And that's what life is all about

Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. My name is Tim Grall. I'm going to be your host. And in this very first episode, I just want to walk you through really quick before we jump in what you're going to learn on this podcast. So the number one goal of this podcast is to make you a better writer, to help you figure out how to tell a good story and become a successful writer. I myself am an aspiring fiction writer just getting into it after, you know, several years of playing around with it and writing here and there, I've decided I'm really going to go after it. So I reached out to a friend of mine named Sean Coyne to talk to him about how I can do this and how I can do it well. And I reached out to him because he is the author of the Story Grid, this amazing book that walks you through how to tell great stories. And so I reached out to him, we started talking, and we came up with this idea of this podcast where basically I could play the role of you and me, the person trying to become a better writer, and just pepper him with all of my questions around how to tell great story, the different parts of a story, things from the story grid books we love, why they work, all this kind of stuff, all the things that I want to figure out as I'm becoming a writer. And so that's what you get to do. You basically are going to listen in to conversations that we have where I just pepper him with all kinds of questions and hear his answers so that I can become a better writer and you can become a better writer alongside me. So we're gonna jump right into this first episode, and I'm excited to get started.

So, Sean, I want to just start out this whole podcast adventure thing with you, with just asking you what it is that you do as an editor. You know, I've always, you know, I hear like, as a, as a writer, you know, you hear about editors and then you hear, like, line editing, and you hear like, you know, the ones that edit for grammar, the ones that editor for, like, the edit for the whole story arc. So what it is, what is it that you do as an editor?

Well, I'm going to answer that question from the point of view of sort of a big five top publishing editor, somebody at Random House or HarperCollins or Grand Central Publishing. And basically they have two jobs. The first job is called what they call acquisitions editing. And what acquisitions editing is, it's making friends with a lot of agents and pounding the street getting submissions. Now you might think, oh, geez, editors get submissions all the time. Why do they have to go out and find new stuff? Well, it's just like anything else. It's like sort of like a mini Hollywood in a way in that, you know, there are certain agents who specialize in certain kinds of books. So when I was at Doubleday, my job was. I had. I had a number of jobs, but my primary job was to do big commercial fiction for the male audience. So big male thrillers, things, you know, military thrillers or serial killer thrillers or really great crime novels, what have you. So my job was to go out and find all the agents within my specialty and make sure that they knew that this was the kind of book that I wanted to acquire and publish at Doubleday. So what that entails is being friends with people, going to lunch, having drink dates, and then when that agent would have something that they thought was terrific, they would call me and say, hey, I've got this new project. Do you want to read it? And of course I wanted to read it. You know, you always want to read it. So.

The second the manuscript arrives.

As an editor, the first thing I'm going to do is just read it for pleasure. So what that means is that I'm not going to worry about anything. I'm going to try and just put all of my analytical and critical skills aside and just enjoy it as an everyday Joe. And, you know, the way that works is that because you have so much experience reading so many different books, and if that book doesn't grab you within five pages, you know pretty much that it's not going to grab you within 100. So even though you'll. You'll probably keep going. And so you can formulate a pretty good rejection letter, if that book does not grab you immediately, you're not going to keep going. So literally, the first job of an editor is to be a reader and to see if the book holds the attention throughout the entire thing. Now, I call that a book working. And what I mean by that is that if you start from page one, you get all the way to the end, and you say to yourself at the end of it, wow, I enjoyed myself. That was a good read. That's working.

Whether or not it's working to a level that you think you can convince your publisher to publish it is another question. But knowing up front that the book works, meaning that it delivers what it promises, if it's a serial killer thriller, you know, it's gonna be a great ride with a lot of twists and turns, you're gonna think it's one guy and it ends up being somebody else. If it's a military thriller, there's gonna be a great action scene at the beginning, middle and end. You're gonna have a certain number of sequences of action scenes that are gonna be amazing. And so if the writer delivers those things and there are some problems in there, you don't worry about them. In fact, when you go to your publisher and say, hey, this is a book that I think we should publish, you'll admit to those problems and you'll say, hey, it needs some work in the middle act. But at the bottom line, you can say that I think this is a guy or a woman who can really deliver a book year after year after year. So that's the first job. And the second job is after you acquire the book and it's on the schedule and Double A is going to publish it in 18 months, then you take out the surgeon's gloves and you look at the entire thing in terms of the global story, not the line by line work. The line by line work is really, you know, that is going to either grab your attention and imagination at the very beginning and when you first read it and you're going to say to yourself, well, this person has their own voice, they have their own particular style. Some of the sentences, I think, are a little choppy and cheesy and I can work with them on that, but I'm not going to worry about going through every single sentence of the story because that's really what the writer has to bring to the table. They have to bring their own voice. So the second job is to look at the global story and fix all of the problems within that global story. And, you know, it's easy for me to say, that's a process that takes a good two or three months. And in fact, I wrote the story grid because that is basically what the story grid is all about. It's talking about the global problems and fixes of a story, structural and form, that you can fix as yourself as a writer.

So that was one of the interesting things I had going into this storygrid thing was, yeah, what would you call the story grid? Because I've been talking to some friends about it and I'm trying. The way I explain it here, I'll give you the way I explain it first. So I'm like, okay, so there's these forms that every story falls into and you know, there's these things that every story has to have. And then depending on your genre, it has to have certain, like, obligatory scenes. Like, that really stuck out to me. But there's like this overall form that your story should fall into. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't quote work. And what that means is at some point the reader is going to either get confused or get frustrated or get bored.

