Point of View and Narrative Device

Hello, and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm the host, Tim Grawl, and I am a new writer struggling to figure out how to tell a story that works. And I'm peppering Sean Coyne with as many questions as I possibly can. He is the creator of the Story Grid. He wrote the book the Story Grid. And this podcast is to help me and you, the listener, understand more about how you can write a story that works. In this episode, we break down the movie Dead Calm that Sean told me.

A few weeks ago that I should watch.

I finally watched it, and we walk through how the story grid applies to that movie. We also talk about what makes a good setup, and we get into different types of inciting incidents, and then we take a turn that I wasn't expecting, and we focus in on narrative devices, and we spend a good bit of time working through those. So it's a really great episode. I know you're going to enjoy it. And make sure you hang on to the very end of the show, because I have an epilogue where we cut. We talked for a little bit, and then there was this piece that I just had to add back in that I think will be really helpful. So that is at the very end of this recording as an epilogue. So hang in for that and we'll jump right in.

So I finally got around to watching Dead Calm.

Great.

And it was really interesting because, you know, I was watching it from the standpoint of, you know, everything from the Story grid. And it was neat to see, like, all the different.

All the different ways it kind of did what it's supposed to do. I think the thing that stood out to me the most was how it went through this. Like.

Each scene, you know, would have a turn, but they weren't all bad turns. You know, I think I have it stuck in my head that each scene should make it progressively worse.

Right, right.

And so, like, there was this one scene where the he. I mean, it came out in 1989, so this is gonna be full of spoilers, and he's been telling you to watch it for weeks. So.

You know, he started where the boat wasn't working because he ends up his wife stuck on one boat with the bad guy and Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. And then Sam Neill ends up on the broken down boat. But at the beginning of the scene, the ship's broken down and full of water. And at the end of the scene, he gets it running again and he takes off after after the. His wife. And so I just thought that was interesting how early in the movie it.

Turned positive. You know, it was like, bad scene, bad scene, positive, you know.

So that was just a good reminder to me about how, like, we. Well, we talked about, like, the whole soap opera thing of, like, cliffhanger, cliffhanger resolution. This was more like negative, negative, positive, you know, and then there'd be a couple more negative scenes, and then the scene ends with her getting the gun. You know, she had been working this whole scene to get the gun put together and in a place where she could use it, and she gets it, you know.

So I just was. That was interesting to me. The other thing that was interesting is I. You know, you talked about how one way to find. One way to do obligatory scenes in a new way is look at the cliches, look at what's out there, and just think about what the opposite would be.

Yes.

And so I love how it ended up being she was going to rescue him at the end.

Right.

You know, because he starts out chasing her, and I'm thinking, okay, yeah, he's going to, you know, track down this boat and he's going to get on there and he's going to kill Billy Zane and save the day. But what ends up happening is she takes out Billy Zane and turns around and goes after him because he's sinking on this ship.

Exactly.

So I thought. I thought that was really cool because I was not. I was not expecting that at all.

Exactly. Because you remember. And here's. Here's why I forget. I think it was George Miller who produced or directed it. And George Miller is that famous Australian director who did the.

The Mad Max films. And he's just such a master of that kind of pulling the rug out from you. And as you remember at the very beginning of the movie, he established so many things so quickly and so well that we believed the character had that capability even before they displayed it. So, for example, when you mentioned the part where Sam Neill is able to get that boat running.

George Miller, he was either the producer or the director on. Don't want to give somebody credit who didn't do it. But anyway.

Sam Neill, at the very beginning of the movie, he is on a train and he is the. Like, the big cheese of a naval operation. So he's like a very, very seasoned sailor. So when he goes and he fixes that boat, we don't. We're never told that, oh, this guy can do that kind of thing. We just intuitively know it, by the way, the presentation of the story was. Yeah.

And right before he leaves his boat to go to the broken down boat, they're talking about, you know, is this Billy Zane guy crazy?

Right?

She says, why do you think this? And he kind of shrugs and just says, 25 years on the sea. Exactly.

Great.

You know, so it was a great way to say he's been doing this for 25 years without it just being kind of thrown at you.

You know what that is, Tim? This is a. This is a great phrase that I Learned from Robert McKee. One of the difficult. One of the most difficult things about writing a story is getting an exposition. And exposition is all that stuff that you think the reader needs to know as soon as possible, right? So exposition is one of the difficult things to get in there without seeming cheesy, right? So.

The phrase that McKee uses is to use exposition as ammunition. So exposition as ammunition means that you use it as a revelatory turning point in a scene. So when Nicole Kidman says to Sam Neill, well, it seems kind of reasonable. I mean, all these people on this boat died of salmonella poisoning. I mean, that's possible, right? And he just looks at her and he goes, no, I'm not really sure. And then she presses him and then he goes, look, it's. It's. 25 years of experience on the sea tells me that this is hinky and weird and not right, and I need to go check that out. So that ammunition turns the scene from, oh, we rescued this guy, so let's just keep him on board, and then we'll. We'll find an island and drop him off on, and then everything will be okay. So Sam Neill makes a character choice, an active choice. I cannot abandon that ship that is sinking on the sea because I suspect something is wrong. So when he says 25 years of experience at sea, we're telling the reader that this is a very experienced captain. But it makes sense that he says that at that very moment because he has to back up the fact that he's going to leave his wife alone on that ship with that guy. So he tells her, look, you know, this is my job. This is my life's work, is being on the sea. I know this is something strange here. So I have to go check out that boat. And it's great because he. He doesn't just go check out the boat and leave Billy Zane, you know, free and clear. He locks him in a stateroom. And so we don't. He takes the necessary precautions before he leaves the ship because He's a. He's a pro. Right. He doesn't know that Billy Zane is strong enough and smart enough to break through that. You know, that trapdoor. Anyway, exposition as ammunition is a great way of treating information for the reader that you think they need to know immediately and to give it to them at a critical moment, that can turn a scene.

