Just Skip to the End

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, Sean and I continue working through the ending payoff of my book, and I keep getting stuck at what to do next. And so the solution we come up with is pretty interesting. I think it will be helpful for you in your own writing. I also want to mention two things here before we get started. The first is after we stopped talking and finished the episode, we continued recording, and we continued discussing different aspects of the story.

And so I've added that on to.

The very end of this episode as, like, an epilogue. So if you want to continue listening.

All of that's there.

That's why this episode is a little longer than normal. Also, at the end of this episode, I have a really cool announcement. Sean and I are doing something this coming fall that you may want to.

Be a part of.

And so make sure you listen to the end, and I'll announce what it is and how you can find out some more information. Okay, well, let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, last few days ago, I came into my office in the morning, and I thought, you know what? I should really do some research before I write these scenes. And so I watched a good chunk of the Godfather, but it was research. I did not enjoy it.

No.

I went back, and what was funny is because it's been a while since I've watched that movie. I thought the scene where he shot the guys in the restaurant was towards the end of the movie. No, that was, like, in the first, like, third of the movie.

Yeah, it's the end of the beginning hook.

Oh.

It's the transformation of Michael. The internal genre of the Godfather is, you know, it's a disintegration plot, meaning Michael moves from a positive to a negative by the end of the movie. It's not punitive because he doesn't get in trouble and suffer for it. He actually rises in stature. But at the beginning of the movie, Michael is the only good egg in the family, and he's vowed to Kay, you know, kay, that's my family. That's not me. And then after the Godfather, Brando is shot. Michael's the only one he realizes. Michael realizes he's the Only one capable of getting vengeance. And so when he makes that decision, it's that beautiful moment in the library where Marlon Brando's library, which is where, you know, the very beginning of the movie begins. And Michael's sitting to the side of the desk where the Don sits, and it all gets very quiet. And he explains exactly how he's going to kill Sollozzo and the police detective. It's just so incredibly. I'm getting chills just talking about it. And then, you know, then he goes down with. With Clemenza to learn how to actually fire the gun, hear the sound, so he doesn't get all fidgety in the restaurant itself. Anyway, I interrupted you. But that is one of the greatest beginning hooks of a movie of all time. Because it's almost. It feels like the end of a movie. Right? It feels like the climactic moment of the ending payoff of some incredible gangster movie. And at the end of the beginning hook, you're like, oh, my gosh, this is just the beginning.

There's. There's another hour. I can't wait.

Yeah. Yeah. I watched that whole scene, and then I watched. I kept watching. Yeah.

Then he goes to Italy, and he tries. He tries to run away from his problems, and he finds the love of his life there, and he's decided, you know, I don't have to go back to America. I'm going to stay here in Italy. And they come after him, and then he's like, you know, all bets are off. I'm coming home.

Yeah. So I. You know, so I did start with the scene in the basement, and it just, like, reminded me of, like, how a good movie just moves so effortlessly, but, like, they really don't waste a single, like, moment, a single word. There's no, like, extra. It's just exactly what the scene needs to be. Yeah. And. And then I slip into despair that I'll never be that good. And then I come back and I try to write something, but. So I. I sent you. It ended up being two scenes because I have one scene with, like, everybody in the room, and then one scene with just Randy and Jesse. In the first version, I kind of made Randy kind of an ass. And, like, pushing them and telling them they'll never. They're never gonna do it. And then I realized, or I felt like, you know, he's still got this act, that he is the wronged one, and he's just trying to help. And so I wrote. Rewrote the scene much softer from his point of view, as if like, look, I'm gonna push you guys hard, but I'm trying to help you. This is what you've got to know.

And then I tried to end it with kind of a. He mentions, like, they talk about how, you know, he kind of leaves the hanging thread of how he won the threshing, but he's still not gonna tell you. And then the second scene is with just him and Jesse. And that's where I tried to. Because I realized I hadn't revealed yet that Lila was 86 or 83. I keep forgetting.

I think it's 83.

Okay, 83. And so I tried to reveal in there, without directly saying it, that she was 83. And then also gave another clue into what Randy is setting up by saying, like, they're going to lose the next threshing in order to get the way. That's their only way out anyway. What'd you think?

I thought both scenes worked. And.

I think you really did do a nice job with having Randy be tough but vulnerable at the same time. He still has to get around in a wheelchair, his hair is all gone. He's obviously has some strength back, but he's not this Marine like drill sergeant pressing these people. And I also like the way you, you put in, you know, some of the parameters of what the threshing is all about and that there are three acts in the threshing and Randy describes, you know, the, the setting of the threshing that he was involved in and he refers to, you know, the bombed out city from when everything went terrible so many years ago. So again, I think you're using exposition as ammunition in a really nice way here. We're expecting to learn more and more about what this society is. Where did it come from? How did it happen? And having these details dropped in at that moment was the right choice to make. I also like the way Randy has sort of lost complete interest in one of the coders who will be in the threshing. I think his name is Craig.

Yes, right.

So that's a nice setup for something. I'm not sure what, what that is, but as a longtime reader, I'm saying to myself, oh, Randy's setting up Craig to do something, you know, to serve his purposes by manipulating him in a way that makes him think that, that Randy doesn't like him and that he.

Well, I'm kind of pictured. Craig is like the red shirt in Star Trek. You know, you always know the guy that's gonna die in the scene of Star Trek because he's just the red shirt guy that showed up you've never seen before. So, like, I figure at some point he's there, but mostly his cannon fodder.

