How to Write Faster

Hello, and welcome to the Story Grid 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 soon is Sean Coyne. He is the author of the book Story Grid, the creator of the Story Grid, and he is an editor with 25 plus years experience helping other authors write books that work and become best sellers. In this episode, we discuss how we can actually write more words. We're all about getting as many words out as possible, especially during that first draft. We just want to cover the canvas, write as many words as we possibly can. So Sean and I talk about what the wall is. When do we finally reach the wall where we can't write anymore? In a given day, is there a wall, or is that all in our mind? And I also talk about some specific tactics that I use to write more in less time. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I've been doing some kind of experimenting with how much I can write in a day. And because I've always kind of had this sense where I kind of hit a wall, and I'm like, well, that's. You know, I'm gonna just write until I hit the wall. And then last week, the wall came at like 700 words, and I'm like, well, that's not good enough. And so what I did is I was like, well, I'm just gonna start the next scene, and if I'm right, if I get a, you know, 100 or 200 words in and I'm not feeling it, you know, I'll stop. But as soon as I kind of pushed past and got a couple hundred words in, all of a sudden everything started flowing again. And so then I was like, I wonder, like, how hard I could push this. And so last Saturday, I wrote 6,200 words almost in one sitting. I was. I was on a flight. I had to switch flights, and then I wrote the rest there. So, like, so I'm just curious your take on just that. Like, how much writing, you know, can you get done? Like, are these walls just in our head? You know, because I'm like, dang, like 6,000 words in a day, you know, that's significant. If I could do that once a week, that'd be significant.

Sure.

But, you know, I'm also haven't been trying to do this for years. So I'm just curious, you know, with all the writers you've worked with and everything, we Talked a little bit a few weeks ago about writing habits, but just kind of like getting the words down and hitting the proverbial wall or whatever. Like, what is your experience in there?

Well, that's a really interesting thematic question because I've been thinking about this myself. I was meeting with a couple of friends and we had sort of a campfire the other night, and one of my friends was telling me about this guy he knows who was a Navy seal. And the Navy seal, you know, they went and they. He was doing this. There's some endurance run called Tough Mudder, which is kind of like the Spartan race. And my friend does.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he does that all the time and he loves doing that stuff and he loves to challenge himself. So he was telling me about how he had trained so hard to do this Tough Mudder and he finally got through it and he was exhausted and he said, this other guy just sort of like showed up that day and somebody said, hey, why don't you do it too? And he was like, oh, okay. And he did it and he beat, like, everybody. And so my friend went over to talk to him and he turns out he was a Navy seal. And he said, well, how did you. You hadn't prepared for this. What. What's going on? He said, well, there's a principle that we sort of learn in Navy SEAL school and I'm probably messing all this up, so please, if there are Navy SEALs out there, you know, take this with a grain of salt because it's third party. But I think they would agree with the concept here. And the concept that the Navy SEAL told my friend was, we understand because we were put through such drastic training that your brain will tell you that you're completely shut down after 40% of your effort has been expended. So my friend was like, I really don't understand what that means. And he said, okay, well, for example, if I ask you right now to go over and do pull ups until you can't do anymore, you'll probably do between, you know, 5 and 8 or 10 or however, you know, however good a shape you were in. And then if I let you rest and I tell you to do some more, maybe you'd be able to do one or two more every 10 minutes. And my friend was like, yeah, that makes sense. He said, well, if I were to tell you that if we continued that pace, I would be able to get you to do 110 more if we didn't worry about time. And I gave you as much time as necessary to regain your composure. You probably wouldn't believe me. He said, that's true. But that is true. Your brain is constantly trying to reserve your energy stores. So when it comes to writing, we all. And also this is something I learned from watching that TED talk that your friend Josh. Is it Josh Kaufman?

Josh Kaufman, yep.

He did a great TED talk about, you know, the 20 hour rule, how you can become competent at something if you give 20 hours of dedicated energy to one particular thing and you really crack down and concentrate on it. It was a terrific TED talk. And one of the things that Josh said in that talk was the things in our lives that we think are so difficult are emotional barriers more than they are physical or intellectual barriers. So it's really our emotional makeup that stops us from really doing those things that we think are impossible. So if you combine those two things and you understand that your brain is really going to shut you down after 40% and it's going to say to you, you're absolutely exhausted. You're not going to be able to do one more pull up. But if you give yourself a little bit more time to recover and try another pull up and not accept that, you'll find that you're going to be capable of doing far more than you believe. This is the phenomenon of people who say, fall out of a boat in the middle of the ocean. They survive for, you know, 15 days floating on an oar. And you say, how did they, how are they capable of doing that? And that's the thing about human capacity, is that we never even really approach our limits. So when you hit that wall at 700 words, your brain seriously said to you, dude, you're toast. There's nothing more that you can do. And if you believe that and you stop yourself, you're going to do 700 words that day. And you know what? 700 words is not so bad. You know it. 700 solid words is a good day's work.

