Moving from Scenes to Sequences

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 shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we dive back into my story. We go over the last few scenes that I've written, and we start talking about the next sequence in the story. And I think that's what's exciting for me is we're starting to move from looking at individual scenes to looking at sequences, because I think Sean can trust me to write a decent scene now and is allowing me to go a little deeper. So I'm excited about this episode because we're getting closer and closer to the end of the beginning hook, which will allow us to dive into the middle build of the story, which I think is going to be really important to start working through that because that's going to be 50% of the story. Anyway, we dive into a new sequence in this. I think you're going to enjoy it. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, we're back into my story. So we've gotten four or five scenes done or approved to the point where I can keep going. And so we're on to the next sequence, the sequence where Jesse runs away, tries to go home and gets dragged back. Now, originally, I wrote two scenes that you had some tweaks to, but they seemed to be all right. And then the third scene that kind of wrapped that sequence up, I had flash forward and kind of looking back like she was safe. And then looking back at what happened, you're like, no, no, no. You got to keep telling the story in real time and draw out that suspense. So I threw out that scene and rewrote it. So the first two scenes, I basically just tweaked some things to fit some of the decisions we've made. Like, you know, everybody goes out at night, everybody's in during the day. So I tried to make those more consistent. I tried to add some things where it was a little more obvious that the numbered were like the cast outs of society. And I also will use that as the way, because, you know, 83 will have to get punished for what will happen. And the punishment is not so much that Jesse got away, it was that they were seen by so many people, because that's the bad thing, because they're the cast outs. Right is what I was thinking. And then. So that third scene I added on to kind of wrap up because the first scene is when she gets home. Second scene is when she first runs away. And then the third scene is when they're trying to get back to the numbered compound before something bad happens. And I really liked how I ended it. I felt like I was really happy with it. I had fun writing it. And I wanted to say that before you said anything about it. But, yeah, so that's where we're at. So what'd you think?

I think they're in good shape. I really do. And I think these three scenes, they're accomplishing exactly what you want in this sequence, which is to establish almost another man in the whole complication for Jesse in her, you know, her evolution of actually, you know, eventually getting to the Capitol. We need to bring her to a place where she just. There's no other choice but to go. So the very first scene is really strong because it's coming off of her realization after the Revelation from 83. Let me just. For all those people who. This might be their first episode, let me just quickly go through, you know, the evolution of this story. It begins with a young girl who is stealing food from a house. And she feels the presence of another person there who says to her, I know what you're doing. Don't worry. You're in great luck. You're going to go to the Capitol and you're going to join this, you know, this group of people who are at a higher level in society than you are now. Congratulations. And the end of that scene is she says, no, I'm not going to go. The second scene is the repercussions of that decision. She is shamed in the society, and she is physically and emotionally abused to the point where she is cast down and cast out into a group in society that has, you know, physical monitors embedded in the back of their heads. And her hair is actually shaved bald. So that's the second scene. The third scene is her awakening the next day and being introduced to her mentor, whose name is 83. And 83 puts her through the paces to discover and as we're watching what's happening to her, as she's acclimating to this new world, she is then also put in the process of these jobs that she has to fulfill to be part of the unknown people in this society. So that ends with her discovering that she has been sentenced to 25 years to life in this group of, you know, the castaways. So that is enough motivation for this next scene that we're gonna. What I'm gonna talk about now, where she decides, you know what? Forget it. I'm just going to escape this world and go home. Which is perfectly reasonable for her age group and for everything that she knows. So this is the scene where she's running home and we find out her little secret paths through this society from her previous life with her family. And it works. And she drops the note underneath the brick, which signals to the reader, you know, she is in communication with another group of people from her past. And she gets home only to discover that there is no escape. The thing in her head is beeping. Nobody else can hear it. And just as she sees her father, 83 comes back and says, look, you've got to go. You've got to get out of here. They break in, and she decides to run away. She goes through her. Her hideaway. The next scene is her hiding in a shed. And 83 has to get her to go back to where she should be or something terrible is going to happen. And this is. This is also a really nice scene because you're coming off of her going back to her father and her family. Helpless, right? She's helpless. She goes home. She says, dad, here I am. I'm home. Help me. And he rejects her. He says, look, you shouldn't be here. The decision that you made is awful. It's terrible for your mother and I. And so he essentially is rejecting her, which is a really painful moment for her. Now, before. Before I move forward, my big note for you in this section is the moment when the father says, why didn't you take that commission and go to the. To the Capitol? Jesse doesn't respond.

And I think this is a moment when the reader is going to ask once the question answered.

So you don't have to have a perfect answer right now, but there should be some dialogue there where she says, well, you know, if I went, I'd die just like our brother, like my brother did or. Or something. Do you understand what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah.