Yeah. But I would use him as cannon fodder in a unique way. What you've set up with that dynamic is that Randy is manipulating Craig to do something. So he's going to somehow get Craig to be so interested in earning his approval that he'll be able to have a side conversation with him before the event and say, oh, by the way, in the second act of the threshing, there will be this moment, and this is when you need to do this. Something like that. Now, we don't. We're not privy to that conversation, but you can reveal and pay that off, that conversation off in the actual action moment of the second act. And you've also set yourself up for three really tight action scenes to, you know, as you're ending payoff. You've got act one of the threshing. You've got act two of the threshing and act three of the threshing. And also you've set up this thing like, hey, here's a secret. We're going to lose. So now the reader is a little bit confused in a good way, because they're expecting Randy to explain to Jesse how they're going to lose and how it's going to work for them, which you may or may not do on the page. And then Jesse is also has to pretend that she's in there to win it, and as is in there to win it too, and so is Craig. So what you're establishing what you've established with these two scenes. And of course, they're not perfect and you can. They're not Michael Corleone and Clemenza in the basement yet.

But.

But with that said, come on, what they are are great. You're moving the pieces forward and you're building to the ending payoff in a very good way because you're. You're basically saying to the reader, hey, you have no idea what is coming. And neither does Jesse, neither does Craig. Neither does. As the. The mastermind here is Randy. Randy has an agenda that is going to either succeed or fail in this threshing. And Jesse is going to become either the vehicle for him to get his goal or the one who stops him from getting what he wants. So that is a crucial bit of information to remind the reader. And the way you've done that is very, very good because you need to remind the reader somebody has an agenda. The MacGuffin. We don't know what Randy's MacGuffin is. We don't really even know yet if Randy is the ultimate bad guy. We're still seeing the president as the bad guy. So the one note I would give you, and you can mull this over, but I do want you to keep sort of moving forward is let's keep the president, Marcus, on the stage as much as possible so that the reader can continue to believe that he is the bad guy. Because Marcus is serving as the bad guy of this first novel. And we can do this later on in another round of editing, but we need to establish Marcus as really not such a good guy. And we know what Marcus's goal is. Marcus's goal is to win the threshing so he can remain in power and he'll do whatever is necessary to make that happen, including using Randy and Randy's sister to win this next threshing. Go ahead.

So, and you know, you've said from the beginning that the villain is the one that drives, you know, it kick. He kicks the story off. He, you know, drives the middle build like the villain is the thing.

Yes.

And so looking back through, I could easily, like, we've set it up and with a few tweaks, we could really drive home Marcus is the villain from, I mean, we've set it up in scene one.

Yes.

And so, and I feel like, you know, like you were saying with the scenes at the end of the, the end of the middle build, where if I set up that it's going to be the super action final severing, and then if I set that up more, the payoff is even better. So I'm thinking with this, if I, like, really drive home Marcus is the villain, it will be an even better payoff when Randy's the villain.

Right. Well, Randy, Randy's revelation as being the mastermind, the real villain who really put Jesse's life in mortal danger and he used her for his own purposes. That revelation is the thing that's going to push the reader into book two because Randy's somehow going to get away. He's going to be released from his virtual and his real chains by the events that take place in the threshing. And Jesse will inadvertently be the mechanism in which brings him freedom. So, you know, I'm not trying to get too confusing about this, but what we're at, where you've taken the story is a place of really high pitched uncertainty. And that's exactly where you want to be heading into the climactic. Action of the story. So that's all very good news. And again, it's not, it's not difficult to. To massage these characters on a second, third or fourth draft. You know, we haven't even got, ironically, we haven't even started editing this thing yet. We're. We're just trying to get a first draft, but we're trying to get a very workable first draft so that, you know. Go ahead.

The picture that keeps popping in my head is like when you're doing like a thousand piece puzzle and you like pour out the pieces and the first thing you got to do is like, turn them all over. Then you find the edge pieces. Then you find like all the green pieces because those are the trees and all the blue pieces, those are the water. And like, you just kind of get everything into a place where I can actually now work on it. Like, that's the picture that keeps coming into my head is you're like, well, this isn't, like, this isn't what it needs to be. But it, it's got the enough of the pieces that we can keep moving forward. And then later we'll have to come back and actually put together that piece of the puzzle. That's been the, like, metaphor in my head for a while.

Well, that's a good one. That's a good one. And the other metaphor, it's not exactly a metaphor. The other way to think about the global story is, you know, again, I'm going back to the five commandments of storytelling. And what do we have? We have the inciting incident. We have progressive complications. We have a crisis, a climax, and a resolution. So the beginning hook of a novel serves as the inciting incident for the entire book, and in your case, an entire series of. Of books. So the beginning hook of this novel is doing that for us. And what it does is it also raises complications. So once we get into the middle build, progressive complications arise and they sort of take center stage. That's why it's called the middle build. And so we progressively complicate the story in the middle build until we reach a crisis. And the crisis for Jessie was. What was her crisis in the middle build? Can you answer that?

I have to remember the middle build.

The crisis in the middle build. The decision is.

Is it that she's actually going to fight to win this thing?