Well, I didn't say they were solid words words, but when you don't know yet if they're solid, when you pressed.

On, it's almost as if a trigger in your brain said, oh, he's not going to believe that crap. It's like the internal resistance in your brain said, oh, no, that didn't work. And then you were able to do another thousand or two thousand or however many you did. And there are a lot of people now that are suggesting that, you know, I think it's like anything else, you can train yourself to do that and you could Bang out a lot of words. But the trick is to. Is to sort of use both sides of your brain. Are those 5,000 words usable? You know, it probably doesn't really matter if they're all usable. If you're able to get in a consistent effort of 5,000 words a day and you can go on a riff of, say, 30 days for 5,000 words, that's 150,000 words in a month. That's two novels in a month. That's pretty great. But you can't sacrifice quality for quantity. And this is where the editorial head comes into it. And what I would suggest is make use of those 5,000 words that are really, really helpful. What do I mean by that? Here's what I mean. Say you're. You've trained yourself and you're doing your say between three and five thousand words a day. Here's what I suggest you do. Instead of just going from, you know, scene to scene to scene to scene. This is, by the way, this is sort of for the pro writer. This is somebody who's, you know, who's had some novels written. Whether or not they're published isn't really as important as somebody who's capable of going from beginning to middle to end and finishing. But if you're able to do three to 5,000 words, what I'd suggest is think about doing multiple takes on a particular scene.

So say you have a scene that is your intention for that day, and you're able to write that scene in 1500 words, and you've got, you know, a couple more hours of prime writing in your future instead of going on to the next scene. And if you have a confidence level, try and do the exact scene only with a switch. So instead of, say, writing it from the point of view of one character, switch to the other side, or come up with a different climax or crisis based upon the same intention of the scene. So specifically, say you have to write a scene where you're writing a love story and it's the scene where the lovers break up and you've decided that they're going to break up and Thanksgiving dinner and they're going to break up at the dinner table and they're going to ruin everybody's meal. I'm just making this up at the top of my head. It sounds kind of like not a bad scene for a romantic comedy. But so using that setup, write the scene from the point of view of one of the lovers and then switch it and go to the other side. And then maybe write in third person and try and give it from the point of view of, say, the patriarch of the family or the matriarch of the family, or even the dog, you know, something interesting that will make you force your creativity to focus on another player. And what this is going to do is if you do these multiple scenes, you're going to discover really interesting specificity and that you can include in your final, you know, your final draft of that scene. You might discover after writing a first draft, hey, this is pretty good. But if you do two more using different points of view or switching something up, you're going to discover even better little nuggets that you can include in your final draft. So my point is that if your goal is to do 5,000 words a day, try and make those. It's like somebody practicing hitting a golf ball or somebody practicing free throw shots. You don't just keep doing the same thing. You want to hone your craft. Anyway, I'm going on a little bit here, but I think it's absolutely possible to write 5,000 words a day and the only thing that's stopping people from doing it are family obligations or personal resistance.

Yeah, well, how would you put that in? Because that sounds more like a second draft action. Like, if I'm in my first draft and I can legitimately write 5,000 words, should I really stop and do a scene over and over? Because I was kind of in this mode of like, just get to the end of the story as fast as possible.

No, you're right. No, you're absolutely right, Tim. You should definitely go from, you know, it's a race, it's covered the canvas as quickly as you can get that first draft done. And then as you're exploring and you put the story grid on your first draft and you discover, oh, boy, my, you know, my obligatory scene with the hero at the mercy of the villain scene isn't really that good. This is a time to use that 5,000 word juice to try different things to make that one particular scene better. So, yeah, you're right. You want to fly through that first draft and. And then what you want to do is step back and put on your editor's hat, go through that first draft and be very meticulous about how well you've done particular things. What you're going to discover are all the weaknesses in the story, and then you want to prioritize those weaknesses so that you start working at the most critical, weakest parts first and then whittle your way down to the line by line things, you know, in your 10th draft.

Yeah. I'm really hoping by next episode I'll be either done or almost done with my first draft, because I'm at 39,000 words, and I'm really going to see push and see how many I can write over the next week. And I'm still kind of trending where I'll hit between 55,000 and 60,000 words if I keep at the current pace, which I keep doing everything I can not to stress, because, like, I keep writing scenes and they're like a thousand words. They're within 100 words of a thousand words, and it's just driving me insane. But it's like you just. You keep. I keep saying, well, Sean said not to worry about it, so I'm just going to keep writing. No, don't worry about it.

Oh, man. Because it's like, I have. I have.

