How does the Story Grid Trinity apply to Global Internal Genres?

Hello and welcome to the storygrid podcast this is a show dedicated to helping you level up your craft as a writer my name is tim grall and i'm a writer at storygrid along with running all of the operations around here starting with this episode we are changing up the format storygrid certified editor kimberly kessler will be hosting alongside storygrid founder sean coyne an editor with over thirty years of experience in this episode they are discussing how the story grid trinity applies to global internal genres before we jump in i want to mention two things you might be interested in first if you haven't seen the story grid masterwork guide to lin manuel miranda's hamilton i highly recommend you take a look storygrid certified editor abigail k perry shows us that miranda's skills as a storyteller are equal to his gifts as a composer we see how he brilliantly weaves together story genres including a complex love story a bloody war story a performance story and a society story about a world turned upside down all within the overarching status tale of a hero's tragic rise and fall you can get twenty percent off of the masterwork guide to hamilton and all of our books at storygrid dot com books and use the coupon code podcast lastly the next storygrid certified editor training is coming up this february there are big benefits to being a part of this elite group of story nerds you can see all of the details at storygrid dot com certification okay that's all on the announcements so let me turn it over to kim.

And sean okay hi sean it's so great to be here with you and i am just super excited to have this opportunity to pick your brain publicly in front of everyone so i'm just super excited to be here and i want to start very selfishly to talk about global internal genres because that is my jam so i have some you know i just want to talk about these stories global internal genres and i want to talk about them in the context of the stuff that we learned at the trinity conference and i just have some clarifying angles that i want to get to the bottom of to figure out like how how we're applying these trinity concepts to the different genres and how if they look different or how they look different i have some questions for you so i guess just in general how would you approach how do you approach a global internal genre when it comes to the trinity principles.

The way i look at it is when i'm considering an internal genre i actually focus on what is it coupled with externally the external genre is really about sort of stimulus and input that is coming through the perceptual planes of your your protagonist avatar when you're thinking about internal genres what you're talking about is the way in which the avatar protagonist is processing information.

So internal genres are about the frame breaking of that process such that they become either more attuned to what's really real or less attuned to what's really real when you open up your your cognitive worldview frame it's very destabilizing to you right yes it is so the internal genres are really about how to do that i always like to think about storytelling like what's the point you know well the point is to get a signal from the artist to the audience and what's in between the signal from the artist's mind to the audience's mind is all that other stuff that we call a story right so we invent these avatars who play on a stage of our own invention and that's what the audience is actually objectively evaluating so when you have an internal genre it's tricky right because the thing about internality and information processing is that i will never know what's going through your mind what we have to do is externalize the processes that the avatar goes through as their their frame breaks and that means knowing how people respond to stimulus and how it's sort of out of whack so if you're talking about a worldview sort of transformational story a worldview let's say it's a disillusionment plot and what right so disillusionment means you're you're breaking the illusion of the frame so it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a negative ending it just means that you're you have a more optimal more real grip on what's truly going on i like that.

Distinction like i think we tend to think about disillusionment as cautionary and negative but if you were believing a lie before and now you're not that's still good news right like that's a really.

Good point is to is to frame story as the means by which we learn how to navigate the world understanding that we will never get rid of the valences of pain and pleasure it's not about sort of eliminating affect but it's about getting an optimal grip on the affect feeling things but not craving fully going nuts for one particular kind of feeling at the expense of a full spectrum of affective value i know i'm speaking pretty abstractly i think your original question was how do you frame internal stories within the trinity idea is.

That correct yeah that idea of like how are we applying trinity to global store internal storytelling and i mean in a way it's probably how do we apply all of the tools but i think i think i was i'm thinking about that internal genres you know like what you're saying it's like they're almost like weighted to be above the surface right because that's like the story of what it's about is about how the characters are making sense of the world around them and so that part feels so essential but it's like you can't negate obviously like the on the surface and the beyond the surface just like you can't negate that's correct you can't just have on the surface and not have above or beyond right so it's just it's interesting to me the weighting of those things and kind of how to come at those and how they are the same or different from a.

Global external genre here's where the rubber meets the road is that when you're dealing with an internal genre combining it with something like if you want the emphasis for the audience to take away at the end of the story oh i see i need to sort of break my axiomatic worldview in order to level up my ability to deal with reality that's what i say at the.

End of no but it's kind of.

Like you have that cathartic moment like oh i see yes it's not a catharsis of oh thank god they survived.

Right right right right it's not really even about the character it's more about you like oh i take this away from me that's what i yeah so.