Well, I think the crisis arose when she was in the second severing. It comes to pretty much the midpoint of your story. And when she was in the second severing, she freaked Out. Remember she was in that room and she reached a crisis moment where she didn't know what to do. She didn't know, you know, if she continued in the game, she would probably lose and hurt herself. If she didn't continue in the game, she would be zapped or what is it, scrambled. And then her, her co players Alex and Ernst would suffer. So she had a terrible irreconcilable goods crisis as well as a best bad choice crisis going on at the same time. And it's in that moment that you chose to bring in the magical element of Randy pull pulling her out of the game. So her crisis was averted by almost a supernatural event. And what that event did was it gave her, it reconfigured her thinking into believing that, oh, now I have to press on because then I can get my family back together. Randy's alive, he's found me. All I have to do is do what Randy tells me. So that is sort of this crisis that arose. But the climax of that crisis was in her continuing to move forward in the hopes that there was another force that would give her the answers to the test. So you know, that middle build was about progressively complicating to this crisis moment when she freaks out. And then the climax of that crisis moment is that this magical. It's the meeting of the goddess meeting with the goddess, sort of scene where Randy explains to her, you've got to hang in there, I'm going to get you back. You're going to win the second Severing. And then she's empowered. And then she moves into the third severing uses her, her wits to, to beat the other two players. And then she ends up dying in the game and she's now reawakened and she's back, Randy's back. She feels as if she's working with Randy for some larger goal. And the reader is sort of not sure if she's kidding herself or not kidding herself. And that answer will be revealed in the ending pay of the story, which is really this massive crisis of the final, final confrontation. Does she trust her brother or does she not trust her brother? So anyway, I don't know why I went through that other than to say that you are abiding the five commandments of storytelling in the global structure of your story and each one of your pieces. The beginning hook has the five commandments. The middle build has the five commandments. And we just have to make sure that the five commandments are very clear in this ending payoff because we're pushing it all into an irreversible action. At the very end of the story, she's going to blow up the virtual world, which is going to have catastrophic, you know, problems for everybody. For the rest of people in society, it's an irreversible change. Until somebody goes back and rewires and reconstructs this grid, all of society is going to be into chaos. So that is, you know, that has been from the beginning. From what you've told me, your goal of this first novel is to get us from a sense of tyranny and order to chaos.

Yeah.

Okay. What are you thinking about for, you know, your next couple of scenes? Do you have a sequence involved? You. Do you think there's. What do you think?

I have no idea. I mean.

Well, there's a couple of things that you have to do. You have to reveal how Randy won the first threshing. Right. How are you going to make that revelation clear? How are you going to use it in a way that will help you? You know, are you going to reveal that in the actual threshing itself, you could literally move, if you wanted to, directly into Act 1 of the Threshing right after this chapter? Whether you do want to do that or not is another question you might want to. You know, Jesse is just basically woken up. She's been through some training. Randy has told her, you know, don't hold a grudge against Lila83. You know, she had to do what she had to do. Now you could do. What you could do now is. Is move back and reveal what that note to the rats was all the way back in the beginning Hook. You could bring in the rats and the mentor figure from the one who speaks in biblical phraseology, or you could just go into Act 1 of the Threshing and just get right into it. If you're going to do three acts of the threshing, that's three scenes. And you're gonna have to sort of bump up the volume in each and every one.

So my thinking was I have. So the reason I'm not talking too much is I'm trying to figure out if it's my resistance that's keeping me from wanting to just jump in the threshing. Or I actually, like. Because my thinking is I need to arrange my chest pieces a little bit more with bringing in the new character, bringing in the old characters, and kind of getting everything to a point where Jesse can move all the pieces during the threshing. So I also, like, was thinking if he like, should there be something where, like. Because Randy's plan is still on track, and he hasn't really had a hiccup in that plan yet. And you had talked about having something at the beginning with Jesse be a hiccup in the plan. I guess her coming back was a hiccup in the plan. But I was thinking if, like, he wanted to keep hiding it. And then finally, like, maybe Marcus revealed how he won it without. And he kept trying to hide it or. I don't know. I don't know what I should do next because I'm trying to decide. I don't even know what pieces I've got to put in place to get to that final ending payoff.

Sometimes it's a good idea to move forward without having the answers. And this might be one of those times. I was just thinking as you were talking, you know, how do you set up the actual threshing itself? Right. There's got to be almost. This is what the Hunger Games was so great at doing. Is that Suzanne Collins, who wrote it? She was really great at setting the scene. She had the television coverage. And so Katniss and I forget the male lead in that, but they're interviewed.

Oh, right.

You know, and so it's this entertainment program for the masses.

Yeah, because they also have that thing where, like, they come in almost like the Olympic ceremony, where they all come in and show off who they are, and then they get interviewed. And then there's that final scene where, like, where they actually get put into the severing or into the thing where they take her. I don't know, the guy that, like, helped her through her mentor, through the. That process. Anyway, so you got to think this.

Is a moment where you could almost go very global, third person omniscient in a way, by using a narrative device where you have, you know, the three presidents of the three factions get together in, you know, the threshing control headquarters. And between the three of them, they've each devised their own final threshing scenario. It's almost like a football game. It's almost like the coin tossed. And so these three presidents go into a room and they figure out, okay, well, here's my proposed threshing setting. It will start here. The goal is for them to do this. The final one across, you know, the final one standing. The final team standing will get the credits. Maybe you bring in those, you know, those super. What are they called again? The Scramblers or the, you know, the people.

The Reapers.

