The Foolscap Story Grid

Hello, and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of Story Grid, the author of the book StoryGrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we dive into the full SCAP method in Story Grid. So it's taking the entire book and putting it on one piece of paper. It's a pretty cool exercise, especially coming out of, like, all of the, like, really micro looking at each individual scene, what's going on in each scene, and things that I can fix in each scene that I've been doing for the past couple weeks. And now it's able to step back and look at the story as a whole. And so I finished filling out the full scap, and in this episode, Shawn and I dive in and start working through each piece. It's a really useful tool as you edit your first draft. And I think you're really going to get a lot out of this episode. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, a few weeks ago, I finished the first draft of the novel, and now we've entered into trying to figure out how to edit this first draft. Because this is what I've realized with Story Grid is this is where it shines apart from other methodologies. So there's all, you know, there's like, save the cat and there's story, and there's, you know, other people teaching methodologies for writing, which, you know, all have their merits. None of them are bad. But what I realized is they all get you to a first draft, but they don't help you get past the first draft. Where, as we've started going through this, you know, applying the Story grid to now an actual manuscript instead of a work in progress, it's helping me, you know, see things in such a different light. So anyway, we. The first thing you had me do was go scene by scene and put it into the Story grid spreadsheet and fill out the first five or six columns and then create a long brainstorm to do list of things. I thought I've even added a couple more over the past week to it as I've thought about it, and my wife has started reading it, so she's given me some feedback, too. That's been good. And then this last week, you had me now move to, instead of going scene by scene, kind of look at the book as a whole and do the story grid, full scap sheet where you put the whole book on one page. So that's what I did. And I just went ahead and added it to the same Google spreadsheet. So I'll link to it again in the notes. And I even, like, made it yellow with all the lines exactly the same, like blue and red, just like on a full scap. And I was doing that when I kept getting stuck and I didn't know what to do. So I would, like, fiddle with that for a few minutes and then try to finish it and then fiddle with. But anyway, so I put it all in there, and I definitely hit some places I wasn't. I had a really hard time with the external internal charge of the different pieces. And, you know, and then I. You know, I'm not 100% on if I got. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if I put in there what you're looking for, but it's all there.

Okay. Okay, Just one. One comment about what you said at the beginning. And that is, you have to remember where the story grid came from. It came from a guy who was trying to do a job. And the job that I had to do was to make books that my publishing company acquired better. And the way I could do that was to create a systematic way of analyzing the stories so that I could communicate properly with the writers who had written them. So that's really why it's so practical, is because I couldn't talk in very global, you know, terms with writers. They wanted me to tell them, what do you need me to do so that I can get my delivery and acceptance check Right. Because they. They wanted the money rightfully so. They had written a book. Part of their advance payment was a very big payment on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript from the publisher. And what that means is that an editor puts them through all these paces, and finally, when the editor's happy, he puts through the check with the accounting department. So as the editor, I would get in trouble. And if I accepted a manuscript before it was ready, because guess what would happen? The writer wouldn't want to do any work. We'd already accepted it, and that basically meant we had to publish it. So, you know, it. It had a very. There was a very. The elephant in the room, in the relationship, was that if they didn't do what I told them to do, I could essentially fire them and force them to give back their advance to the publisher. So they were very motivated to do what I. What I asked them to do. So from my point of view, the way I could help them would be to be as specific as possible so that I could say to them, oh, well, you don't have the conventions and obligatory scenes of your chosen genre. You've got two thirds of them. Here are the ones that you don't have. And I would, I would say you don't have the speech in praise of the villain. You don't have, you know, red herrings, et cetera, et cetera. And when I explained it to them like that, they go, you know what? You're right. I can fix that. What's next? And so that was how the story grid evolved. And it was always a wonderful way of avoiding a lot of negative atmosphere between two people. So anyway, I, I think, you know, the. The people I forget, the guy who wrote Save the cat, but Robert McKee and all the other great craftsmen of story who know it so well, they were put in a position where they had to make it so practical that somebody would be able to do the thing and then they could get their money. So that's why the story grid is so valuable to me and to other people, is because it was built by necessity, to be specific. So, yeah, let's. I think it's a great idea to keep going through your fool's cap global story grid and the fact that you had some questions and you were unsure of things, you know, that's good. It means that you're thinking about it. And if you're unsure of something, that means that either you didn't make the choice necessary that you were required to make, or the choice that you made at the time was incorrect, or it also means that maybe you didn't make a choice at all. So let's go through.

So it's not that there's something wrong with your storygrid method, there's something wrong with my book.

Well, we can test it. Let's test it. I always say that I'm willing to put the entire thing under another test and we'll figure it out by the end of the call whether or not I was right or you were right. Now, from what I remember, we left off last time by. We went through the obligatory scenes and conventions of the thriller, right?

