Part 2 - The Foolscap Story Grid

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 a creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, Sean and I are actually together in person.

He.

He came to Nashville and we spent a day together planning some fun stuff we have coming out in Story Grid over the next year. And then we also recorded this episode live together. So it was a lot of fun. And we continued our discussion about the Foolscap. So in the last episode we got about halfway through and as we continued to work through it in this episode, I really saw the power of this Story Grid tool and how it can help you see your story in a whole new light. So, you know, Sean's thing is to always switch between micro and macro views of your story. And so going scene by scene was the micro view. And doing the full SCAP was a way, is a way to zoom out and look at your story as a whole. So really powerful, really showed some things in my story that need fixing. So I think you'll enjoy this episode a lot. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, in the last episode, we started going through the full SCAP for my story and we got through the first kind of section, the global Story, where we talk about the genres internal and external, the obligatory scenes, the points of view, objects of desire and controlling idea and theme. And we started getting into the beginning hook. So we're going to try to pick back up there. But to back up, can you just talk a little bit about what the full SCAP is, the point of it, what we're trying to accomplish? Because I went through scene by scene and looked at all the five or six different columns of the spreadsheet and I did the to do list that I've continued adding to. So why are we now switching to something that. Like the Fool's cap?

Well, the fool's cap gives you a global macro view of the story. So you can be perfectly fine in the micro scene by scene work. But if you don't step back and take a look at the global story and the global values that are moving, Remember, each scene can have a value at stake that changes, but it may or may not have anything to do with. With the global value at stake at a larger degree. So when you step back and use the fool's cap. You're taking a very, very wide angle picture of the story. So, for example, when you ask somebody, hey, you saw Star wars, what's it about? They're not going to tell you scene by scene what it's about, right?

Yeah.

They're going to tell you the global story and maybe two sentences. So the Foolscap gives you the tool necessary to look at the story and from that kind of point of view. So that when people, after they finish reading your book and they're asked, what's Tim Grohl's book about? They'll be able to say, oh, it's about this girl who overthrows dystopian future. And, you know, in fact, she makes it worse. Okay, so that's sort of the global story that we're talking about. You've got a young girl who's recruited to fight in a battle that brings about change in the society. And if she wins, the society will change irrevocably. Now she's naive and immature, so she has to go through a process of becoming mature as the story progresses. But I'm getting off track again. But the global idea is to give the writer a true sense of what the message and the global movements of the story are. So the fools cap tells you if you're on track or not. And if you're having difficulty answering the questions that are posed by the Foolscap. And there are like probably about 50 questions you have to answer on this page that will tell you there's a weakness in your story that you need to go back and pinpoint where you can fix that weakness. Where can you make it more clear about the progression of the story? Okay, so this is the big, big picture that you have to look at after you've gone through your scene by scene. You've gone through your scene by scene and you've probably, I would say, 90 to 95% of your scenes work. There's probably a few that are clunkers that you have to fix, but you know, you know how to write a scene, so you're not going to worry about that so much. And you've already gone through scene by scene to find the small continuity problems and all those things that you want to do. And you've added notes to yourself about how you can increase and better the story settings and things of that nature. So now the reason why we move to Foolscap is now we're going to test did you comply or abide by the conventions and obligatory scenes of your genres where Specifically, did you, you know, abide them? If you didn't, you have to make a note where and when you have to abide them. And then we're going to go, you know, from the beginning hook, through the middle build through the ending payoff, and look at the global movement of each one of those sections to make sure that you're hitting the plus, minus, minus, plus, plus, minus of the global value as well as the micro values from scene to scene. Right.

And that's the part that, as I filled it out, I had the biggest trouble with was the far right columns of the plus minus of the external and internal values.

Right.

So you want to just jump into the beginning Hook.

Yeah, let's. Let's talk about the beginning Hook. But before we do that, let's really go super global here, okay? And I'm very, very pleased that you put at the top of each of the sections, the beginning hook, middle build, and ending payo, the progression that you wanted want to be able to show in each one of these sections in terms of value. So the beginning Hook, you want to move from life to unconsciousness. So what that means is you want to show this is the external value at stake. The external value at stake in the thriller is, is life, death. And there are two positive two things. Above the X axis, there's life and unconsciousness. And beneath the X axis are death and the fate. Worse than death. Damnation. So at the beginning of this story, our character is alive. She's full of life. She's doing her thing. She's in.

Her life. Value is pretty stable.

Right.

By the end of the beginning hook, you need her to be in a place of complete and total uncertainty, unconsciousness. Her life has been shaken so much that she's now moved from a positive at the top, life to slowly downward to the negative of unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, meaning there's so much going on in her world that she can't really feel stable. She's unconscious of what's really going on.

Okay.

Now also, because you have an internal genre, the maturation plot, you want this to move. It's going to start in the negative. Your external starting in the positive. Right? She's starting with life.

Right.

The internal starts negative because she's naive. In fact, she's worse than naive. She believes she's sophisticated. So it's naivete masked as sophistication. Just like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

Right?

So isn't this interesting? You're starting your story at the very beginning with one value, positive. Your external Value is going to be positive and your internal value is going to be super negative.

Okay?

So that's really interesting because that's a character that has two polar opposite things in her characterization.

And that's the tension. We want that tension.

That's a conflict, right?

Okay.

That's what conflict is, is when things don't match.

Okay.

Okay. So now we're talking globally now. We're not talking scene by scene. Now, at the end of the story, how do you want the story to end? This is answered by your choice of genre. This is why genre is so important. If you understand your genre, you can answer a lot of questions automatically.

Okay.

In a thriller, if your thriller ends negatively externally, meaning it does not end with your hero winning, your audience will be disappointed. It doesn't mean that the hero's actions can't cause something that is worse than the beginning, because that's what happens in your story. It just means that your hero has to succeed at her external object of desire. Okay, so the story, your story ends positively. Jesse wins, right?

Yes.

Jesse overthrows the tyranny.

Yes.