Yeah, the Reapers. So you could have like, almost like a sporting event narrative device where the. The three factions and the three teams on each faction. So you basically have nine players, right? Are you. You're having the Asian faction, the Euro, Russians and the Americas, right? So you have nine players. And so what you do is you. You kind of walk this back and just start banging stuff out. Give yourself a narrative device to goof around with. Pretend that you're a sportscaster. Just narrate what happens in the first act of the threshing. You know, do the pomp and circumstance before the thing. Then get into, like, the kickoff starts and then bang, you know, they're all. Are they all. You know, they're all logged in. They're all locked in with the cords in their back of their heads, etc. You could take it from the point of view of Ernst or Alex the medic and the, you know, the translator or whatever, the comms guy. And this way you can sort of peel around and have some fun knowing that you don't specifically have to know how exactly everything's going to play out. This is the moment when you kind of let your subconscious goof around, okay? And you're not going to solve all the problems, but what you will find is some kind of setting or some interesting setup that you can build on. But right now you've. You've built this threshing into such a huge event that you're now avoiding writing it.

So. Okay, so I think I'm tracking with you, so I want to. I have a couple more specific questions. So one is like, if this is such a big event, I do need to show, like, how it impacts. How it impacts the greater world as far as, like, are they paying attention? And I also wonder if she should, like, wouldn't she do a final, like, phone call to her parents before she goes into this? And it could happen in the virtual world where she basically goes to them and is like, you know, they're talking about everybody in the town getting ready for the threshing. And, yeah, she's talking to them about this and maybe like, even the. The rats are in the room, you know, so she. Because there's always the moment when they go. They go back home before they go to the final thing. So she goes back virtually to say, you know, to kind of do a goodbye without saying goodbye. And then I was even wondering if, like, they all physically go to the same location. Like, all. So they're. So. I don't know. I don't know. So I can work that out.

But yeah, I mean, what you just described is a perfectly valid scene, but I would suggest you not write that scene yet. Instead start. You know, you got to get into the ring with this big, bad scene, okay? So what you can do is once you sort of construct this, it's probably going to be somewhere between four and 5,000 words, this climactic battle. And that's probably three to four scenes. And after you. You get a feel for that, and it doesn't have to be perfect, then you can go back and put in the details that, like, you can say to yourself, I'll let Jesse take advantage of some rat trick in the threshing. I'll have Jesse use something out, and then later on, you can go back and write that, you know, the warrior right before he goes to war scene where he gets to go home for, you know, for leave for a day. You might conceive of an interesting idea where you use some element of historical battle. You know, back. Back in the early ages of battles, people used to take picnics, and they would. They would have a picnic on the lawn and. And down below, like the Russian army and the French were, you know, fighting it out, and they would watch them have their battle, and then they would clean up their picnic and go home. And it was a certain kind of strange thing today we would never consider. I'm thinking like the Franco Prussian wars or if you did some Google work to find, you know, were there moments of battles beyond. And also there's the Roman Colosseum where it would fill and people would kill each other on the grounds. It's a form of entertainment that. I mean, the great thing about the Hunger Games was the exploitation of children as a means to serve as cautionary tales for the population while also providing entertainment thematically. You know, that's what a tyrant would do, is you have these great spectacles in order to scare the bejesus out of the population and also excite them at the same time. So they're getting a double dopamine rush. Oh, my gosh, this is so exciting and thrilling to watch. Thank God it's not me. I'm not gonna mess with things because I could end up down there. But isn't it exciting anyway? And in many ways, that's what the National Football League is today. You know, we enjoy watching these guys beat the hell out of each other, and thank God it's not me, or. So to think of the threshing as the super bowl of this society is really the direction you want to go in. I'm not saying you want to duplicate what Suzanne Collins did in the Hunger Games, but to think of it in terms of, you know, what's the purpose of the threshing? The purpose of the threshing is for the people in power to maintain power by providing entertainment and caution at the same time. So if that's the purpose of the threshing, how would they best present that to the three factions, you know, struggling to not eat up all the resources of the planet that are left? You know, the Reapers are using the threshing as a means to control people's appetites. And the other way they're doing it is by using virtual reality.

Let's see. I haven't seen it as a cautionary tale as much as there's limited resources and the Reapers control them, but they're doing it under the guise of, we're trying to just care for everybody in the world. And so the only way we can figure out how to divvy this stuff up without you guys killing each other is if we control it and you guys do a virtual battle. And it was. It's like this agreement to stop the fighting, right? So in. If we're looking at Hunger Games, it is that, like, it's them keeping everybody down. And all of these. I forgot what they called the eight different places people lived. Or this is more like this was the agreement under the treaty is this is how we handle things, right? This is how we handle our dispute, is once every four years, we come together and we battle for the resources. There's not that many anyway. And we've trusted this other power to maintain that for us.