Here's the thing, Tim. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your word count except you. Now, you have to remember that all of those things are ways in which your brain's trying to reserve your energy. So, you know, you can end up doing a lot of ridiculous work that you'll end up cutting, or you can come up with just a really fluid, fast first draft that's, you know, 55 to 60,000 words. And what you're going to find after you go through the editorial process is that, you know, that was just your. That was your clay, you know, and you might have to go out and get some more clay at some point, but at the beginning, that's just your ball of clay that you're going to form into, you know, the final product. So really giving yourself all kinds of crap about word count and how long your scenes are going. As long as you are hitting your five commandments of your scenes, your inciting incident is progressively complicating. You have a crisis question that arises. You have a climax where the action answers that question, and then you have a resolution. You've done your work, you know, so as long as you have those five elements you're seeing, you know, it's. I say this all the time. Hemingway short story, Baby Shoes for Sale, Never Worn. You know. Yeah, that's a full short story in six words, or however many words it is. I'm not thinking very clearly right now.

Yeah, it's just that, you know, I got that, and I'm doing pretty good of just sitting down and writing. But it's that analytical thing saying it's supposed to be 80,000 words, so 60 scenes, so 1500 words per scene. And you're not doing 1500 words per scene, so you're not going to hit 80,000 words. And it's like tapping at my head. And so we'll let it tap.

You know, it's bs, so don't worry about it. Don't try and push it away. I mean, you're going to have a thought. Everybody has a thought. Just say, oh, okay, there's that thought again. But just keep writing, you know?

Okay. Yeah. And it's been a lot of, like, I continue to have fun with it and really enjoy the different. Like, my favorite parts are the, like, really violent parts. And so, like, I. I just love. I keep looking at my scene list and I'm like, okay, just a few more scenes. So I get to really, you know, fuck her up. And.

And so it's been interesting. But, yeah, it's been. I've really enjoyed the writing process. And, like, I gushed about last week. You know, it's continued to just make it so much easier to just move to the next scene. But that has helped with kind of pushing through those word count barriers, because what. What. I usually feel that kind of release of, like, okay, that's all I've got at the end of a scene. And so, especially when I was on the plane, like, I promised myself, like, I'm just gonna write until I literally feel like my eyes are gonna fall out of my head. And so would get to the end of the scene, and I'd feel tired. And I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna. I'll start the next scene and see what happens. And then I get rolling. I'd feel good. I get to the end of that scene, I'm like, okay, just. I'm just one more scene, you know? Like, I just kept doing that. And then where I finally was just like, okay, I gotta stop. And I looked, and it was 6,200 words. And so. And it got me thinking. I'm like. But that was also after, like, three days of life not letting me write. And so I was basically making up for days I couldn't write. But I was. I was thinking, like, if I could legitimately average 2,000 words a day, I'm like, that's 700,000 words a year. Like, that's insane. You know, and this is probably the most, like, consistent I've written over a long period of time. And so, you know, I'm trying not to get too excited about it, but it's like, if I could legitimately, like, keep this. Any kind of pace going, like, this it would put me in that place of like, continuing to create a lot of works and keep. And keep that going.

Well, now you. Yeah, now, you know why Stephen King, he doesn't take many days off, like maybe two a year. And then even those two days, he lies and he forks anyway.

He doesn't want the mojo to leave. The other thing is, remember all those days when you were in high school or college and you had a paper due to. And you didn't do any work for months, right. And the night before that paper was due or the weekend you were able to crank out that 10 pager and, you know, was it the best work? It was probably as good as you were probably going to do anyway. So we have the capacity, you know, we have the capacity to do so many different things. And writing, it's willpower. A lot of it is willpower and word counts and not letting yourself off the hook and saying, oh, well, I put in a good day's work and I'm going to stop now and just saying, you know what? I'm going to press. I'm just going to press. It's like in basketball, when you're down a few points, you press the other team in the backcourt and you're able to get a turnover every now and then and score. And if you press yourself sometimes that's going to happen. And other times when you press, it's just. It gives you nothing but irritation and no fun. So you gotta get in the mojo and ride it when you can. So I'm glad that you're doing it.

Yeah. I want to mention something other that's really kind of out there, but I was talking to a guy about it yesterday, and so I thought I'd bring it up here. So a year and a half ago, I switched to the Colmac layout of the keyboard. So do you know anything about multiple layouts of your, like, keyboard on your computer?

No. All I know, I learned how to type with qwerty, so that's all I know.