Because the reader at this point is going to be saying to themselves, yeah, what. What's this girl's problem? You know, why doesn't she just go take this commission and it'll all be over with? So you can either directly have her answer that question by saying something that makes sense, or you could say, you. You know very well, dad, why I didn't do it. So that what that will establish is a secret.

So you can set up something that you can reveal later on in your story. So, because, you know, when. When we're talking to people that we know very well and somebody asks us a direct question, like, Sean, why were you late? And I answer you by saying, well, you know why I was late, Tim.

Right.

Other people hearing that would say, oh, there's some rift between Tim and Sean, and I'm not really sure what it is, but I really want to know.

So you can use that psychology in your writing, too, to get narrative momentum going. So what you're doing is you're lodging a question in the reader's mind that they want answered later on, which will make them want to continue reading the book. Okay. And you can use that setup as a payoff somewhere in your middle build or even in your ending payoff where they explain exactly why she was so terrified to take the commission. So that's my really, really big note for that scene. Because it strains the reader's ability to suspend disbelief if the father directly asks her a question and she does not answer.

Okay.

Because we want to know why that is. Anyway, so to move forward, the next scene is that she. She runs away and hides in a shed, and 83 waits her out.

So Jesse knows that 83 is making a sacrifice to be. She doesn't know exactly why she is, but she's making a sacrifice far larger than her father did.

Right.

So what's great is that it establishes that mentor, mentee bond very organically. And we can see that. Jesse. Hey, Jesse, you know, maybe you should, like, bond to this woman because she's out for your interest far better than your father or mother are.

The other thing I was thinking when I went back and read it and why I liked it, too, is, you know, you talked about early on where the first scene of the book is two people, and the second scene was a crowd and just, you know, jumping back and forth between just kind of what's happening and who's there. And so this, I thought, was thinking, like, the first one was a lot of like, run, run, run to the house, arguing at the house, then run away. And then this, like, stopped the motion where they were both just waiting for most of the scene.

Right.

So that was another thing I was thinking. I mean, is that. I guess, is that good? Like that, that kind of thinking?

I think so. Because what I think it is is it's true to life. We have very quick moments of rapid thought and rapid decision and rapid action. And it's usually followed by contemplation. Of, oh, my God, what did I just do? And that's what it feels like. It feels organically believable because her instinct to run away. You know, what's really great about this sequence is it's a very, very clear value at stake. And just to go over what values are, again, is story. Values are the lifeblood of writer. So, you know, I always talk about how at the beginning of a scene, something has to be one way, and at the end, it has to shift. There has to be a positive to a negative or a negative to a positive or a positive to a double positive or a negative to a double negative, or there has to be a shift of value on. On a spectrum of value. So just to use the. These three scenes as an example of that, the value at stake in this sequence of scenes is freedom and slavery. So at the beginning of this story, at the beginning of the sequence, it's positive she's escaped. So on the freedom spectrum, she's in the positive, or at least she thinks she is. And then as it progresses, she comes to discover that she's never been free. She's. She's a slave. But in the slavery of being part of this group, what she discovers at the very end is that there's a tribe of people just like her. She is not alone, even in this very lower class of society. She's part of a group, she's part of a tribe. Whereas when she's at home, she's not really much a part of anything. She's trying to reform bonds with her father so that she can bring back this fantasy of her family life that departed some time ago. It departed when her brother departed. So, I mean, that's another thing to think about. I'm not saying you should do this now, but there should be a moment in the story when that idyllic moment in her mind is demonstrated. So maybe, you know, earlier, before her brother left for the Capitol, there was probably a good family feeling. The father was a stronger figure, the mother was a more sane figure. The brother was helpful to his sister. There was a nice family dynamic and bond there that Jesse longs to return to.

So that is her want, you know, her want is to go back in time to when the family was strong and together and it felt secure. So that's really what she wants. And the reason why she doesn't want to go to the Capitol is that the capital is what destroyed that. So to go to the Capitol in her mind is like a double destruction of her family.

Right.

So that organically makes sense and psychologically it makes sense too. So her want, and you know, I always talk about wants and needs.

Now the want is the thing that drives the external story. Jesse's want for a return of her family is what's going to drive the external action thriller story component of your, of your long form novel. So the reasons why she goes to the Capitol, it's to try and heal from the destruction of her family. And she wants, go ahead and too.

As you frame it like that, I think too, like at the beginning of the story, she was already a long way off from what she thought was the idyllic thing. And then by the fourth or fifth scene where something she didn't think could get worse, it's now worse. Now she's cut off from even what little family she had left. So in her trying to get home, she's trying to just get, you know, the whole thing with refusing the call is trying to get back to status quo. Like maybe status quo wasn't awesome, but at least I'll stick with it. That's right. And so she's just like, I'll just at least go home and get what I had. And then that's even taken away.