Yeah. In on writing, Stephen King uses an example of, like, a scene where a woman walks in and a man sitting there, and he says, hello, ex wife.

And he's like, that's a really bad way to do that. And then he rewrites it, and it's something like, you know, I'm gonna butcher it. But it's something like, you know, he says something to her, she says something back. And he. He plays with the place where the ring used to be.

Mm.

You know, and so it's like sliding it in instead of just hitting people over the head with it.

The one thing. The one thing that drove me crazy about the movie, though, and this may. And you can probably tell me if I'm right in my assumption here, because it was this whole, like. I wish they would have just ended it when she rescued him. Right? So she left Billy Zane floating on this little raft thing. So he's obviously gonna die in the middle of the Pacific. She finally makes it back, right? You know, right before he's basically gonna die on the sea. And she. She grabs him and rescues him. And they should have just ended it, but instead the movie keeps going, and it go. They go back to find the raft. He's not on the raft. And so they think, okay, he must have gone in the sea. And then there's this whole thing where Billy Zane had climbed back on the boat and he still got blood all over him, and he tries to attack her, and then Sam Neill finally kills him, you know, and I was like, oh, come on.

Like, you know what that is, Tim?

What?

In a thriller, you need to have a false ending. And so that was. That was the way that they solved the problem. The obligatory scene of having a false ending. And whenever you have a thriller, you'll notice this. Like in Die Hard and all these other thrillers, there's the moment when it seems everything's over, and then there's that final bang. So you didn't buy that. And that was probably the weakest part of the movie. And I would agree with you.

But, I mean, it's also, like, what, 17 years old now? So maybe it wasn't so cliche in 1989.

Exactly. Exactly. I mean that was, you know, that movie is so, so, you know, it brings me a little bit of sadness because there used to be, when I was growing up, you know, these really kind of mid budget Hollywood movies that would be just these impeccable thrillers that, you know, the studios would produce or they would buy from a foreign country for like say 10 million bucks, right? And then they would put them out there like maybe 3, 400 screens and they would give them time to breathe, meaning they would let a lot an audience sort of come to them over time and that you. We don't have those anymore. And there was a, there's another great one called Breakdown. If you ever have time, go see a movie, rent a Netflix, a movie called Breakdown and stars Kurt Russell and I think Kathleen Quinn. Oh, it's great, isn't it? And J.T. walsh plays the bad guy.

Holy moly. I watched it in college, so it's been a bit. But.

Yeah, yeah, it's a similar kind of setup.

Exactly. Whenever you can have a husband and a wife who are dealing with like a deep marital issue and then they're challenged by some psychopath, you've got the recipe for a pretty good thriller. So like, a lot of people always ask me, you know, what's a good setup? You know, I'm really having a hard time figuring out, you know, that one sort of central setup idea that can sustain a thriller from beginning, middle to end. And you know, that triangle, you can't really go wrong with the triangle of, you know, two men and a woman.

And.

Which is the same setup for a romance.

Exactly. So, you know, it's, it's a, because relationships, there's, there's like, that's a manageable triangle of, of manipulative relationships. If you have more than three, then it gets kind of, you know, a little bit difficult to handle. That's why, you know, in the epic sort of storytelling tradition you have these pockets of story, right? You have like these subplots, like, you know, War and peace has like 12, you know, major characters and they, but they all live within a limited world unless, you know, they go to a battlefield or something. But anyway, I'm getting a little bit off track. But the thing is, is, is to think about.

You know, those, those central conflicts between, you know, a married couple and, and challenged by some third force that comes in.

It's a really good way of just sort of when you get stuck saying to yourself, okay, what's interesting? How am I going to get people to want to keep turning Pages. Well, if I have these relationships that are sort of hazy and they're not really sure where they're going to go. The other great thing about Dead Calm is you see the arc of Nicole Kidman as a character. She starts out as sort of this very, you know, waifish, sort of kind of weak mom who lost her child, who's on medication, who kind of can't handle anything. And then she becomes this kick ass action hero. It's cool.

Yeah, I, I love that part.

Because I just loved how like that, that built in. It built and it built and it built. You know, she kept coming again to this, like it was most, you know, best bad choice and she kept choosing the hard choice because it was the right one.

Right.

The other thing I liked that we've talked a little bit about before is the mix of. I forgot what you call them, but basically where the complications, some of them were environmental and some of them were. What do you call those two different things?

