Creating a Story Grid - Part 1

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book StoryGrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we step into the next tool in evaluating and your first draft. So we've gone through three so far, and this is the fourth one. And if it sounds like kind of a long slog, that's exactly what it feels like on my end anyway. But what I'm hoping and what, you know, Sean says and I think is true is this is going to make the shift from the first draft to the second draft, just make the book so, so much better looking at the story from all these different angles. So this is the fourth tool. It's definitely one that's probably the hardest on me to wr. Wrap my head around, but I think it's a really great one and I'm excited to jump in and get started. So, Sean, we're continuing to work through the first draft of my novel. And this has just been continued to be fascinating to me because everything that you see out there is all about writing your first draft and how to write your first draft. But I've never really seen a methodical way to move from first draft to second draft. And this thing we've been going over for the last six or eight weeks is nothing if it's not methodical. So. So we've gone through going scene by scene through the story grid spreadsheet and then doing a big to do list and brainstorm. Then we did the full SCAP global story grid, where we put the entire novel on one sheet of paper. And then we looked at the hero's journey and walked through both the archetypes and the moments of the hero's journey based on Voldner's work and use that as a way to evaluate, you know, what I have in the book, what I'm missing, what needs to be turned up a little bit, and then this. Now we're moving into a scene by scene external value. So can you talk? I tried to do the homework from last week, and we'll go over that, but can you talk a little bit about what this is?

Sure. This is a way to evaluate each and every scene in your novel in terms of the global story value. Now, the global story value is, is based upon your chosen Genres, right? So it's not like something you have to, you know, make up. It's. It's baked in to each and every genre in, you know, storytelling. So your genres are globally the thriller for the external and the coming of age maturation plot for the internal. Right. So from these two major polls, we can look at each and every scene that you've written and assign it a number. Now when I say assign it a number, what I mean is to evaluate each scene in terms of the other scenes in the entire story. So for example, the low point or the all is lost moment in your story would be the very, very lowest point on a graph, on the story grid graph. So because you have now say you had 150 scenes. Now you don't. But let's say you wrote, you know, the first half of War and Peace and it was, and it was 150 scenes. So what you would do is you would have 75 scenes that would probably be in the positive realm and 75 scenes that would be sort of in the negative realm. But the, the lowest point would be a negative 75 and the highest point on the positive axis would be a positive 75. So because you wrote 60 scenes, what I suggested is that you look at each scene in your story and assign it a number relative to the other scenes in your story. Now this is kind of a new innovation that I'm bringing to story grid. So know, lucky you, you get to be the guinea pig for it. And the reason why I thought this would be a good innovation for the story grid is that it reduces the subjectivity of the analysis. What I mean by that is the way I would like when I went through Pride and Prejudice and when I went through the Silence of the Lambs, I, I sort of gave it not a subjective but a kind of not wishy washy but general sense on each scene where it would be in the spectrum of value, you know, would it be a little bit higher than the previous scene? Would it be a little bit lower? That sort of thing. Instead, what I think would be even more accurate and more helpful would be to evaluate it in terms of each scene in the story. You know, each of your scenes would have, you know, ideally the positive on one end would, you know, reflect the negative on another end so that you would have this sort of emotional irony going throughout your story. I know I'm speaking in really vague terms and I'm trying, I'm looking around my office now to find the story grid of the Silence of Lamps. Hold on a second. My point is, is that each scene. What a great thing to do would be to evaluate each of your scenes so that you can distinguish one from the other. You can track how progressively it's getting more tense or less tense or she's approaching maturity or she's getting away from maturity. And the way to do that is to give each scene a number. And then when you go to make your story grid, because all of your scenes will be given specific numbers, it'll be very, very easy to plot those numbers on a graph. Right. What I thought would be good to start here was to ask you to evaluate all 60 of your scenes and find the most positive moment when life, you know, the most positive element of the life value is present and the most negative level of the life value, which would approach, you know, damnation. And also to look at the maturation plot. When is she at the lowest point, the furthest away from being capable of maturing? When does she sort of have a massive amount of cognitive dissonance to the point where she sort of freaks out? And when does she reach maturity? You know, what is the highest level of that scene? Which scene is she the most mature? Do you have an answer for that? Yeah.

So. So let's start with the external life and death value. So, because I feel like that's the most straightforward. So I put the negative 30 as when she dies at the end of the third severing, right before the ending payoff of the book. And then I put the positive 30 is when she forces herself to wake up out of the grid and confront Randy. So, like the third from last scene.

Okay, well, let's talk about it. The lowest point is when she is literally dead. Right.

Right. Okay, I have that marked. That was. Of the. Of the four scenes I had to mark that one I marked first because I'm like, if it's life and death, she was closest to death when she actually died.