Exactly, exactly. So that's the want of Jesse driving the external genre of your story. Now her need is the internal thing that is really, is the global thing that is driving the entire story. Because this is a coming of age story. It's a maturation plot. The action stuff and the thriller stuff is really fun to read, but the reader really wants to see this young girl evolve. They want to see or her arc from being a child to an experienced smart hero. So her inner need is, you know, the need that is required in a maturation plot is to move from naivete to experience and wisdom. So what she really needs is to find out the truth. And the truth for the maturation plot is that, hey, the world is complicated and all the people in the world who surround you are not there as puppets in your own private little story. Each one of those people has their own story going on. And sometimes their stories positively intersect with yours and it makes things good for you, but sometimes they negatively intersect with yours universe. So part of the maturation plot is discovering that you are not the center of the universe. And that is the deep truth.

I have kids that go through that maturation plot.

Well, a lot of adults do too.

Far more than you would think.

And I include myself probably in that list too. So this is why the maturation plot is so important and it's so primal to people is because it reiterates the truth that when we judge other people based upon our own internal worldview, we've got to be careful doing that because our worldview is, as they say, it's unreliable. We constantly, as human beings, need to be looking at our worldview with skepticism because oftentimes we lie to ourselves in ways that not only hurt us, but they hurt other people. So the maturation plot is a way that people, when they read the story and they identify with the protagonist and they root for her to come to a truth. It reinforces this necessity of all of us to constantly be searching for our own private truth. I know I'm getting very sort of psychobabbily, but it's true. The worldview that we all have is extremely unreliable. And this is one of the basis, you know, for things like, you know, Steve's concept, Steve Pressfield's concept of resistance. Resistance uses our worldview to its advantage to get us to not do anything. It doesn't want us to be exploring our internal worldviews and being skeptical about them and being open to change. Because stories are always about change. Stories teach us how to behave when confronted with positive or negative change.

So the maturation plot is, you know, like To Kill a Mockingbird. There's a maturation plot for you, right? These are things that we really bond to because they show us how important it is to self examine and to learn and to seek truth. And that's what you're writing. Your story has a lot of bells and whistles on it, literally, bells and whistles. But deep down, the core of the story, as is Harry Potter and all the other great, you know, big epic stories featuring younger protagonists. It's a maturation plot. It's somebody coming to terms with the truth of life, which is that you are not the center of the universe. You need to seek wisdom in order to not just benefit yourself, but to benefit all of humanity. And the thriller element in your novel is supportive of the maturation plot because the thriller element is the hero sacrifices himself or herself for the good of others. The world is a better place when heroes sacrifice themselves for the betterment of others. So that's why all of this stuff, when it clicks together, become billion dollar franchises, because you're dealing with primal search for truth and the social contract as well. We're not here for ourselves. We are here for everybody else.

So is that your guarantee that I'm working on a billion dollar franchise here?

No guarantees.

All I can do is point out these things and hope that you execute. Execution is everything.

I'm hoping for dozens of dollars off of this book.

So we're in the sixth scene where she escapes and she's hiding in the woodshed.

Yeah, this scene begins with her being free again. So the first scene opens with her free and then it shifts to being caught and then she escapes again and now she's, she's now not free. She's stuck in this shed and she has to make a decision. Do I give up the freedom of being alone in this shed for the slavery of being part of 83's world? And she, she chooses to do that. And that choice makes sense.

Well, I was actually Talking to my 11 year old or almost 11 year old son about the story and I was thinking about that decision and how he's in this place where he can't seem to think long term about his decisions. And so he keeps making decisions that just are painful for him because he can't think past the end of his nose, which is normal for his age. And so I was thinking about if he was in this situation and he's stuck in the shed, he would literally be trying to decide, should I live in the shed now or should I go out? You know, like where an adult is like, I'm stuck. Am I going to keep running or am I going to turn myself in? And like I was thinking, you know, Jesse's literally making the decision is like, is this where I live now? You know, I'm just gonna stay here anyway. Yeah. So did the scene work?

Well, let's walk through it. The first scene rides on the value of freedom and slavery. So it opens with her escape. So it's a positive freedom and it shifts to slavery when the people come to collect her. Then it shifts again back to freedom when she escapes. So the valence moves from positive to negative to positive. The next scene, it's negative because she's stuck in the shed. And it moves to positive because she escapes the thing in her head from going off. Actually there's one more scene after that where that is resolved. Correct?

Yeah, I guess I was thinking it shifted from like. I don't know how to put this, but basically she's alone at the beginning and when she makes the decision to go with 83, that's basically her deciding, I'm a part of this now.

That's right. So she was rejected to embraced in a way. So alone to together is also a value shift. Right.

Okay.