And so what the story grid is there to do is to kind of help you map out your story and make sure that you haven't missed anything, that it actually has like all of the pieces of a story that you need to make sure it works. That's like my long winded version.

That's, that's pretty accurate. You know, I'm always trying to think of metaphors to make it easy for people. And it's sort of. I like to use the house metaphor too, because we all know what the structure of a house is. But there are many, many different forms of houses. There's adobe houses, there's Cape Cod, there's modern architecture, there's all forms of houses. But they all share, you know, central things that each and every one of them have to have. They have to have plumbing, they have to have electricity, they have to have walls, they have to have shelter, they have to have insulation, they have to have a roof. These are all the things that a story must have too. Now, your point really. So, you know, when people say, what's the story grid? I, I'll say it's sort of like, you know, what they would give, what they would teach in architecture school, what they would teach in carpentry school. You know, how to frame, you know, certain kinds of wood, how to cut them properly. I'm kind of making it up as I go, but the, the. It's all about craftsmanship.

The thing that always, it's all about practicality. This is not. The story grid is not about, you know, that mythical creature that's going to come into your workroom and, you know, inspire you to write the great American novel. That's just not going to happen.

What the story grid is, it's a way to learn the craft of story. Now, story is the thing that separates us from animals. It's something that we do intuitively, that we all live our lives by. We all have our own internal stories. And you've written about this yourself, Tim. And you know.

So like, the central thing about whether or not something works or not is whether or not your story spine is going to attract enough people to keep turning pages. And, you know, if I had to say the one story Spine that's going to work for everybody is, you know, it's the Joseph Campbell hero's journey story, which is all about somebody who's sort of cast out of society, is thrown into the bushes, and they have to find their way home. And when they get home, they tell everybody everything they've experienced. It's the Odyssey. You know, it's. These are the primal stories of our lives that we all have and we all talk about. So if your novel, if your fiction, be it science fiction or fantasy or crime story or whatever, love story, if it doesn't have a central hero's journey of sorts, people just aren't going to attach to it emotionally. So, you know, the story grid is about teaching writers that central story and then, you know, building wings and, you know, other things on top of that to suit their particular interests.

Yeah. You know, and it's funny because.

Like, so as I'm starting to step into this whole fiction writing thing for real, you know, like, I'm really going after it.

I was looking for something that would kind of teach me how to do this because, like, I listened to Stephen King's On Writing, and I've listened to it, like, probably a dozen times. I just absolutely love it. But. And there's some amazing things in there. It's amazing book. Everybody should read it. But when he gets to talking about putting the story together, he kind of falls into this kind of metaphysical, like, the stories come to me, and it's my job to dig them up. And he never plots anything. He just starts writing. And, like, for somebody that has never done that before, I'm just kind of like, okay, so I just start writing and a story comes out. I just don't. I can't imagine that that's the way it works. And so when I went through the story grid and you had all these different things, like, for instance, you talked about, like, the inciting incident. Every. Every story starts with an inciting incident or has to have near the beginning. And, like, the day after, I sat down and was watching the Garfield cartoon with my kids, and I'm like, there's an. Like, at the beginning of every episode was an inciting incident.

Sure.

And I'm like, oh, man. Like, everything. Everything from the great American novel to a Garfield cartoon.

That's right. That's right. The thing. Here's the thing. I'm a huge fan of Stephen King's, and I love his book on writing, too. And I love all the other books I'm writing. Natalie Goldberg's writing down the Bones and over and over and over. And, you know, I wouldn't have written the story grid if I was just gonna, you know, write what Stephen King had written. The reason why I wrote the story grid is that I look at story from the point of view of an editor and what an editor's job is again is to fix things that aren't working. So when I very, when I started out, very early on in my career, I wanted to find that book, where's that book that teaches me how to edit? And what I discovered was there was no book. It was very much similar to.

Kind of learning a trade from the master above you. It was an apprenticeship that an editor would learn from, you know, the great fiction editor in the desk down the hall. And I was okay with that. But the problem was is that those editors have put in 10, 15, 20, 30 years and there's a certain, you know, hey, you know, it took me 30 years to learn this. I don't really want to hand this to some bright eyed, bushy tailed young editor so that they can go and take my job. Now whether or not that was their real, you know, reluctance to sit down and go through the process with me is beside the point. And I do think that Stephen King as a writer, he had to learn all this stuff, but he learned it through trial and error. So he was in the marketplace writing stories and books and short stories and everything. And some people would say, yeah, that's terrible. And other people were like, hey, you got something here, but you need to tweak it a little bit.

Yeah, he told, you know, he tells all these stories of like all the books he's read, you know, since he was a kid and then he was writing when he was like seven or whatever and all the way through and then finally hit with Harry. Right? Yeah. And, and like long after he'd been writing and I'm like, there's got to be a path that isn't 15 years long to find some success. I, you know.

There definitely is.

Yeah. And so that's why I was like looking because I'm like, there's got to be something that teaches me some kind of like. Yeah, well, form is the word. We keep using it that like, you know, kind of do these things and you'll at least get close, Right?