Well, yes. Yes and no. I mean, the Reapers are acting. They're using a rational argument to keep people under control. There's only so many resources, those who can get more of them. We want to encourage people to become better thinkers, more active physical beings, so that we will reward the most fit among the three factions with a higher percentage of resources. So they're encouraging each of the factions to better themselves so that they can overcome eventually the limitations of their environment. So they are basically playing a game of evolution. It's a survival of the fittest sensibility. And they believe we will have each faction boiled down to three people. And those three people are representative of the best thinkers, physical specimens, etcetera, of that faction. And then they will compete with the other three people from the other two factions. So we have this nine person, winner take all kind of battle. And then the other two factions, they're on half rations while. While the winning faction is on double rations or whatever it is. And you need to have. You could sort of have this setup scene where, you know, the. The reapers. Historian. Like, it's like the beginning of the Olympics, you know, back in, you know, ancient Greece, city states used to get together and have a competition. So we're using that as a story in order for us to have this event that will make a lot of money on television. That's what the Olympics is. It has nothing to do with anything but ridiculous national. I mean, I'm probably digging myself a huge hole here, but it's just nationalism with, you know, television profits and there's cheating scandals. I mean, it's. It's silly. It's nothing like the original Olympics. So to think of the threshing as some sort of Quasi Olympics vs death race 2000 vs any one of these dramatic moments in time where a very limited number of members of society have to represent their entire faction in order, and everybody relies on their success or failure for their survival. That's kind of the message you need to impart in this threshing. And you need to set it up so that the reader completely understands what's at stake here. And the idea of going. Having her going back to her town for a night is a good one. But again, I think if you do that scene too early, you're just gonna have some cheesy reconciliation between her and her parents. And instead of setting up, she's going home. Most people go home from that thing to relax. She knows I've got to go home to get my ducks in a row for this threshing because I'm going to use the resources that I have at home for when I'm in the battle somehow. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah.

But you do. You do need to set up the importance of this threshing and how this is. Everybody stops the threshing has a limited time. It has a clock. Right. It can end at any time. But whoever's standing at the end of act three wins.

Well, and, you know, this is even making me wonder, and this isn't to do now, but, like, once we get to the end of this, that'll be stuff I need to add earlier in the story, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, how important this is, because I'm thinking, like, oh, you know, I have not even considered the society at whole.

That's okay.

As I've written this first draft.

That's really fun stuff that you can pepper in later in dialogue. And also many little asides and all that sort of thing. So don't worry about. You can build up this thing and you can find the moments in the story to do that later. So don't beat yourself up because you haven't painted in all the brushstrokes yet. As you said, this is a big piece of puzzle. It's going to be vague at the end, but we know what the scene looks like.

So I'm gonna just jump ahead to the threshing. And once we get through that, that will inform on the couple scenes I'm gonna skip for now. You think I should just go ahead and dive in?

I think so. I mean, I think, look, the first act of the threshing and the first third or whatever, you might even not do the acts. You haven't even figured that out yet. What's great is that there aren't many limitations in what you're doing other than you have to set up the moment, you have to set up the game, and then you have to get her in the game with a strategy of some sort. And you also gave yourself some ideas about how to do the setting. With Randy, discussing the last threshold, which was a really good idea. Well, they put us back. I pictured like, you know, somewhere, some war torn zone. Because of my age, I think of Vietnam in 1974, the fall of Saigon and just this burned out city and people are trying to get out of it. And that's where they put the threshing people back and have them negotiate, you know, taking each other out. I mean, what's the goal of the threshing? That's the other thing you have to establish. Are they supposed to kill the other people or scramble them? How do they do that? Is it a. Is it a game where they have to seize something before somebody else? They have to get some. Some ring somewhere or some magical. They have to go find Hitler's gold. I don't know. Is it a kill game or is it a retrieval game? The first one who gets the locket wins. You have to make that decision. It's probably going to be, you know, this is a life and death thriller. So it's got to be a kill game, I would think.

I mean, I could probably weave together both.

There could. I mean, you could have, like use it. Think of it as a video game. You know, what do you do with video games? You try and get armor and then that will protect you from the dragon's breath. You know, something like that. Where there are these little Easter eggs in the. In the world where they can find and they can get a certain protection, but the ultimate goal is to be the last man or last woman standing. And so it's similar to the Hunger Games payoff. Or maybe it's not. I mean, that's the great thing at this moment is that you can make up whatever you like. And that's also the limitation because it's frightening because there's no, you know, Jesse has to win or lose or both.

Well, I just think, like in a. In a heist movie, you know, from the beginning, the. The ending payoff is going to be them trying to get into the bank, you know.

Right.

And with this thing, there's really no thing that I know I've got to do as far as, like, it doesn't. There's no setting that's already in place. I've just gotta come up with something.

Well, I mean, the other thing to think about. And again, this isn't the moment to panic about that because we can always add that stuff in later. We can add in these little things explaining what the ultimate threshing is in another drought. So it's okay that you've gone this far without having this perfectly laid out plan. But one thing that could be interesting is maybe.

There'S another purpose to the threshing beyond just distributing resources. It could be that there was a moment in time where somebody. It's. It's almost like that movie with Tom Cruise a couple of years ago where he goes. He keeps going back to fight the same battle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

I forgot. It was like live, die, repeat or something.

That was. That was the.

The catchphrase or whatever.

Yeah, but I'll have it in just a sec.

It could be something like that where.

Edge of Tomorrow.

Yes, Edge of Tomorrow, where they go back to this specific moment in time when everything fell apart. And the goal is not just to be the last man standing, but to solve the problem that destroyed the. That destroyed the Earth. Like, maybe it's a reversible problem or maybe there's some action that could have, you know, stop things from falling apart in the way that they have.

Like the 12 monkeys type. Was that the name of the movie?

I think.

Movie?

Yeah. That's a long time ago. I don't quite remember, but it could be something like that or not.

So. I mean, I've been so focused on figuring out what the action scene is. I mean, I. Should I be thinking, like, bigger and globally about these type of things, about having some kind of hidden thing that. Because my thought has been too. That the way every other threshing besides Randy's was won by Last Man Standing. And Randy's was won because he ripped open a hole in the grid. And they called it, basically. So that was why it was so different, was that he did something that was never done before. And so with this, my plan was to have her rip open, like, take that initial tear that he did and just finish it. And that's what shuts everything down. But that could expose, like, a bigger secret of what's really going on under the surface. I mean, is that the type stuff you're thinking?

