Planning the 2nd Draft

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grohl, 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 are finally taking the plunge and getting me to the point where I can actually start working on the second draft. I'm really excited about this. We've gone through a lot over the past couple months, and I'm excited to actually get started on the second draft. So, anyway, this episode, I think, is really good as you hear me plan out what my beginning hook's gonna look like, hear Sean's feedback on it, and getting me to the point where I can actually start working on it. And then we have a cool announcement of what we're gonna be working through for the next couple weeks of the podcast. So I think you're gonna enjoy that as well. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, I've gone through. So we're finally at this point now where I think at the end of this, I'll actually get to start working on the second draft. I meant to go back and count. It's been at least two months since I finished the first draft, and we started working through each of these things. But it's just been really cool, from my perspective, to see a methodical way to go from first draft to second draft, because it's the most opaque kind of part of the writing process to me, because I've worked with writers once they have the manuscript, like, getting it published and then out into the world, and then marketing, and then, like, the finished manuscript. And then I've, of course, seen all kinds of stuff online about how to write your first draft, and I've done NaNoWriMo and that kind of stuff. But this idea of what it takes to get from a first draft to a second draft has always seemed like, I don't know what to do. So getting to work through each of these things because, you know, we started with the scene by scene, filling out the spreadsheet and making a brainstorm and to do list. And then we moved into the full scap, where we put everything, the whole novel, on one page, and then we looked at the book through the lens of the hero's journey and looked at both the moments and the archetypes, and then we made the Actual story grid graph. And then. So I finished that graph over the last week and then moved into planning out the beginning hook of the second draft based on all of those things. So, yeah, it's been a really. Just like. It seems like such a long, arduous process. But now once I started actually planning these out, I planned it out in like, basically one sitting where I just sat down and. Because I. I just looked at all my notes that I made through each of those processes and then just like banged out the 12 scenes, you know, I should add the prologue in, but we've talked about this so much. I know what that is, too. So to the prologue and then the. The first 12 scenes of the book, and I put them in the same Google spreadsheet that I have everything else in. So if you haven't seen that yet and you're listening, you can get to that through the show notes. But anyway, yeah, that's where we're at and so we're going to talk through those and hopefully I'll be able to start working on this second draft.

Well, yeah, I mean, the method is to constantly be moving your focus of looking at your story so that, you know, you. You look micro at the beginning because, you know, you just sort of come from finishing micro scenes. So it makes sense to be able to go and, you know, look at the micro world and then you pull back the camera and you look at the global world, you know, in the. In the exact same manner, with as much dedication and deliberation as you would in the micro. And then after you've gone through this sort of. I think it's four stages. So you've got the spreadsheet, the foolscap, the hero's journey, and then the story grid. So those four things give you four tools that will allow you to construct your next draft and the next draft, as you said, after you do all this work, once you start to plan how to do your revision, you've got so many notes and so many things in your spreadsheet, your sort of, you know, your brainstorming spreadsheet, that actually doing and laying out the revision for the second part is actually not so hard. And then you give yourself very specific assignments in each scene when you go back and, you know, I know probably, you know, at the end of this conversation next week or tomorrow, you're going to start rewriting, you know, your book in principle, and it's not going to be as scary and frightening as it was after you finished the first draft. So taking the time to really you know, put a deep analytical method on your work really, really is going to pay off. And the movement from first draft to second draft is a very large stage. It's not, as, you know, intimidating as writing a draft from. From scratch, but it's really, really a big. A big deal. And the later drafts are going to get far more. Oh, let me just hone that moment there. I've got to, you know. You know, we'll look at the. The next drafts as they come, but I think you're going to be in a good shape. So I think what would be cool is I deliberately did not, you know, go read your notes to yourself about how you're going to fix each one of these early scenes. Instead. I thought it would be a good idea for you to. And I always. I recommend this in. In the book itself, in the story grid book is that when you have an idea or you have a revision, it's a good idea to go out with a friend and buy them a cup of coffee and literally tell them, you know, the development of the story. And you'll know when it's working, when it's not, depending upon the reaction of your friend. So I think verbalizing your ideas now will help you when you write, because a lot of times you'll make notes and you'll write it down, but then when you talk it through with somebody, you might realize it. It doesn't quite work. So if you're cool with it, why don't we try and walk through the 12 scenes that you have sort of plotted out how to revise?