Those are, those are inciting incidents that are either causal or coincidence. Causal means they're. They're caused by another human being. And coincidence means that, you know, there's a storm that comes or the lights go out, you know, or something happens in the environment that changes that wasn't caused by any one person. So they're either causal or coincidental. And, you know, that's what you got to mix those up. You know, if you keep having the same one over and over again, the reader is going to be like, this doesn't seem quite right. You know, I don't know. There was something about it in the middle. It just seemed to go off the rails and I lost my ability to suspend my disbelief. And you hear that a lot from people. When somebody says that to me, I immediately know that the problem that the writer is having is that they're not mixing up their complications. They're inciting, you know, they're inciting incidents for a particular scene once it's causal, causal, causal, causal, causal, causal, causal, not sort of causal, causal, coincidence, coincidence, causal, causal, coincidence. So that, you know, you all constantly want to keep the reader off balance in much the same way that you want to keep your protagonist off balance.

Yeah. Because in that column there was.

You know, it was really calm at first and. But then like a storm came.

The boat started sinking again for a second time and he couldn't fix it.

Right.

You know, but then of course there was. The causal ones were like. And I started seeing too about, like looking how each scene had an inciting.

Incident too I know.

You know, we're like. She walks in to the radio and starts trying to radio him and it's like, oh, man, Billy's gonna be mad. Like, you know.

And so. And I don't. I get. It's funny because I don't watch very many scary movies. I like reading scary books, but I really don't get things jumping out at me.

Yeah.

And so though there was several times I'm like not looking directly at the screen because I'm just waiting for Billy to jump out at her.

Wasn't he great in that? I mean, Billy Zane is. He was so believable in that part. And I think, you know, he played that very young in his career and I think it's. He was so good in it. Everybody thinks he's a nut bag, you know, because he was so good in it.

Well, so in the last week, I've read two books.

And I. One of them was before, Before I Go to Sleep. And it was about a woman. It reminded me. It's a similar setup to the movie Memento and that Adam Sandler movie with Drew Barrymore where. But the whole thing is the woman had an accident and she's lost all short term memory. So every time, every night she goes to sleep, she resets and she wakes up and she's lost 20 years of her life.

But there's something sinister going on. But the whole thing is she's can't. She's having trouble figuring it out because she always forgets. And so that was really good. But I read this one I wanted to run by you because there's a couple things in it that I wanted to mention. I read it was called Bird Box and it's just this brutal story. I had trouble sleeping after I finished it. I actually finished it last night and I was late and I still couldn't go to sleep because I was so freaked out. But it's basically. It's kind of a typical post apocalyptic thing where. Or apocalyptic thing, I guess, where.

Something. Basically, if you. There's these beings that have showed up and if you look at them, they. You go crazy and you kill yourself. And anybody that's close to like, anybody in your vicinity.

Mm.

And so then, you know, the main character gets to this safe house where there's, you know, half a dozen of them trying to live, but anytime they go outside, they, like have all the windows blocked. Anytime they go outside, they have to put on a blindfold because they can't look at anything.

And so. But what was interesting, the first Thing is. And this goes back to what we've been talking about is.

The writer. I forgot the author's name.

He.

Gave you so little information in each scene.

Like the very. The very first scene.

Oh, that's great. That. That. I mean, I'm loving this story already. Just.

Yeah.

Statement.

Well, and it plays well with the. The whole idea is anytime they go outside, they have to put on a blindfold. And so the entire book feels claustrophobic because you never get a description of what's going on. All you get is what they hear, what they feel. Because you know how, like, you walk in the dark and, like, you get this creepy feeling somebody's watching you.

Mm.

Like, the. The main character starts going crazy because she thinks somebody's watching her, but she can't take off her blindfold to check.

Wow.

You know, and so. But so that was really interesting. I just loved how.

You know what. Sorry to interrupt, but I have to say this because we talked about this. We talked about this almost every week.

What that reflects is a writer with a tremendous respect for his audience or her audience. It could be. I'm not sure if this was written by. I'm gonna absolutely buy this book now and check it out.

Yeah, it's. It's one of my. One of the. My favorites I've read in a while.

So it takes so much courage to leave out all that exposition that we sort of. We cling onto when we're writing our first draft. And I say, go ahead, put all that exposition in. Write as terribly as you possibly can in that first draft, because you can always cut it out. But when you start paring down your scenes to the point where there's very little exposition, it's all active movement on the page where the characters are actually doing things all the time. And that allows the reader. Who's your partner in this, as a writer, you're writing for readers, right? Everybody writes because they want people to read what they write. So when you respect your reader and you say to yourself, you know what? These people are so good at story. The less I give them, the more they're going to fill in by themselves in a way that I would never, ever be able to do specifically for them. So when you're. When they put those blindfolds on, everybody who reads that book has a specific traumatic incident in their past where they couldn't see at one point. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah.

So the writers wisely was saying to themselves, the more I can pull back and let the reader, you know, inject their own life experience into my story. The. The far. The far better experience they're going to have. And obviously it worked for you because you couldn't sleep after you finished this book.

Well, and it was.

Well, and just going off of what you said. I think the reason that works so well is because I fill it in with my sphere, not his fear. And so. But. Oh. So this is what I wanted to mention too. So the opening scene.

Is.

I'm trying to make sure. I don't want to spoil the book. I don't think this will spoil the book because it's just the opening scene. So she is.