Okay, let me ask you this question then. Okay.

Okay.

Is there a moment in the story when she's actually at a worse place than that? Meaning where to die would be almost a mercy. Meaning if she were to put herself, she would be damned if she does not make a specific kind of action. Do you know what I'm saying?

No.

Okay, so in Silence of the Lambs, at the end of the middle build, Clarice Starling has been shipped back to Quantico because they say you're off the case. Go back, Starling. We don't want you here anymore. It's right after she has the final Discussion with Hannibal Lecter just before Lecter escapes the prison in Tennessee. And so they send her back, and she's at sort of this very, very low point in her. In her life because she has to make a very difficult choice. The choice that she has to make is she knows that she has some level of gift that the other investigators don't have. She knows that she can think in terms of what the victim has experienced, as opposed to what everybody else does, which is trying to look at the murders through the point of view of the killer. So she intuitively, inside of herself, knows that she should continue on her track, investigating this murder. Not this murder, but this kidnapping. There's a woman's life is at stake. She is being held captive by a madman in a pit where nobody knows where he is. And she, because she's very intelligent, puts together the clues that Hannibal Lecter gives her, and she intuitively thinks, what I should do is go investigate the very first victim of the killer. Because she understands from Hannibal Lecter, because Lecter says to her, buffalo Bill covets things. So what do you do when you covet something is it's constantly in your presence. So Starling says to herself, if Buffalo Bill started killing because he coveted something, I should go back to the very first victim. Because that very first victim was probably someone very close to him, because he saw in her what he wanted. So she puts together all these pieces in her mind and understands that she should go back to Ohio, where the very first victim was killed, because Buffalo Bill probably lives there because he coveted this young girl who was living close to him. And she turns out to be right. So she begins to think in terms of who the victim is and why she is so special to the killer, as opposed to, you know, the way everybody else is thinking, which is from the point of view of the killer anyway. So it's at this moment when she realizes that she's onto something. Now, her life is not in jeopardy, but she faces an internal damnation of sorts. Because if she does not go on her instincts and if she does not do everything in her power to try and save this poor woman who's been held captive, she will never forgive herself. She will feel damned. So she reaches the point of damnation, close to the edge of damnation, at the end of the middle Bill. And she has to make a choice. Do I stay here in Quantico and get everything that I ever wanted, which is to be an FBI agent and respect for my family, or do I put that at risk? Seriously at risk. She's going to get kicked out of the academy if they find out she did this in order to save another person. And she makes the choice to go and do everything in her power to save the life of another person. So. But it's the moment when she faces the possibility of living damned, walking around for the rest of her life. This is why they call the novel the Silence of the Lambs, because as a child, Clarice Starling heard lambs being slaughtered, and she could hear them screaming, and it tormented her her entire life. So, you know, thematically, she does not want to experience, you know, she wants to silence those lambs. She wants to be heroic. And the only way she's going to be heroic is if she goes and, you know, makes the choice to put her. All of her material and personal stuff aside in order to save the woman in the, you know, in the lair of the killer.

So it's at that moment when she faces damnation. So that is, you know, a very, very critical part of the story. And it's. I think it's scene number 50 or 51 in the novel. It's just at the end of the middle build. And so that's the low point, the lowest point for the life value in Silence of the Lambs. So I'm going to go back to my question for you. Is there a moment in your novel where Jesse faces a similar choice?

There's a. There's the choice of whether or not she's going to stand with Randy or fight against him.

That's correct.

Okay.

So that is facing. This is a really key point about the life value. And it's one that can be very confusing. So I want to talk about it again. The life value, you know, it's. It's very. It's wonderful the way storytelling is, because the life value seems very, very easy. Right. You're either alive or you're dead. Right.

Well, that's what I was thinking.

No, no, I mean, it's obvious. And I go through the same thing every time I'm analyzing something. And it makes me really have to think more clearly about what the life value means. Is it better? The concept is this damnation to be alive, but to be internally damned. So it's almost as if putting somebody out of their misery would be, you know, a mercy. And putting them out of their misery would mean that they die so they wouldn't have to walk around anymore tormenting themselves with all the horrible things that they did or did not do. That is a damned life. It's you know, it's sort of somebody who does something really. And this is the. The thing of, you know, redemption stories is it begins with a character who's living a damned life and redeems themselves and comes back. So for Jesse, the lowest point on the life, you know, value, the negative 30 scene, is the moment when she has to confront damnation. And she, you know, the scene after that is going to jump, right, because she's going to make a choice from the lowest of the low on the life value to I'm going to be an, you know, altruistic, and I'm going to sacrifice myself for the greater good. So I would say the lowest point for you on your. On your spreadsheet would be the moment when she faces that choice. Now, here's a. Here's a note to think about. Is it clear in your story that she's facing that sort of choice, or are we sort of noodling around to find that moment?