Okay. All right. So I'll just get started. And if you feel like I'm. I need to do something different, just let me know. So I planned out one of the things that did make this easier for the beginning hook is I feel like of the entire story, the beginning hook is the tightest. And, like, we got the story right.

Right.

So most of what's going to be. I'm going to be changing in the beginning hook is first the setting, because I'm moving it to New York City, and I'll get more into that in a second. So I'm working mainly on the setting. And then I'm going to also be setting up things that are going to come later that I didn't know were going to come later when I wrote the first draft. So I'm going to be weaving in things into the beginning hook that I'll be able to pay off later. So the prologue is going to be. We're going to Add in the part that we've discussed a lot on the podcast, which will be Jesse and or Randy running through the woods carrying Jesse because she had died and he's freaking out and then she wakes back up. But I won't put anything about her dying, I won't explain why he was freaking out. It'll just be, you know, watching them, third person watching this happen. And that will set up the fact that later on when we find out that Randy knew she would come back from the dead, people would think all the way back to the prologue. So I'm adding that story, that bit in as the prologue. So then the first scene is going to be a new scene, not a rewritten scene. And it's basically because the current first scene is where she gets caught stealing. So what I'm going to do is add in a scene that establishes them. It's gonna be, the whole goal of it is to establish a lot of things. So the first is going to be the setting. So we're gonna be in New York City, she's gonna be moving through the buildings. She's going to be, you know, basically breaking into an apartment so that she can steal their credits. So it's, you're going to get to see New York and what it looks like from her perspective. Because what I'm basically doing is taking modern day New York and freezing it in time for like 100 years because everything falls apart.

So. And how I'm picturing this is it's basically because electricity is such a scarce resource and there is no fossil fuels anymore, I'm basically taking New York City and putting it like in the Old west times. So that's where everybody's going to be using lamps and torches and those kind of things for sources of light while living in this very modern city. So I thought that would be a fun kind of juxtaposition. So the first scene, she's breaking in to the apartment where she's going to be stealing. She's going to be on the radio with the rats and with Balaam that I'll be able to set up for later in the story for them when they show up. And it's going to be all about her trying to work her way into this particular apartment that they want to steal from and why they want to steal from there. The second scene is going to be pretty similar to how it is now where Jesse is going to get caught stealing by President Marcus and offered a chance to go to the academy. And we're going to see for the first time, what the people in the city look like. And I'm going to talk. I'm going to show how, like, even the higher ups in the city are basically emanciated addicts. Because I've decided the big change is going to be, like, everyone that's walking around connected to the grid and in the city are going to be addicted to the grid. So I'm, you know, I've done a lot of work with addicts and that kind of thing. So I know what it. I know the symptoms, I know how that all looks. And I'm basically going to write that in as they're all addicted to the grid. And so at the end of that scene, she's going to say no, and that's going to be what it turns on.