An internal genre is actually what happens at the end of the story is ideally the audience internalizes what the transformation process was for the avatar and they recognized the reality of the necessity of of going to the bottom of oneself and feeling the negative feelings of that that kind of you experience in the third quadrant of all stories at a level that enables them to roll with the punches a little easier so that when bad things do happen to them and they happen to everyone that they can sort of like temper that go oh well you know sometimes you experience these these dips in your in your affect and it's because you're in the process of transforming and that in fact is necessary for transformation but on this if you don't have any on the surface stimulus response active interplay between external inputs into the actual being then then it becomes very heady and then the audience is just sort of like i don't really care what's going on in the internal mind of this character i really want something to happen and so the way you can show how the character is going through this transformational process is the gap between what they're actually responding to and what is objectively coming at them so i use kind of this idea in the conference where like say somebody comes over and says oh shawn i brought you a glass of water if i go i don't want any water and i slap the water out of their hand you would naturally say any observer would say wow that's certainly a strange response for somebody offering a glass of water what's going on in the internal process of that person right to be able to do that that's intriguing and so there are any number of different maladaptive responses to objective stimuli and so that's where the intrigue comes along intrigue comes along in establishing how the audience is responding to the avatar's real actions so if the avatar is never given any stimulus you don't have any external genre driving the story then we can't really see we can't evaluate what's going on their minds because they're not responding and then what you end up doing is doing a lot of stream of consciousness like she thought well and then it becomes very telenovela kind of thing where you know it's narrative telenovela where people are just going and then she thought wasn't that nasty of her to say that to him in such a way and then it becomes very like i'm just reporting the thought processes of the avatars and i'm not actually showing the active responses of.

The avatars well and it's interesting to think that because you know nobody wants to change right like we resist change so much so like our characters they're not going to go through the terrible experience that is transformation without a lot of external stimuli like you have to you have to be pushed to that place to actually break down and change and so it makes sense that you wouldn't even i mean like you wouldn't even your character wouldn't even believably change without it can't entirely be an internal.

Absolutely right you need to be pushed out of our safety spaces so that's that's sort of the meta myth of heroic journey two point zero is the movement from sort of like the homeostasis at the beginning of the story where the avatar sort of feels like they've got this thing knocked and everything's cool and then some chaos drops into their lives such that they have to leave that place of comfort because if they don't they're going to experience even worse symptoms than they need to leave home in order to prevent something worse happening because we all have the loss aversion so generally on the surface is really about the active movement of stimulus going into the avatars above the surface is the internal processing system of that stimulus within the avatar and beyond the surface is the gap between what happens from the response to the stimulus so i know that's pretty abstract but it's like.

How we then interpret what it means.

Yes the meaning is the gap so we say wow sean's really overreacting to that offer of water i wonder what's going on with him he's going all.

Black irish on that water and so.

Then that would be an interesting sort of setup and then later on in the story there could be the payoff where well sean was born in you know in aqualand and water really you know i don't know but that revelation then answers the prior response right right.

And then we go yeah that makes sense because and we can draw our own conclusion like i was born in poverty therefore whenever somebody tries to give me hand me downs i feel whatever like you can take it to whatever you're like right right right and we apply like there's this i think it's from i can't even think of the book now it's the it's the book about miracles anyway it's i'll find the title but it's the the quote is we bring everything all the meaning that it has right so like whatever is meaningful to you it's like it's because you brought that meaning anyway it just it makes sense that our characters are doing that and that that's how and the reason our characters do that is because that's how humans do that and we're telling stories for ourselves like so we can make sense of things so.

That makes sense but of course you you do have to you know you have to come down on a a place right so you do have to choose where you're going to plant your flag is it going to be an external genre which which concerns life safety justice that kind of thing or is it going to be an internal genre which is about sort of self actualization about worldview attunement it's about performances status the internal genres are if you're doing that kind of story you're not going to want to have a very very explosive external genre to match with that's why performance genres with internal stories are a very good match because you know you put the character under pressure oh you have to win the band contest in order to be able to get that prize money to keep your family alive right so then it becomes well i'm not very good you know it's it's like those great films from the nineties there's one with the piano player in it it's an australian piano player i forget what it's called but but it's always about will they perform how will they perform and it's it's breaking sort of these these internal stories that the character is is generating for themselves so that they open up to new experiences so you wouldn't want to put in action sort of life and death stakes on a mountain dealing with an internal genre although you know you do have to break frame in the in the action story but it's a different kind of degree of breaking frame the internals are complete breakdown of the entire worldview system whereas the internal concepts inside an action story are about breaking the frame of problem so learning how to to macgyver out of the situation is a smaller transformational process it's an insight cascade as opposed to a complete worldview transformation of framing but you need it's not like you can go well i'm i'm just gonna plant my flag on the internal genres and then then the external genres aren't gonna matter i'll talk about then it's right that's a book.