Yeah, so qwerty, you know, it was basically designed so that typewriters wouldn't jam, which is not so much a problem anymore. And so this, there's been these other kind of variations, but there is this very mathematical one done called Colemak. And so a year and a half ago, I always promised my wife I would not work between Christmas and New Year's. And then I would always work between Christmas and New Year's. And so a year and a half ago, I was like, okay, I know how I can solve this. I've always wanted to switch from QWERTY to Colemak. So I, like, I switched it on my computer. I popped my keys off, and I could type about three words a minute. And so I didn't work because I literally couldn't do anything except practice typing well. So I tracked my words per minute before I switched, and then I practiced. It took me probably about six months to get to full proficiency, but now I trend over 10 words a minute faster than I did on QWERTY. And I was talking to somebody, he's like, well, does that really matter? And I'm like, right now, if I'm locked in and writing, I can do 1300 words an hour. So that many words per minute, you know, 10 words per minute. Of course, I don't type straight for an hour, but if it's even like 30 minutes an hour, that's an extra right there. 300 words a minute that I'm typing just with a different keyboard layout. So just throwing that out there was one of the most excruciating learning things I ever went through because I typed for a living, you know? So, like, I was literally, like. When I went back to work after New Year's, and I'm, like, trying to email people, I'm typing at, like, 20 words a minute, and it's taken me forever. But over time, like, I've gotten significantly faster than I did with qwerty, which, as a writer, was worth the investment, you know, is kind of my thinking.

No, it is, because, I mean, just think about the main line from your brain to your fingers. If you're capable of speeding up that process of your thought process thought to your fingers so significantly, you'll be able to tap your unconscious in a way that you really aren't so great at doing. I learned way, way back, literally, on a typewriter. I started in book publishing when there were only typewriters. And you think I started in 1956, but it was 1991 or 1992 when I started in book publishing. Nobody had a computer, and so we all had to bang out, you know, copy on typewriters. And we had onion skins and we had whiteout. So going from that, I don't even.

Know what an onion skin is.

Oh, okay. Well, an onion skin is something that you would use to make a photocopy. So if you wanted to do multiple copies of something, you would have onion skin behind or in front of your regular piece of paper, and the onion skin would pick up the impression as well. So you would you would basically make two copies as you were typing one. This is like when photocopy machines.

Tell me more about the.

Yeah, it was. It was really, really, really something. And you would literally, all business happened over the phone. There was no email, so things weren't as fast. And the art department would bring along. You know, they would bring a huge piece of cardboard called a mechanical that would have the artwork on it, and you would literally write on the mechanical, and there. And again, there would be a big piece of onion skin on top. Anyway, so going from that point of really analog work pace to the digital pace, I can type so much faster because I had to learn how to type on such a primitive machine. But I can't even imagine switching my typing thing. But I'm considering it. I am considering it because that's substantial.

Well, I feel like it. And like, you know, you'll.

You'll.

You're always thinking faster than your fingers can go. And so being able to write faster has been helpful. Although it was funny because I literally can't type on a QWERTY keyboard anymore.

Which 99.9% of the time, does it matter? Because I'm always on my own computer. But I switched gems a couple weeks ago, and the guy was like, oh, so what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I'm a writer. He's like, oh, okay. And then he's like, okay, well, here, you know, here's the screen. Go ahead and fill out your information. And I look down, and it's a keyboard. So I'm typing with two fingers, like, typing out my day. And he's like. Keeps looking and looking at me and looking down. And, like, I know he's thinking, like, he just told me he was a writer. Like, what in the world? And I'm like. And I was like. Almost started to try to explain it, but, like, the answer was so incredibly nerdy that I'm like, you know what? Yeah, go to. Let this go.

That's funny. Wow.

Yeah, I'm just trying to, like, you know, I'm really taking to heart, you know, getting that first draft out as fast as possible. And there's a little bit of pressure because we can't really talk about the editing process until I'm. Until I'm done with the book. So, like, I feel a little bit of pressure of, like, I need a first draft. So we have something to talk about each week. But it's like, you know, I'm really trying to just do everything I can to fast track this first draft. And get it out and just have it so I can stop and go back and start doing the kind of story grid editing process on it.

Well, that'll be great. And a lot of the questions I've been getting recently is all about genre stuff. So the fact that your genre is a very primal one. It's action story with superheroes, and maybe I don't even know. I haven't read any of your stories. So it will be. It should be really fascinating to be able to read it. And then we can go hopefully scene by scene and figure out the obligatory scenes and conventions of that genre, the superhero genre. I think a lot of people want to know more about that, so I'm happy to do that. And I think it'll be really fun to be able to show you and everybody who's listening how an editor actually what they do when they get a manuscript.

Yeah. Because I've thought of, like, well, maybe I should send Shawn a little bit of it. And I'm like, well, the first time I showed him a scene, he pretty much tore it apart. And the second time, he said it was better, but full of cliches. And I'm like, my psyche cannot take that right now, so I'm just gonna wait till I'm done before I show him anything.

Good choice. Good choice.