That's a win.

So now we know it's going to start positively, then it's going to have to turn negatively, and then it's going to end positively. Right. Because we don't want a flat line of story. Stories are about change. They start one place, they go another, and they come back. Okay? So if you're starting positively, your story has to dip negatively in at the end of the beginning hook. It's got to go more negative, more negative in your middle build, and it slowly rises into the positive in your ending. Payoff. Okay, so if you were to look at the Silence of the Lambs grid, you would see my initial grid, the one, the really down and dirty one that I just, you know, Steve Pressfield asked me one day, well, show what. Show me what you mean about this. You know, the physical manifestation of a grid, and I drew a sine cosine curve, starts positively, goes super negative, and ends positively. Kurt Vonnegut talks about this in the. In the YouTube videos too. So, you know, by your choice of genre, the thriller, you're going to be positive, negative up to a positive.

Okay.

Now, your internal genre is a process of maturation. What is maturation? It moves from lying to yourself. Super negative. To being uncertain. I'm sorry. To recognizing your naivete to being uncertain, meaning you're willing to change your point of view to maturation, which is when you understand that the. The world is a different place than when you Initially thought so it moves from super negative up through a positive. So it's sort of a starts negative, and it goes sort of like a half of a wave.

Okay.

So just knowing your genres has given you a lot of story grid information. Now, the purpose of the Fool's Cap is to check that whether or not you're actually doing what your genres require. So let's go through your beginning hook and see if we begin positively on the external and negatively on the internal. And then we're going to move a little bit more positive on the internal at the end of the beginning hook, and we're going to move to a more negative on the external.

Okay.

Just based upon those two pieces of information, we know about your chosen genres.

Okay.

Okay. So the inciting incident of your global story, you say when she is discovered to have a gift not getting scrambled. This will be the. In the prologue. Yeah.

This we discussed near the end of the last episode was like, what was the inciting incident? And we went back to like, oh, well, it's actually the whole story began when Jesse was younger and her brother realized the gift that she had. Yes. So.

So let's. Let's talk about that. Externally, is that a positive or a negative for the life value of your character?

So this is where I don't understand. When you say externally, was that a negative or a positive? I'm having trouble.

Is she alive or not?

So we're just. When you say positive or minus, externally, you're just. All that's saying is, is she at the beginning of that curve, which is life?

Yes.

So, yes, she's just living her life. She doesn't know anything's different.

Well, it's actually a positive inciting incident if you discover that you have a superpower.

Yeah, but she didn't discover.

I know that, but this is where I. You are the architect of the story.

Okay.

So you are looking at it as the architect of the story as you're constructing it. And your first foundation is a prologue that the reader isn't going to understand at first. That's why you put a prologue.

Okay.

Prologue is an action scene or sequence that doesn't throw off too much meaning, but is very mysterious to the reader. It's a way of hooking them. Right.

So. So it doesn't matter if the reader knows it's positive, as long as it is positive in the story as a whole, then it's positive as you. Because I was thinking like, okay, well, she's running through the woods because she almost died. Like, that's externally bad is what I was. But you're saying, looking at it as a whole, finding out that you have a superpower and that she can live when nobody else. When everybody else will die, That's a positive thing.

That is correct. The reason why we're doing Fool's Cap is see, micro thinking. What you were just describing was micro scene thinking.

Okay.

We're looking at macro foolscap thinking, which means we are not worried about the actual scene. That is the inciting incident.

Okay.

We're trying to qualify. What kind of inciting incident is this? If I say to you the beginning of this story begins with a hurricane.

And it's an action story, is that a positive or a negative inciting incident?

Negative.

Negative. Exactly. And it's a coincidental inciting incident, meaning there's no cause for a hurricane. It just kind of happens. It's arbitrary, depending on weather patterns. Yeah, I know. The physical universe, there's reasons why there are hurricanes. But we as human beings would say it was an arbitrary occurrence.

Right.

Jesse's inciting incident is that she has a superpower. She is immune to death in the alternative world, meaning she won't get destroyed in the alternative universe like other people do. Okay.

And that's positive?

That is absolutely positive. That is a special gift. Now, is that causal or incidental? Do you know? So you don't necessarily have to know right now, but it's a good question.

So is it finding out is the incident or just the fact that it's there?

Is the incident just the fact that it's there?

So I don't know.

Okay, this is good. This is the way you plan sequels and prequels. Okay.

All right.

Right. Because I haven't seen the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but they planted a special gift in the protagonist.

Yeah.

And they planted a possibility that his father is someone was an extraterrestrial who had sex with his mother, who was a human being. That's why this guy has superpowers, but he doesn't know it yet. We don't know it yet. I don't even know it yet. So Jesse's gift could either be coincidental, meaning just a genetic luck of the draw, or it could be because of her lineage. So that's something to think about in the future. So when you do an inciting incident, think about how you are structuring it. Is this a causal or incidental one? If you don't necessarily have to make an absolute choice about it, still make a note of it. Because when you want to plan something Later. And your mind is boggling, and you go, well, what was that inciting incident where I started the whole story? I'm not really sure if I would qualify that as a coincidence or a cause. If it were a cause, then X. I could do X. If it was a coincidence, I could do Y. Okay.

Yeah. Well, even inside of Guardians of the Galaxy, they make it seem like at first. In the first movie still. They make it seem like at first he was just kind of abducted and you don't know why. So it's incidental. And then at the end, they let you know that. No, they were sent to pick him up specifically. And so then. Then you know it's causal.

Right. So that's an interest. That's called a setup payoff.

Okay, so.

So then. And you're gonna. That's what your prologue does, too. You're setting up a payoff later. Okay, this is. The only person who knows about Jesse's gift is who?

The brother.

The brother.

But the reader doesn't know. The brother knows that even after reading the prologue.

Of course not. Yeah, that's the setup.

So then the internal charge. We don't really know. I would say the inciting incident.

We know the internal charge.

It's negative. Yeah, but she shows that more in the first actual scene than the inciting incident.