No one wants to read right we talked about we talked about that right like it's so internal that it's not useful so it's interesting talking about you know performance stories so i'm currently studying the queen's gambit which is my new favorite novel like walter tevis is he's just he writes such an amazing performance novel i just i love it it makes me cry like i cry over just now and so it's so it's just so fantastic and so good and i love like it's so interesting i mean maybe not everybody thinks it's interesting because chess notations can be pretty tedious but i think that it's the amount of pressure that she faces in that story is really fascinating and the way that she deals with it and there's these really great external things happening with her life and what happens and you know i think i think internally i think it's a status sentimental story so it's really about she makes it because she gets help you know what i mean like she has these other people who believe in her and they they aid her and she accepts that help and it's she's willing to you know she's willing to set aside her pride to like accept help and to get over addiction and all of these things but so anyway it's just been a really it's been a really cool study of this performance and how internal performance feels and how external status feels it has this very interesting mix but it's anyway i'm just fangirling about it yeah.

I would i would absolutely i agree with that tevis also wrote the hustler which is yeah so his point was is it better to be completely sort of dissociated and alone but brilliant or should we leave that behind when the opportunity to commute and commune and connect with other people presents itself and so i think he as a as an artist was constantly that was constantly in his mind and because you can just see it as a thematic pattern in his work and i think as as internality goes the the notion of can i make a meaningful life as a singular being as my own individual actualization is that enough or do i need to sort of go paul tillich and participate after i individuate and tevis i think you know he believed that it was required to participate but if you look at the hustler it's sort of a tragedy so that is very much a deep ethical kind of more not i wouldn't say moral it's a worldview shift how much meaning can one person create through their own.

Their own set of accomplishments slash status blah blah blah versus is it more meaningful to have less external validation but commune and connect with other people in your love of chess so the the final scene in the in the miniseries was beautiful because.

What does she do yeah it matches the book like so it's basically like they shot the book in so many.

Ways that's a well written story so you know she goes into the park and plays another game she communes with other people y so she sees less of it as a for lack of a it's sort of like philia nikea which means the love of yeah competition to philia sophia which is a love.

Of of the game yes oh i love that so i love that you're saying philia because i'm i'm obsessed with those seven types of love now right like i'm like they're so good you know it's such a such a juicy a juicy place for storytelling so okay so follow up here just and that i want to stick with this so when we're talking about global internal genres and how we're approaching them and you know i love how you said okay so if you want to tell an internal story you really need to think about the external container that you're putting it in right and that the kind of stimulus that's going to come in that's going to be the thing that makes them change so on the flip side of that when you're looking at a global external story how do you consider the internal genre that goes with.

That well yeah that that's all about insight generation so like a master detective crime story you know the payoff of of the story is when the master detective or amateur detective solves the crime they have the insight that generates who the perpetrator of the crime was so that is the same systemic process as worldview maturation worldview dissolution but it's all about insight generation as opposed to worldview framework transformation so when you're dealing with an external story you want to focus on what's the key thing that generates the insight for the avatar to solve the ridiculously difficult question to solve so here's an example of did you ever see one hundred twenty seven hours or.

Read the book i didn't is that the one where the guy gets stuck in the cliff and the yes okay i couldn't i couldn't well it's brilliant i've heard enough about it i've heard that it's amazing but i'm just like oh it makes anyway it's too it's.

Just hard that's a case where in the film and in the memoir too it's it's got a really incredible balance of external life death and internal worldview transformation and the way danny boyle the director made the movie work is that the character had to have an insight that would be extraordinarily painful and could cause his own death right but what inspired the insight was his understanding of what was really deeply meaningful to him.

Right that parent like you can just even you explaining it you're like yep like like that because this is so meaningful therefore i will choose to go through this physical pain in order to get back to this meaningful thing that i need that's correct yeah yep so.

It'S it's the perfect it's the perfect symbolic represent literal representation right the necessity of going through extraordinary pain when you are transforming your worldview right and it's it is life and death because you know the you know as socrates said the unexamined life isn't worth living and if you continue to move forward as as deeply fearful of transformational processes your worldview gets more and more narrow and you find it more and more difficult to to adapt to changes in your environment so it's a beautiful metaphor and literal story that you can look at from well the thing that transformed him was what saved his life and what saved his life is the thing that transformed him and so it's this really nice balance so a lot of people go into that novel into it's not a novel it's a memoir but they go into the memoir thinking like oh great this is gonna be a great action story and i can't wait and it pays off but what they get also is this deep metaphorical internal transformation story too where you the audience at the end of the story you're like i don't know if i would have the courage to do that but i understand the necessity of why he did.

It it's like this that's the spoonful of sugar right to help it all go down it's really good it's really good thanks for listening to this episode of the storygrid podcast if your heart is set on telling an internal genre story but is struggling with how to get it on the page i invite you to connect with me for a free consultation at kimberkessler dot com that's k dash i dash m dash b dash e dash r dash k dash e dash s dash s l dash e dash r dot com for everything storygrid related check out storygrid dot com and make sure to pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the storygrid universe also make sure you go to storygrid dot com books to see all of the titles that we've released through storygrid publishing if you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes on all of that can be found at storygrid dot com podcast if you'd like to reach out to us directly you can find us on twitter storygrid and 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 apple podcasts and leaving a rating and review thanks so much for subscribing and being a part of our work here at storygrid we'll see you next week.