Exactly. Here's an example. I'm, I'm like one of these people who thinks he's a. He can, you know, build anything, right? But I'm not. I don't have any skills. But I do think that you know, I had to build a bench for my kids, right. So I'm like, I'm going to go out and I'm going to go online, I'm going to get a diagram of a bench and then I'm just going to re engineer it from that diagram. And guess what? I did do that. Is it a great bench? No, but it's a usable bench. My kids use it. And I think the same thing can work with a story. I'm not saying it's that simple where I'm going to be able to give you a formula. It's very complex, but there are certain principles that if you understand, you'll be able to check your work. That's the big thing. Tim is learning how to check your work. Because we all get excited. We have an inspiration. We write a scene, we read it and we're like, wow, this is amazing. Then the next day we read it again, we go, there's something not right about this. I don't know what it is. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if, you know, if you know, oh, I need an exciting incident. I need to progressively complicate the circumstances. I need a crisis, I need a climax and a resolution. You can go and look at that scene and say, do I have those five things? Oh my gosh, I have no crisis. That's my problem. I have to put that in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting. So I took, I had a 50, like right at 50,000 word novel that I started working through your story grid. So I'm making my spreadsheet and it got me really worried because.

You had like, okay, a typical novel is like 80,000 and you should have what was like 62 scenes.

Yeah, like, you know, about between 50 and 80 scenes or whatever. Yeah.

So my 50,000 word novel had like 70 something scenes. And I'm like, oh, oh, what's going on here? And so like then I put all the word counts next to it and I got all these scenes that are like 200 words or like 90 words. And then I have this super long scene that's like, you know, 2000 and some odd words. And I'm like, oh, I have a problem. Yeah, you know, but that was the first sign I got of like, oh, this is what he means by like finding the problems. You know, like I couldn't see that when I, because I had reread it and I'd made some changes and all this kind of stuff, I'd gone through it all, but I didn't see that issue until I laid it out.

That's exactly true. It's all about finding the problems now. You know, to be able to tackle a huge problem that doesn't have specific little tiny problems to fix, that's intimidating. It's really intimidating.

Right, right, right.

And what we end up doing, Tim, is we end up going to people that we think are going to solve our problems for us. Right, yeah, go. And we'll hire an editor who has a lot of experience, who's edited a lot of different books in their time, and we put, we put all of our faith in them and, you know, oftentimes they don't deliver in the way that we want them to. And then we start damning them and then we get confused and we don't know what to do. And it just sort of piles upon piles upon piles of these little micro problems that snowball into this huge thing that we don't know how to deal with. But when you look at your work really analytically with, you know, not judging yourself and saying, oh my God, what an idiot am I for writing a 200 word scene? Some 200 word scenes are off the charts. Amazing. There's nothing wrong with the 200 word scene. Is there something wrong with 75200 word scenes? Yes, there is. Yes, there is.

So that's an important thing to learn. And you know, that's the first stage when you go, oh, okay, now I know. Here's one problem I have. Let's see if I can find some more.

Right. Well. Oh, and I'm. Have you heard of Scrivener?

Yeah, I have.

So have you ever used it before?

I haven't, no.

Okay, so you got to check it out because when. So the part of story grid when you're like telling people to go through and put all these numbers in their spreadsheet, you're like telling them how to like highlight and see the word count and all of that.

Oh, right, yeah, sure.

Okay. So. And like, and you're like, this is going to take a day of your time. It took me 20 minutes with Scrivener because you, they actually, you can lay out.

On a, like a corkboard inside of Scrivener all of your scenes and have like one line summaries like you tell people to do. And then it also gives you all the word counts. So it cut down on the first three or four steps of the story grid, probably by. I probably saved me a day's worth of work just writing inside of Scrivener. So that's great.

You should.

You should download Scrivener and check it out just from a standpoint of using the story grid. Because a lot of the things that you say to do, you can do like you would. I haven't gotten this far, but part of it. You had it, like, put it in different people. Like, there's a column for whose. Whose point of view it's from.

Yeah, right.

Like, you can go through and color code scenes. So you can say, okay, all the green scenes are going to be Tom's point of view. And go through and hit all those green, and then you'll be able to see all of those in a color code.

That's fantastic.

So I was just thinking of that because, like, when I was reading about this, I was like, oh, man, that's going to take me a long time. But I have it in Scrivener. And so I could just, like. It took me not very long at all to put together my initial spreadsheet.

Well, a lot of people have been asking me about software, which I certainly have a big interest in doing.

So that's really good to know that somebody's already done a lot of the, you know, the analytical and, you know, software work for it.

That's, you know, there is something, too. I think Scrivener is great, and I think it's. It's a tool you should use. But just to be the old fogey, too, there is something to.

Sort of taking yourself out of the writing world in a way, when you start working on your editing. And what I mean by that is if you can sort of take some tasks that aren't that difficult, that are rote, that are mechanical in a way. A lot of times, what I find, like today I'm working on. I'm analyzing right now the. The tipping point piece that was in the New Yorker in 1996 that eventually became Malcolm Gladwell's book. Right. So today I wanted to do this really kind of fun thing where I analyze sort of the word counts. So I literally, because I'm a New Yorker subscriber, I printed out the actual, you know, article, and I went line by line and I wrote down the number of words and I. And I. I took a good two hours doing that kind of cheesy, rote, mechanical stuff. And while I was doing it, a lot of things came to me that I hadn't thought of before. So I think there's. There's something to. It's like somebody pounding nails or. The repetitive tasks of doing a craft often opens up another Window in your mind while you're doing that to. I'm starting to sound like, you know, Mr. Muse here, but I do think that there's something to that. But then again, you're gonna have a.