So that value shift really supersedes is larger in my estimation than the freedom to slavery one. Because at that point, she pretty much knows there's no escape. So the slavery value is underneath the primary value, which is at stake, which is alone versus togetherness. So it begins negative alone, and it ends positive in a group. So I would agree with you on that. Now, the third scene, that's when they return back to the compound with the rest of the number. And so what happens there is that they begin, they're safe, and as they travel, they make it, but somebody gets hurt pretty seriously. So I'm just walking this through off the top of my head. So forgive me if I don't come up with the perfect value at stake right now. I do know that there is a movement there that moves from being secure to insecure. So it moves from positive to negative. So we have. The first scene moves positive, negative, positive. The second scene moves negative, positive. So that. That all works. The third scene moves positive negative. So those valence shifts make perfect sense. So each one of the scenes works as a singular unit. And the sequence itself moves from freedom to certain slavery. So it moves from a positive to a double negative.

So what happens at the end of the sequence? There's no turning back. Right. She's learned by falling in this hole and coming out of this hole that there's no turning back. She is part of the numbered. She's stuck there for 25 years. She can't leave the compound or she's gonna get hurt or somebody else is gonna get hurt. So the sequence works, and it escalates and it progressively complicates. So I think you did a really nice job.

Okay, great. Because, you know, I had what I want. You know, we talked about killing him the third. The guy that was with him.

Right.

And then we backed off and said, no, it's too much death too soon. And so I just had it where he got hurt.

That works.

And I tried to end it with it being pinned on Jesse in front of everybody, which, you know, I want it. So she accepted membership into this society, but right after that, she's kind of shamed in front of them because it's her fault that he got hurt. Yeah.

And she's given the test that she has to stand by him and nurse him, which was great.

Okay.

So, yeah, that's not. Killing the guy was really smart. Because when you bring in death too early, it's too much too soon. And it could turn off the reader to a degree. Like, oh, geez, now we're going to. Now the bloodbath starts you know, everybody gets killed. I get it. But the fact that he gets a serious injury and is bleeding and that's enough. It's enough. How did you.

Because I tried to do this kind of mini thing where you think he made it and he's safe, and then I pull the rug out from. Did that part work?

Yeah.

Or was that a little too. I felt like it was like, is this too. On the nose where it's like, oh, he's safe. And then, oh, no, he's not.

He. You know, it did not strike me as cheesy, if that's okay. It seemed. No, it seemed like a reasonable device. You know, the guy gets caught in a thing. Oh, my gosh, he's not going to make it back. Oh, my gosh, there he is. He's dragging his leg. He got stuck. Okay, everything's cool. Come on, hurry up. And then it happens. Because the reader wants to witness the repercussions of him not making it. We need to see on stage what happens to the guy. And the fact that he grabs his ears. You can. You can sort of. You know, everybody has these images of being tortured with really loud noises and having your nose bleed, and so that's what you accomplished. And it's also even worse because nobody else can hear it. Nobody can feel or experience the terror and horror that this guy is experiencing because it's all internalized through that. That mechanism that's at the base of his skull. I really think that that element, too, with Jesse being the only one to really hear, you know, the. The other. Only the numbered. Can hear the beeping is great. So, yeah, I didn't find it. I could see what you mean now, intellectually thinking about it. Oh, geez. Yeah, I guess that is a little cheesy. But, you know, I always say this. The first thing I do as an editor is I read the book like I'm reading a book. So when I read a story or read a scene, I don't put on my editor hat until afterwards. And a lot of things will jump out at me like, oh, this is stupid. Write it. Write that down. But if it doesn't jump out at me on the read, I usually think that's a good sign and it's working organically. So when you can. So, yeah, other people can point it out. And every editor is different. It might bother some other editor. And the fact is that everything can be made better, right? So something that's working can even be better than working. So that's why different editors have different. You know things. Focus on.

The goal now is to get a working scene that gets us from this point to this point. Exact decent fashion. And we can always go back and fix it.

Absolutely.

But, yeah, because I thought, like, you know, one is, I've been watching a lot of this Disney show called Liv and Maddie because my kids like it. And I kind of like it. I'm going to admit that. But I keep, like, cracking Connor and Max up because I'll, like. I'll say, oh, well, this is what's gonna happen. And, like. And then, of course, that's what happens. It's the same plot from, like, Saved by the Bell when I was a kid. And, you know, all these other. All these other shows because they can just rehash the same things because the kids are only eight and they haven't seen it a hundred times. And so I was like, you know, how many times have I been watching a show? And, like, as soon as the guy comes around the corner and you think he's safe, immediately I'm like, oh, you know, the ice is going to break or, like, a meteor is going to come and hit him in the head. And so there was this moment where I'm like, ah. So I was just. Yeah, I was interested in your first take on if that worked. To be like, he's okay. No, he's not. You know.