Basically. There's something.

Before you tell me, let's just let me just. Before you tell me what exactly it is, I think what would be instructive for people is for me to describe sort of what a great opening scene for a big global story would be.

And then you can tell me what the opening scene is and we can see if it sort of matches up. So a great way to open up a book is what you want to do is think about.

How you can generate the most suspense and interest in your story in the shortest amount of time. And the also. The thing you also need to know is, is that you're inciting incident at the very beginning of your book, which is of course your global inciting incident of the entire story itself.

What you're doing is you're setting up not just the beginning of the book, but the ending. So that first scene that you're going to give the reader, you're saying to them.

I'm going to tell a story like this. And because you are so smart and you've been around stories so much in your life, reader, you know that the ending is going to be somewhere in this arena. So if I'm writing a thriller, I'm going to open up a story where it's usually going to be something strangely.

It's either going to be a discovery of the body scene, if it's a serial killer thriller, or it's going to be.

The scene when the investigator is hired to find the killer. Or it's going to be something extremely traumatic like the beginning of Dead Calm, where a man loses his child and his wife is in a coma and his life is at a very, very difficult place where he has to repair his entire life. Is he going to be able to bring his wife out of the coma and repair their marriage and move on with their life, or is he not going to be able to do that? So just with that Said now, now tell me. You know the opening scene of Bird Box?

Okay, so the opening scene, the mom.

The main character, she's a mom. She has two kids that she calls girl and boy.

Oh, I love it already. And she has decided today is the day. The fog is thick enough, she can go down to the river and they can get in the boat. That's all you know.

Okay.

The next scene is four and a half years before that. The main character is finding out that she's pregnant. Something weird has happened in Russia.

Okay. The first scene that you just described is a perfect example of a great beginning.

I'll tell you why. Because what it says to the reader is that there's a woman, she's got two kids that she has to take care of, and she has to wait until it's. It's impossible to see outside before she can escape. So what the reader, what the writer is telling the reader in that very short beginning scene, these people are trapped and they need to escape.

So that is going to be sort of the through line in the back of the reader's mind from the beginning of the story to the end. How did they get into this situation and are they going to get out of it is sort of like the central narrative suspense that is going to keep the reader turning pages. So it's going to meander, of course, and it's going to go different directions depending upon, you know, other progressive complications in the storytelling. But the. The global. It's like the wizard of Oz, you know, is Dorothy going to get back to Kansas? You know, that's the central movement of wizard of Oz that keeps you going in that book. And for the description that you just gave me, it's a woman with her two children who need to get out. Are they going to be able to make it?

Well, early in the book, she ends up at this house with some other survivors, and she lets you know that's the house. She's escaping by herself with her two kids.

Oh, great.

So the entire book, you're like, where did those people go?

You know, and so.

When, like, in certain things happen, when you're like, okay, they're. They're not coming back. And then they come back, you're like, well, when is the author going to get rid of all of these people? You know, like, there's all these people there.

How does it happen?

Yeah, and it was this perfect, like, you know, that you. You always talk about the inevitable but surprising end. Yes, yes. So, and it mirrored the first scene, and, like, all this kind of stuff that was exactly how it was supposed to be, but I was still like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe that's how it ended, you know?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I. It was really good, and it was really neat. But what I thought was interesting and I wanted to run by you was this idea of.

Two.

Stories going on at the same time. Like that. Right. So they're telling you one story that's present and one story from, you know, four plus years ago.

Oh, yeah. That's a great narrative device.

So talk. Talk to me about that a little bit, because you don't. I don't think you touch on that in the book.

I don't really, because the narrative device is sort of.

Let me think. It's sort of a way to not cheat, but to.

To help yourself as a writer figure out sort of the tone of the work and.

How to, you know, keep the reader turning pages. For example, I think I mentioned to you in my notes on your scene to think about the narrative device of the survivor telling the story that has already happened. It sounds like Bird Box is kind of like that sort of setup where you have.

You almost have, like, a deposition kind of style. It's sort of like that television series True Detective, where they had Matthew McConaughey sort of. And they were interviewing people like, oh, here we are. We're investigating the investigation, you know, and they make it very formal, and the cops sit down and they're being interviewed, and they start to tell the story, and then you have the flashback of what happened. That's a great narrative device because you've got two.

Tracks of story moving at the same time. And you can always, you know, pull out. Pull the rug out from. From the reader in each one of those ways. And when it's one way gets stale, you can go back to the other. It's sort of like a really nice way of keeping the reader grounded, too. So that, for example, if you. If you tell the story of sort of like, you know, legal thrillers are. Many legal thrillers are like this. Presumed Innocent is a terrific example of, you know, the front story and the backstory. The front story is that the lead character, Rudy Savage, I think, is. His name is being. You know, he's on trial for killing his lover. And so, you know, we get in. We get in the scenes with him and his lawyer, and they're lawyering, discussing the defense. And then, as you know, he goes up on the stand to relate the story. Then we get back the backstory.

So the narrative device if you can figure out something that's really exciting to you early on.