Hard time talking me into saying I should be copying.

Highlighting each scene and looking at the word count. You're gonna have a hard time talking to me.

Okay, I got you. So.

Okay, so I want to. I want to go back to this story grid and just talk about some basic things in it. Since this is the first episode, if you haven't read the book, I want to let you know what it is. So.

So walk me through. Just kind of. So this idea, what really stuck with me is this idea of editors say things like, quote, the book doesn't work. But when you say why, you don't get an answer. So actually I had an editor read this book. I told you about the 50,000 word thing. And she came back and she's like, you have a story. And I said, well, how do you know? She's like, I just know. And I'm like, not helpful. You know, and so when you say a story doesn't work and you gave the. One of the examples you gave is when you tried to partner with that one writer who just kept having all these problems and she wouldn't put in the obligatory scenes, right? So when you say, if you could just talk a little bit about what you mean when the story doesn't work and what you find when you start looking at some of these and obligatory scenes and like, genre specific stuff, could you just talk a little bit about that to give people an overview of what the, what the story grid's about?

Absolutely.

The thing about something not working, it does speak to a reader's expectations. Right? So when, when I say to you, Tim, I've written this, this great crime novel, it's sort of a mystery, but then it sort of also has a love story underneath it. What I'm doing is I'm. I'm trying to give you a sense of what you're going to experience by reading my novel. So if I convince you and I say this is great, you're gonna love it. Just give me, you know, give me your thoughts about it and I hand it to you. And nothing happens for the first 50 pages beyond really terrific descriptions of seaweed and, you know, the tidal marshes in South Carolina. You're gonna say to yourself, where is the murder? Where is the crime? When am I gonna get my mystery right? So what genres are, is a way to Let people know what they're in for. Right? We all love to go to the movies. And when we see a poster for a movie or we see a, you know, a trailer for a movie, we know immediately whether or not we want to see that movie or not. Because those, those devices are ways to explain to people what they, what they're going to experience when they go to the movie. It's the same thing with book covers, right? So a book will not work if you say to somebody, I'm going to give you a love story, and then you deliver historical biography. Because people just are not going to be satisfied unless they get the obligatory scenes and conventions from a love story. From the work that you've described, what.

Do you mean by obligatory scenes?

Well, for instance, every single genre has certain things that you have to deliver in them. And a lot of people have asked me over and over and over again, if I could just give everybody the list of all the obligatory scenes and all the genres, everything would be fine. And I would be happy to do that. But it would take me a good 30 years to do that. But what I can say is that there are certain genres that editors and writers, they're just attracted to them. So for me, I know crime novels, I know thrillers. I know those obligatory scenes like the back of my hand because I've been editing them and working with them for so very long. And even nonfiction has obligatory scenes. So what am I saying when I'm saying obligatory scene? An obligatory scene is the moment in a love story when the lovers meet. It's a moment in a serial killer thriller where the hero is at the mercy of the villain. It's the moment in a mystery story when the master detective explains who is the killer. It's a moment in, let's see, a literary novel, coming of age story where the protagonist is betrayed by their mentor. These are the moments that we can all understand when we watch the films. Like when you watch To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, there's gonna be that great trial scene at the end. Is he gonna get off or is he not gonna get off? Is he gonna get convicted of the rape or is he not? So that is what drives the reader and the viewer to the end of that story. We set these things up so that the reader will have something to, you know, look forward to and anticipate at the very end of the story. So with the.

So you mentioned, like, the thriller has to have the hero at the mercy of the villain. So you're saying, like, if I'm writing a thriller and I don't put that in somewhere towards the end that what's going to. What's going to happen?

The book won't work and people won't be able to tell you why. Even some editors won't be able to tell you why, but they'll just say, I don't know, there's just. There's just something missing about it. And it just, you know, it just didn't work for me. And these are the things that, you know, writers. This is what drives writers crazy. Because if somebody said to them, hey, you know, you're building up to a place and then you never deliver the scene.

The writer will go, oh, my gosh, you're right. I didn't know that.

Oh, I can write that scene exactly right.

Because if given a problem, people can solve it, right? If I say to you, tim, you know, I'm going to call you tomorrow at 5:00 clock and I want you to have 10 different setups for a hero at the mercy of the villain scene. And I want. I want all 10 of them to be something that you've never seen before. That's a problem that you can put your mind to very specifically and think to yourself, how can I set up a hero at the mercy of the villain scene where Mel Gibson is not chained to a pipe and somebody's whipping him? Because we've seen that scene a thousand times, right?

Yeah, well, you know, when I read that part, I actually. Because I start, like going back through, you know, different movies and books, and I thought of the movie.

Limitless with Bradley Cooper and like, did you see that movie?

I didn't.

Okay, so it's all about this, like, pill that he takes to become superhuman. Like, he can think, he can like, solve any problem, he just becomes incredibly smart. He finishes this novel that he's been working on for years in like 24 hours or something. And spoiler alert, if you haven't seen it, there's this point towards the end of the movie where he's run out of the drug, he's going to withdrawal, he's about to die. And this one guy that has stolen all of his kind of stash is like right in front of him and he's, you know, gonna win and all this. And then all of a sudden, I forgot how. But that guy ends up like dead on the floor, bleeding. And Bradley Cooper like drinks his blood to get this stuff back in his system, you know. But it was like this turn of, like this point where the, the villain was Gonna win. And Bradley Cooper was tied up and dead, you know, almost dead on the floor because he was withdrawing from this medicine. And then it turned and I'm like, oh, man. Like, that's. That's what you're talking about, right?