Okay, we're talking about global.

I'm looking at scenes still.

Right.

Okay. So globally.

She.

She thinks she knows how the world works. The work. The world works this way, and she's living inside of that world, and she has no idea what's really happening underneath the surface.

Exactly.

So that's.

She's super smart.

Yeah.

Right. She's really good at what she does.

Right.

So that's. That's a quality of a sophisticate. Somebody who's sophisticated, is good at what they do.

So I might be a sophisticated editor, but I'm not a sophisticated diplomat. You wouldn't want to put me in a room in Iran with anybody negotiating anything because I'm naive. I would ruin it. I would screw it up. So you can have a sophistication in a particular arena that can lie to you and say, oh, that transfers to everything in my life. So she has a sophistication as a hacker, as somebody who's capable of negotiating this strange world she lives in in a way that makes her comfortable. And she is better at other than other people. So she is naive. She has a naivete that's masked by sophistication. Okay, that's your inciting incident. For the internal genre, it's negative. It's double negative, in fact. Okay, which is good, right? Because when we began this podcast discussion, we talked about how in the beginning hook of a thriller, the external should start positively.

And because you have a maturation plot, the maturation plot starts negatively. At the beginning of Saturday Night Fever, Tony Monero is a mook. He's a complete mooc. That we all know. We know this guy. This is the guy who works at the hardware store, blows all of his money on Saturday night, and then he has to start over again the next week, and he's going to live that way this rest of his life until something happens to him.

Okay, all right, so so far, so good. We've got a positive external and a double negative internal. Now what you have is listed a negative external and a positive internal.

Yeah, but see, nobody's going to see that because I already changed it on the spreadsheet.

Oh, okay. All right.

Okay.

So that's the global inciting incident, which is also the inciting incident of the beginning hook. Now, what's the complication? You say the punishment is the shaming and banishment to the numbered.

Oh, because so we. Okay, this is where we must have stopped in the last episode, because the inciting incident I had was that she refused to go to the Capitol. And so then the next thing I said, and the punishment for that was the shaming and banishment to the number.

No, the inciting incident was when she got caught.

Right. Okay.

And then as we talk through it, we were like, well, actually, it's the prologue that kicks off the whole story of when the brother finds out she has the power, because that's what actually kicks off the whole story.

Well, the complication. If we're going to use the prologue as the inciting incident of the story, which I think we should, the complication would be she's caught doing something that she thought that she was immune to being caught. So she's caught red handed as a complication.

So externally, let's evaluate that complication globally.

Okay, so globally for moving to life to unconsciousness. So life to unconsciousness is a negative movement. So she went from all is well, she's moving in the world uncomplicated, and now she's caught doing something. So that would be a negative.

Yes.

Okay, so is the complication for the external genre necessarily the complication for the internal genre too, or those two different things?

That's a good question. It's usually the complication has an external and internal component. So the answer to that question is. Yes, the complication for when you're analyzing the global story. You know, beginning hook by, middle build by. Yes, those two should be complementary. So the internal complication for being caught red handed is actually positive because when she is caught red handed, it's going to force her down a path that will reveal the truth to her.

So this is one of those things where, like, it's.

If you're like, it's alcoholic and you hit bottom, it's a negative. Right. But it's also a positive.

Right. I was gonna. I was gonna talk about, like, my kids getting disciplined. Right. So for them, externally, it's a negative, but it's a positive because it's teaching them how to.

Exactly.

So. So when I'm looking at her, her getting caught doing this action that is just reinforcing her sophisticate mass. Sophistication is now calls that into question, which externally hurts her, but internally starts putting her on the path towards maturity.

Exactly. Okay. Exactly. So your external starting to move downward. Your internal is starting to move upward. Right, Right.

So it's the shift. Right?

Yes.

So the first, the inciting incident is where we're beginning. So in the internal, she begins double negative, but in the complication, it starts to shift positive.

Yes.

Okay, so now we're at the crisis. So I put the crisis as. So when I was putting this together, I went back and looked at your full scap for Silence of the Lambs in Pride and Prejudice and tried to kind of. Because you did different things and different ones. Slightly different.

Right.

So I tried to put in here because you can either have best bad choice or irreconcilable goods.

Right.

So I put best bad choice is the crisis of the beginning, Hook, is does she stay with the numbered and people keep getting hurt while being loathed by the number once they find out that she can leave or go to the Capitol, where she's terrified to go because that's where her brother was lost.

Yes, that's the crisis of the beginning, Hook. Does she stay with the numbered, which will be negative for her and for innocent third parties, or does she go to the capital, where it's going to be even more negative for her and she's even unsure of what effect that will have on third parties. So she either has a choice between double negative or a negative and a.

Possible positive question mark.

Yeah. Right. So the reason why we don't mark whether that's a positive or negative in the external and internal. Internal columns, you see you have an na There. And I guess you just, you know, you did that because that's what I did.

Well, my. So here's my understanding of it, is that nothing has happened yet.

That's correct. She hasn't chosen.

Right. So that. So having a choice is not negative or positive. It's once you make the choice, what happens.

Right. So there has to be a choice.

Right.

A lot of people like to write things where nobody chooses anything. And that's not a story. That's something else. That's boring.

Okay. Those things don't work and stop doing them. Who's ever continuing to write things where nobody chooses anything anyway? So the best bad choice is the crisis. You could also look at it in terms of irreconcilable goods. This is this thing about best bad choice, irreconcilable goods that depending upon the nature of the fallout of the complication, you kind of see if somebody's choosing, this is going to be bad for me, but worse. But it's going to stop worse things from happening. That's the best bad choice. Irreconcilable goods means this would be good for me and not good for anybody else.

Okay.

So it's sort of looking at the glass of water half full or half empty.