Yeah, it's not clear.

Right? It's not clear. So this is a great moment. Right? And this is one of the reasons why you want to do this kind of deep thinking evaluation, because what we've just discovered is you need to take a sledgehammer and really make it clear. Like, and I'm not saying, like, you have to literally have somebody say, well, my choices are to help everybody else or to just be selfish. That's not what I'm saying. It's to think about how Thomas Harris handled the damnation point in his novel When Starling Faces Damnation. She doesn't literally sit around going, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? Do I stay in the FBI or do I go try and save this woman? No, what Thomas Harris does is he has her dreaming. I believe he has her dream in the scene right before she goes to see Crawford. And it's in this dream that she remembers the horrific screams of. Of the lambs and also of, you know, when she escapes and she leaves on the horse from her uncle's Montana ranch. But she thinks about her past, how her past comes to haunt her in her dreams. And it's then that she decides she can't sleep. She leaves her bed and she goes to the laundry room and she does laundry like we all do when we don't want to deal with anything and we can't think. So we do, like, a really manual task because it frees up our mind. And she goes to do her laundry, and she can see the tumbling, and it makes this. This very kind of soothing Noise. And it's at that moment that he cuts the scene. And then the next scene is, you know, she's made her choice at that point. Like, nah, I gotta. She goes to do her laundry because she's packing her bag. She's going, she's leaving. And so that's a way of really, clearly, I'm not saying, you know, telling the reader, saying, kind of showing the reader, you know, Jesse's. You know, she could be. It's like when those great Westerns in the scene, you know, every Western has the, you know, the showdown scene where, you know, the gunfighters go and, you know, and what really terrific filmmakers and writers do is they. They let us into the world of the. The good guy before he has to go and, you know, fire a gun and try and kill somebody else. So we see him, like, you know, cleaning off his boots and polishing his buckle and, you know, doing kind of the manual. Go ahead.

Yeah. Goes and sees his girl for one more time.

Yes. Yeah. Takes care of. Yeah. If I don't come out of it, this is what you need to do. And don't cry. This is something that has to be done. And if I don't do it, nobody will. That kind of thing. So, you know, it's kind of interesting because we skipped over some stuff at the very ending payoff so that you could kind of work out, you know, the logistics of how are you going to flesh it out? So this is a great note for you. Oh, wow. This can really sort of pump me into.

The ending payoff. If I can get Jesse to come to the realization that, oh, my gosh, I've got to basically do whatever's possible all the way to losing my own life to stop my brother. And, you know, she doesn't literally have to say that, but that would, you know, then you're like, wow. Then the reader is going to be like, oh, my gosh, what she's got. What's she gonna do? How's she going to figure this one out? She just came back to life. How's this going to work out? How's this possible?

Yeah.

So that will be your low, low, low point on the life value. That's going to be your negative 30 on the life value. And your positive. Your positive. Positive 30 is going to be where.

So I have the positive 30. See, I got to get back to it. I was putting that note in my brain.

Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Well, so the positive 30 would be when she.

So is the hero at the mercy of the villain? Right, right.

Okay. And I had. That's what I have here.

Okay, good. Because that.

So I have it. When she wakes up, she forces herself out and then beats Randy.

Yes.

It's the scene after the hero at the mercy of the villain. Right. When she comes out of that.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's the. The scene at the hero, the mercy of the villain scene and begins negatively and it ends positively. Right. So the hero of the mercy of the villain scene will be dynamically the most positive one because she triumphs. The scene after that will probably be a little bit lower because it's like, you know, when you stand up the plate in baseball and you hit our home run, it's the moment of impact, when you hit the ball. That is the high point. Right. That's when you are fully, fully in line with the universe. Or, you know, use any analogy. I like sports because anybody who's hit a baseball solidly knows what I'm talking about. Or hitting a golf ball or, you know, writing a great sentence. You know, you have that feeling. You're at the moment of, like, complete, you know, karma. I mean, not karma nirvana in the universe. You feel, oh, wow. And then the minute you start running to first base is a letdown. I mean, you're happy. It's like when. When they ask guys who win the NBA championship or the super bowl, how's it feel? And they always go, oh, it's unbelievable. You know, it's like. It doesn't feel like anything now. At the moment when I won, it was amazing. And I can't even explain what that felt like right now. It feels kind of like, is this all there is? Because, yeah, I've got some stupid trophy. But the thing that was interesting and the reason why I play this game is for the moment I can't describe you. It's the moment when I am, you know, I hit that, you know, that incredible mystical, spiritual, you know, cord. And that's when it was amazing. Now it's not so amazing. Answering questions about how I felt is not really that amazing. And so that's the same thing in a story is that. That moment that she, you know, put. It's like when they put the final dagger in Dracula, you know, it's like, bang. The final force. That's when everything's cool. So that will be your plus 30. Is the hero at the mercy of the villain scene when she triumph.