It's been. Well, like, one obligatory scene in the superhero genre, especially the first story is like the transformation story. Like, how did this person go from a normal Superman? You got to figure out, even if it's Batman, you always get the story of his parents dying and then something happening that kind of triggers his revenge. But then you have. With Spider man, it's always like, he somehow gets caught in a lab and, you know, a radioactive spider bites him. And so, you know, I thought through that pretty heavily of, like, okay, what's my scene? Where the hero has that happen and tried to come up with something interesting and something. And this would be interesting because the idea I had was maybe I shouldn't be talking about. I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. Is a, you know, maybe a little cliche, but I really tried to, because this. I wrote it after we talked about the power of 10. And so that was probably the first significantly violent part of the story where there's lots of blood, there's lots of vomit, and she basically dies. And so I tried to, while I was writing that, of what if I want people reading this to just cringe and just, like, maybe even if you don't like blood, like, get sick to Your stomach a little bit. And I just kept thinking, like, what is the worst version of this happening? Like, what is just the absolute worst? And I just kept, like, cranking it up as much as I could. And, you know, I still don't know. I haven't read it, but I just had a ball writing it because I just was. I really was, you know, in each of these things, just trying to see, like, what. How could I make this just as horrific as possible?

Well, the thing. Let's just talk one minute about what is the superhero story actually? What's it about? And here's. I've been thinking about this a little bit, and I think it's this.

Oh, you're asking this on, like, a bigger scale?

Yeah, yeah, I want to. I want to.

You're not asking what mine is about?

No, no, I meant globally. Globally. What's the global theme? You know, we're always worried about theme, and we've talked about it a lot, but what's the global theme of a superhero story? And here's. I've been thinking about this a lot, and here's what I've come up with. A superhero story is about an individual person discovering a gift within themselves that makes them unique. And it is their job to discover what that gift is, and then to use that gift to defend what they believe is of value in this world. So if you think about that, that's really, really a great theme because it speaks to each and every one of us at the deepest level. Because I think we all are searching for that thing that we're supposed to do on this earth. I don't mean to get metaphysical here, but it's kind of. Once you discover the particular gift or the thing that you're supposed to be here to do, then you have to make the choice to express that gift in a way that will defend and promote the things that you believe in most, what you value most. So this is what I think the superhero stories are always about. You can look at Spider Man. You know, Spider Man's about, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. Batman, he's a vigilante to bring justice to the world. So superhero stories are all, at their core, these thematic transformation stories of a person who discovers their gift, embraces their gift, and then expresses the gift to defend and promote the values and the beliefs that they hold dear.

I feel like, you know, that's interesting you put it that way, because it is like. Because Peter Parker in Spider man is kind of the typical, like, do good. He never worries about Going bad. Yeah, in most cases. And where like he's like the goody two shoes super superhero where like Batman is always on the edge of just flipping over and being a villain himself.

Right.

But they're both have that, like, they have this particular opportunity and power, I guess, that they use to protect what they think is most important. That's interesting.

Well, it also speaks to the hero's journey because the hero's journey is about the protagonist having a call that they have to go out of the ordinary world into the extraordinary world and return with knowledge and a gift for their contemporaries. So the superhero story really expresses that in a very, very external way. You know, somebody gets bitten. Prior to Spider man becoming Spider man, he's just a nerdy kind of high school kid who people kind of make fun of. And then once he's bitten by the spider, his power starts to come to him and he has to leave the ordinary world and into the extraordinary world to express and to, you know, deliver justice to society. So the superhero story, a lot of people make fun of them, but they're very primal because they do directly sort of lock into, you know, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey in a way that is very easy to track. So whenever you get stuck in a hero's journey or in a superhero story, you need to think about what's the gift? How did they get come to? And this is where the obligatory scenes and conventions come in is you have to think about those critical moments in the hero's journey as they relate to your specific genre. So the moment when they leave the ordinary world to the extraordinary world will be the scene when they discover their power. So that scene needs to be a critical obligatory scene that will transition your story from ordinary to extraordinary. And usually it's going to come at the end of the beginning hook of your story. You know, is that. Is that close?

This is why we can't talk about this. No, because mine's like in the middle of the middle build.

Well, that's okay too. I mean, it depends on, you know, every story has its own rhythms and cadences. So the fact that I'm telling you the conventional place where you would put it, that's my job, is to know structural rules so that you will learn about them and you can make a decision based. For example, in Rocky the movie. I know I bring this up a lot, but it's really an important thing. We have 20 minutes of movie before anything really happens. It's just Rocky living his life in this, you know, this really low down way. And there's a lot of foreshadowing and setup that goes on in that 20 minutes. But you don't get the big end of the beginning hook is when, you know, the inciting incident of the entire Rocky story is when Apollo Creed says, let's give the bum a chance. Let's, you know, let's take this bum. And he'll, he'll get to fight me. And that doesn't happen until, I'm saying, 20 to 25 minutes into the film. So the fact that your transitional moment where your character recognizes her power doesn't happen until the middle build. It may be fine. It may absolutely be fine. So don't freak out.

It'd be interesting, your take on it because. Yeah, I'm not currently freaking out. We'll see it later. Because what I, the way I structured it was that the move from the ordinary world to the extraordinary world had nothing to do with the power. It had to do with her getting pulled into this new place. And then in that place is where all the bad stuff happens. And she doesn't really even face her power until the end of the book.