So going back to the complication, this is one thing, because between the complication and the crisis is like nine scenes of other progressive complications in the beginning, Hook. So when you're filling out the full scap, are you just looking at the first complication that starts to throw the world out of kilter? Right? So if we think about Lord of the Rings and, you know, Frodo and all that, like, between him having to choose whether or not to take on the challenge of taking the Ring and leaving the Shire there, like, he came into contact with the Ring. But then there was all these other little ones where the comp. The first. Are you just looking at the first complication that starts to throw the world off balance? Is that what you're putting on the foolscap?

Okay, here's. Here's something that will confuse you even more.

Awesome.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

The way I would look at the complication in the beginning, Hook, that you want to focus on is the call to action in the hero's journey.

Okay.

Call to action in the hero's journey. Call to adventure.

Okay.

Is what they call it, what Joseph Campbell called it, the call to adventure is when the hero told, hey, you need to leave and go do something for the good of everybody else. And they go, no way. I'm not going to do it.

Right. And so that's what.

That's.

I have that pretty explicitly in that scene where she. He's like, all right, you're gonna leave and you're gonna go to the Capitol. And she's like, no, I'm not doing that.

That's right.

Okay.

So she refuses the call.

Right.

Which is absolutely in line with the Hero's Journey, which is why we talked about it for about seven of these podcast episodes. Yeah.

And we're going to talk about it some more.

We will talk about it some more. Because you want to do what I call the Hero's Journey Check. As part of an editorial process. And that would be after we finish the foolscap stuff. But anyway, the complication in the beginning hook that will gives rise to the crisis is the call to adventure.

So I. I feel like I said the same thing in a different way, which is basically the first moment where their world starts to get kicked off kilter. Right. Because the whole point of the beginning hook is to shove them into the new world.

Yes.

And so. But there's a moment where, like, normal world. Normal world. And then it just starts to get kicked up. And so the fact that she got caught and she's put into a bad position, all of a sudden, her world.

Well, but that's the next complication. I mean, the first one was just the fact that she got caught. That's what we put in here. Right. Because that start. She. She obviously has been stealing for, you know, a long time. So the fact that she got caught, it's like, now she can know she already can't go back to how things were before.

Yes.

So once they've gotten that call to adventure, they can never go back to a time where they weren't called to adventure.

Exactly. Exactly.

So. So I got the crisis. Now we're on to.

That's an irreversible complication. Right.

Being called to adventure.

Right. Right. You can't go back from being called to do something.

Okay.

If somebody says, I need you to pick me up at the airport at 4 o', clock, you say no, and it's past 4 o'.

Clock.

That's an irreversible decision.

Right.

So when you're called to action and you refuse the call, that call to action doesn't go away. It sits inside of you and stews.

Okay.

Okay. So that's the crisis of the beginning Hook. Do I stay or do I go? Should I stay or should I go?

Right. So now we're in the climax. So the Climax is the decision. Right. So the crisis is the choice. The climax is the decision. Right?

Yes. It's the question and then the answer.

Okay, so will she stay with the number or will she go to the Capitol? And then the climax is she decides to go to the Capitol.

Correct.

Which. See, and this is where. I don't know, like, externally is. I would say that's negative.

Life more threatened now that she's decided to leave the safety of her ordinary world and the knowledge of her. Or she knows what she's in for at home. Right?

Yeah. Even if she's a part of the.

Number, she knows what she's in for.

So it's negative.

It's negative. Right.

Okay. So once again, this isn't scene by scene. This is me as the storyteller looking at the entire story, and it's like, yes, if she had stayed with the numbers, she would have been safer than what she put herself into by agreeing to go to the Capitol.

Exactly.

So it's negative.

Yeah.

All right, so I had positive. We're going to switch that. So when she decides to go to.

The Capitol, is that good for her internally or not?

Yes, it's good for her.

Yes.

Yeah.

When you decide to do something, if you decide to go on a diet, externally, it sucks. Internally, it's good because it teaches you discipline.

So then the resolution is Jesse goes to the capital. Right. So.

Well, the resolution of it is something that you want to make a note about.

Okay.

Because often what you want to do in the resolution of your beginning hook is to tweak it so that it complicates it a little.

Okay.

So you know what? Let's not get into that now. Right. So her decision, the resolution is that she's actually accepted and she goes to the Capitol.

So the resolution is what happens is the result of her making the decision.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

So what happens as a result of her making the decision is she's taken to the Capitol.

Yes.

Which is negative and positive.

Okay.

So again, the opposite of what I had.

So let's check our work here. Now we can check our work in the thriller genre. At the beginning of the beginning, Hook, things are okay. It's positive. At the end of the beginning, Hook, it moves downward negative.

Okay.

And what do we have? We have positive at the beginning and negative at the end.

Yeah.

In a maturation plot, we start double negative. Sophistication masked by naivety. Masked by sophistication. And positively where that character is now on a path to truth.

Okay.

Now, okay. So I'm One of those people that like, is if you take a personality test, you look at it and you're like, well, it's really easy to now like read into it that that's what I am. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. It's like tarot cards, you know. So as somebody that you know, it's great having you here having this discussion and you like point out these things, like, if I know going into this, okay, she's supposed to be going from positive to negative in the external genre. Like, am I going to be able to catch. When I don't actually make that switch in my story? Like, am I going to see it and be like, I know it's supposed to go negative, so I'm going to read it as if it went negative.

That's a possibility. You can lie to yourself that way. And the only thing I can say to that is that the more you write, the more you won't allow yourself to lie to yourself. Because what often would happen in this case case is that this is what a lot of writers will do. Instead of them accepting the call to action, they'll just complicate something more.

Okay?

So they'll just keep the complications running in the ordinary world, and it doesn't.

Move, it never climaxes.

So the story stays.

In the same sort of universe.

That's what I was doing in the ending. Payoff, right? I kept writing more scenes and more scenes and more scenes, so I never actually had a finish. Right. And you're like, okay, stop complicating. It's now time to actually reach the end.

Right?

Okay.