Okay, that's. I had that marked.

Okay, great.

So looking at the internal value. So this one I struggled with a bit For a couple reasons. So we're moving from naivety mast as sophistication to naivety to uncertainty to maturity.

Yes.

And if I look at my full scap, which I feel like is cheating, but I looked at my full scap, and it starts negative, double negative, and then it's just positive all the way to the end. And so I was looking. And this is. You know, when we did that on the full scap, I had lot of trouble because I couldn't. I was having trouble differentiating between seeing it as the storyteller and seeing it as Jesse. And so part of me thinks the negative 30 should just be the first scene because that's when she's the most naive. But then part of me, you know, even what you're talking about when we first started this episode is part of me thinks the negative 30 is that second severing at the all is lost moment. So I put it as that scene 31 right in the middle, the all is lost moment. But I struggled between whether it should be scene one or scene 31.

Well, that's a really, really good question. And it's a really. This is why. This is really important to think about. Because I'll admit right now, I'm not always correct. My. My initial thinking. Thinking is not always correct. And I have to do. What everybody else has to do is to step back and isolate the question and really think it through. So for me, let's really think it through. When is Jesse. When are any of us the most naivete masked as sophistication? Okay, so what does that mean? That means when the person believes that they are smarter than everybody else. They're sophisticated. They have a very, very. Their worldview is universally sound, and they have no hesitancy in making choices because they have a very, very strong worldview. It's like people who have very intense worldviews that are intractable, usually religious zealots, you know, anybody who's thoroughly committed to their worldview and anybody who challenges it is the enemy. Okay, so at the very beginning of the story, Jesse thinks that she understands the way the world is. She believes that she's figured out a way around it. She's a hacker. Everybody else is mining and doing all the stuff that the faction tells them to do. And she does that to a point. But she sees how, you know, corrupt everything really is. And she. She understands that because she's capable of maneuvering in the virtual world in ways that nobody else can. She has a certain gift. So she believes that her worldview is strong, is. Is intractable, is she's got it figured out. Having that attitude is perfectly, you know, that that's very strong. But what's even stronger than that? Any idea holding the attitude. Well, what's even more a bigger expression of naivete masked as sophistication. Is it the character thinking that they are sophisticated when they're really naive, or is it when they act when they're sophisticated, when they're really naive? Yeah.

I mean, I would say it's when they're faced with something that would expose their naivete and they still ignore it. My wife's therapy calls, you know, ripping. Ripping off the denial blanket. So when somebody tries to rip off the denial blanket and they just hold it on even tighter.

Right. So I think it's. And I think you agree it's when we act from our intractable worldview in a way that is. Does not. That holds us back. So I would say the negative 30 for her naivete, you know, spectrum is when she turns down the trip to the, you know, to the special school and she says, no, I'm not going to do that. So that. That's at the end. Right now it's at the end of scene one. But you may or may not, you know, tweak with.

Yeah, it's probably gonna be scene two or three.

Okay.

Because we're gonna. We're gonna have the prologue, but we're probably gonna also have a scene. So the prologue and then the actual first scene will probably be some world establishment. And then the second scene will be the one that is currently the first scene, a version of it.

Right, Right. Okay. So you would begin. So that's your negative 30 point. And you are correct about the movement of the maturation plot. It moves from positive from negative to positive globally throughout the story. It keeps getting a little bit. Little bit more positive. Now, since you brought it up before we get into the plus 30, let's do the plus 30 on. On the naivete scale because it's pretty easy.

Yeah. It's the last scene. So it's when she goes back and she admits she doesn't know what's going on or what to do next.

That's correct. And that is, as anybody who's an adult can agree with that is maturity. When you say, really don't know. Really, really don't know. Now, let's talk about that moment when she freaks out. Where do you think that falls on the spectrum?

I feel like it's actually in the positive because it's when she finally, like, is able to face the fact that she doesn't know what to do. So up until that point, it might be the point where it flips. Maybe it's the positive one because it's the point where it finally flips from naivety to uncertainty.

Yeah. I would even put it right on the X axis itself, you know?

Okay.

It's right. That intersection moment when it's like the Kubler Ross moment when we stop bargaining and we were over our depression and now we just face reality. You know, we face up to it. We, you know, we change our course of action. We're open to suggestions, as they say. So, you know, now. So now you've established for the naivete maturation plot, your. Your beginning, your middle, and your ending. Right. So that would be zero. Right. For that scene would be the number zero.