Almost like it happens and she can't really explain what's going on, but she keeps like trying to act like it's not there. And she does. And part of the.

That's fine. That's denying the off. That's. That's.

Yeah. Part of the ending payoff is when she has to like, she has to finally face what happened to escape the situation that, you know, the final all is lost moment. She has to use what. What happened, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does. And that could work. It could work. And you know, a lot of times when you're writing a multi book epic story, what you do is you, you know, especially in trilogies, what a trilogy of novels is, are three separate books that represent the beginning hook, the middle building the ending tale of the global story. Like the Star wars trilogy, you know, before the new movies, you know, that was very much in that tradition.

Yeah, yeah. So it's been one. It's again, it's over. It's that overarching. Just like I set up the story and now I've got to write it. And it'll be that part of going back and like systematically going through it and seeing what works and what doesn't. And maybe that'll be when I reach my dark night of the soul. But you know, it was in it because I was telling. I was at lunch with a friend of mine and she was she's about finished with her first novel. And it's funny because, you know, I was telling her about Story Grid. We hadn't talked in a while, so I was like, telling her about Story Grid and the podcast and everything. She's like, why do you need anything but on writing to, like, learn how to write? And I'm like, well, because I don't like Stephen King's whole, like, we'll just start writing and the story will find you. Like, I've tried that. It doesn't work. She's like, I can't write any way.

Any.

Any other way. And I'm like, well, I don't know, because it just doesn't work for me, you know, I'm like, you know, because I. Because I remember, like, trying to write these stories from scratch, and it was like I would just end up lost in the woods somewhere, you know, and she was like, you know, because I kind of had gotten to the point where I just believe, like, Stephen King just does it because he does it automatically. And it was just interesting to talk to another, like, beginner writer that, like, she's like, every time I tried to plot out my story, I couldn't do anything. She's like, I just had to start writing. So, you know, it's just interesting that, like, different takes that people take on this stuff, because I just. That would never work for me. Ever, ever, ever work for me.

Yeah. I say God bless her, and I hope, you know, a lot of people feel that way. And I'm going to sort of press down my initial reaction to that, which is, oh, okay.

Let me know in six months how you're feeling.

But then again, what do I know? You know, all I know is the craft that I've learned that has. That has worked for me. And some people don't embrace my very analytical process. And it's absolutely fine to reject what I say, because a lot of people, it's like, some actors are just naturally gifted, and it's. I was a failed actor, and I was around so many extremely talented actors that it was depressing because I wanted every little trick and craft book I could find that would make me be half believable on stage. And then, you know, some other people would just go on stage and your jaw would drop because all you wanted to do was watch them the entire time, and they were completely believable. And it seemed as if they did know none of the work that I was struggling with. So I think there's probably a similar situation in every craft. There are Some editors who don't have any system like what I have, and they're, you know, they're very talented and they get the job done and they help their writers, and they would poo poo what I, what I say. And they say, I'm a crank. And that's absolutely fine. So your friend, I hope that she is one of those people who does have that extraordinary gift. But I will also say this. If she ever finds that the gift is failing her understanding story structure and craft will be immeasurably helpful to her. And here's the thing that I always say to people, do no harm. It's not going to hurt you to understand the structure of storytelling and the history of all of the people far smarter than I am, from aristotle to Robert McKee, who have battled this stuff and have come down with some really great tools to help you as you're moving along in your work in progress. So some people attack me and say, I just don't get it. I sit down and I write and this great story comes out, and I say, God bless you. Good for you. Good for you. You probably don't need my stuff, but if you find yourself struggling and having difficulty figuring out what's not working in your book, then I'd suggest looking at these tools and this craft. And it's going to help, I promise.

So what is your advice? So assuming I can actually finish this first draft over the next week, week and a half, what is your advice about what to do with the draft? Should I, like, put it in a drawer, the proverbial drawer, for a month, or should I, like, how what's like my going to be my first step after it's done?

Well, the first step would be to. I wouldn't put it in a drawer. I think certain people would do that and take a week or so to chill out before they dive into the editing. But, you know, the first step that I always do when I read a book is I read it. Then I know generally whether it works or it doesn't work. And usually if it works, then I'll have a general sense of where it could be better. But that's not very helpful. So after I read it, what I'll do is I'll get a stapler and I'll staple together all of the scenes, and then I'll go scene by scene and I'll analyze each scene and say to myself, okay, what happened here? What was the core event of this scene? Did it move from positive, a positive value to a negative value? Or negative to positive or negative to double negative or positive to double positive? Did it have an inciting incident? What was the inciting incident? What was the degree of reversibility of the turning point? And I can, you know, I can really start to narrowly focus. It's like focusing a microscope. And I would do that scene by scene by scene. And I would say to myself, okay, what's the main genre here? What's the external genre? Is there an internal genre? What are the obligatory scenes and conventions of the external genre that this writer chose to write in? What are the obligatory scenes and conventions of the internal genre? And I'll write those down and I'll say, did he deliver on each of these things that should be in this book? And then I'll check them off. Oh, yeah, that's scene 17. Could be a little bit better. So there's a million things to do, and, you know, we can do that, but to talk about it now is probably less helpful than to actually do it when you have a draft.