So if you find. This is why we have. So I have so many multiple layers of looking at the story, so many different tools. It's to safeguard you from lying to yourself. So if you look at it from three different points of view or four different points of view, or however many it takes at some point to lie to yourself will fall. Because I brought up the hero's Journey. Now I meant to talk to you about the hero's journey, check in the next episode and we will do that. But the Hero's journey would stop you from making that mistake.

Okay.

Because you would be like, oh, she's still in the ordinary world. I got to get her to the extraordinary world in the middle build. Oh, damn it.

Okay.

Oh, okay. Then I didn't really resolve this. I really didn't have an irreversible crisis. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, all right, all right.

So middle build.

So the middle build is. Is Also the big. The big fat section of the book. It's 50% of the book. And so this is where a lot of people can just fall by the wayside.

Yeah. Which I tried to do several times writing this.

All right, well, and let's just. Again, let's check the value. I think we skipped over that. Did we move from life to unconsciousness? Like, sort of being pushed out of your comfort zone in kind of a daze? For Jesse, I think we did.

Yeah. I think I did that. Well, with how hard it was on her to be put into the number and then how bad it got with the number. Like, she was never able to, like, rest. Right.

So she's a little unconscious. Unconscious and fuzzy. So that's where our beginning, our middle build begins with her at unconsciousness. Okay, so it's negative, as opposed to the beginning of the book, but it's still not negative. It's still in the positive quadrant. Yeah, we want to end the middle build. The middle build in death.

Right.

She has to face death.

Okay. And so then did we move from naivete master sophistication to just naivete? And I would say we did, because she knows now at this point, she doesn't understand everything that's going on, but she still does not understand what's going on.

She still has an internal confidence in herself that, okay, as a numbered, I'm not so great, but if I get back into my sweet spot of sophistication, hacking, I'll be cool.

Well, even there's that. Even I put that scene in there where she starts to get comfortable with the number. Like, she starts figuring out the system inside the numbered, but then that gets thrown out of whack, too. Right.

Okay, so, yeah, she's still. She's not as fully confident in her sophistication anymore.

Right.

She's naive now, so she's recognizing that she's out of her comfort zone.

Okay.

And that is naivete, knowing that you don't know.

Right.

That's actually uncertainty. But we'll keep going.

Okay.

All right, so we did accomplish those goals. Now let's look at the middle build globally. Now, that's 30 scenes or 25 scenes. Does it begin at unconsciousness? Does it end at death?

Okay. Are you asking me?

I'm asking you.

Yeah. Because she dies at the end.

Okay, so at the beginning of the inciting incident for the external, when she arrives at the Capitol, what is the charge?

So, okay, so let's go back. The beginning Hook started. We started with a charge, and then the other Three were the changes to that original charge. Right.

The other three.

So, like, the inciting incident was the charge we began with, and then the other. The complication climax of resolution was a change to that original charge, right?

The complication, yes. Yeah.

Right. So when we look at the middle build, am I saying what was the change since the resolution of the beginning hook, or what are we starting at?

Oh, no, we're doing it at the resolution of the beginning hook. So at the end of the beginning hook, the charge of the external genre is negative.

Yeah. It's moved from. So it started positive and then sighting incident. Then it went a little more negative. A little more negative. A little more negative. So are we at. When we look at the value shift of the inciting incident, middle build, are we saying we're starting. So we're starting still in the positive quadrant.

Yes.

But are we asking where it's moved since the end of the beginning hook?

Since the end of the beginning hook.

So since the end of the beginning hook, it's moved negative because she's got. Now she's not just going to the capital, she's actually in the Capitol, which means she's in more danger.

Yes. There's another way to look at it too. Okay. And this is something that you might want to take a note on or not. It's your decision. One of the ways to. You know how I always say to.

Undermine the reader's expectations.

Zig when you're supposed to zag.

Right. This is now an opportunity for the inciting incident of the middle build. What is the inciting incident of the middle build? Right now she gets to the Capitol.

And gets shown around.

Gets shown around. Right. Is there a way to make that. And we expect her to be scared.

Yeah.

What if when she gets there, it actually increases her external value, her life value? She's actually better off at the capital.

But aren't. But according to the curve, I'm supposed to keep making her go down until.

Yes and no. Yes and no. You don't want it to go so high that it overshoots. Or actually, you could. The point is, is that you have a. Like a heartbeat.

So is it like. Like, if you had a client that, like, was an investor guy and he wrote this thing about how average isn't normal. So if you look at, like, an investment portfolio over 10 years, you gain 10% over that time or whatever, but any given year, you. Not one single year was it actually 10% average. So it's like little ups and downs. Little ups and downs. But if you look at it as a whole, it's moving in a general direction.

Exactly.

So you're saying, like to pop it up only to, like, crash it back down. Yeah.

If you look at the story grid for silence and limbs, there's a lot of jagged peaks and valleys. That's what I'm talking about. And that is how a writer can create narrative drive. If it's so smooth, it's so predictable. It's so predictable. Okay, so you might want to make a note that when she arrives.

Her life value is actually, you know, wow, this is even better than I thought it would be. Incredible. Now, internally, if that is what happens, then that would be a negative.

Right. Because then she'll get more comfortable.

Exactly.

So right now, though, as written starts, negative because it pretty like her. Him as showing her around is kind of scary because it's fast. Here's all the danger. I can't believe you don't even know this stuff. They didn't tell you anything. They just dropped you in here. So because it's putting her more neg, it's creating more external pain. It's creating more positive change because we only create positive internal change when bad things are happening. So right now, it's negative external. Positive internal.

Yes.

Okay.

And what I'm suggesting is you might want to consider switching them.

Okay.

And the way you switch that is by changing the scene to make it like in Hunger Games, when she gets on the train and they're, you know, they have this incredible food that she's never seen.

Yeah.

There's all this stuff. She's got great dresses. She's got all kinds of attention. She never got at home. She's better off on that train going to die in the Hunger Games than she ever was at home.

Right.

It's confusing.

Right, right, right, right.

So when Jesse goes to this Capitol, she's expecting it to be like a penal colony.