In your quest to tell your story. And it sounds like the bird box writer really kind of thought to themselves, let me introduce this story almost at the very end, right before the climactic moment of the global story. And then I'll tell you what happens later. And in fact, the Great Gatsby is also a narrative device in that way because as you'll remember, the beginning of the Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway telling a story. He's telling the reader a story with the, with the vantage point of already having experienced it. So he opens up, you know, you know, my father used to give me some advice about people and he used to say, withhold judgments until, you know, you get to experience them personally. And that reminds me of this guy I knew and his name was Jay Gatsby. And then, wow, we're like, oh, I wonder what this guy's going to tell us about. That's kind of interesting. And so once you're locked into that flow, it's it, what it does, is it for, for a reader. It makes you feel warm, it makes you feel as if.

You know, there's, there's a presence.

Telling you a wonderful story that's going to have a point that's leading somewhere. It's like being told a bedtime story by your mom or your dad. And that is, you know, when we're little kids, we think, you know, that's a such an exciting part of your day because, you know, you're in the presence of somebody who has a lot more experience than you do, who's going to tell you a story that's going to make you laugh, it's going to make you a little bit scared and it's going to have a point. So the narrative device. And Steve Pressfield talks about this a lot and he's a master of the narrative device. I mean, I had the pleasure of editing his book Gates of Fire and a lot of his novels and he's always thinking about narrative device. Like he won't, he won't start, he won't start a novel until he figures out that narrative device. And in Gates of Fire, it was this brilliant choice where, you know, he wanted to tell the story of the battle of Thermopylae, which is this incredible, you know, 300 Spartan warriors hold back the million man Persian army at this very narrow pass in Greece. And it's called Thermopylae. And you know, it's a famous, it's One of the famous battles of all time. It's, like, incredible. But he couldn't figure out, well, how do I do it? Where, you know, we learn a lot of different things because he knows it's a war story. So the climactic moment, the biggest climactic moment, is going to be that actual battle. And he knew he had to deliver that. That battle, but he wanted to build to that battle so that the battle had context and rich, you know, detail. So he thought to himself, well, apparently, you know.

The story is that these 300. All 300 Spartan guys died. And so there was nobody to tell the story of what happened leading up to that. So Steve thought to himself, what if I did a little research and I find out there. There must have been a group of people who supported the Spartan when they, you know, slaves who would bring their battle gear and cook their meals for them and take care of them while they were fighting. That's the way they used to fight. They would have, you know, like, a Man Friday of sorts who would bring their gap. So what if there was a sole survivor of the battle and. And they find this guy? The Persians do. After they slaughter and wipe out all 300 Spartans, they find this one guy. And Xerxes, who's the king of Persia, says to his men, bring that man to me. I need to know how these Spartans fight. They killed a million men, and there were only 300 of them. And I want that man to live because he's going to tell me how those suckers trained and were able to kill all of my best warriors. So that's the narrative device. So we get this great narrative device where the sole survivor of the battle is. Is relating the story of the Spartans to the Persian king. The Persian king wants to hear this story because he. He thinks if he understands how the Spartans fight, he can teach his men how to fight in the same way. So that narrative device is so crucial because, you know, if you read Gates of Fire, it's a little like reading the Iliad. It's not. It's not like picking up, you know, a terrific little crime thriller that you're in. You know, you're engaged immediately. You need to sort of get a feel of the language because Steve somehow was able to recreate this. This feeling of ancient Spartan prose. So it's not. It's not like it's this easy thing to jump in there and you're, you know, you're on this adventure. He needs to really grab the reader and get them attached to his narrator before he can really get into the meat and potatoes of the spartan world and the way he did it. I mean, I remember I was an editor at Doubleday, and at the time, and Steve's agent at the time was a guy named Sterling Lord, who's one of the, you know, just the greatest agents of all time. Like, if there's a hall of fame of literary agents, it's like Sterling Lord is right there. And so I remember, and I write about this sometimes on my website about like, sort of the. The publishing community and how there. There's this service community of, of scouts who sort of, you know, they make. They make friends of agents and of editors and they read. They basically make sure they know everything that's going on in the publishing industry before it happens and when you're an editor. And I was at the sort of this place where I needed to, you know, publish at the top of the Doubleday list, which meant the books that I would publish, six to eight books a year, and they would be the ones that, you know, would hit the New York Times bestseller list, Knock on wood. So I was really deeply engaged and connected to this community. And a friend of mine who was a scout called me one day and said, hey, I heard about this, this submission that Sterling Lord is out with. And I immediately thought of you because it's about the Battle of Thermopylae, something like that. Thermopyle or I don't know. And I was like, oh my God, somebody wrote a novel about the battle of Thermopylae. And so I immediately called Sterling and I said, hey, Sterling, man, this is right up my alley. Send it to me. And he did. And I took it home that night. And I was just. So I was just. It was like reading the Iliad for the first time. And I'm like one of those nerds who loves the Iliad and the Odyssey. And luckily I was probably the only nerd in town who totally got it. And so I worked out a deal with Sterling and that's how I met Steve. And that was in 1995, 1996. So anyway, that's a long story to tell you about. The really important choice to make is the narrative device. And I talk about a lot of point of view and free indirect style and third person omniscient.

And all that kind of stuff in the story grid book. But narrative device is really dependent upon.

It's almost like a personal choice by the writer. It's the thing that's really going to make them feel comfortable in their Storytelling.