Well, you know, the very thing that you're talking about, the cliche, ish element, it's a cliche for a reason. And that's because it works, you know, and you have to balance satisfying, you know, those little kind of fun things that we all enjoy in a story, a particular kind of story, by giving them to the reader in a way that they hadn't seen before. So the fact that the torture device hadn't, you know, is unique. It's an internal, you know, torture device that causes complete. I don't even know what. But it causes bleeding and everything. So, you know, I think we might be belaboring it, but I didn't find that too over the top. And it is those sort of things. There is a convention of kind of cheap surprise in thrillers. And, you know, you can get away with it every now and then.

Okay. So with, you know, reworking these scenes and I, you know, I was trying to figure out how to get us now to the end of the beginning hook.

Right.

I made some notes, and I'm. I'm struggling with. With where to go, because the. The two kind of threads that we've Talked about are 1, 83, getting punished for Jesse running about. And in that being revealed to the number, that she can leave whenever she wants, which will make her an outcast from even the number. So that was one thread. The other thread was, you know, she left that note that's for her friends. And this idea that she's gonna make one last ditch effort to get this thing out of her head so she can just run off and be by herself.

And then that not working and her friends getting punished for that is what finally puts her over the edge to agree to go to the Capitol. So I was struggling a little bit with how to tie all that together, right. Because so the notes I have are like, scene eight is 83 being punished. But I was thinking the value shift would be from accepted to cast out, where even though 83 is being punished, and the captain was hoping that that would drive Jesse, the number kind of come around her and, like, you know, assure her it's okay, and da, da, da, da. And so to kind of pull the rug out from under that, the captain reveals like, you know, she's not like you. She can leave whenever she wants. And so that will basically make her cast out from even the numbered. So she's now another rung lower. And that will drive her to try to get her friends to help her, which is scene nine. I was going to move from hopeless to hopeful, where she thinks she's really stuck now, but her friends assure her they can help her. And then I didn't sketch out getting her to the end that.

Okay, here are just some early thoughts. I think at this point in the story, we need to turn down the volume a little bit and have a scene that will be informative to the reader and also get Jesse more firmly attached to the tribe.

So these are kind of like the scenes in thrillers where, you know, the two cops or the people get to know each other by doing something. They have a conversation. Somebody tells somebody else's story, somebody. It's a story within the story. It could be a situation where the next scene is Jesse taking care of this guy who just had his brain scrambled and has blood all over his face.

So.

It could be a situation where he tells her a story about how he became unnumbered. And that story within a story will serve more than one purpose. One of the things that we need to establish is.

How did this world get this way? And this guy's sort of an older figure.

And he could tell her it's like sort of like, you know, a nurse in a Hemingway novel. You Know, the nurse comes in and you've got the soldier on the bed who's recovering from a wound. And she. She asks the soldier what happened. And the soldier tells the nurse his life story. Well, when we were on the. Let me tell you what happened on the. At the battle. Then the soldier tells the story to the nurse and we, as the reader overhear it. So you could have this figure, explain to Jesse the things like how the shaming came about, what people are doing in those virtual reality machines. These are some of the questions that the reader is desperate for answers for. And he can tell it in the form of, well, here's. Let me tell you how I became a numbered, you know, maybe he's bleeding and she's tending to him, and he wakes up and he's got ptsd and he thinks it's his daughter or his, you know, his niece. And she, you know, calmly assures him it's not. She's not his niece. And he says, oh, yeah, yeah, my niece. Let me tell you what happened. And he starts and he tells her a story that informs the reader and Jesse about what happened to make this society the way it is. It's the old, you know, the old soldier telling, you know, how World War I started or so that we can have more context for the reader to really understand what is in the offing, what is the fantastical world that she is going to be entering into in the middle build. It's a way of giving them a little bit of warning and to give them an anticipation for something extraordinary. He might say, you know, you wouldn't. Go ahead.

What if he is from the capital?

That's what I was about to say. Okay, yeah, he could, he could be like, well, I was. She could ask him a question like, you know, how did you know that you could make it back and, you know, why did you come to my rescue? And he could say, you know, it's. It's like, you know, guys when I was growing up would say, ah, it's an old trick I learned in the army, you know.

And he can, he can tell her, well, you know, I've been around these devices since they first started putting them in people's heads. And, you know, I have an internal feeling of when they're going to go off. And I knew I had a certain amount of time to make it, but, you know, so, yeah, you know, I was only a couple seconds off and I, you know, I'm no worse for wear despite the fact that I have a terrible headache and I've been bleeding all over the place. You know, I've been through this before, that kind of thing.

What if it ended with like them getting up because he's hungry or something and going out and like joining the rest of them as they eat and banter and they give him a hard time and you know, like, yeah, if you say we want her entrenched in this tribe that's going to reject her shortly. We got to entrench her not just with another one character but kind of in the, like her realizing she is accepted by everybody. Do you think that would be a good way to end that one too?