Or.

Or, you know, one.

You know, I put zero slash one.

Yeah.

Because if we do zero, it's gonna mess it up because there goes our valence. Well, because then. Then I'll have 61 numbers with 60 scenes, and it's just. I can't handle that. So I put 0/1.

I just had that moment of panic in my own head. So. Thank you for saving.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's pretty good now. Now let's go back to the life value. So we have our positive 30. When.

So I have the positive 30. It's the third from the last scene. It's the. The scene where she overcomes villain.

Right.

And then the negative 30. So there is a point where. There's a point where she does make the decision to, like, she confronts Randy and is like, I know what's going on, and I'm going to fight you. But it's not like, well done, like we talked about. So I went ahead and marked it as negative 30, but I'll have to rewrite a couple things to get it to work the right way. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think so. Your negative 30 is the moment when she comes to the realization that she has to sacrifice herself for the greater good. And what you just described as a scene where she confronts her brother and says, I'm going to fight you. Right, Right.

Because I don't have the scene that I need. Right.

You know, the great thing, the thing to remember is the obvious choice is always probably not the one you want to end up using. And so what's so great about the Silence of the Lambs is that it's. I don't want to get too. Harris made the external low point, meaning the Life value. He dramatized that by having an internalized scene. Do you follow what I'm saying?

Yeah. With the dream?

Yeah, with the dream. So that was an internal. He internalized the external and externalizes the internal. When you're. When you're doing that scene with Jesse where she. She comes. She comes up to this problem. She understands if. If I do this, it will be good for me and terrible for everybody else and I need to choose what's good for everybody else at my own expense. That scene may not be something where she's having a conversation with anybody. It could be the moment where, you know, she just kind of. She's doing something. It's expressed through a softer scene that doesn't have a lot of guns and knives. And action. You know what I'm saying?

Could I make it the scene where Lila reveals to her the scene where she realizes that Randy's the bad guy?

I don't know that you can. Because that is a very large beat in the story. It's a large moment when we come to realize, oh, my gosh, Randy's the evil force behind this entire thing. We thought it was the, you know, the mayor or whatever, and now it's Randy. So if you try and jam, if you try and add any additional moment there, it will confuse the scene. So you need an entirely different scene where, you know, Jessie, it's almost like she has to deal with it herself. Or, you know, there's a moment in the great. In that great movie, the Deer Hunter. I don't know if you ever saw that movie, but it's a story of these. These guys from Western Pennsylvania who work in a steel mill. It's during the Vietnam era. And three of them are sent to Vietnam. And they're all very rough and tumble kind of blue collar guys who have no fear of going to Vietnam. Flash forward, they go to Vietnam and it's horrifying. They get, you know, they all get captured by these Viet Cong who make them play Russian roulette. Sorry to spoil the story. It's. I'm really. They make them play Russian roulette and there comes a moment where, you know, they understand they've got to do something or they're just gonna, you know, eventually die in this. In this sort of prison. So one guy's facing the other guy and they're both brothers. Not literal brothers, but they're brothers from Western Pennsylvania. And one's played by Robert De Niro, one's played by Christopher Walken. And De Niro, you know, says to the guy put two bullets in here. Three bullets. We'll play with three bullets. And then he gets them out of the situation. Flash forward two years later, De Niro's back in western Pennsylvania, and Christopher Walken has stayed in Vietnam. He's lost his mind. He's become completely, you know, completely fragmented. And he's. He's now making his life playing Russian roulette for money. And they finally say to De Niro, hey, you know, Christopher Walken, he's not. He hasn't come home, you know, what are we going to do? And he's like, dude, I don't want to go back to Vietnam. It was horrifying. What do you want me to do? And there's a couple of scenes where people aren't saying anything to him directly, but eventually he reaches the point where he just. He stops and he just. He's in the middle of something, and he just goes, okay. Oh, I know what it is. He's out hunting deer. This is why they call it deer hunter. He's out hunting deer. And he's the best shot, right? He's the best deer hunter in western Pennsylvania. And he's. He's tracked down this deer. It's just him and the deer. And he's got the gun raised, and he's. He's looking through the scope and he sees the eye of the deer, and he drops his gun and he says, okay. And the next scene is him going back to Vietnam to get his friend back. And it's that moment that we don't really. When you're watching the movie, you're like, why isn't he killing the deer? Oh, my gosh. And then all of a sudden, he goes back to get back his friend. That's his moment where he switches his point of view, where he says, I gotta stop thinking about myself. I had to go back and get my friend.

Well, in the both of the ones you described of that and Silence of the Lambs, you don't actually know that was the decision point till the next scene, right?

