Story Grid Trinity - Above the Surface

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. I'm a writer and publisher at StoryGrid. And joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of Storygrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 30 years experience. Yesterday, I was catching up with a friend of mine, an author named Jay Papazon. He's the author of the One Thing, and he's one of these guys that I've known for a while in the industry, and we catch up maybe one once a year or so. And so he was just asking me about StoryGrid. I was catching him up on everything we've been working on, showing him our masterwork guide, showing him some of our other books, talking about the upcoming Trinity seminar. And I just realized how excited I get when I talk about storygrid. As many of you know, I came into storygrid as a fan. First I read the book, I loved it. Sean and I started the podcast. But even then, there were no workshops. There were no other books. There was nothing else for me to do other than learn how to write. And learning the Story Grid methodology just changed my life so much that it makes it really, really easy for me to tell other people about it. Back in March, I got my first real look at the Story Grid Trinity. So, Sean, Leslie Watts, our editor in chief, Danielle Kielski, one of our StoryGrid certified editors, and I all came to Nashville. We rented a house for a few days, and we spent five days working through the first draft of my next novel and running it through this Story Grid trinity. It was just one of those amazing weeks. I mean, it was really, really hard because I found out on day one that I was going to need to do a page one rewrite. But as we worked through it and basically tore the story apart and started putting it back together, by the time we reached the end of the week, it was just a completely transformative time, not just for my novel, but for me as well. And so as I've continued learning about this on the surface, above the surface and beyond the surface, it has completely changed my writing, just really leveled me up in a way that I honestly didn't know if I would ever be able to reach. And that's why I'm so excited to introduce these ideas to you as well. So we've been talking about them on the podcast. We're going to dive into above the Surface here in a minute. But I just Want to remind you that you can join us here in Nashville or online for a live seminar, the StoryGrid Trinity Seminar, where Shawn is going to go in deep detail through the storygrid Trinity and you can find out everything you need to know about that conference@storygrid.com.

So again, that's storygrid.com Trinity. Go there, learn more about it. I really hope to see you here in Nashville. I'm really excited for this pandemic, starting to be able to lift as everybody gets vaccinated. So if you can come join us here in Nashville, we would love to have you. If you can't join us here in Nashville in person, we are offering an online virtual where we stream it live. We did this last September. It worked really well. We have an entire professional team here filming it and streaming it. And we'll have a live Slack forum so that you can ask questions throughout.

The event as well.

But you can see all of that@storygrid.com Trinity and I just really hope you'll join us for that. I think it's going to be a life changing event for you. Okay, enough of that. We're going to go ahead and jump into this week's episode where we talk about the above the surface component of the storygirl Trinity. So let's jump in and get started.

Okay. So Sean, the last couple of weeks we've been talking about the story grid trinity that you've been working on. And we looked at how it's on the surface, above the surface and beyond the surface. And so last week we looked at on the surface and you also talked about those three different kind of planes of perception of I, the writer or I the author, I, the avatar that's actually moving and then the eye of the audience as well. And so we really looked at the audience and the on the surface. So this week I just wanted to talk about the above the surface, because that's the one I feel like I have the hardest time kind of wrapping my head around exactly what we're talking about when we're talking about above the surface and the avatar and what's going on above the neck, as you say.

Yeah, well, I mean, this is a very difficult thing. You're basically exploring the cognitive realm of Homo sapiens when you're talking about above the surface. So that's a very, very vast and complex set of investigations that have multiple kind of disciplines to do that. So you've got neurology, you've got psychology, you've got all this stuff. And it's generally called cognitive science because they sort just want to slump it all together and say it's kind of exploring how it is that we think, how is it that we navigate the world, how do we make decisions, how do we solve problems, how do we integrate our emotional systems, all this stuff. So above the surface is extraordinarily difficult. And so what I'm trying to do is to boil it down into actionable things that the writer can consider, and then to make sure that it works. And if it works, then you can kind of just move on with your life instead of worrying about, you know, the neurology of decision making. So, okay, what's above the surface? All right, so what we talked about the last time was that there are these. This trinity of point of view, right? We've got the eye of the author, which is sort of like this. This being that's on top of a stepladder, like maybe 20ft in the air. And that author has decorated kind of a scene. They've decorated a box. Let's pretend it's a movie theater. So you've got the author, and they've put some avatars. I was talking to Leslie the other day. Remember those dioramas? I don't know.

Maybe.