Exactly. That's exactly it. And if you look at horror movies are another example. And usually it's the. The victim at the mercy of the monster scene. It's just a little variation on it. And the monster is usually so awesomely powerful that you could never believe that they would ever. I mean, that's what makes horror movies so, so exciting is that the difference between the power of the victim and the monster is so large that the viewer just cannot believe that there's any way out of the situation. And the higher you raise that power, you know, dynamic, the more exciting it is for a reader or for a viewer. So that's what an obligatory scene is. And every genre has them. And it doesn't mean, you know, some of the best writers fall into this trap. I mean, there are a lot of great writers who write novels that just don't work, but because, you know, they're. They're a list writers at this point. They just get the books published and people read it and they say, oh, it's wasn't one of his better ones, you know, and. But nobody can tell you why.

But can you, can you give an example of that?

I'd rather not say a specific person, you know.

Well, like, I'll tell.

I'll say one thing, and I think he would probably agree. There, There's a couple of, you know, there's more than one Stephen King novel like the Tommyknockers. That's not, you know, the top level of Stephen King, you know, put Tommy.

Knocker's next Drive me insane.

Yeah, put that next to Misery or the Shining. I mean, those are. Those are real substantial novels. And they're not about horror at all. They're. They're deep, deep internal genres that are expressed in external ways that are just. They'll just rock your world in so many different ways. I feel the same way. I mean, I wrote, you know, the story grid is a deep analysis of the Silence of the Lambs. And Thomas Harris, you know, he wrote Red Dragon, and who would have ever thought he could do any better than that? And then Silence of the Lambs comes along. Now, since Silence of the Lambs, you know, I think. I think he's been not. Not really at that level.

Well, so go back to Tommyknockers. And so what, like I'm trying to get at, like. Okay, because I've read it a long time ago, so I know I remember the plot, I remember what happened. I remember the ending. But, like, what. What was missing that made it not work?

Well, a lot of times again, I wrote. I read Tommyknocker so long ago, but that's where the. The aliens come down or something.

Well, yeah, they find that spaceship in the back of the thing, and then they're, like, making the batteries and everybody has to be in close to it so they don't die or something.

Yeah, exactly. That. What that is, is.

That'S a deus ex maa problem. Which means that when a writer puts themselves in a certain corner, instead of coming up with the perfect turn of a plot point, they'll just say like, oh, look at this magic herb I found in the forest, Jim.

That's the alien thing for me. Like, I hate when I'm watching a movie or reading a book and, like, there's this awesome mystery going on. And then, like, the writers just like, oh, it was aliens, because aliens can do. You know, you can say, aliens can do whatever you want because they're aliens. And that drives me insane because it's like this. You're getting me involved in a mystery and then you just make, oh, one. One that pissed me off. Like, that was.

Steve. Michael Crichton's, the one with the Sphere.

Is that it?

Okay. No, Sphere was my favorite one. We can't talk bad about Sphere. That was my favorite Michael Crichton book. No, it was the disease one.

Andromeda Strain.

Yeah. Because at the end, the Andromeda strain, they don't ever fix it. It just goes off into the atmosphere and goes away.

Yeah. I gotta tell you, what a great inciting incident, though, right?

Oh, what was it? I read it once and was so mad at the ending that.

Oh, the inciting incident is just. It's one of those things that just spooks you out so much. At the beginning of the story, it's sort of like.

It feels as if there's these astronauts that are going into this town and they're in, like, deep. You know, they got the mask on, they've got the whole suit on, they've got their own oxygen and their. And then you discovered that this is just like any normal town. And they go in and all these people are lying on the ground.

Yeah.

And then one guy takes out a knife to prick the skin, and he does, and, like, sand comes out.

Yeah, I remember that now.

And you're like, oh, my gosh, what's going on? And that. That's just like a killer inciting incident. Because you don't. I mean, it takes an ordinary scene and it makes it extraordinary just through. And then I think at one point, like, the coffee. The coffee mug is still warm and the guy just died or something. I don't know. But that kind of stuff, if you. Inciting incidents, man, if you spend a lot of time on them and you come up with something extraordinary. The great thing. Here's just a little tip. A great thing is to concentrate on two things. Because they bookend each other, right? The inciting incident and the global climax of your story. The ending payoff of your story. They have to bookend each other. And when I say that bookend, it means you're going to set up in the reader's mind an expectation that at the very end of this story is going to resolve that inciting incident, right? So just to use the Silences of the Lambs as an example, the inciting incident is this young recruit gets called into the boss's office. Not just any boss, like the boss of the FBI. Like, everybody respects this guy. He's the genius of the FBI. And for some reason, he asks her to go interview the biggest madman of all time. And it's very strange, and you're not sure why. You know, there's something not quite right about the situation. She agrees to do it. But what that sets up is the ultimate confrontation at the very end. You know, that Clarice Starling and this Mad Men are either going to be at each other's throats. Or there's going to be some crime that just is so outrageous that she's going to have to solve. And the way Thomas Harris twisted that. Because he sets up Hannibal Lecter as the force of central evil throughout the book, which he sort of is. But he's also the only trustworthy character in the entire novel. Which I thought was just a brilliant twist. But anyway, you're inciting incidents in crime stories and in science fiction, in thrillers especially, if you can get that moment where the reader or the viewer just goes, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen next?