So the next scene is going to be Jesse ashamed. It's going to be the same dynamic where her parents are going to be there and not take care of her. The mayor is going to be there, and he's the one that does the shaming. But the setting is going to be instead of an old church, it's going to be a Broadway theater where it starts. And then when they step out, they're going to be in Times Square. And again, it's going to be lit by torches. It's going to be at night, because that's the only time anybody comes out anyway. And I'm going to try to make it as, like, suffocating as possible with the crowd pushing in and everything happening. And then at the end of that scene is when the numbered come and get her. So the next scene we're now into scene four is Jesse. When she wakes up, she's in, like, a low ceiling concrete bunker. But then this is the scene where 83, like, gets her up and kind of hurries her through the process of going out into the world. But what I'm doing now is I'm placing the number in the subway system. So this is how they get around is they have, like. Remember in all those old Western movies where, like, the carts on the railroads where they, like, have to pump them up and down to get them going to get from place to place. Like, that's how I'm gonna have them do. Basically getting from place to place is using the subway system to go out and do their, you know, take care of all of the people that are hooked up to the grid. So I'm gonna have them in the subways. That's how they get around city. That's how they get to where they need to Be they only come out during the day because. So that the people don't ever see them. I thought in the first scene, too, when she's talking to the. To, like, the rats and balaam, that she'll throw something in about the numbered. And I'm kind of gonna make them like a mysterious group of people that everybody's scared of because they never actually see them, you know, because I was thinking about how a friend of mine, he's a plains person, kind of like Amish, but without the religion. And he talks about how, like, in the. Like, old. Old, like, you know, middle. Like Middle Ages, you know, the. A lot of the peasants ate better than the kings because they actually had all the animals and knew how to cook them the right way. And so I was kind of thinking, he's like. And there was always this juxtaposition. So I thought there would be this, like, kind of fear of these people. And they're like the lowest, lowest, lowest of society. And what we're gonna see is, like, they're the only ones that, like, are healthy because they're not hooked into the grid.

Right, right.

But anyway, so I. The other thing I'm gonna introduce during this scene is I never introduce how food gets distributed to people from the reapers, the centralized kind of government that runs the. Runs, the severing or the. Right.

I was gonna ask you about that.

Yeah. So I'm gonna add that in here, where they have to go to this central location to get food to deliver to everybody that they're cleaning behind. And that's where 83 will talk to her about where the food comes from and who's in charge of it, and actually talk about how that works. Because at the end of the movie, or the movie, the end of the book, when everything falls apart, they realize they're not getting any more food, they're not getting any more supplies. What they have on hand is all they have because she shut down everything. So I had in my notes that I needed to explain that at some point. So I'm going to do it here. So then pretty much the rest of the beginning hook is how I laid it out. I had some notes to, like, change some certain things. And of course, the setting is going to be different in each of the scenes, but I like how it flows from there. Basically, after they get back, after that scene where they go and at the end of that scene is when she accidentally unplugs somebody and they attack her. And then the next scene is where 83 saves her, but then tells her that she's been sentenced to 25 years with the number. And so then the next three scenes are when Jesse tries to go back home. Then the number come and get her, and there's that whole race back. And of course it's going to be different because the setting will be different, but in general, I like how those scenes work. And then there's that scene where they're all together and they've accepted her and 61 forgives her for basically getting him scrambled. And he shares stuff about the Capitol, which I still got to change the name of the Capitol. And then.

I can't decide because I had this other character in there that I never introduced. And I basically have to decide if I want President Marcus to come and punish 83 or have the mayor do it, but he's gonna come and punish her because they were seen. And then she. And then at the end is when everybody finds out that she's not one of the number, that she can leave anytime she wants. And if she stays, people are going to keep getting hurt. And so that's, you know, then the next scene is when she's in the Capitol.

Right. Right. Before you move forward, a couple of things occur to me that I think are important to establish. Okay, one, one. And it's something that you can set up and pay off later on in the novel. And that is the nature of what the people are doing to mine, you know, in the. In the Grid. Because I think what's interesting today and what we're facing globally is the idea that in the not too distant future, work, like the work we all do, the things that we do will no longer be required of many people. And so work and meaning are sort of similar separating from each other. So in the future, it's possible that artificially intelligent programs and algorithms and robots will be doing a lot of the work that, you know, we all do now. So the idea is that these people are required and, in fact, addicted to doing certain online or in the Grid kind of work. And ultimately that work is meaningless. And to make that discovery later on in the story, you know, either through Randy or Marcus explaining to Jesse, either before or after she triumphs, oh, you know, those guys who are, you know, everybody who's in the Grid all the time, the work that they think is so important is really kind of meaningless. It's just to occupy them so that they're not constantly trying to overthrow the system. Okay, that's an idea to think about.