Yeah, because I'm not. So when you talk about narrative device, what. So is that, like. So the stories where. That are kind of more typical, where you just start at the beginning and go to the end. That's one narrative device. Another would be somebody's telling the story, you know.

Yeah. Story within a story.

Yeah.

Gone Girl. Gone Girl is a great example of a terrific narrative device, and it was unique and it was fresh and it was fantastic.

Oh, because there was the diary at the same time as the. The story. Exactly.

And she wrote in first person.

Gillian Flynn is just fantastic writer. She wrote in first person. I went to the story from the female point of view and the male point of view, and it was convincing on both sides of the equation. When I read that book, I was like, oh, my gosh, how does she know how men think? Because this guy, this guy Nick is like, it sounds like a guy I know. You know, he's like a friend. And so her narrative device, which was a really unique one, was, you know, she was using the unreliable narrator narrative device where.

Where you, you know, you have a narrator who's telling a story for their own particular reason. I'm not going to spoil Gone Girl because it's a great reading experience, but, you know, both characters in that book, they're trying to convince the reader, the universe to their particular way of thinking. And anyway.

There'S many different examples of narrative device.

The traditional narrative device is sort of the Dickensian, you know, omniscient, godlike creature who says, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

And it just kind of tells everything that happens.

Yeah. It's almost like a grandfather, like the Princess Bride. There's another great example of a narrative device. And William Goldman brilliantly thought to himself, hey, I'm gonna just have a grandfather make up some crazy story because as a kid, his grandson won't go to sleep. That's gonna be my narrative device. And so, you know, the grandfather. And in the movie, it's wonderful because he's played by Peter Falk.

Right.

And he's just sort of like, ah, let's see. And then there's this guy.

No, he's reading the book.

Oh, he is? He is, yeah.

Yeah.

He.

But he, like, skips parts and, like, stops and talks to the kid and. Right, Yeah. I just think that's interesting because I've never really thought of this before.

Because I'm trying to think, like.

So one of the goals for myself and for people listening is, you know, we want to set it up for success. Like, I want to create everything that makes it you the most likely to succeed at writing this book and it becoming a success.

Yeah.

And so when I think about narrative device is, it seems like. It's almost.

Like, why is it. Why was it so engaging for me that in Bird Box, I was reading two different stories? Because on one hand, I kept thinking, like, I know exactly what's going to happen.

But yet that alone kept me reading.

Exactly. And I think you answered your own question with that statement is to flashbacks.

Flashbacks are a part of everyday life, right? Say you decide to go out with your friend for a cup of coffee. And before you do, you know, you're. You're emailing each other, goes, oh, my gosh, I got to tell you a story. You are not going to believe what happened to Jim, our mutual friend Jim. And you're like, no, you got to tell me. Oh, wait a minute. I'll tell you a coffee, right? Well, let's just say he and his wife Sally broke up, and you're like, wait, what? How did they break up? What happened? Well, it's not what you think. And you're like, what? And he said, I'll tell you about coffee. So you go to the coffee, and you're ready. You know, you've got your coffee. You want to hear this story. You want to know exactly what happens. And if he throws down the punchline immediately. Well, it turns out that, you know, Sally was in love with his brother, and the brother was in love with Sally's cousin. You know, it's a little bit disappointing, but if he builds up and tells you the little events that occurred that revealed that deep secret, then, you know, he's got you on a string. He got you to go across town to a coffee shop to hear that story. It's the same thing in a novel or in a. A screenplay, if you can set up that. That relationship that we all are so familiar with, which is hanging out with a friend who tells you just a great story. I mean, why do you think. I mean, a lot of people have drinking problems, but a lot of people go to bars. You know, they go to bars for that experience, Right? They don't. You know, they. They want to. They love the idea of sitting down, pulling up, having a beer, and listening to the guy next to them tell them the story of their life.

So as a writer, like what? Because you said Steve Pressfield thinks a lot about what narrative device before he starts writing. What does that mean? What kind of questions is he asking? What kind of who is the best.

Person to tell this story. That's the question he's asking. Who is going to give me the most freedom and limitation at the same time to steer me down the right path to tell this story in the right way? When Fitzgerald wrote the Great Gatsby, he could have told it from the point of view of Tom Buchanan, or he could have told it from the view of Jordan, you know, the prissy golf pro who's the friend of Daisy. Or he could have told it from the point of view of Daisy. So I got to tell you, he thought to himself, what. Oh, my gosh, how am I going to. I want to tell this story about basically the, you know, the. The very nastiness of, you know, the class system, the. This. The social stratification of American life. How am I gonna tell it? Who's the best person to tell it from?

When is I think about bird box again? Because I was thinking, like, they. She or he. It was a. He was Josh, somebody that wrote it. He could have told. Poor guy.

Bust his ass for years. And we don't. I bet he doesn't care because we're talking about his book.

That's right. He'd rather you buy his book.

Well, I had it up, and then I was looking at other books while we were talking, and it's weighing my history now. So.

No. So he could have told a story chronologically and just put that entire story of going to the boat and everything that happens at the end. It would have worked where, like, the end of the first part, it could have said four years later. Like, you know, now the kids are four years old or whatever.