I think so. I think. I think having the payoff be, oh, well, Randy wasn't the only one who survived. Lila survived, too. I don't know. I think that works as long as we understand what this rip in the. In the, you know, the digital world actually means. The difficulty with dramatizing on the page, with language, a rip in the, you know, the physical universe is that it's very difficult for the reader to envision. And so you sort of have this magical moment where thunder and lightning happen, and all of a sudden there's a rip. It's like the moment in Indiana Jones at the end and the Ark of the Covenant, you know, where they close their eyes and all this supernatural thunder and lightning come down. And I guess that's okay, except it's not as viscerally exciting as witnessing, you know, something based in reality that. I mean, I'm explaining that the very difficult elements in creating a supernatural, horrific monster, too. I mean, how many monsters are really. You have your vampire, you have your zombie. I mean, you have these traditional monsters. You have your alien. Well, what does the alien look like? Oh, geez, let me think. It looks like a rat. You know, so, I mean, that's part of the challenge of creating this climactic moment. And the way Suzanne Collins got around it is she made it Last Man Standing game and then used the brilliance of Katniss to sacrifice herself. And I forget the male partner again. The two of them agree to eat the poison and both die so that there's no winner, which makes the. The powers that be have a very big dilemma. And they, you know, they use this power of love in order to beat the evil of the tyranny. And everybody can relate to love, right? So that's why the love ending of Hunger Games, the first one really worked, because we're like, oh, yeah, these two really love each other and they're willing to die. I mean, it goes all the way Back to Romeo and Juliet and the poison. So I wouldn't doubt Suzanne Collins was like, how can I Romeo and Juliet this I know. I'll have them eat poison together, you know, so it's not out of the realm of possibility to think of the famous solutions to these kinds of problems and then, you know, put your own twist on it. In fact, that's called innovative Creativity is looking at what other artists have done in the past and then putting your own twist on it. So I know I'm not being specifically helpful, but I'm trying to get you in the researchy kind of helpful, like, what's your favorite Scooby Doo? And how did they solve one of these problems? And can you twist it? You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. But I do think now's the time to start battling this monster, this big. Threshing. Your novel's called the Threshing, or that's the working title for it. And so you got to deliver something, and there's no pressure right now. You're really cooking. You've done a great bunch of work. So allow yourself to make a lot of mistakes and think about it globally and then think about it locally. Start writing something. If you get stuck, step back and say, what am I supposed to accomplish here? Oh, yeah, right. And then get back to it. The most important thing is to not despair to the point where you stop working. Remember that you're not going to solve this sitting down for three hours. It's just not going to happen. It's going to take a lot of showers, a lot of running around the block, a lot of walking the dog, a lot of making pancakes for your kids, a lot of, you know, all those moments when your brain is doing something else. It'll be churning on this problem, but now's the time to start churning on it and trying some scenes, trying some setups, trying some inciting incidents. Think about the goal of the society in this threshing. Think about the goal of Jesse in this threshing. Think of the goal of Randy. Think of the goal of the president, that stuff. And then just start goofing with some inciting incidents and see where you can go.

Okay, I can do that. Oh, all right. Well, I'll. I have no idea what I'll have ready to turn into, but I'll send you whatever I have and we'll go over it next week.

Okay.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything Story Grid 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@storygrid.com podcast so I mentioned at the beginning of the episode two things. One is there's about a 20 minute epilogue where Sean and I kept talking after we ended the episode and we got that record. And so that's coming up in just a minute here. I also wanted to mention something Sean and I have been working on. So one of the biggest requests we get from people is wanting to get help applying StoryGrid to their story, right? So I'm the lucky one that actually gets to talk to Sean every week and gets him looking at their story. But not everybody gets that chance, obviously. And so how do you get somebody to actually help you do the StoryGrid method for your own writing? So what we've decided to do is start an editor certification program where we're going to bring in editors, teach them how to do the storygrid method, teach them how to edit it through, so that they will be available to anybody that needs help getting their story edited in the story grid system.

So if I said that and you.

Are an editor and your ears perked up and you're interested in learning how to do this, how to become a certified Story Grid editor, we have a page up just for you. So if you go to storygrid.com cert like certification C E R T. So storygrid.com cert we have an application there along with some information on how you can become a certified Story Grid editor. We really want to continue to grow StoryGrid, make it available to more people, make sure more people can have access to, to the help they need to get their story from not working to working. And of course, StoryGrid is the best methodology to do that. So if you are an editor looking to grow your business, if you are an editor looking to learn the story grid in a much more deep and detailed way, any of that interests you, go to storygrid.com cert C E R T, fill out the application, and then we will get back to you as we continue to put final details on this. So I'm just really excited about this. I think it's going to be really helpful because again, this is the questions we get from you more than any other question is people wanting help applying StoryGrid to their own writing. And so hopefully pretty soon that's going to be a reality. So, again, that's go to storygrid.com cert if you are interested in becoming a certified Storygrid editor. And we look forward to hearing from you and moving forward on that project.

So, as always, if you want to.

Support the show, you can do that by leaving a rating and review on itunes and of course, telling your author friends about it. If you want to reach out to us, you can do that on Twitter torygrid. Thanks, as always for subscribing and being a part of our work here at Storygrid. We love working with you and putting this out every week. So we will see you next week.