And oftentimes when it's really, really good storytelling, you don't know it until you've read it four times or you've seen the movie four times. And then somebody says to you, I wonder when the time was when the character realized that they had to go back to Vietnam. And they go, oh, right. It's that moment when he doesn't kill the deer. Oh, it's that moment when she's in the laundry room and she's. She's cleaning her clothes, because she's gonna leave. And that's, you know, the. This is when you're firing on all cylinders as a writer, is when people don't know they can't see the parts until they really think about them. So think about a scene for Jesse where she is. And this is some, you know, a broader note. Set up a scene, you know, what, what Michael Cimino did in the Deer Hunter is he started the movie with these guys going on a deer hunt. And of course, Michael, the Robert De Niro character, he gets the deer and everybody's happy and it's great. And it's, you know, their usual deer hunt. And so he sets up that moment, that critical moment at the beginning, you know, the end of the middle build of the movie into that flushes into the ending payoff. He set it up in the beginning hook. So you might want to think about, is there something that I can bookend this moment for Jesse that I can stick in the beginning hook and then pay it off with the opposite decision in, you know, that critical shift from middle build to ending payoff. It could be, you know, she. She does something nice for her mother. It's a matter of routine or she. She has some sort of personal action that has meaning to her that she stops doing. And that's a way of signaling subconsciously to your audience, oh, she's changed. Oh, Robert De Niro's changed. She's not killing the deer now. In fact, he's going back to save a life, not kill somebody. He was a hard ass macho guy at the beginning, and now he understands the value of life after he was through all this trauma, you know, now he's going back to save life, not to destroy it. Maybe this is for Jesse.

Now.

She's. Now she understands what this is about. This isn't about hacking the system. This is about destroying the system. This isn't about, you know, being ironic and detached. This is about doing something for other people. There's a great line in one of my favorite movies and novels called North Dallas forty. It's about football. And the line is, seeing through the game is not the same as winning the game. And what the. What I think the writer meant by that is understanding the way things work and laughing about it and sort of enjoying your expertise outside of every other person is kind of cowardly. What you have to do is to see through the game and then try and change the game. And that's what Jesse has to do here.

Okay, well, I was thinking even then. So one of the things, you know, in my notes is I need to make the ordinary world much more painful for the people that live in it. So I was thinking about. I've done some work with, like, you know, drug addicts and stuff, and basically right now it's a little. One of the things I realized when I went back through it, and it's in my Brainstorm notes, is it's not all that bad for the. For the people in the normal world. So her saving them isn't much of a saving. So I was thinking of switching it over to where they're just these people that just hate it so much, but they're. It's like the alcoholic that. That hates alcohol, right? And. But yet at the beginning, she loves it because she, you know, those are all the. The weak idiots that don't know how to do anything, and she's the one that does. And so at the beginning, she loves the system or the grid, and at the end, she destroys it.

That's good. That's good. And it could be even something fun where she and the rats or Balaam, you know, they have like, you know, it's like we talk every Wednesday at 3 o', clock, right? And I talk with Steve every Tuesday at 3:00'. Clock. And I've got a whole series of these things where, you know, I do. I have certain moments in my week that are plotted out and she might have some kind of fun deal with the rats that, that she does. And she's able to start doing that again when she gets, you know, into the. She can't do it when she's one of the numbered. But when she gets back to the school, she can't. When she gets into the school, she can. She can log in and, you know, go to some secret place. It's almost like, you know, playing Dungeons and Dragons with your friends or whatever. And maybe that's the moment when she realizes, you know, later on, I can't do this anymore. This isn't fun.

Yeah, I was, I was thinking the opening, the scene to establish the world will involve. So I, I thought of this because I watched the second Guardians of the Galaxy and. Have you seen it yet?

No.

Okay, so they. Oh, Yondu or whatever. The blue guy that, like, stole him in the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He talks about how, like, the reason he kept him was because he was. He was small and could fit into tight places and was good for thieving.

Right.

And so the whole reason Balaam likes Jesse is she's really good for thieving. So I thought the establishment of the first of the world will be her, the rats, and Balaam helping her break into the place that she gets caught. So that we'll be able to see the city. You know, if we, if I do end up basing in New York City, we'll be able to see a little bit of the city we'll get to, you know, they'll have some conversations that will reveal things, and then it'll swing into that, that scene that I've already written where she's actually in the room and she gets caught. That's so, and, but then, but I thought in their interactions, it could be kind of like those buddy crime movies where they're all, like, joking around the whole time.

Yeah.

And so they could just talk about, you know, these idiots that are addicted to the system and doesn't know how to break out of it and like, establish some of those things as well.