Yeah. I was thinking in the first scene, they would refer to them in some way. Like, you have the people that go into the mines every day, like, in, like, you know, Pennsylvania or whatever, that are doing, you know, the real work and the backbone of society and that kind of thing. And then you have people, the people that are trying to undermine the fabric of society by, like, you know, living outside of the law. They see those people as, like, losers that are actually, you know, submitting to that way of doing things. So that's why it was. That's what I was thinking. Part of the conversation between the rats and Balaam and her in that first scene will be, like, just in a few sentences, talking about how, like, how they look down on these people that are just basically going to the mines all day.

Right, right.

I mean, do you think that would be a good way to do it?

Well, I think, you know, thematically and, you know, the big metaphor here is this is a dystopian world in the not too distant future where the atmosphere is so, you know, overwhelming, that people can only live at night. So during the day, it's so hot that nobody can, you know, leave their. Their shelter. So we need to explain, how do you keep society from, you know, devolving into, you know, a very aggressive, you know, people fighting for the last loaf of bread kind of deal? And the way that was solved was by this centralized sort of government that has tricked people into believing that the work that they're doing in these mines is crucial to their survival. Not only is it crucial to their survival, but it's the only thing that gives them any sense of. Of quote, unquote, happiness. Because the grid work that they're doing in the minds is sort of like playing Candy Crush all day. You know, it gives you a dopamine rush from playing on the video screen that is meaningless, but it makes you happy. So all these people are addicted to doing this work that ultimately is, you know, doesn't do anything. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Like, I. I was planning on tying that back to the reapers of like this. The belief is the more credits you've you create, they're on the grid. Not only do you get a rush every time you get one, but it helps you. It helps the faction with which helps you get more food and everything from the Reapers. But later, we'll show those. Those don't actually connect. But that's the belief.

Exactly. Yeah. So as I think some way, in some elegant way, you need to establish what these people are actually doing. You know, they're in this artificial world doing. What are they Literally, you know, do they have, like, a virtual reality pic and they're actually hitting virtual cold or what? Or are they playing a game? I saw a really great episode of a very interesting television show on Netflix called Black Mirror, and there's this great episode where everybody in society has to ride a stationary bike. And as they're riding the stationary bike, there's this big video screen that they get to choose that, you know, shows them on their journey. And they get little credits every time they hit a certain milestone. And the big reward is once you get 15 million credits, you get to audition for, like, a. An American Idol show. And if you're lucky, you get, you know, celebrity. So I. When I watched that show, I thought, oh, that was kind of interesting because it's similar to the world that you are creating where people are plugged into a system where they're constantly chasing the next reward. And they believe that these rewards add up to a greater good that helps their faction get more.

Supplies in order for everybody to be able to eat and be happy not knowing that they're actually just sort of being mind controlled in a way that they don't uprise and, you know, try and change the way everybody is living. And I think that's the subtext and the big metaphor for your story is that, you know, our society is getting to the point where everybody is so constantly engaged with this virtual world that we're losing sight of the real world, which, you know, is plants, animals, all that kind of stuff, you know, nature. So I think that's the reason why I bring this up is that if. If you can somehow show what those people are doing in a virtual. In their virtual world, that's kind of interesting. Like the idea of riding a stationary bike, getting rewards based upon. It's almost like everybody's addicted to going to the health club. But yours is more an internal thing where people just don't want to get out of the, you know, the world. They want to check their social media constantly. So maybe each person. Maybe there's different divisions of labor. You know, maybe some people have to be the social media people who. I don't know. I'm just making all this stuff up, as I think. But I think there needs to be an implicit structure in the society that makes sense to the reader so that Jesse and her friends, when they make fun of it, they know what they're making fun of.

Okay. Okay, great. Yeah. So I feel. Okay, so I got. I got those notes down. So I feel like, overall, I've got a sense of where I'm going. I feel like the story's elements work. It's the setting. That kind of thing is gonna be most of my work. Because even as I thought through it, I'm like, well, I've got it. Like. Like, there's that scene where 83 is, like, out in the street trying to find Jesse.