So what's your definition of an inciting incident?

It's when something happens for good or for ill, that throws the world out of whack. It breaks the equilibrium of everyday life, right? So two things can happen. It can either be causal, meaning somebody does something. Somebody kills your brother, right? And you have to go find the person who killed your Brother, that. That's a causal inciting incident, a horrible situation. You come home.

You know you're gonna go fishing with your brother that day, and instead he's lying on the carpet and he's got, you know, he's been shot to death. You have no clue who did it. That's a causal inciting incident where your world as the protagonist, the protagonist's world, completely thrown out of whack. Then there's the.

I think it's coincidental, which would mean something like by some stroke of luck, you won the lottery and you are delivered a check for $150 million. So something great happens to you that throws the balance of life out of your. A good example of this one is a simple plan, right? A couple of guys walking through the woods, they stumble upon a plane. There's a whole slew of money in there, right? All they have to do is keep their mouth shut, hide the money, keep their mouth shuts for a few months when the story falls away from the press, everything's gonna be great. You're all gonna be rich, right? Mm. And it doesn't end up that way.

But that's. That's a great coincidental inciting incident that makes the reader go, oh, my gosh, what would I do if I. If I stumbled upon all that money in the woods? How would I deal with it? And what if I had that?

Oh, well, is that like, what. What do you call a good one versus a bad one? Is it that question of, like, it'll make people say, oh, what would I do in this situation? Or what makes a good inciting incident versus, you know, not so good?

Well, the thing is that.

It'S so dependent upon the writer and the storyteller. Some people can wrap an inciting incident like the Great Gatsby, right? The inciting incident of that novel is Daisy Buchanan's cousin rents a summer house next to Jay Gatsby. That's it. This guy from, you know, I think he's from Minnesota or somewhere like that shows up and he rents this little shack on Long Island Sound next to Jay Gatsby. Gatsby finds out he's the cousin of his long lost love, and there you have it, right? That's a tiny little inciting incident. It's a coincidental inciting incident, so to say, whether it depends on the genre you're working in, right? So if you're working in science fiction and you have a tiny little, you know, cheesy, non exciting little inciting incident, like.

Somebody comes home for lunch and aliens have landed in their backyard. Actually, that's probably not a bad idea.

But you know what I mean? It's all the skill set of the writer. It's. Can you. Can you, you know, turn the reader into somebody who voraciously wants to know what's going to happen? That's the skill.

You know, I was telling you about that podcast entitled Rothfuss, and Max Timken, who is the host of it, he's. He created that game Cards Against Humanity. And what he was talking at one point, he was talking about why he loves comedy so much, is because you can take a story to somebody and say, do you like this? And they can lie to you. He's like, but if you, like, tell somebody a joke or, like, show them a joke that you've written, like, you can tell by whether or not they laugh, whether or not it works, you know? And I guess that's what's so hard about some of this stuff is like, I want to know when something I've written doesn't work or when my inciting incident, it doesn't grab people's attention and keep them reading? You know, is there, like. Is there a good kind of rule of thumb, like, take it? I don't know. I don't even know what I'm asking.

Here's what I'm going to suggest. Yeah, I know what you're asking. What you're asking is, is there a way I can test before I bang out 80,000 words and find out somebody doesn't like it?

Right?

And the answer to that is yes. And you can use the story grid to do this. And it's all in the chapter about math, believe it or not. And what you do is that, you know, there are three. There are three sections of every story. There's a beginning hook, there's a middle build, and there's an ending payoff. Now, each one of these sections has a certain, you know, you spend a certain amount of time in each one of them. But the bottom line is each one of those sections has to have five things in them. They have to have an inciting incident, a progressive complication, a crisis, a climax, and a resolution. So what I would do is I would write down 15 little scenes, setups, right? You would want to write your inciting incident of your beginning hook. This would be the inciting incident of your global story. For example, you know, if F. Scott Fitzgerald is sitting down, he's going to story grid, you know, the Great Gats. Before he writes it, he's going to write down on his first. The first sentence is, nick Carraway moves next to Jay Gatsby. That would be the inciting incident of the global story. And then, remember I was talking about how the inciting incident and the ending payoff always sort of bookend each other. What's the ending of the Great Gatsby? The ending of the Great Gatsby is. Gatsby's dead.

Right?

Yeah.

And the only person who goes to his funeral is this guy who had just moved in two months ago. Now that's a great bookend, Right?

Right.

This guy shows up, he's a pitcher, right? He's just some guy from the Midwest. He's got no connections. He has some distant cousin who's kind of a bitch. He lives next to this rich guy, Right. And the initial reaction of the reader is, oh, I feel sorry for that Nick Carraway. You know, he's a real striver. I don't know if he's gonna make it or not. At the end of the novel, you feel terrible for Jay Gatsby.

Yeah.