Yeah, you know, I was thinking to. And like, the other thing that they want is to constantly find the people and destroy the people that will mess with their hold on society. So, like, that's where the. That's where the numbered come from, is they're the ones that could break the grid that they can't control. And so they kick them out of the grid. And so there's something, too, around them. This threshing is a way of control over the factions because they want to maintain their control. You know, Marcus wants to retain his control over his faction, and so they are playing them against each other so that they won't ever fight the reapers.

And what makes Randy so scary is he came really close to imploding the whole thing. So that's. So to me, there's going to be. There might be some kind of twist in this one, or the reapers are just as scared of Randy as Marcus is, but for different reasons. And so when they find out that he's involved, there might be something there. But yeah, like when you were saying at the end, thinking through the individual people's what they want. And also, you know, it was so helpful to finally pinpoint where the real conflicts are. You know, that helped a couple episodes ago.

Right.

You know, so thinking through, you know, what is everybody afraid of? What does everybody want? And where are they? Where's their biggest, like, you know, pain point right now that they're trying to solve? And that's gonna tell me what is happening, because now I'm wondering, like, so if we're thinking about why in Hunger Games, why did they have these children fighting to kill each other? And like you said, you know, it's to show that they have power and to show what happens when you mess with them. They'll kill your children, you know.

Right.

And then it provides, you know, entertainment. So. So the actions they're taking in.

They're trying. So what you're basically saying is that these, these reapers are trying to find the most innovative people in their society so that they can fight amongst each other, so that they don't turn around and destroy the reaper's power.

Right.

So they reward. They're basically getting the most like the Steve Jobs is and the Elon Musk's and all those people in this society to fight each other in this threshing. And they're supposed to feel so grateful that they are the heroic elements of their society and they're bringing back, you know, the extra rations. So that basically buys them out like they're emotionally attached to being a heroic figure. Whereas Randy, Randy was the bug in the system when he won the threshing. He didn't really win the threshing. He just broke this. He broke the machine.

Yeah. And that's why it ended on Act 2. And it's never ended on Act 2 before.

Right.

And so he was the, he was the bug. Yeah, he was the guy that should have ended up as a numbered, but he ended up in the threshing instead.

Right. And he won the threshing and he was supposed to get a hero's welcome, but because he broke the system, he was imprisoned.

Right. But he's. That's what makes him so angry, is that he didn't get the thing that he deserved.

Right. And he would have been happy being the hero if they had just let him go home. The big mistake they made was to imprison him and not give him his heroic rewards. Whereas Jesse, she wants to bring down the entire system. Right. Or she doesn't know what she wants yet. Yeah.

Like, so what she wants is. What she's going to end up wanting is to stop her brother from getting what he wants. Because that's what she's gonna realize is what he wants is evil. But then she's going to make it worse.

No, I think what you could do is have her innocently think that Randy is a victim.

Well, that's how she's starting. But then she has to like decide, I thought we were gonna set it up where Lyler. Somebody's gonna be like, you know, he almost had your body burned. I'm so glad that never happened to you. And that's when she's gonna be like, huh, what?

Right?

Yeah. And so.

Well, you could do that. You could do that at the very end. You could make that almost like the bad news. Like she does this incredible thing. She wins, she breaks open. I don't Know, like, she. She breaks the machine, she wins the threshing, people are free, but her brother is gone. She thinks that if she can accomplish all those things, she's gonna go back to, you know, Happyville at home with her brother and her family.

Yeah. But then she never has her crisis of deciding to stick with her brother.

You're right.

And. And then we miss that whole thing where he's gonna try to kill her in real life because she turns on him. So what I'm trying to figure out is when she turns on him, what is she going after then? Like, maybe the speech is okay, so she's got to want. When she switches, she's got to now want the opposite of what Randy wants. What Randy wants is Marcus's job.

Right.

He wants everybody still locked down, but he wants to be the one in charge. And so what she does is say, both of you are evil. I'm letting everybody go. And that's when she undo. Does the entire thing. But what she doesn't realize is by doing that, she undoes the entire power structure. And now there's a void that needs filling that her brother is going to happily try to step into.

Okay, yeah.

Like, she's at some point going to be like, this is wrong that any of us are attached to the grid. It's just your system of keeping us control and keeping us down. And Marcus is no longer in charge. Randy's not going to be in charge. We're going to be in charge of ourselves. And then she does the thing.

You know, these are decisions that we can't completely make yet. Until you saw. I mean, until you start playing with the big scene. Her crisis is she has to sac. The crisis for the heroic figure is, do I do what's good for me or do I sacrifice myself for the good of everyone else? So she has to come to believe that she will sacrifice herself to free everyone. And it's through that sacrifice that. That ends up breaking the machine. She doesn't die and everyone's free. Right?

Yeah. And that's why we're going to have Randy attacking her in real life, because she's not afraid any longer of dying in the system.

Right, Right, right, right.

So she has to have that moment where she decides to let him keep, you know, hacking at her in real life. And she's not going to stop what she's doing in the digital world.

Right. That's good.

That works. Because there'll be a moment where he's like, if you stop, I'll stop.