Right.

And that doesn't really work with, like, having everybody, like, in building. Like, I got. There's just some very kind of normal problems to solve I've got to solve to, like, set it in this new place. But I even, like, found the apartment building in New York City that I want them breaking into in the first scene so I know, like, what street they're on. So I might even, like, throw in some references to, like, the street numbers. So, like, like, as she's going there, she's like, okay, this is where I'm at. And they're like, okay, you know, one more block or something like that. So I can actually follow on a map where she's going. So it's rooted in the real world because I feel like that was the biggest thing Ms. Missing is there was no kind of rootedness in a real world. And so I'm not really in a position where I want to make up a completely new world, like a Mockingjay or whatever, but. So I thought it would be fun to just take what I know, because I go to New York City once or twice a year anyway, so I'm pretty familiar with the city, know how it runs. You know, I. I can, you know, establish it in that place, but then just take it back a hundred years and set it in that. And that's going to be basically what the setting is going to be, I think.

I think that's fine. A dystopian New York is a completely believable idea.

Some would say we're already there.

Break into my apartment. Yeah, I don't know. No, yeah, don't have it go on my block.

Well, I thought it would be, like, creepy to talk about what it looks like at night because it'll be completely dark, you know, And New York is never dark, so. Or like.

Well, you know what's kind of funny about what's kind of funny about New York is that there are certain sections of the city that are virtually empty. And the reason why they're empty is that very wealthy people buy the apartments because they're co ops or condominiums. They buy them and then they just never live there. So they live, say, in Switzerland or they live in San Francisco, but they have an apartment in New York City. Like, I have an apartment in New York City, but I'm rarely there. The reason why people do this is that New York City's real estate values are so high that it's a really good investment. It's better than the stock market. So what's kind of interesting in your idea is, you know, there are large swaths of New York City where, you know, you have dormant buildings and there's nobody living in the building. So, like, when I. When I. When I use my apartment and I go there, the doorman is so happy to see me because nobody's in the building. And I think, you know, in the future, if, you know, if something horrible were to happen, there would be all these buildings that. That were empty anyway. So you would have, you know, the underclass of people being able to take over them very quickly if everything went, you know, to hell. So that's kind of an interesting idea to stick in if you ever, you know, need to put in the reason why. You know, there's these people living on Park Avenue who, you know, are destitute, who are barely getting enough to eat. It's sort of like squatters who came into the buildings after the big, you know, meltdown of the grid. Something like that.

Yeah. I mean, that was my thinking, is that basically, since everybody gets all of their food and resources from a centralized location, they have to. Everybody has to be in a centralized location to survive because that's the only place that has any resources. So that's what kind of made me change it in the first place. Because I like the idea of, like, cramming a lot more people into a smaller place, having everybody and. But still having the wealthy of society. Right? So just like you were saying, like, once. Once you reach 20 million credits, you get moved to the nicest part. You get in a bigger apartment. You know, you're playing for yourself, too, because that's who she's going to be going after to steal from. But that's what I want to show is even the wealthiest in society are still in horrible, horrible shape.

So that's good. That's true. Because the great equalizer is scientific technological oppression. And, you know, there's no difference between classes when it comes to an iPhone. You know, everybody sticks the iPhone in their face, you know, four to five hours a day. And we may not think that that's a problem. That's a problem. It is. Your novel is a way of sort of entertainingly pointing out that obvious fact. That if all we do is devote our energies to screens, we lose our ability to interact with real nature and reality and we, we lose our ability to do anything for ourselves beyond, you know, buying things or acquiring things. It's a consumer society based on teaching people that they're incapable of doing anything themselves. You know, oh, that's something that you buy. You know, that's something. Oh, just go to the market and get your vegetables instead of, you know what, there's something called seeds that you can put in the earth and the earth will eventually return, you know, food to you. You know, people don't get that.