The only guy who shows up to his funeral is the guy who just rented the cottage next door. Talk about a bookend. And that, that, you know what that is? That is just incredible writing. That's what it is. And so if you look at your story that way and you say to yourself, you know, even forget about the middle build for a second, just beginning hook, ending, payoff. And if you can go out and then this is what you do, Tim, then you call up three friends, right? And you set up individual coffee drinks with each one of those friends. And you say, I'm gonna pay and I'm gonna buy anything that you want at the coffee shop, but you have to listen to me for 15 minutes. And then you take them out to coffee and you've got your list of 15 scenes, or say it's even, break it down to five or 10 or whatever. Just get your beginning hook and your ending payoff down so that it turns, right, that there's a real sort of turn. What you expect at the beginning isn't what happens, but at the end. But it makes sense. It's inevitable that it happens. It's surprising and inevitable. So at the end of the Great Gatsby, it's really surprising that Gatsby's dead. But when you look back at it, you're like, you know, it was inevitable. This is a guy who's living a fantasy world who was placing all of his hopes and dreams in some, you know, really stupid, nasty rich lady who would never, ever live up to what he wanted in the first place. In fact, it's probably a good thing that he. He got killed.

Because what if he had gotten Daisy? That would have driven a guy crazy, right?

Yeah.

So that's an inevitable but surprising conclusion. So back to what to do. So, you know, write this stuff out and then go out with a friend and sit there and tell them a story and see if they start rolling their eyes, if they start fidgeting in their chair, you're going to know. It's like the joke thing. You know, when you tell a joke, people are either going to laugh or they're not, or they're going to be, ah, yeah, that's funny. And it's the same thing when you tell them a story. Like, if you say to them, oh, you're not going to believe what happened to Chip the other day. They're going to be interested, right? And then if you're a terrible storyteller, you're going to lose them very quickly. But if you've got a good story to tell, they're going to listen to the end and in fact, they're going to go, oh, my gosh, you're kidding me. Wow.

So, okay, so that actually brings up something completely different in my mind that I. I'd like to get your input on. Because you've been an editor for 20 plus years, right?

Yes.

Okay, so ballpark me how many writers you've worked with?

At least three, four. 300.

Okay, so you've worked with a lot of different writers. Describe to me the attitude that a writer brings to their work. That is, that makes them most likely to succeed in the long term.

That's it. That's a really good question.

I think that there are. There are stages in a writer's life because there's. Yeah, go ahead.

I mean, because my biggest fear as I'm getting into this is I'm gonna, like, you know, you know, Stephen King's like, kill your darlings. Kill your darlings. And I'm like, how am I gonna know the difference between killing my darlings and doing, you know, and doing what I know I need to put in my story? And how am I gonna know when people are gonna tell me the truth? And how. How can I make sure that I don't turn into that? Like, like, oh, the story, you know, and just like, all, like, up in arms about being pure to the story, you know, like, those. That's my. Probably my biggest worry right now as I step into this, is that I will bring the wrong attitude to the craft. That will really undercut my chances at success.

Well, my advice to that is. My advice to just about everything is this. You can't worry about what other people are going to think. You can't worry about living up to some strange theoretical ideal. The only person. The only person that you're going to be with when you're a writer is yourself. So my advice is always, you know, think about the craft. Enjoy it. Enjoy, you know, like we're laughing about how I write down, you know, how many words are in a paragraph. I kind of enjoy that.

In the sense that it. It engages a part of me that, you know, I just can't. I can't do anywhere else. And that's what writers are. Writers are people who really can't get much satisfaction unless they're engaging in a story within their own brain. And they don't even know what it is sometimes. And they get confused and they get. They're not sure. And sometimes people give them advice. But the bottom line is that you need as a writer to be open to learning your craft and saying, oh, well, you know, the muse didn't tell me. I just need to be loyal to what I think is right. And I don't think I should put in an obligatory scene. I think that's what hacks do. Well, I think that's baloney. I think that's. That's running away from your requirements as a writer. Your requirements as a writer are to move people, to tell them something, to have some controlling idea that says something to them. Now, the great things about commercial fiction writers and when they. When they. When they go beyond sort of just telling a humdinger of a tale is that they have a message underneath their story. So I think the thing for you to think about when you write a story is what do I want to say here? You know, like, do you think Fitzgerald had anything to say in the Great Gatsby? You're damn right he did. You know what he had to say? Pursuing money for money's sake and trying to be somebody that you're not is a death wish. You are never, ever going to be Tom whatever his name is, Jay Gatsby. Be yourself. And in fact, you're going to betray your moral interior by chasing some baloney dream that has no meaning. And Fitzgerald told that story, and he put that forth in such a beautiful way that it's changed people's lives. That's your job as a writer, is to think about those things that are the most important to you specifically. What means something to you as a writer? What means something. What do you want to convey in your story that somebody's going to take away and say, oh, man, I'm glad I don't live in a mansion.

That's kind of. I think that would be my guiding principle for any writer is, you know, when all the crap starts to fall on your head, you got to remember, hey, I enjoy what I do. I enjoy chasing the form and the craft. And even when the days are terrible and nothing comes to me, at least you know, I'm with characters and ideas that inspire me. So if you're out there trying to write a blockbuster movie that, you know, Robert Downey Jr. Is going to star in and you're going to make a zillion dollars, you're in for a world of pain. You really are. Because maybe even if you get that, it's not going to really mean much to you. But if you're in it to tell an elegant story that can change somebody and to make them not feel alone, then you're going to get something out of it. Then you're a real writer. You're. You know, you're going to have some ups and some downs, and some of your books aren't going to work. And, you know, some editors are going to tell you you're an idiot. A lot of people won't read your stuff, and all that crap is going to happen to you, guaranteed. But at the end of the day, you'll be able to say to yourself, hey, man, you know, I really. I really busted my ass on that idea I had, and it's in that book, and that's all I can give.

