again,
24:57young world is out, uh, may 5th and I heartily recommend it. And, uh, you will not have any
25:04problem spotting it in the bookstore. Definitely not.
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