Yeah, I like the idea of making it basically a souped up version of Candy Crush.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So, okay, good. But, so I feel like, again, most of my work in this first beginning hook is going to be setting and establishment of how the world works because the story itself works pretty well. And then I think once we get into the middle build is where we'll have a lot more story work to do versus setting work.

Yeah.

So. So I basically have.

I'm gonna make one more suggestion is that I would not write the prologue now. Put that in the back burner.

Because the prologue is probably one of the things you're going to write last.

Okay.

Because it's a foreshadowing device that, you know, you don't, you want to get perfectly in. You don't want to be rewriting it a million times because you don't know exactly how you're going to end or what your mental build climax is going to be. Or, you know, there's a whole bunch of scenes that we have to skip over in order for you to hit the finish line on the first draft. So the prologue is going to be probably one of the last things you're going to write and it's not going to be that difficult.

Okay. So as of Now, I'm at 12 scenes then because the original was 13 or 11. And then I'm going to work on those 12 now when I'm rewriting. So like the first scene is a completely new scene, so I just do that. But when I'm looking at, say like rewriting the scene where she gets caught or rewriting the scene where she goes home and tries to get her dad to let her stay, should I just like read the scene and then just rewrite it from scratch or should I take that scene and actually try to change the words? And that's just like adapt that those words to be the new version?

Well, that's really your choice. But you know, it all depends on the scene. Sometimes you need to. Sometimes an idea will come where you'll re envision the notion of the scene and none of it is really going to work. And so you have to completely rewrite the scene. But you know your beginning, middle and end, you know your inciting incident, you know your resolution, you know, you know your progressive complications. So, you know, writing a whole new scene isn't going to be that difficult. And then other times you're just going to tweak it and say, oh, here's, here's the part where, you know, I'll put in an additional progressive complication and then I'll stick in that bit about how people are addicted to Candy Crush. So it's really in your court. My gut would be to do whatever feels like it's gonna, it's gonna be less onerous.

Okay.

So if you find that you're, you're going over every word of the scene that you wrote before and it's just, it's like moving like molasses and you're not feeling good about it, then just put it aside and say, okay, how could I begin again? Where would I do this? How? You know, and the fact that you're adding so many elements of setting, etc. You may be able to just drop in the setting and then keep, you know, the dialogue. Who knows?

Okay.

But it's really up to you. Whatever works best for you in the moment. You can go back and forth. There's no rule.

Okay. Okay. Because I'm, I was working with an editor on the second draft of one of my non fiction books and he was like, I was like, I feel like I need to just type the whole thing out again. He's like, no, no, no, most of this you're going to keep. That's just a waste of time. And so anyway, so I'll just try a couple things and see what works.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So I'm going to get started working on the second draft of the beginning hook of the novel. And what I've alluded to a few times, I think, on other episodes is I'm also working on a new nonfiction book. And it's been interesting because on one hand I feel like a crazy person trying to work on two books at the same time. But it's been a nice kind of like. So over the last two months, as we've worked from first draft to second draft, I haven't had a ton to do in between recording the podcast, so I actually wrote an entire first draft of this nonfiction book that I've been, you know, you and I have been talking about and I've been kind of playing with for a year. I actually was able to sit down and write the first draft. So for the next so we're going to flip those over the next couple weeks. While I'm working on the second draft of the beginning hook of the novel on the podcast, you and I are going to start working through how to move from first draft to second draft of a nonfiction book. So hopefully that'll be interesting to everybody.

I hope so.

Should be.

Yes, it definitely should be.

Yeah, I think it'll be good. It's always good to look at things from a different perspective. And I get emails a lot from people that listen, that don't write fiction, that write nonfiction. They're just trying to become better storytellers. So hopefully it'll be good there too. So for the next couple weeks, we're going to be working on my nonfiction book while I'm off writing the novel and trying not to go crazy by doing both at the same time. So we'll do that. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything StoryGrid related, check out storygrid.com make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, I'll 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. 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 StoryGrid. We will see you next week.