And instead it's actually, oh, wait, do you want a steak? You know, you want a milkshake? Are you hungry? Can I. People waiting on them hand and foot, treating them like gods. That could be kind of cool.

Okay, so we've got the inciting incident. So the complication is. So the complication is where it starts to throw the world out of whack again. So the inciting incident is she gets shown around the Capitol, and it's dangerous. I put the complication was when she burns down the tower in the first severing, because that's the first time the world of the capital gets thrown out of Balance. Because if she had just, you know, when we were writing those scenes, you're like, you can't write it so linearly where she like goes into the severing and she just wins. And so then we came up with the idea of like, okay, well, what if she just opts out of the whole thing by burning down the tower so nobody wins. So my thought was that's the complication because that's the first moment where life and the capital gets thrown out of balance.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. And it's irreversible. The opinions of the people will not be changed because of that action that she took.

So externally. All right, not looking at the scene, I would say that's a positive shift because she gains power externally and she wrestles back some control that was being taken away from her by doing that. If she had just played along with the game, she wouldn't have gained any power. So that was her way of trying to pull back some of her power.

Well, I would say the opposite. I would say that her life value is worse because she's going to suffer the consequences of.

Again, I'm looking at it from her perspective.

I have to look at it from the global architects perspective.

Right. Because the result of that was she was put in more danger. Yeah, that's where she gets exactly.

More danger.

She gets more danger.

Negative.

All right, so then the internal charge.

Is positive because usually if ideal situation is that they're mirrors.

Right.

I'm not mirrors, they're opposites.

But it's cheating to say, well, this negative, so this must be positive. Like, we have to know why.

We have to think of why.

So she's moving from naive to uncertainty. So it was naive of her to think that she could like control the game by just throwing it out of balance. And so when the president brains are back in, she's now once again more uncertain about how everything works. Because she thought, I can wrestle control.

Closer to the truth. Think about is she moving closer to the truth or further away from the truth? So there's this.

My wife and I have been watching Handmaid's Tale on Hulu. It's really, really good. But there's this one scene where so the. I'm trying to encapsulate this quickly. Like there's like she's in this house and she's basically just like a sex slave in this house and the man is in control of the house and she's only supposed to interact with him once a month when he has sex with her. To try to get her pregnant. Well, he starts inviting her into his inner sanctum and they play Scrabble together. I'm ruining them. It's a spoiler alert after the fact. So he's inviting her in, inviting her in. And then there's this moment where she thinks that she can control him. So she starts trying to seduce him. And he's like. And he lets her close. She has asked for permission. He said yes. And then he's like. He's like, kiss me. And she kisses me. He's like, kiss me like you mean it. And so she does. And then he kicks her out. And so she was trying to seduce him to pull the power back, and he turned it around on her and was like, no, no, no, no. I'm still in control of this situation. And so that's the same idea here where she was trying to pull some of her power back and she never had the power in the first place.

Right?

Okay, so she was naive, thinking she could get the power. And now she's even more uncertain of how any of this works. Because. Okay, so the crisis of the middle build is best bad. I put best bad choice. She can play the game for real and probably die or keep up her petulance and Ernest and Alex will get hurt along with herself. I should have him there. So I have her crisis. Is.

Is she going to play along or is she going to keep being petulant and fighting it?

Right. To be petulant would be good for her because maybe it'll eventually get her out of the place, but it will be bad for Ernst and Alex. So that's also irreconcilable good. So it's good for her. It's not good for her friends. It's also a bad best bad choice situation. So it's okay to look at these crises from either irreconcilable goods are best bad choice because you can use the language either way in most cases. Some are just really obvious that they're one or the other. My only point is that there has to be a choice. There has to be a question. There has to be consequences for the actions. It cannot be all good or all bad. There has to be shades of gray of consequences in your crisis or it's not a crisis. Should I have chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream is not a crisis.

Okay.

Or I get ice cream. They get nothing. That's a crisis.

So I'm looking here. I have that as the crisis. I have the climaxes. She decides to play the game in the second severing, but ends up losing.

And then the resolution is her brother saves her. And I think we talked about that at some point because she was facing death at that point. Right. If she had gotten beat in the severing, she would have died. But then I skipped the whole second half of the middle build.

Yeah. I would go to the end of the middle build. So it's after the second severing is the moment when she.

Shifts from naivete to uncertainty. Cognitive dissonance. Remember? She freaks out.

Yeah.

Severing. And then what's his name, Randy, comes and saves her.

Right.

Okay. So it ends with her deeply in uncertainty. She doesn't know what's going to happen at the end of the middle, Bill. In fact, she's dead.

Right. But the end of the middle build is after the third severing.

Right. So what's the crisis that. I think you still have the right crisis here.

Right. Okay.

But the resolution is not that she ends up losing. She ends up dying.

Okay.

The climax is that she chooses to play the game straight. The resolution is she dies. Okay, so does that end negatively externally?

A little bit, yeah. All right, so when she plays the game straight, does it. Does externally go positive when she plays the game straight?

No, it goes negative. She's gonna play it straight. She's in deep danger. The more she plays this game, the greater the chances of her dying.

Okay.

As the architect of the story.

Yes.

She's just this little character running around on top of your tabletop.

So then what's happening if I'm looking now. So she plays the game straight, so she's in more danger, but that means internally, she shifted to where she's caring about other people instead of just herself. So that's a problem. Positive change. The resolution is she dies, which is externally bad. But internally she gave up herself to save other people.

So is it a problem that all I've. And maybe we already discussed this with how my line really died. Right. So my line is extremely smooth, though, because I have a positive external at the beginning. The inciting incident, beginning hook. And all I've had is negative since.

Yes and no.

Okay.

Globally, your global look at your story, your fool's gap is going to look smooth, okay. Because you are skipping over those jagged.

Peaks and valleys that happen scene to scene.

Right.