Yes, that's a great idea. And it's, it, it's also mirrors Oliver Twist, you know, the Fagin and, and the Artful Dodger. And, you know, these guys are, you know, swindlers who go out on the street and pickpocket people, and Oliver Twist, you know, he kind of falls in with them. It's, it's also the Falstaff mess myth, using Fagan and Falstaff and, and Balaam as sort of the, the ringmaster. He's also a trickster. Right. That's a really good idea. And, you know, it's also the other, the other thing that's good to have in a story like this is having your lead character, like, you know, doing something on the sly, you know, and they think they're getting away with it and they're kind of like, goofing around because they, they think they're smarter than everybody else. And, and so maybe this is something that she does on the sly. You know, she kind of. And she, and this is also works because you already put Balaam in there to help her, you know, solve the first severing. So you can have maybe, you know, 83 be like. And don't, by the way, don't think we don't know about your little stuff with Balaam and the kids, you know, like, yeah, you're not smarter than you think you are. You know, that could be. Or not. Or she, she comes to realize that, you know, doing that is, is worse than what, what, you know, what the faction is doing to these people, using these people for amusement like she and her crew are doing is even worse. Than exploiting them. That's kind of. Well, that's.

Well, that's where I was thinking that would give me a good kind of. Well, what you were talking about is put her in a situation where she would normally, in the first scene of the book or the second scene of the book, she would have done it this way. And now she's gonna just. She's gonna save everybody.

Exactly.

Further.

Exactly. That's a way. You know how I always say that a story has a surprising but inevitable conclusion? So if you establish early on this. This sort of sensibility that she has. He's smarter than everybody else. She's sophisticated. She's the best one. She's even better than Balaam. And then at the critical moment of the story, she says, you know what? It's not funny anymore. I'm not playing. I'm out of here. I can't do it. And then when she. She confronts Randy later on, we know, oh, that's the moment she changed. That's the moment she's like, nah, this is not cool. This is totally not cool anymore. And I'm out. And in fact, it's so not cool. I'm going to do everything I can to stop the entire situation. And that's a way of that being signaled to the reader by a setup and payoff. The setup is the early Dickensian world. Fun and games. Let's all, you know, you're one of the family kind of stuff. And then. And that's. That's also in Shakespeare. That's Henry iv, parts one and two, where he's got this crew of guys that he hangs out and drinks with in a bar. Falstaff's his buddies, this kind of big, loud coward. And then, end of Henry iv, he's now king. He's king. Falstaff's in deep trouble. So that. That's a really, really effective way of signaling to the audience. Get ready. This. This girl is now a woman. She's taken no crap, and all bets are off. It's not going to be easy for her. She still has a big, big event, but she's serious now. She's mature and even. She even understands. Hey, you know what? Chances of me coming through this, you know, alive are pretty slim, but I'm going to do it anyway. That is a really, really great idea to use that setup and payoff and to make it entertaining, make the scene entertaining and have it have depth as well. So we really enjoy that opening scene because that is going to be your beginning, Hook. You know, you're going to have to have a really cool prologue that's really mysterious and cryptic, not too long, maybe a thousand words. And then. Then you're going to go right into the establishment of this strange, dystopian, ordinary world, but with fun, with levity. So there's this really dark. You know, there's nothing worse than somebody saying, it was dark. It was so bad. Everything was horrible. You know, who wants to read that book?

Yeah, I was. There's a quote somewhere. I don't know where I've heard it. It was like, you know, make it hard or make it dark, make it awful and make it terrible and all these things, but at some point, tell a joke. You know, I don't have any idea where I've heard that, but it was about writing.

Yeah, it's. That's the way life is in all the darkness. It's never always dark, and it's never always light. There's always shades of gray. And that's what maturity is, understanding. It's never as bad as you think it is. It's never that way. You know, there's always fun stuff, too. So that's why people don't like that one note, Charlie writing, because it just gets so oppressive after a while. You know, those big, sensitive, dark novels about somebody's mental breakdown. You know, there's only so much of that you can read before you say, oh, come on, get off of it. There's got to be something beyond. You know, there's always moments of beauty and interesting things in everyday life. And what is a novel? But it's artifice. It's a. It's a way of tuning up real life into a believable fiction, a believable story that feels like real life but isn't, is. You know, it's life at the extremes.

I found the quote. It's Joss Whedon. He said, make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then for the love of God, tell a joke. And he's the best at that.

Yeah, he is.

Okay, so at this point, is my homework to go fill out the values, the value numbers for the rest of the scenes?

