The premise of Masterclass is experts teach you how to do what they do.

The fabulous new episode with Michael Lewis illustrates both how true and unlikely it can be.

Lewis is the author of 20 books, many of which have been made into movies, such as The Blind Side, Moneyball and the Big Short.

He’s famous for a style of non-fiction that uses colorful anecdotes from little-known obsessives to tell larger societal stories.

As he explains, Liar’s Poker isn’t really about Wall Street just as Moneyball isn’t about baseball

The two-hour video is loaded with practical suggestions for storytellers.

-Write 1,000 words a day
-Use index cards to map it out
-Write on caffeine, edit on wine
-Avoid distractions (ie the phone)
-Write for one person who loves you
-Find a quiet, dedicated space to write
-Quit before you finish and start immediately the next day
-Make a playlist for each book (Favorites include “Let it go” from Frozen)

There are also big ideas:

-Tell the truth, not what people want to hear
-Know where you want to begin and end
-Focus on the people everyone ignores
-Be curious and follow that curiosity
-Find your inner voice and use it

What separates Lewis from the rest of us, are the lengths he goes to.

This becomes clear when, sitting on the floor, he starts rearranging cards that are color-coded for characters, events and themes.

As he shuffles them obsessively, he explains there isn’t one story that you find and tell. You create the story by selecting the characters and events and order.

It’s a profound insight and one that requires conviction, since inevitably someone won’t like your version. Lewis reminds writers: You are the one arranging the cards. You are the one on the pitcher’s mound.

For the Big Short, he figured there were perhaps 15 people who could be the protagonist for a story about the global financial crisis. He picked Michael Burry, who has since become a legend.

To make that approach work, you need personal detail, some of which can be uncomfortable.

In Moneyball, Lewis digs into Billy Beane’s past as a disappointing player. In Premonition, he explores Charity Dean’s upbringing in a restrictive Christian household.

At one point, Lewis asks Dean to poke around her house. Inside the medicine cabinet he discovers Post-its with aphorisms about courage.

He is delighted and uses them to great effect. She wasn’t thrilled.

Lewis talks about a low point of his life, the death in 2021 of his 19-year-old daughter.

I assumed it would make him more cautious and empathetic to his characters. Instead, he said it emboldened him. It gave him license to probe deeper into the human experience.

People are the vehicles he uses to tell stories about life.

It’s not about baseball.
It’s not about Wall Street.
It’s not about the pandemic.

Lewis claims he was an unremarkable student and says his teachers would be shocked at how his career turned out. Sean Tuohy, a former classmate, couldn’t believe Lewis wrote the books. (Tuohy later becomes a main character in the Blind Side.)

In Masterclass, Lewis tells you exactly how he does what he does.

But the episode also makes clear how hard it would be for any of us to do the same.