Yeah, I guess I had this thought that the first thing I should do is go back and, like, fix things that are broken in a kind of more global sense. You know, we talked about a bit about, like, kids characters that you don't use enough or realizing, like, oh, I didn't connect these two dots from, like, the beginning to the end of the book. I was thinking kind of fixing kind of global issues that I already knew about.

Those aren't global issues.

Oh, really?

You're talking about continuity problems. And I always save continuity problems until much later.

Really?

Yeah. The reason why is this. The thing that you have to deliver just fundamentally is a great hook. And then you have to be able to jettison that reader and surprise them into wading deep into the depths of your middle build. And keep surprising them and keep making them promises that this is going to really pay off. Hang in there. And. And then that you have to pay it off at the very end. That's simply what a story is. It's like a really good joke. You know, you got to hook them. You got to keep them interested. And then you've got to surprise them with an inevitable conclusion that a white. You know, make them very excited. It'll give them a catharsis, ideally.

Oh, yeah. You know, I finished two days ago. I finished 1122 63, and the whole book, I kept thinking, you know, your voice is in my head now. So it's like I kept thinking, like, okay, what's the inevitable end to this story? And, like, I Kept like, flip flop and I couldn't make a decision. Like, once I got to the end, I was like, this is the only way it could have ever ended. And it's funny you say that, catharsis, because, like, I've. There's books I cry in and all this kind of stuff, but this was the first one. Like, I read the entire. And it's a long book, it's like a thousand pages or something. And so I read the final word and I sat there for about five seconds and I just started sobbing. It was like I read the whole book with a dry eye. And then it was like something about he just ended it so perfectly and I was so happy and sad at the same time. And I'm like, he is just he. It was like this perfect ending to it. And so it's funny when you say catharsis, because that's exactly what it was. It's like, I was fine. I was fine. I was a complete wreck, you know, so.

So those are the things you really need to focus on in your editing from the very, very start. Because here's the trap that a lot of people get into is, hey, you know, it's not so hard to fix a continuity problem. Oh, one of my characters is only in one scene. Oh, I know. I'll pop them into six other scenes and I'll make those choices and there they are. And, oh, I can check that off. But that's not going to do you any good if you have a weak hook, you know, and if your payoff is just sort of blah. And this goes back to what we started talking about at the very beginning of this podcast about, what can I use 5,000 words a day for? And, you know, after you've banged out your, you know, your first draft and you're capable of doing 5,000 words a day, this is where the 5,000 words a day can really pay off, is in not allowing yourself to accept that first draft scene. Because if you do, it's not going to be as good as it can be. You're going to be at 20% of your capacity instead of. You're not even going to reach 40%. So what I'm saying is that look at those climactic moments of the beginning hook, the middle build, and the ending payoff, and ask yourself, and where are you going to find those? You're going to find those in the conventions and obligatory scenes of your genre. Find and check those to make sure that they're really innovative and interesting, because those are the things that Your genre readers are really going to be looking out for. If I read a mystery and the big reveal of the killer isn't so great, I'm going to be mad. I'm going to be like, I just read 60,000 words and the killer turns out to be the butler. Are you kidding me?

The butler.

And I can't tell you how many books end like that, so don't allow that. So that's got to be your first task when you're editing, is you've got to really press yourself to make sure that that beginning hook and that end. The first thing is, are you hooking them? Are you paying them off? What's your beginning hook like? The beginning hook of 112263 is there's a portal that a guy can go back and maybe stop the Kennedy assassination. That's a really good hip hook, Right?

Yeah.

The ending payoff is what happens. I mean, I know he didn't stop the candidate, the assassination, but you never know. Like, Quentin Tarantino killed Hitler.

I don't want to talk about it.

Okay.

Yeah, that was. Oh, that was a good one.

Yeah. Quentin Tarantino killed Hitler in Inglourious Basilis. And it worked. Yeah, because he knew what his genres was. He knew what his genre was. It was not realism. Quentin Tarantino does not deal in realism, especially in Django Unchained, in Pulp Fiction and in Glorious Basterds. That is not realism. It's a fantastical Tarantino world. He's created his own Tarantino genre by mashing up all kinds of stuff. I mean, I can get into Tarantino until I'm blue in the face, but the guy's a genius. And the reason why is, if you want to ask somebody about a genre convention, if you can get Tarantino on a phone and ask him any genre and its conventions, he'll tell you because he knows them all, because he plays with them and he makes them so innovative and interesting in each and every one of his films. I don't love every single film he makes, but each one you just kind of have to, like, you go for the ride and you're like, wow, I can't believe he did that.