Yeah, I like the transition of it being a one on one bedside moment to her helping him out to the canteen where they eat and you know, having people sort of shun her, but come to him and ask him how he's feeling and then he can say, sit down. You know, she's one of us. We've all made mistakes, we've all suffered for them. And you know, so he can come to her defense and then that way she can even get another sort of jolt of camaraderie and love from this very strange ragtag group of people.

And could I establish here too something where he said maybe he says something like, we're all stuck in this and have no choice, so we need to get, to get, you know, we need to get along. And kind of he's assuming that she, she has no choice but to be there and really kind of drive that home. Because that's what we're about to turn over in the next scene.

Yeah, and also, you know, it's like that scene in Titanic When Leo DiCaprio, he goes down below and they're dancing and they're having all that good time and it's this fun sort of provincial group of people having fun versus all the people at the top of the ship who are in tuxedos and everything. So Jessie is sort of our Leo character. She's going to move from below board to the Capitol. And instead of it being a dancing scene, it could be, hey, old, you know, old 61, tell us the story. Tell us a story. You know, like one of the kids can say that or you know this. He's kind of like the entertainer of the group and it tells the story of the capitol, you know, and then he tells some parable about life in the capital. You know, it's like Of Mice and Men, the Steinbeck novel, when Lenny's always tell me about the rabbits. George, you know, and so George tells him about the rabbits, you know, we'll. We'll get a steak together, and we'll get a farm, and. And I'll get to raise the rabbits. Right. You know, and you can have a character like that so that in the midst of all this numbered life, which is really shitty and depressing, there's human interaction and camaraderie, so much so that it's almost a blessing of sorts to be among these people and not be plugged into the. To the machinery that just diverts them and makes them hollow, soulless creatures who lie in bed all day, you know? So I think this is a nice moment to establish Jesse as becoming a member of the tribe and also use this as an opportunity to dump in some exposition about the extraordinary world that she will eventually go to. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. And start to hint at answers to some of the mysteries I've opened up.

Right, right. And then. Because one of the things you have to regulate in your storytelling, especially when you tell a big canvas action story like you're telling, is, remember, people cannot withstand action. Action, action, action, action, scene, action, scene, action, scene. One after the other, where the stakes are higher and higher and higher without moments of either comedic relief or communal gathering. So this is why you'll. You know, when you go see a movie like a cop movie, like Lethal Weapon, you know, Lethal Weapon works because you have those domestic scenes with Danny Glover and his family. You know, when you go ahead and.

You always have the scenes where they're, like, back in the precinct talking about stuff that's no action.

Right.

Because I'm thinking of the comedy.

The Other Guys with Will Ferrell and Mark. Marky. Mark. Whatever his name is.

Mark Wahlberg. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, there was like, you know, action, action, action. And then back in the precinct where they had the meeting with the boss. Yes. You know, and like. And so it. So then there's no action. There's just.

So you're basically saying, gives a chance for the reader to take a deep breath. Yeah.

And that doesn't mean that this is a pure. You still have to turn the scene. And one of the things that I always suggest is think about doing the opposite of what the reader is going to expect. So one of these sort of languid getting to know the group scenes. Your reader is going to know what kind of scene this is the minute they start reading it intuitively. So what they're going to think is that, oh, boy, here's the scene where she bonds with the tribe.

So you have to keep that in mind and say to yourself, how can I make this scene interesting? How can I turn it? What value can I put on top of this that will be more interesting than a loan to part of the group? Because that's what made that scene in the previous action sequence interesting, is that it moved from this high level action, freedom versus slavery to a loan to part of a group. So what you did there when she was in the shed was call, you know, bring the temperature down a little bit to get a breath before the, the ending payoff of the run back to the compound. If you had just made it more, you know, guns and guys running after her and more and more, it would have become too much and too over the top. So in this way, you might even do two scenes here that you would break up to establish her as a member of the tribe. You want to get a story within the story. You know, we might think, oh, he's going to tell a really cute, charming story about his time in the capitol and maybe he tells some horrific, you know, thing, I don't know. But keep, keep that in mind that you want to use a value that the reader is going to find surprising. To turn this. Another example that I talk about in the story grid book is in that great movie Zero Dark Thirty, where you have the two women who work at the CIA and Islamabad go out to dinner and you think, oh, here's the girl talk scene. And as they're starting to talk, bang, explosion. So what the filmmakers did was like, let's, you know, let's cut this scene short. Let's defy the expectations of the audience in an interesting way. And the result of that is that the two women became even closer friends because they had to get out of the rubble together. They had to find their way out together. And that was far more bond, that's more of a bonding situation than one woman saying to other over a glass of wine, oh, you know, the guys back at the office just don't respect me. You know. Instead they made those two women bond over a life and death matter. They had to escape the rubble together. So that I'm not saying to do an explosion in the scene because I don't think it calls for it, but just think about, you know, 10 different ways you could turn this scene in a way that would be interesting.