Maybe you're too young. But when I was a kid, part of the school projects that I had to do in public school in Pittsburgh in the 1970s is that every now and then they would say, go home, get an old shoebox. And what we want you to do is to make a scene in that shoebox that represents indigenous people living in whatever, at whatever time, or a Thanksgiving scene from whatever. And so what you would do is you go home and you'd have the box, and then you would go, oh, what am I going to do with this box? And so you would go out, and you were like, well, I need some earth to represent Earth. So you go out and get some leaves or some moss, and you throw it on the bottom, and then you get some rocks and you paint faces on them. And then you put. Right, yeah, this is exactly what a storyteller does, right? So we're creating these dioramas in our mind. And then what we want to do is describe the diorama that we see to an audience so that they can see what we see in such a way that they understand what we're trying to communicate. So that's the eye of the author. It's 20ft above the surface, at the very top, not above the surface, but sort of for lack of A better word, it's the godlike perspective.

Right.

Watching what's going on in a constructed universe on the surface of what they've created. Now, the second point of view that the storyteller needs to consider is the avatar. And the avatar are those people in the diorama moving around through time and space. And we first started this whole discussion by talking about the audience, which is the third eye. That is, what are they seeing? Right. So what we want to do is to consider now the avatars. What are they experiencing? Why are they doing what they're doing? How do they think?

Right.

So this is all about.

Considering the reasons why people are behaving the way they are in our crazy make them up avatar world. And so what you, as the author get to do is to think of, like, who am I going to put in my diorama and why? And why would I want to have two figures in my diorama who think exactly the same way? I wouldn't, would I? Because it'd be kind of boring. So the I above the surface is thinking about what reasons, what justifications are my avatars using to put themselves in motion in the way that they do. When we are faced with the dilemma, should I get the chocolate ice cream or the vanilla ice cream? We have a justification system in our mind, and we go, chocolate, vanilla. Definitely chocolate. Why? Well, chocolate's my favorite ice cream. Well, how do you know that? Well, I've had both chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream in the past, and it's been my experience that I get a higher level of pleasure from eating the chocolate ice cream than I do the vanilla ice cream.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

So if you literally pick. This is like what Socrates would say to somebody. Well, why do you like chocolate over vanilla? And they go, I don't know. I just do. Well, can you think more about why you do? And then they would go, oh, well, I guess I've had them. I made a decision a long time ago that the pleasure I get from chocolate is higher than. Right. I'm making a value judgment. I value chocolate over vanilla.

Yeah. This made me think of them, that movie Runaway Bride, because when you first see her order eggs, her boyfriend orders eggs, and she says, I'll have the same thing. Right. And so then later, you start seeing Richard Gere, ask her past boyfriends, what kind of eggs did she like? And every one of them started saying, she liked poached just like me. She liked fried just like me. And then you realize the reason she was ordering those eggs was because she was constantly trying to turn herself into somebody the man would like instead of being true to herself. So in the beginning, it looks like, well, they're just at a diner and they just ordered eggs.

It just.

It goes right past you without even paying attention. But then later you realize it's like this outer action that's. That's showing you what's actually going on. And what we would say is above the surface. Is that kind of what you're talking about?

Exactly. And I would also say what you just described is a subject, a subcategory of above the surface, which is called unconscious behavior.

Okay.

So there's conscious behavior, subconscious behavior, and unconscious behavior. And a story is all about converting the unconscious into conscious understanding.

What's the difference between subconscious and unconscious? I think I use them interchangeably.

Right. All right. So.

All right. Because I know what conscious is. It's. I would say it's when I. I know that I'm. I'm doing it on purpose. I know why I'm doing it is that it's salient to you.

Yeah.

Okay.

You're aware.

Okay.

You're aware of a particular phenomena, and you are engaged with that phenomenon. Right. The subconscious is something just beneath the surface that isn't fully conscious yet. But it's something that, if somebody points their finger at it, we would be able to say, oh, yeah, I guess I do do that.

Okay.

So if I do this to you, like, if. If we first meet, I go, hi, how are you doing? And you give me a kind of a weird vibe. I might do something like this. I might sort of, like, protect my. I mean, there's great books about this. There's an FBI guy who wrote a great book about. So it's all the subconscious behaviors, they can slide into unconscious too. So unconscious is something that requires deep, deep psychological investigation. So, for example, say that you were raised an environment that was very dangerous.

Okay.

And so what you had to do in order to survive in that environment was to sort of figure out a way to almost try and not exist, to kind of disappear into the background so that you weren't in danger. So that would be. Become an unconscious thing that you would start to incorporate in the rest of your life even after you've left the dangerous environment.

It's like the people that had. That grew up and never had enough food. And now they hoard food even though there's plenty. Plenty of food. And they're never. They're never in danger of being out of food.

That's correct.

Okay.