Well, I have said now, I haven't seen Hateful Eight yet, but I will say he's gotten soft because, again, don't know what happened in Hateful Eight, but all of his recent movies, the good guy wins, Django Unchained and Glorious Basterds, like, name them off. Like, his early movies. I could barely stomach. And you get you. I didn't like him, but everybody dies and ends up just, you know, in horrible situations. And I like his newer ones because I can. I'm like, okay, the good guy's gonna win. Like, all of this horrible stuff's gonna happen?

Well, yeah. I mean, he was. Yeah, he was dealing with some serious social issues. Slavery and the Holocaust and Hitler. You know, you can't have the bad guys win those.

Well, I wouldn't put it past him. I mean.

Yeah, it's true, but.

So it's interesting because I was. As you were saying, as you're talking about hitting those obligatory scenes, I'm like, what was it that set me up to be so devastated at the end of 1122 63. And I can't pinpoint. The book is just so long, it's hard to. Because, you know, he kind of goes off on these tangents really well. Like, I never got bored. But anyway, are those the ones that you would say, like, if you go back and you look at the obligatory scenes, you look at the hook and the payoff, that's where he's setting you up to have that moment at the end of the book?

Yeah. Yeah.

Because, you know, that's what I'm thinking of. Okay, this. You know, I have a general feeling of what I want my reader to be feeling at the end of the book and where I want to get them. And I'm just struggling with what, you know, have I done the job to get them to that point yet? Do they care?

No, you. I guarantee you have not done the job yet. You have not done the job, but that's okay. You have to accept the fact that your first draft is not going to get the job done. And it's perfectly reasonable. I mean, nobody has written a perfect first draft that delivers on all cylinders. Nobody. And.

Right.

So the trick is understanding that you're not going to deliver everything in the first draft, but also understanding that you're. You're going to have the tools and the analytical know how necessary to fix what's broken and not just fix what's broken. You know, it's really difficult to even identify what is broken.

Well, that's my biggest worry. I feel like.

Oh, I'll tell you what's.

Oh, that's good to know. Yeah. Because I was just. I told you about realizing I had the wrong antagonist. You know, like, all this stuff immediately dropped into place once I, you know, the muse told me who the antagonist was and then starting to, like, as every scene he shows up in now I'm, like, turning up the dial. And again, thinking back to Harry Potter. And it's like she went so far into making you just hate Snape because she was setting him up as, like, the patsy, you know?

Right.

And he ended up not being the bad guy even in the first novel. And then, you know, ultimately. But it was just like, I can see where, you know, again, this is where maybe. Maybe you can pull some strings, SEAN, and get J.K. rowling on the phone with me. But I'd be interested to see, like, did she, after her first draft, go back and say, where can I make the reader hate Snape even more? More, you know, like, where can I really turn up that dial? So by the end of it, everybody hates him and just knows he's the bad guy. That way I can my twist at the end. Because the more you hate Snape and look at him, the more surprised you are by the twist ending.

Right.

So I'm just starting to, like, think about those things as I continue to write the first draft of, like, making sure I'm trying to turn those right dials to make sure that everybody's looking the way they're looking and feeling the way I want them to feel. So at the end, I'll hit them exactly how I want to hit them.

Well, good. That's great stuff to keep in mind. But also remember, don't edit while you're writing. So if you were so concentrated on the editing when you were writing, you wouldn't have switched the antagonist, because you would. You would have been constantly trying to prove yourself right and not open to a different direction that your unconscious was pushing you toward. And identifying that direction and going with it was absolutely right choice. So it's this delicate balance. It's not really a balance. When you're writing your first draft, you always need to sort of just follow your words, follow your unconscious. And if it says you're going to make this turn, all of a sudden, a bomb's going to go off in your book and you're going to say, oh, I don't want a bomb to go off in my book. Just let the bomb go off and then try and figure out how to fix it.

All right.

All right.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For all things StoryGrid, you can go to storygrid.com Sign up for the newsletter, read the transcripts of this show. There's lots of resources there. You don't want to miss any of that. Along with that, we have all of the past episodes and show notes@storygrid.com podcast and if you're interested at all in learning how to type in the Colemak layout that I mentioned in this episode, I have a link to the system that I used to learn how to type in Colemak. Again, switching from Qwerty to Colemak was mentally excruciating. It was really hard to learn. It took me about four weeks till I could type at any kind of normal speed and actually start getting things done. But over the following months I actually ended up increasing my overall typing rate and now I can type a whole lot faster. Actually, just this morning I was able to type 1400 words in an hour, so I highly recommend it if you want to give it a try. It's really hard, but it's one of those things that you do once and it really helps you for the rest of your life. So you can check that out in the show notes@storygrid.com podcast as always, thanks so much for listening to the show, sharing it with your friends, leaving Reviews Our itunes reviews continue to go up and every single one of them I read and I really appreciate. So thanks so much for your support of the show and we will see you next week.