And she says, no. You know, whether she says it or not doesn't matter, but, like. And that's where the. That's the crisis moment is. If you stop, I'll be in charge. I'll bring mom and dad to the Capitol. You'll live here with me, will finally be together. You can trust me. I love you. Da da da da da. And she does it anyway. And he. You know, and she does it anyway. Right. That's because. And says, like, fine, kill me. I don't care. I'm gonna do this because I'm doing this for the rats, and I'm doing this for Ernst and Alex, and I'm doing this for Lila, and I'm doing this for the. My actual, real family.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah, You've got that all written down, right?

Well, we're recording.

That's why I don't talk to you about this stuff without recording it.

I think that's good. I think that's really good. And she. So her moment of. You know, her moment of realization is that family is not genetic. It's environmental.

Right. And there's got to be that moment where he makes the promise to give her everything she wants, and she says no. Right?

Yeah, because she's already been told he tried to kill her, you know, with the incineration.

Yeah. And he'll deny it and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

But we'll have the prologue that she'll refer back to right there.

Right.

And so that's why Randy let himself get cornered in that basement, because he knew that's the spot to unravel everything. And when he did that, they shut down the whole threshing and made him the winner because he almost got into the system. So now he knows how to get in there, and he tells Jesse how to get in there. But once she's in there, she can make a decision to. But what is that decision?

Well, the decision is that she can win the same way Randy did and shut down the game, or she can just destroy the game.

But what have the Reapers done to make sure that never happens again? Right. Because if that.

That's when. That's when, as will do his sacrificial moment. They have some fail safe down that they put in that as inadvertently attacks and sacrifices himself for the win, not knowing that he's just enabled her.

Oh, so now. And so now she'll feel guilty for his loss because he sacrificed himself to help them win, but he's actually sacrificed himself to help them lose.

Right.

Because there's got to be sympathy for him.

At the end, she can just be like, I'm sick of people dying for pointless principles. I mean, why?

Once again, somebody got hurt on her behalf.

Right, right, right.

Which we established in the beginning, Hook. Right, well, and they'll also have to be a moment there, too, where when somehow, when he makes all the promise, when Randy makes all the promises, she's like, well, what about Ernst and what about Alex? And he's like, well, we can't have them hanging around, right? Because she. She's doing this to save them.

Right, Right.

And they're probably attack. Trying to attack him to save her. Right then at that moment.

Right.

Oh, I understand why these are so hard. Because this is the moment when, like, everybody's fears, wants, conflicts, all fever pitch at once bump into each other.

Exactly. This is the big watch.

Have you watched that new show called Patriot?

No.

Okay. It's what. It's one of the best shows I've watched in a while. It's an Amazon prime show, okay. And it's so on the money story grid, and it's 10 episodes, but it's really just one long story. It's like the season, and the way he. Whoever did the movie builds, the middle build is just lovely. Like, he sets up all these tiny little things that happen in the first episode or two that just. They build and they build and they build just slowly through all the episodes until there's this scene in the second to last episode where they all just converge on him at the same time. And it's just like, I have no idea how he's gonna get out of this. It's so good. And it's that moment when everybody in the entire show, all of their wants and desires and fears, all converged on the protagonist at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a real skill, man.

So that's what I'm trying to do is take Marcus, Randy, Ernst, Alex, Lila as Craig, the reapers, everybody in all the towns, her parents, all of that, and they have to all lean on her at the same time.

Well, that's exactly what you want. And her decision will affect every single one of those people. So.

Yeah, because, like, in this. In the show. In that show, like, his friend kills himself. Spoiler alert. You won't know which friend, though. His friend kills himself. Another guy like his. His life falls apart. You know, like good. You know, bad things happen to good people because of the decisions he makes. So I have to. That's because I'm just. I've Been so struggling with, like, what am I even trying to accomplish in these things? Because, you know, what's been ringing around in my ears is when you said, like, you know, the plot of Silence of the Lambs is bad guy gets caught by cop.

That's right.

You know, and so. But it was like all of these things building through the entire thing to this. I mean, I'm not realizing. You tell me this all the time, but I'm just starting to see what you mean by, like, I've got to have all of these Fever Pitch and hit her at the same time. And that's when she makes the final decision of what she's going to do.

That's right.

So spending time, like you said, thinking through each character what they want, their conflict, what they're afraid of, getting that all down and looking at that will help me make these decisions.

And you can also just have each one of those characters almost jump in and tell her what they want. You know, like. But, Jesse, you know, what about, you know, thematically, not necessarily literally, having, you know, having Alex and Ernst in the room trying to save her so that she'll save them, and also because they care about her. That's. I mean, those are her brothers, you know, those are her real brothers.

Again, if I get that right, the setting doesn't really matter that much because that's what we're reading for.

Oh, yeah. That's the subtext that really gives the emotional power, is her choice to protect the rats and the. And the numbered and Alex and Ernst over her fantasy of reuniting with her brother and her family and understanding and literally saying, you're not my family. They are.

Should I write that scene now and then we can back up from there back into the other arcs and the other.

Sure.

Because I figure if I can get that scene right, that answers all these other questions of the four or five scenes leading up to it.

That's true. So you're basically writing, you know, the. The climactic scene of the final threshing where she, you know, she goes into the belly of the beast of the machine. She's ripped through some kind of time thing. She's gone through the hole and as follows her. Craig's dead.

I figure as will be dead by then, too, because AS will die in the scene before that.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Go ahead. Resolution of the scene before that.

I think. I think if you can get a general feeling of how you're going to bring this thing to Fever Pitch and pay it off, then the rest of the stuff will be easier to, you know, walk back.

Okay. I'm gonna work on that.

Yeah, you should. You're ready for it.