Oh, and that's where I compare it to. To the value shift column of the spreadsheet. So my value, I remember. I mean, I have it here, but my value shifts. My polarity shifts scene by scene in the Middle build are pretty like negative to positive for two scenes. And a positive or negative and so.

Exactly.

So those are my jagged.

Yep.

Okay. Okay. But the. But the full scatt. I'm moving.

You're looking at it very globally. It's like when you were talking about the financial advisor and you said if you look at your investments and you look at it globally, you see a nice little rise, right?

Yeah.

But if you look at it, you know, the more points. Points of data you get, you get jagged. Okay, so the spreadsheet gives you the jaggeds and your foolscap gives you the smooth.

Okay.

Get it?

Yes.

So it's okay that you're smooth. In fact, you want to be smooth. Okay, so we go through the charges for the climax.

Yeah.

She decides to continue. She decides to play the game straight.

Yeah, we talked about that.

So that's a negative externally.

Yeah.

And a positive internally.

Okay, so what about the resolution?

She dies.

So it's negative.

Deathlike limbo. Yeah. So externally it's a negative.

Internally it's a positive.

Right. Because she's gonna. Because she sacrificed herself.

Yes.

Yeah. So, okay, so she moved. I feel she did move from unconsciousness to death and she did move from naive to uncertainty.

Let me ask you this fun question. Question.

Okay.

Where is the all is lost moment?

Well, I mean, I'm cheating a little bit because you told me that a few weeks ago. I mean, it's where she's not. She's lost the second severing and she's just sitting there waiting to die.

That's right.

That's when she's realized she has zero control over.

The all is lost moment is when you have internal and external genres that play like you. The all is lost moment is the.

Moment when the lines intersect.

Well, close. Or the internal is at its lowest.

Okay. It's always when they switch from. That's when it crosses the line. Right. So we're now.

We.

She's now moved from negative to positive internally, but she's just over that line.

That's the all is lost moment.

No, that's a good question.

Well, so. Because what I've always seen as is, as I've learned, storygrid and then watched movies, it's the moment where the protagonist or hero changes internally but still doesn't get it Right. So I brought up the Family man, that movie that we watch every Christmas where he finally realizes that the life he has now, this new world, is better than his old life. But he still tries to go back and get his old life because he still doesn't. He still thinks he can get Beth the best of both worlds. Like he's still missing out on something. So he changed to where now he's no longer selfish. So from selfish to unselfish. But he still doesn't fully get it until the end of the movie.

Right. He's bargaining with.

So that moment is where she finally realizes she. She has no control over what's going on, but she still hasn't fully gotten the full ramifications of what's going on.

That's right.

So if you're saying the XY axis, the. Because she has to move from naive, which is below, to uncertainty, which is above. So the moment she flips over the X axis from negative to positive is the all is lost moment. In the middle. Right. In the middle of the middle, Bill.

Right. When you can no longer sustain your worldview.

Yeah.

You either have to go up or you just flatline.

Okay. Okay, so now let's do the ending payoff. Which has to move from death to damnation and uncertainty to maturation. Sophistication.

Right. And it doesn't. When I say death to damnation, it just has to bring in the realm of damnation. It doesn't have to end on damnation. It has to progress to the point of confronting damnation.

Okay.

Get it. Because it's really. Is not going to end on damnation. Because then it's a bummer. Nobody will enjoy it.

Right.

The character flirts with damnation.

Okay.

Unless it's a story like Angel Heart, which I published years ago, which became a movie. It was called Fallen angel, and the character becomes damned at the end of the story. It's a great.

Okay, so has to flirt. There's a possibility of damnation.

Yes, exactly.

Okay. So really the movement is death to damnation to life.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's the double ending.

Okay. That I don't have yet.

So the inciting incident I have. Randy is released from his prison to train the coders.

Is that positive or negative? Externally, for Jesse, positive.

Externally, that's negative.

Yes.

So again, Jesse thinks that's positive, but it's actually negative.

Yes. Okay.

So.

Because he wants to make her a slave.

Right. So then internally, since she. It gives her a brief feeling that she's that naive, she's going to discover.

The truth of her father, her brother. That's positive. She's going to have to face. It's like when that monster is released from the cage.

Okay.

You now have to fight the monster. You have no choice. He's literally released from his cage. So she. She thinks that's a good thing because he's a really smart scoundrel, villain. But it's actually gonna threaten her life and threaten her moral and ethical life too. Her soul. He's going to threaten her soul.

So it's positive because she gets to defend her soul. She gets to mature and come into her own. She gets to express her gifts.

Right. So again, if I'm going from Jesse's point of view, it would be positive, external, negative, internal. Because she gets a. She feels a little safer. Right. But since I'm standing back and looking at it, I'm like, well, this is bad for her, but it's gonna. It's getting her one step closer to maturity. Okay.

You're the parent, man.

This is tough for me to see it from that point of view. I don't know why. So complication. So this is where knowledge is given to Jesse that changes her view of Randy. So this is where it's. Forgot how I did it.

But basically she discovers that Randy tried to have her body cremated when she knows that he knows that she can survive this stuff.

Right. So externally, if I'm looking at that, that's a positive shift because it gets her closer to life. Yes, because now she sees that.

So internally.

That'S also positive.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is the moment when she sees the day and she understands. She's no longer naive.

Okay.

She can understand that somebody can seemingly be nice but also be a horrible person. Bastard too. It's like really nice people who are horrible. Yeah. Who caused, like, all the really nice clerks at Auschwitz.

So the crisis is best bad choice. Or I have best bad choice. She can side with her brother or she can work against him.

Yeah. Where it could be irreconcilable goods. It would be good for me to be number two under my brother and have so much power, but it would be bad for everybody else. Okay, what's the climax?

So she decides to circumvent Randy's plan.

And so externally, is that good for her or bad for her?

That's bad for her.

So it should be a negative.

Right. Because she's gonna die as a result.

Right.

But pot. But it's a positive because she's sacrificing.

For the good of others.

And that goes maturation.