So that Is an unconscious thing that. I have a theory that these unconscious behaviors. This is a little bit controversial. So hang in. Hang in here with me. I have to kind of like this idea. It's called the lineology idea. And so the lineology idea is such that we are from a long line of genetic stuff, right? So, like, your parents had their parents, who had their parents, and so you come from a line of. Let's call it the graw line. Right? So let's say years and years and years ago in the past generations and generations ago, the growl line had to do some things in order to survive that weren't exactly perfect, but it was necessary. So that behavior then got passed on to the children of that graw line and then the children's children and the children's children and the children's children. So just to be more specific about this, let's say it was a really horrible time, and in order for the family to survive, they had to kind of. I don't want to make this nasty because it's. Your family.

Say the father had to go and steal food from the people next door because he didn't want his kids to die. Right. Let's say it's a real bad problem.

Okay?

And so he had to go and steal some food, and then he had to protect that food so that they could survive.

Okay.

And so he had to make some very difficult decisions that would require him to choose the lives of his children over the lives of his next door's neighbor's children. Right?

Okay.

That's a horrible choice.

Right, Right.

But then it became kind of deeply ingrained within the Grohl family. And then, let's say the Grohl family became extraordinarily selfish, and they became very successful because they didn't really care about other people's stuff. Then let's say, here comes. Here comes a new grawl. And he's like, you know what? This has made my family miserable, and I've got to stop that behavior. So he has to pull the unconscious lineological problems of his family, and he's got to break it apart, integrate a new way of being, which is very, very hard. So the unconscious is. It can go that freaking deep, and it can also be just in the lifespan of the human being. So, like, every time I get nervous, if I do this, and I've been doing this since I was in the cradle, it's going to be hard to stop.

Right, right, right.

And the story is about how to break those things that don't work Anymore. Right. They're maladaptive to the environment in which we find ourselves. So if my solution to a problem that worked for me for a long time is to yell at people who don't do what I want them to do until they do, that's going to be a maladaptive behavior because it's going to not solve my three perennial problems. It might solve my survival problem, but I'm certainly not going to have any close relationships with anyone because everyone's not going to want to be around me because all I do is yell at people.

Right.

So that's a pattern of behavior that has to be broken apart and fixed. A lot of people are like, I've got great reasons to be angry. Let me list them. Right? This and this and this and this and this.

Right.

And you're like, I'm not arguing with your justifications for your anger. What I'm saying is that it's not pleasant to be around someone who's angry all the time. So maybe you better think about how you might want to see the other side of experience and stop being so angry about it, because there's a lot of stuff to be happy about, too.

So is this like. Well, because you said a few minutes ago, you said the storytelling is the act of bringing the unconscious to the conscious. So when you're talking about above the surface, that's what you're getting at is like looking at your avatar and saying what is unconsciously driving them that needs to be broken apart and reintegrated consciously.

Yes. That's the global question you want to ask yourself.

Okay, that's the global.

Right.

Okay.

Now there's the micro. And you go scene by scene and say, what are they thinking?

Okay.

What reason is it that they're doing the thing that they're doing?

Right. Yeah.

And so the trajectory of a story is about breaking the cognitive framing of an avatar, such that they reach an insight, an enlightenment. Oh, I guess they don't have to yell at everybody. And sometimes I can be. I can just let people be people and I can't control them. So me yelling at anyone isn't going to stop people from being people. Right.

So, yes, the above the surface has many dimensions of levels of analysis. Right. There's the what's going on in each moment of a scene. There's what's going on in each scene. There's what's going on in each sequence, each quadrant. Right. The global story, each hat. Right. Like, we can break that thing into a lot of different levels of analysis. So the above the surface is, it's really, really important. And the reason why is that a really well told story makes the very difficult process of confronting unconscious maladaptive behaviors understandable.

Right.

So when we see a great story, we go, oh, wow, yeah, that person was one way at the beginning, and now they see the world in a different way. And the new way that they see it is much more enlightened. Even though they probably, they've suffered tremendously to learn that lesson. But now that they have it, now they're better adapted to their environment and they have better relationships. So that would be a prescriptive story. And then there's the opposite. Here's someone who is doubling down on their anger, and so they're never going to leave the anger, and then they're going to sort of like doom themselves to being miserable. That's a cautionary tale. So guess who gets to make all of those decisions? That author who's sitting up on that ladder. Right. So this is all about what is moving, the motion, what is energizing the avatars to try and attain things that they care about.

Okay.