Okay. And maybe even think about extending it out to 2 mm, because then I could end that second scene with basically 83 come, you know, them busting in and, you know, dragging her out. I actually first thought, drag her out by her hair, but she doesn't have any, so I can't do that. But, yeah, basically dragging her out. And that's how the scene ends. So it could be. So that could be my bomb going off in that second scene of this part. But I can think harder about the first one of how to.

Oh, here's another idea. Just thought of this.

Okay.

There are some really great scenes in the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. And this is the story of. Are you familiar with that novel and that movie?

No.

All right.

Well, I mean, I've heard of it, but never watched it or read the movie.

Well, it's great. It's. Jack Nicholson plays this guy who in jail, and he learns that if he can convince people he's crazy, they'll throw him in the lunatic asylum and he won't have to do any hard labor. And then he can run out his sentence in the loony bin and, you know, hang out and not have to do any work and get out of jail. So he does that. So he goes to this lunatic asylum and, you know, he's trying to make friends with these guys because that's just the kind of extrovert this character is. And so they end up playing poker and then the lunatics don't do it the right way. And he gets more and more angry. And there's this one great scene where he's finally starting to get through to these guys and they're starting to have a little bit of fun. And he says, hey, you know what, guys? Let's ask the nurse if she'll let us watch the World Series tonight. Because the World Series is on. We got a television here. And the guys are like, oh, I don't know anything about the World Series. And he gets so excited telling them about it, and there's this great build up. Hey, guys, let's just, you know, let's all just ask the nurse, because if we all ask her, she'll say yes, and then we can watch it. So, of course, they have this therapy session with the nurse, and he says, nurse, I was talking to the fellas and you know, the World Series is on tonight and we sure like to like to watch it, right, guys? And he looks around and none of the guys really say anything. And she says, well, why don't we have a vote? And so, you know, as you're watching this, you're like, oh, the guys are definitely going to vote to watch the World Series. And she says, who wants to watch the World Series? And nobody raises their Hand. But him.

So it turns when you think, oh, R.P. mcMurphy, the character has finally gotten through to these guys that they have some power in their life and they can make their own choices about what to watch on tv. And then bang.

No, no siree Bob. You think you might be part of the group, but you're really not.

So that turning moment was a really big scene in the film because it showed. He thinks that he can just go in there and charm people. He has no idea what he's up against. And so that's an example of doing a camaraderie scene. Guy tries to become part of the tribe and to turn it in a unique way that is devastating to the audience, but perfectly in keeping with the world that he has entered.

Yeah, and I'm thinking, too, again, you brought up Titanic, and, you know, that scene of them being down and dancing, that scene does that really well. Of. He could say, you know, it could have been a scene of exposition where he's like, you know, you guys are up here and so stiff, and we're down there and we. And we're dancing all the time. And instead, you just watch them, you know, have this party. So I'm trying to think, too. Like, did you ever watch the show Office? Yes, the Office. Like, my favorite. We're. Candace and I are kind of working our way back through the series, and my favorite character is the old guy, Creed, because he says the most random stuff. And so as you're talking about him being in, like, some of it is true, and some of it is just weird, and you don't know. Like, we just watched the episode where he's like, if I can't scuba, then what's all this been about?

What?

I was just thinking, like, maybe she. He spins her this story, and then it turns on. Like, half of it wasn't true. You just aren't sure which half.

Right, right. No, that's good.

That's good.

You need a character like that. It's a comic relief element, and that's a good thing to think through. Yeah, that's. I love that.

All right, so the next thing I'm going to do is work on those two scenes and the third scene where 83 is, you know, basically punished, and it comes out that she can leave whenever she wants, which gets her kind of kicked out of the community again. Is that. I mean, is that like the.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Can you. So 83 can leave whenever she wants?

No, no, no.

Oh.

So all of the Numbered are stuck for their sentence. I mean, just like they were in jail.

Right.

The only one that with a word can leave is Jesse.

Right.

But they don't know that. They think she's got her 25 year sentence, but she knows the secret that she can leave whenever she wants. And she's the only one that knows that.

Good.

And so that getting revealed will basically, to me, it would excommunicate if I was in. I'm thinking if I was in jail. You know, I'm thinking in a jail setting, you know, there. There's this camaraderie about we're all stuck here.

Right.

But if all of a sudden it comes out that one guy's just like in there for the hell of it, like, I don't think that would turn out well for him.

No.

You know, no.

That's good.

So I was thinking, you know, we have to keep progressively complicating it. And so we, we don't want her to get too cozy with these numbers. Like, oh, maybe I can actually, you know, because to me, she still doesn't want to go to the capitol. And so maybe as she gets warm and fuzzy with the numbered, she starts thinking, I could live like this.

Right.

You know, this is more of a family than I have, than I had with my mom and dad.

Oh, and then, then what you're saying is, then you have the guy at the very first scene come into the thing and, and reveal to all these people, oh, well, you know, she can leave whenever she wants.

