Robert McKee says storytellers need God-level knowledge of their fictional worlds: “Not a sparrow falls that God does not know.”
Here’s what I realized—most professionals are delusional about how deeply they actually know their own domain.
You think you’re a high performer? Cool. But when your boss asks about market trends, do you scramble to pull together a decent answer, or do you already know because you’ve been tracking this stuff for months?
Most people I see are intellectual tourists. They skim the surface of everything, collect a bunch of random insights, and wonder why nobody takes them seriously. They’re building expertise they can’t actually defend.
The real players do something different. They pick their small world and completely own it. Not just the obvious stuff—the weird edge cases, the seasonal patterns nobody talks about, the unspoken dynamics that actually drive decisions.
McKee demanded that writers know what their characters eat for breakfast and what the weather’s like in September. So here’s my question for you: if I asked you right now about the “September weather” in your professional world—the subtle shifts, the quiet patterns, the stuff that only someone who’s been paying attention would know—could you answer instantly?
Because if you’re fumbling around for an answer, you’re not the expert you think you are. And everyone can tell.