That's the way I define emotion. It's energy to get the avatars to attain things that they care about. So the energy makes them go in motion to a goal state. So it's important that your avatars have goal states. They want something and they need something. Now what they want will be obvious. It'll be conscious to them. I want to get a Cadillac car. Right. What they need will be unconscious. Right? So the need in a prescriptive tale, the need becomes conscious in the enlightenment moment at the end of the third quadrant, you see how quickly you start getting into cognitive, developmental framing here, once you start talking about above the surface. Because in order to answer the questions about their avatars, this is what's extraordinarily beautiful about storytelling. The author has to explore what they believe. They have to explore what they value, what they care about, what's meaningful to them, what they want, what they need. So this is why the psychotechnology of storytelling isn't just to have a best seller on the New York Times bestseller list. It's actually more important, far more important than that. It's all about learning how to investigate yourself by, like, coming up with some crazy avatars. They aren't you, but you can put you in them. And the way you put you in them is to think about how those avatars are thinking, how they're moving through space and time, how they are trying to attain a goal. State of a want. They want to have something. So that's the second eyes, the eye of the avatar that the storyteller needs to consider. And it's really, really super important. But if you don't like, Just let me go back for a second. If you don't have an exciting motion on the stage, the audience won't give you the opportunity to go near that.

Right.

So first think about the motion and then think about the emotion. And the emotion will link to the motion. Right. So the more crazy your. Your motion is, the more you're going to have to have really intense justification systems to have your avatars move through the world in a way that seems real.

Yeah. You know, Connor, my oldest son, and I watched the first John Wick over the weekend. That's kind of become a joke. I feel like. Of like, what's the lamest setup you could have for an action movie, right, that where he like, literally kills like 100 people because his dog was killed.

Yeah.

But there's two moments when I rewatched it because I haven't watched it in a while kind of through the. You know, now that I'm learning all this stuff, I'm watching it through these frames. There's these two moments in the movie that make it work. So of course that sets it up. But the first is when, like, the bad guys have, like, finally caught John Wick and they're gonna kill him. And he was basic, he was explaining why he's on this rampage is like, that dog was the only thing that provided him any kind of hope. After the one thing that did give him hope, his wife died. The dog was like this replacement, and they just took it from him. And so he's like, you took all my hope. You took all. You know, you took every reason I had not to step back into this life. And then at the very end of the movie, he's like stabbed and beaten up and bleeding, and he like wrecks a car and he kind of falls out of it and he stumbles into this building and it just happens to be a veterinary clinic or pound or something, Right. So he. He not only gets the gauze and the staple and everything, he needs to put himself back together together. There's a dog there that is slated to be killed, to be put down. So he opens it up and he walks away. So he refound his hope, you know, and it was just like, is kind of silly of a setup as it is. It still worked because you knew why he was doing what he was doing. And they Took him through the entire arc by the end.

Yeah. I mean, it's probably be the first person and the last person to make this comparison, but it's Captain Ahab. It's Moby Dick. So John Wick is Captain Ahab, and he's out to destroy the random nature of the universe. He's decided that anyone who creates a chaotic situation in his life and. And randomly decides to destroy something of value to him must die. And that's what Captain Ahab does. Because, you know, the white whale ate his leg, right?

Yeah.

So he's got this peg leg, and he's like that, I'm gonna kill that whale. The whole story is about.

Yeah.

Talking about motion, right. There's a lot of great motion on that whale ship that keeps us glued to the page. But the emotion is this Titanic ubris of the person of Ahab. And we all sort of like that. Ahab's one crazy guy, but I wonder if he's going to kill that whale. Right. And that's what keeps us going. We're like, is John Wick really going to make it through this time?

Yeah.

And so his connection to a dog is. Yeah, yeah, that worked. I mean, they had the minimum viable amount of above the surface and beyond the surface in the John Wick stories to make them commercially very successful because the spectacle's unbelievable.

But you feel something watching John Wick versus Transformers.

That's.

That's what's so interesting to me is it's like you do have this, like, internal pull that just isn't there for like, a.

And it's Keanu Reeves. Like, don't underestimate the power of. Of the actor.

Yeah.

Keanu Reeves the minute he's on the stage. Right. You're sympathetic to Keanu Reeves because he's a fascinating, inscrutable human being. And we all kind of think, wow, there's something really deep in that guy.

Yeah. Yeah.

So above the surface is about the eye of the avatar. It's about the reasons, the justifications to do the things that we do. So you have to look at the why the avatar is doing, what they're doing, what their justification, what their reason is for their behavior.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the StoryGrid podcast again. If you want to join us for the Story Grid Trinity conference here in Nashville and streaming online, you can see all of the information for that@storygrid.com Trinity for everything else 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 Storygrid universe. Also, make sure you go to storygrid.com books to see all of the titles we have released through StoryGrid Publishing. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, all of that can be found@storygrid.com podcasts if you would like to submit a question for Sean to answer on a future episode, you can go to storygrid.com podcast as well. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter StoryGrid. And lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating and review. Thanks for subscribing and being a part.

Of our work here at StoryGrid.

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