Yeah. Like I'm thinking in the midst of 83 being punished, I haven't figured out what that will be yet. Like, they kind of come around, Jesse, and like, you know, it's okay. It's okay. You didn't know what you were doing, that kind of thing. And like, the captain overhears that and he's like, wait a second, you don't know? And they're like, what are you talking about? And he's like, she can leave. In fact, she's not only can leave, she can go all the way up and be a part of the capitol, the top 1%, whenever she wants. And that is what will sever her from her new family of the numbered.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, I think that works.

And that will push her into her last ditch effort to get her friends to help her get this thing out of her head, which will then put her into the space where she finally calls it and goes. Because to me, right now, she could be happy with the numbered, but then she gets kicked out of There. So her only choice now is to escape for real this time. And the only way to do that is to get this thing out of her head. And so she works with her friends to try to make that happen. And that backfires. And at that point, she has nothing else. But she's got to give up because she can't go back to the numbered. She can't go back home. And if she tries to go to her friends, they're going to get destroyed as well. So she literally has no other choice but to go to the Capitol.

Yeah, I think it works okay.

Now I just got to write it.

Details.

Yeah. So that kind of progression. Do you think that works?

I do. I think it's a good game plan. Whether or not.

It reads well, it plays well. Yeah. But I think it'll work. I mean, I gotta tell you, I like the fact that the friends from the past are gonna show up and they're going to try and get the thing out of her head. That's kind of cool. And then they're gonna be caught in some fashion. You know, maybe they do get it out of her head. I'm not. I'm not really sure how you're gonna pull that off, but I like. Because the thing. The thing with the thing in the head is that it's gonna be fascinating to a reader. And deep inside they're gonna say, I wonder how that thing works. You know, so if you can write about how the thing actually works by having some sort of operation that explains the mechanism and how, you know, you don't have to get super detailed. But, you know, the reader wants to know, is it directly fed into the cerebral cortex of somebody's head? Is it in the spinal cord? How does it work? How do you get the wiring out? You know, that kind of thing. That would be cool to be able to, you know, use as a means to have this last ditch effort to get away.

Yeah, because I've always thought of, like, she was part of this kind of underground hacker movement that thought they were fighting the man, when really they were not even itching him that much. But that was kind of what they saw, is that, you know, we're out here, you know, fighting the faction, and so they would know how to try to get the thing out.

Right.

Okay, Now, I keep not thinking about the middle build and ending payoff of the book. And I mean, is that.

Well, you know, you know, the middle build and the ending payoff already, Right?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I know it in the way that I knew what the beginning hook was going to be, which is completely different than what it ended up being. I guess I just. I feel like I've been focusing so much on this beginning hook that I'm on this path, but I don't even know if it's going the direction I need to go. You know, if we keep using the map metaphor of, like, okay, I'm in New York and I'm going to California.

Right?

Like, I don't even know. Like, am I heading west? Like, I just.

You're definitely heading west.

Okay.

What. What you're doing is you're. You're having the anxiety of the plotter, and that's okay. But you also have to remember that you need to enjoy the process, too. So having some mystery about how you're going to get to California and saying, okay, I know I'm going west, but you know what? I'm going to. Instead of going on Route 80, I'm going to take this side road. It's still going west. It's going to meander a little bit, but it might be interesting to do that. So you're giving yourself the freedom to do that by going through the process that we're doing now. When we tried prior to just map the whole thing out and have you write the whole thing, it didn't work, so we need to try something else. And so that's why we're meticulously building this thing, you know, out of spare parts right now. And we're going to get, you know, it's going to get, you know, the ending payoff is she comes to a realization that she's got to sacrifice something to help other people. And she does that, and she ends up losing something, but gaining something at the end, too. So it's a dramatically ironic winning. She wins her maturation, but she loses something, too. And the loss will be an external loss because the inciting incident of the entire story was positive. So, anyway, I don't want to just like.

Just like Katniss lost the thing that mattered most to her to save.

Right.

You know, the. Everybody else. When she lost her sister.

Right.

So we know we're going to a point where she has to give up this dream of her family because she's got to save everybody else.

Right?

Right.

You'll get there.

All right.

Yeah. Don't freak out about it.

Okay. All right, well, I'll get those. I'll get going on those, and we'll go over those next.

Okay.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Storygrid podcast for everything Storygrid related check out storygrid.com I know last week we talked about the workshop that we're doing this coming February. If you are still interested in that and have not put your name in the hat for that yet, you can see that@storygrid.com workshop. The application is still up there. We actually have just clicked on over 35 people filled it out, but we're wanting to make sure that the right people show up. So if this is something you're interested in, make sure you do that pretty soon. Also, 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 if you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter @StoryGrid. And lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on itunes and leaving a rating and review. Thanks for subscribing and being a part of our work here at Story Grid and we will see you next week.