But weaving them together like that, and that is interesting. That was. I think that's what's so fascinating to me, because now I'm reading the stories from a perspective, a different perspective now that, you know, we're doing the podcast and looking at from StoryGrid. It was just interesting how weaving them together did build that anticipation of, like, the whole time I'm reading, I'm like, okay, something happens to these people. I'm dying to know what happens to these people, because they're not there anymore in the first scene.

And.

You know, often Tim and I've done this as an editor.

That can often become an editorial choice after you have a draft, meaning the writer could very well have started from the very beginning, bang that thing out, and looked at it over and over and over again, and said to himself, oh, man, this is really hard to get people to sort of start from the beginning of this thing. Huh? I wonder how I could suck them in really quickly and then give them. It's like giving them a little dish of ice cream before, you know, they have to eat the main meal.

And so that can be an editorial choice whereby you go, oh, what if I move scene 57 to scene 1? What would that do? Holy cow. That's like the easiest fix ever. And then I made 55 to 2. And then. And so.

Narrative device choices can, you know, you can do like Steve Pressfield does, which is to make them those choices very clearly, very early on. He did the same thing with Legend of Bagger Vance and his latest novel that we're working together on.

He certainly made that choice very early on. And it gives him a level of comfort that allows him to know where he's going. It's like his trail guide when he's setting out on his map, on his journey, when he's writing his book. But, you know, some people would rather make that choice after they have a draft, and there's no one way to solve that. I look at when I'm editing a book, I'll look at the choices that the writer has made and think to myself, and I'll create all those crazy graphs and all that stuff, and I'll do this story grid spreadsheet, and I'll do the foolscap global story grid. And then I'll be able to say to the writer, hey, man, you've got a huge moment here in, you know, your middle build that's so good that you could actually launch your entire global story using that. And it's not going to mess up the sequencing of your entire book. What about moving that up front? And these are the moments when, you know, I earn my living. Because what. What will happen is that the writer will go, no, that's not. There's no way we can do that. And then. Then they'll. I'll say, okay, we'll just think about it.

And then, you know, whenever you talk about.

Right.

Whenever you do the writer voice, it's rewinding.

Well, that's the way I talk when I write.

So it's personal experience because I never. I, you know, I never want to take anybody's advice either, so I'm the first one to reject it.

So, anyway, my only point is that narrative device is, you know, I recommend that you really think about it before you start plunging in, because it could solve a lot of problems early on, or it can solve a lot of problems later on, but it's A great little thing. It's a tool that will help you bring a writer into your world very quickly if you can make it very familiar to them.

Well, TV does this a lot where they'll show you a scene where, like, something is happening really bad, and then it ends with, like, somebody dead or a cliffhanger. And then it'll say, three days earlier. And it's.

Right, that's. That's Law and Order. That's the opening scene of Law and order for 15 years. The discovery of the body scene. Go watch every Law and Order episode, and they'll begin with the discovery of the body scene. And then they'll do the investigation for the police, and then they will do the legal action from. From the district attorney's office.

That's still linear, right? Because the person dies and then the police get involved. Where I was thinking, like. Because you mentioned that, where you're like, what if we take this one scene and move it to the front?

Right?

And that happens a lot in tv where they'll show you something and then they'll say, okay, three days earlier. And, like, they're just sitting around the office and you're like, okay, how do they get from there to what?

The hangover? The hangover is the best example of that. That's a good. That.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where. There.

Where he's on the phone and he calls the wife and is like, we lost him. Yeah, it goes. It goes back to when they're just getting going on the story. And what I like is you get caught up about two thirds to three fourths of the way through, and then you get the end of the story.

Right, right.

Yeah. I think that's interesting because.

It's interesting because I never thought of. You got to think that stuff through. And is that almost like a cheat, what we just talked about? It's almost like a cheat. So you can start your story kind of like if you can't come up with, like, a really killer beginning to the story to suck somebody in, you're like, okay, I'll just pull out this really awesome scene that I know people are going to be like, well, now I got to know what happens.

Exactly. Yeah, I think that's a. That's a wonderful way to prime the pump of your own imagination.

Well, because ever since. Ever since you gave me that line. Hold on, I got it written down here. That camel line. What was it? The. The last camel died or something?

The last camel collapsed at noon.

Yeah. You know, I've been, like, ever. So I've written a few scenes since then, and I'm, like, trying to think of some awesome opening line. I'm like, yeah, I got nothing.

You know.

So I just. I think that's interesting this way that you can.

Shift the whole way you tell the story to kind of. It almost feels. Yeah, it almost feels like a cheat or a shortcut to drawing the reader in. Because again, back to bird Box. You know, all of a sudden, I'm like, why does the fog matter? And where are they going on this boat? And why do these kids not have names? And I do not understand why is there a microphone outside the house that she's got to listen to? Like, I don't understand anything that's going on. And then all of a sudden, it jumps back in time, and I'm like, oh, okay. I guess I got to find out what happens, you know?

So I love in that it really. It was neat to read that after we've had so many discussions about it, because I was like, this re. You know, and we opened with this. We don't have to go back into it, but just he. He bare. He didn't tell me anything. All he did was open up all these loops that he didn't close. And how, like, I'm. When I was writing that first scene that you read through, all I was doing was being scared of leaving any open loops.