Yes. And I think the way to do it is, you know, compare and contrast from scene to scene. So you would begin, you know, with your negative 30 and go on either side of those, that one scene and say, is this a 29? Is this, you know, or is this a 28? What is this in terms of? So you want to look at each scene in terms of the global. If you had to track between 0 and 30, I'm sorry, 1 and 30 being the positive, what number would you give it? And you may find, you probably will find that a lot of your scenes are nines. So your scene would be 9, 9, 9, 9. And then you have to say, oh, then I'm not doing something to make distinguish this scene and a little bit better than the other one or a little bit worse or a lot worse. So before you, now I'm not suggesting that you do any of that work like trying to fix anything, but try and evaluate it. And if you find that one scene that a bunch of scenes seem to be the same number, give them the same number. So you want to be, you want to be able to objectively evaluate each scene in terms of your global world and give it assignment a number between 0 and 30. And it doesn't mean that you can't use the same number over and over again.

So if one scene is not, is sort of in the same arena in terms of a global value from scene to scene, that's not necessarily wrong. We aren't going to know until we look at the graph, you know what I'm saying? Because sometimes.

A scene moves dramatically on one of the global values, but not so dramatically on the other. So somebody can escape death.

Should I try to do like all the internals first or evaluate each scene with both?

Start with the external first.

Okay.

And really just look at it in terms of is she closer to the life, unconsciousness or death?

Okay.

Damnation in terms of your story. The damnation value is pretty much played out with her recognizing that she doesn't do something. Everybody's going to suffer. So it's not. Horror has a lot of approach of damnation. So you have a lot of moments where in horror damnation is really on stage.

It's what Robert McKee calls the negation of the negation, which is a complicated idea, but not really. It just means the fate worse than death. And if you want to evaluate your saints sake, if she were to die in this moment, would, would that be better than where she is now? So if somebody's being tortured and it's excruciating and they're in horrible pain, to kill them is a mercy, right?

Yes.

Right. So if she's being tortured, then death would be better than what she's experiencing in that moment.

So she's gone below death, right? Yeah, but that seems different than what we talked about with. Because damnation in the whole like if I don't do this, then everybody suffers and I Got to live like this, I guess. It is the same.

It is the same. One's a physical damnation and one is an intellectual subconscious. You know, a moral and ethical damnation.

Okay.

Yeah, I know it's a lot of thinking.

But it's really, really valuable because you know how. This is one of my pet peeves is when editors give notes like, I just, you know, it didn't have much oomph to it, or it just didn't feel that the stakes were high enough. What they're saying is. Is what we've been talking about. I wasn't able to find the moments where they were approaching the fate worse than death. It didn't seem like as if they were confronting things that were really extraordinary that were going to change them to the point where their world was completely changed by the end of the story. So these are when you hear comments just to anybody listening. If you hear people saying things. I didn't feel like the stakes were that high or your character didn't really seem to arc, or. I don't know. I just wasn't really that into it. What they're talking about is that you're not clearly hitting these moments that are speaking to your reader in a way that they say, oh, my gosh, that would be horrible. That would be worse than that. You know, so when we're looking at the life value in terms of life and consciousness, death and damnation, these are, you know, two parts of that are positive and two major negatives. This will help you find those moments where you have to raise the stakes. And that's why we're going to give numbers to the scenes to see how we track. Because you don't want them operating at negative 30 from scene one to scene 60. Because nobody. That. That's unbelievable, right? That's not life. Art imitates life. So life, you need a lot of variety, a lot of sort of heartbeat kind of shifts in the storytelling. And the way you do that is by evaluating the global values at stake from scene to scene. Now, I'm going to say this again, because this often gets really confusing to people. I am not talking about the shift, the valence shifts in individual scenes. I'm talking about looking at the. Each scene and looking at it in terms of its global value. Not it's sort of like from sick to healthy. Like that might be an internal value shift in one of your scenes that is on the micro level. I'm talking about the macro level. This is the global. Look at each scene in terms of the global values. Does that make sense?

I mean, like so many of these things does until I go to actually do them?

Well, it's practice, you know, it's right. Just when you get stuck, always walk back to the following questions. Where does this scene sit in terms of all the other ones in the life value? Is this higher on the life value than the last scene or lower on the life value of the last scene? Okay, and if I had to have to put a number on this, if this is number 30, what one would this be? And this. You're we're going to do this a couple of times so that eventually you're gonna, you're gonna see a kind of a graph story grid of your draft and you'll be able to go, oh, I need to make tweak that so that it's this and that. And then you'll be able to go back to your micro notes and you'll have all kinds of ideas at the ready to accomplish that.

Okay. Okay, I'll get to work. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything StoryGrid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, all of that can be found@story storygrid.com podcast if you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter torygrid. Lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on itunes and leaving a rating and review. Thanks for subscribing and being a part of our work here at StoryGrid. We will see you next week.