Justice prevails when heroes recognize true family and sacrifice for them. Right. So this is the. Literally the ending payoff.

Right. So then the resolution is that Jesse destroys the grid, which externally. So this is part of my problem that I realized is I did not make people's life in the Cities bad enough in the book because it's almost like she saved them from something that they didn't want to be saved from or didn't really need to be saved from because they were kind of fine. So when she destroys the grid externally.

This is why this is such a good thing to do. Right. Because now you have to think about.

Well, because if life was actually. If I had made life really bad in the Cities, destroying the grid. So like in the Matrix, destroying the Matrix is obviously good for humanity. So they're not trapped.

Yes.

Where in mine, they kind of like being trapped.

Yes. They don't care who's ruling.

They know they're trapped and they don't mind so much.

Right. So if you kept it the way it is, thematically, what you're saying is that she. Jesse, comes to the realization after she's crowned queen at the end of the story.

That the population really doesn't care if she's queen or not. So there's a. There's all kinds of ironies at play. She doesn't feel comfortable being the leader, but now she is the leader. But if you make it really cartoonyly horrible at the beginning, which is a good. Could be a great choice, then it's very clear that she has done a good thing for society. She's pulled all of the, you know, the yolks off of, you know, the proletariat. And now everybody can, you know, have their own thoughts, which was what I.

Wanted was I wanted the ending to be where people were freed from tyranny, but at the. But down in a way where the tyranny kept them safe.

Right. So there, there will be. This is like whatever happens in Africa, this is like the. What happened in Egypt during the Arab Spring. It was so much exultation when they overthrew the leader, Mubarak, anyway. And then after, they're like, now what do we do? We don't. There's no one to hate anymore. How do we hold elections? And then it became very, very strange. And there was a rise of militant ISIS.

Negative forces.

And that's what I'm going to do in the second book is like, so.

You can end this with exaltation. She's overthrown the bad, negative forces. And then you end it ironically, where they turn to her and go, well, Jesse, what are we going to do?

Well, yeah, maybe when she goes back home at the end, there's like a parade in her honor and people are like throwing flowers on the ground. And then she gets to wherever she's going, and she walks in, and that's where they explain to her how bad everything's about to get. And they say, well, what are we gonna do? And she's like, I don't know. So everybody's praising her externally, but they don't realize they were two weeks away from everything.

And that's maturation. But, by the way, is when you have the courage to say, I don't know.

That's the last line of the book.

I love it. I think it's great.

Okay, so assuming I make that fix, destroying the grid is a positive thing.

And it's positive for her, too. So it'd be double a positive, external positive.

It is a positive positive, but it's also. It's an ironic ending, too, because the way you're constructing it is that the resolution, the final resolution of the story is ironic. She's caused a great positive thing that has massive negative undertones, which is an ironic ending, which pushes people into a sequel. Okay. That's how you use story structure to.

Program a sequel into your storytelling, is you don't resolve all the conflicts at the very end of the story. You resolve a lot of them enough that the people are satisfied. They've gotten their big hero at the mercy of the villain scene. They've gotten a lot of action. They're exhausted. But there's the promise of future stories.

Well, it's like Star wars where they destroyed the Death Star but not the Empire.

Right?

Okay. Okay, so I have my full scap. We have gotten through this. It only took us two hours.

What's next?

Well, the next.

What do I do with this? I guess, like, do I do anything with this? Or is this, like, because you had me do the spreadsheet, do the to do list? Okay, set that aside. Now let's do the full scap. Do we set this aside and go to the next thing and then look at them all at once later?

What you're going to do with this is. The first thing you're going to do is go through your obligatory scenes and conventions on your foolscap, then go to your spreadsheet and pinpoint each scene that. That answers those questions. Where are the red herrings? Where are the. Where's the speech and praise of the villain? And so you're going to tell your. You're going to make a note in each one of those scenes where those things are, and then you're gonna evaluate whether they're good enough. Is this clear? Is this Hero at the mercy of the villain. Scene clear. Could it be better? How could I make it better? Okay, is. Did I put in this? Are there clues? Then you're going to go through your beginning hook, your middle build, and your ending payoff. You're going to go through each of those scenes that you pinpoint here. Here, where you have the big complication scene. How can I reinforce this scene so that it's very clear that this is a huge scene?

Can I amp up what's going on here? Right.

Because one of the things we talked about when we were going over the controlling idea and theme is since the theme is justice prevails when heroes recognize true family and sacrifice for them. And then that was what we brought out of what I originally wrote was true. Family is not blood, is those that are there for you in your toughest times. And you must be willing to sacrifice everything for them. So that means early on I was like, hey, that means in these early scenes, I need to really amp up the fact that her dad is not trustworthy and her mom is not going to take care of her, because that's my controlling theme. So every time I get a chance to take that from a 5 to an 8 or a 7 to a 10, I need to take that opportunity.

Exactly. And you make notes in your big global note.

Yeah, my giant to do list.

Okay. So after you do these big, big moments.

So I take this full scap to basically add to my to do list that I created in my scene by scene take. Okay. So I can work on that.

Yes. And yes. And then I always jump, like, another stage later. But the next stage is similar to what we've done with the spreadsheet and with the foolscap. And that's to look at the Hero's Journey. And what you're going to do is use the 10 to 12 major movements of the Hero's Journey and check your manuscript to make sure that you have them. I'm talking about things like, have you established the call to adventure? Have you established the gatekeepers? Have you established trials and tribulations? Have you established the extraordinary world? And I think because we talk so much about it throughout the process, a lot of that stuff you have already baked into the story. You know, there's a point where the hero has to, you know, figuratively die. Yeah, you literally have your one die.

Right.

So that shouldn't be such a. We'll go through that next week will go through the Hero's Journey checklist.

Okay.

And then you'll go back to your spreadsheet and you'll highlight each of the scenes that abide the Hero's Journey checklist.

Okay.

And then after that we will do the graph. The graph. Right.

Okay. Okay, sounds good.

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