Yeah. What? That reminded me of a quote from Jim Carrey that was. I'm going to butcher it, but it was something like, you know, I wish everybody could get everything they ever wanted so that they would realize that's not going to solve their problems. You know, something like. You know, something like that. So when he said that about, like, writing this huge blockbuster, I thought of that.

It's a hard lesson to learn.

Well, and do you think, like, so you're, You're.

You're taking.

When you say the Great Gatsby, you're taking, like, this novel that has stood the test of time and saying, okay, write something like that. But I've also read, like, okay, you.

Know, just some kind of the Rings, so is the Hobbit, so has Marathon Man. I mean, there are certain classic stories that it means it really to call something literary or commercial is really just. It's a way to position something in a marketplace. I think the Great Gatsby is just, you know, I think it's the great American novel. You know, a lot of other people do, a lot of people don't. It doesn't really matter. It means a lot to me.

And that's all that matters, you know?

Well, I guess I wonder, like, because I'm trying to. A book I've loved, I really loved in the last couple years was this book by a guy named Max Berry called Lexicon.

Oh, I remember. Yeah. I didn't read that book, but I read Syrup years and years ago when I was an acquiring editor and I loved it. I think I lost it. The Penguin.

But okay, yeah, I. That's one of his identity. But I've read Lexicon and Machine man and I think one other of his.

But Lexicon, I mean, it was just this story that, you know, kind of left you breathless. It was so fast paced. But when I think back to it, and I just love that book I've recommended all the time. Like, I can't think of like, the lesson, the life lesson I learned in it. Like, all I remember was I couldn't read fast enough to figure out what happened next.

Well, I would have to read it. I can tell you this.

There is probably a controlling idea in there that is not earth shattering. Like, for instance, the Firm. It's a terrific novel. I loved it. Had a blast reading it. And the controlling idea of that novel.

Is, you know, don't work for the mob.

Well, it's sort of like, you know, criminals come, you know, they come to justice when their victims are smarter than they are. They outwit the, you know, the villain. I mean, that's not a huge. But the basic moral of that story is, you know, justice prevails. Right. And one of the reasons why we need stories is, is to reinforce those very important social, you know, things that we have. You know, when we read a book, injustice prevails. It makes us feel like, hey, you know, the bad guys aren't getting away with stuff.

Yeah, and that's a great point because, you know, I do. So I do the book marketing side and I've been doing that for almost a decade. And when I talk to writers, like when I talk to fiction writers, I often get this line about like, well, it's hard to like, market my book because I'm not like helping people lose weight or I'm not helping people do this. And they kind of get this tone of like, well, My book's not really helping people. It's kind of their. Their thing. And I just struggle because I'm like, you know, I love fiction more than nonfiction, and it's added to my life. But it's been hard to put into words like, yes, your work matters because of this, but I think you just did.

Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why we tell stories to each other, and that is to.

Keep the bedrock of humanity strong.

There are moral principles that we all, in our hearts believe in, truly. It doesn't matter if what religious affiliation you have. There's. There's moral right and wrong and stories. They reinforce those values and they keep the society strong. So, you know, even pot boilers, serial killer thrillers, all that stuff, it does support this thing that, you know, what if you're a bad guy? You're going to get caught. Eventually, you're going to get caught. You're not going to get away with it. Even if you get away with it, you're going to, like, you know, Dostoevsky, you know, I mean, like, even if you get away with it, you're going to eat yourself up alive. You know, you're going to destroy yourself by having the knowledge that you're an evil person will destroy you. Those are important messages for people to get across. And when they entertained. At the same time, it's even better because those things are absorbed without this sort of dogmatic person saying. And this is the thing about literary fiction. A lot of times you have these dogmatic writers who say this, that, and the other thing, and we should all do this, and they don't tell a story to save their lives. So nobody really gets anything out of it beyond their intellectual virtuosity. So I'm, as you can tell, I'm a huge fan of just really good, strong storytelling that, you know, if you're. If you want to write a mystery. What's a mystery about? It's about solving a riddle, you know, and that's. That's what life is all about.

Thanks so much for being a part of this very first episode of the StoryGrid podcast. Sean and I are really excited about the future of this podcast and what it means to you and what it means to all of us as we become better writers together. If you want to learn more about the story, grid, the book, Sean, everything that he's doing, you can go to storygrid.com and sign up for the email list. That's a number one thing you're going to want to do. Sean regularly sends out new content, new podcast episodes, new articles he's writing, and if you don't want to miss anything, that's the thing to do. Storygrid.com Sign up for the email list if you want to see all the episodes of this podcast as they come out and subscribe. You can see those@storygrid.com podcast and then lastly, if you love the show and you want to make sure that we keep doing this, there's two things that you can do to help out. The first, tell one of your friends, tell one of your author friends, share it in your Facebook, author group, whatever, tell somebody else about the podcast and bring them along for the ride so they can become a better writer alongside all of us. And secondly, if you can go to itunes and leave a review of the show, that makes a really big difference in which episodes and which podcasts get recommended inside of itunes really helps out in the long run. So if you can go into itunes and rate this show, leave a review view. That'd be a big help. That's it for this first episode of the Story Grid podcast. My name is Tim Grohl. On behalf of Sean Coyne, thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time.