That's right.

Feeling that as a reader now with this book of, like, the open loops are what kept me engaged in the book. If he. If he had told me all that stuff, it wouldn't have. It would have killed the whole reason I wanted to keep reading.

Absolutely. Absolutely true.

Thanks for listening to the Story Grid podcast, as always. If you would like more of the Story Grid, you can find that@storygrid.com the number one thing you can do is sign up for the email list. That's where Sean sends out regular updates, new resources, and new blog posts. Make sure you sign up there. Also, right now, Sean's publisher, Black Irish Books, has a good, killer deal for writers. It's this mega bundle of books just for writers. It's only $35. It's a really, really great deal. I actually bought it myself. And you can get a copy of the Story grid, but also a copy of a lot of other books by Steven Pressfield that will help you become a better writer. You can see that@blackirishbooks.com or click the link in the show notes. So, as I mentioned before, there is an epilogue to this episode, so that's Coming up next. Otherwise, thanks, as always, for your support of the show, and I look forward to seeing you next week.

No, I think a show dedicated to narrative device is a good one because it is a little bit of a cheat. But what's great about it is that.

It feels like a cheat, because what it does is it makes you create sort of a voice in your own head, right? And you're not really sure if you can picture that person talking to you and telling you a story, then you don't put so much pressure on yourself, you know, Then you're not like, oh, my God, I gotta figure out the third act. Instead, you're like, okay, it's that lady who they found on the raft, and she's sitting in the interrogation room. There's sort of this guy asking you a question, and he says, then what happened? And she answers. And then you. You almost, like, hear her speaking. And people talk about this all the time as writers that, you know, it's as if the characters were talking to me. And this is actually how, if you can set up that dynamic, it's wonderful, because then you don't feel like you're the one on the hook. It's this invented character in your head who has to come up with the right response to the questions that they're being asked.

Yeah, I.

What. What I was wanting to ask, maybe we'll put this in the epilogue. But what I was wanting to ask was how that fits with the story grid, because.

Does it still kind of fall into the, like, you know, beginning, hook, middle build, and end, even though it's like. Again, I'm thinking specifically about Bird Box.

Where it's a way to do your inciting incident. It's a way of creating an inciting incident global that will pay off in a huge way at the very ending. So it's a solution to the five, you know, the five big deal. The five commandments of storytelling. It's a way into big inciting incidents.

And, you know, the big problem, Tim, is to figure out what are the big movements of my story, right? It's like, how do I get to Chicago, how do I get to Denver, and how do I get to la? So you want. You want to know how am I going to solve that climax of the. Of the beginning hook? How am I going to solve the climax of the middle build? And how am I going to solve the climax of the ending? Payoff? So narrative devices, a way to think. Think of those. Those big hairy movements that you need to sort of have a general Idea of before you start your work.

And then you. Then once you have those mile markers, then you can sort of back your way into. Well, how do I. Okay, the way I get to Chicago is I take I 80, you know, through the Pennsylvania Turnpike. And if you've got a story and you say, okay, the end of the climax is the captain of the ship is found dead in the machinery room. Okay, so how do I get to that point? And then you start from the beginning hook, and you move there. And then the end of the beginning, Hook, is the storm comes the climax. The storm comes. So how do I get to the storm? So it's breaking up your problems into smaller problems and narrative device. If you say to yourself, well, I've got somebody who's telling a story to an investigator. And then I can go back and forth between time and then I can make maybe the climax of my mental build about, you know, the investigation. She is charged with murder, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. You know what. What's interesting to me is in this in bird box, I feel like what happens is there's this beginning part.

Where things start happening around the world. She finds out she's pregnant, and then she's got to get to a safe place. And then the middle build begins when she gets to the safe place.

Right. And then she has to get out of the safe place.

Well, the beginning of the. The ending payoff was the first scene of the book, right?

Of course it is.

Well, that. And that's what was so interesting to me is when I tried to think through, like, the. The beginning build or the beginning hook, the middle build, and the ending payoff. I was like, well, the ending payoff was this part of the story. But I read that through the entire story. It was weaved all the way through the beginning hook and middle build. And so again, like, I've read books like that before, but not from this perspective of like, oh, oh, that's. That's totally different than. Because I always think of thing. You know, I was always thinking of it linear, you know, like, okay, first I'm going to tell this part, then the middle build, then I'm going to tell the end.

I just thought that was fascinating how, like, it stretched the ending payoff all the way back through the entire book.

Yeah. And it's also psychologically great because then you say to yourself, and this is strange, but it's true. The writer was like, oh, great. I just have to write the ending payoff. The other stuff I already know. You know what I mean, like, then I'm just filling I'm filling in the exposition of the backstory in this flashback. And that's all the stuff that's going to be difficult to get the reader to really want to invest themselves in. So all I have to really do is do this slam bang ending and then tack on what happened to lead up to that slam bang ending, which is, I gotta tell you.

It'S catnip for a reader, because we love to be in the hands of a master storyteller. And if you can invent one who's telling the story to the reader in the first person, or, you know, first person free indirect style, which, you know, is a mixture of I and, you know, getting the reader's thoughts along with the action, then, you know, it's it makes your job a little bit easier.