That's correct. So we have the point of view, objects of desire and controlling idea theme left in the global story, the top part of the page. Right.

So the point of view is pretty easy. It's in third person, and then at one point it shifts into free, indirect Style. And that's. What about midpoint of the novel?

Yeah, I think it's after she meets with Randy, so right in the middle.

So the only question that arises now is, will that work? Is that a viable approach to the point of view? And the answer that I always give when that question arises is, does it work? Is it so blatantly ridiculous that you shift from third person to free and direct style that the reader is going to be thrown out of their chair and they'll be completely thrown out of the experience? And in my estimation, I don't think they will.

Yeah, because when we went over the very first scene that I switched to it, you didn't even notice it. We had talked about that. And then the only other switch I would talk about is it's the entire beginning, hook and middle build of the book is from Jesse's point of view. And then the first scene of the ending payoff is from Randy's point of view.

Right.

And then it even jumps around until Jesse wakes back up. Then it's all from Jesse's point of view again.

Well, I think that. I think that has to be. There has to be a foundation put in place to make that absolutely workable. And I'll just get into it. Now. One of the ways that you could solve this kind of problem is to even go to a higher level of a storytelling point of view. And what I mean by that is if the master storyteller, the very omniscient. Omniscient narrator, makes a choice in that you. You have two points of view in the story, but he lets somebody dominate for a long time and then bring it back. I think it'll work. And so what I'm. What I'm basically saying is you may want to start your novel with a prologue. And the prologue would be from Randy's point of view, but you would not tell the reader that. It would probably be the flashback scene that sort of the. The inciting moment of everything.

And that scene in my head is when Randy and Jesse are sort of hanging out together and she's a very young girl and he's probably 12. And she's maybe whatever she would be. What would she be? 6, 7, 5. And that's the moment.

Yeah, I can't remember. I'd have to do the math.

Right. So that's the other thing you also have to clarify is the age difference between the two, etc. Etc. But my point is that that prologue would be the moment when Randy discovers that Jesse is gifted and that Jesse is Capable of recovering after being scrambled or whatever term you come up with that isn't scrambled. So, you know, we refer to this moment in the. In the ending payoff, or just before the ending payoff in the novel, when Randy is rushing to get her home because he thinks that she's dying or is dead, and she wakes up. So if you were to use that as your framing prologue from Randy's point of view, then when you shift to Randy's point of view after she dies at the end of the middle build, then you're not cheating in that the grandmaster narrator, which is sort of this godlike presence, has bookended the story. If you were to think of storytelling in terms of. I think. I think there's a scene in Star wars where there's. There's this video game or something at the arcade, and people go up and play it, and they. They're literally God, and they create this. These universes on a video platform and then destroy them. Do you remember that scene? Or maybe I'm thinking of something else. I think it's the original. It may be the original Star wars or. Or maybe I've even thought up that in my own head and I put it on Star Wars. I don't know. But the idea is that you are essentially God and the storyteller. This is why everybody wants to tell stories, because you play God, and when you're God, you can. It works as long as the reader understands that there's a higher presence above the story putting it on paper for them. So the godlike presence, if. If they are telling the story and they're opening with a prologue from the point of view of a character that we don't even meet for 300 pages later, that works. But if we never have that prologue and you just pick up the point of view of another character without that sort of warning, then it seems like a deus ex machina, which is when the storyteller just cheats. Deus ex machina means, you know, a God comes down. It's from the Greek theater thousands and thousands of years ago, where these great playwrights would write these stories, and then they wouldn't know how to figure out the third act. So what they would do is they would bring down a God, you know, Apollo or Dionysus, or somebody would come down and say, oh, let me solve this problem for you human beings. You go with her, you blah, blah, and that's all fixed. So that's called a deus ex machina, where you bring down some otherworldly presence to fix your story problems. So that's what it could feel like if you don't set it up. But if you set it up with a really interesting prologue that is dreamlike and interesting and scary and all those things, then when the reader gets to that place where Randy's point of view comes back, they go, oh, my gosh, at the very beginning of this novel with the point of view of Randy the brother, then that will work. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so let's move on from point of view. The next thing are the objects of desire. And just as a reminder, your objects of desire are what the character wants and what the character needs. What they want is their external object of desire, and what they need is their internal object's object of desire. So what you've written down here is what Jesse wants is to go home. And what she needs is the global truth that the world is full of grays. And I think that's pretty accurate. What she wants to do is to stay in her familiar surroundings. She doesn't want to challenge herself. She likes being sort of like the king, you know, like the. The apprentice rat to the master. What's that guy's name? Balam or whatever?

Yeah, Balaam.

Okay. So if you establish that she's sort of the artful dodger to Balaam's Fagin, that's from Oliver Twist, Dickens's Oliver Twist. So she's like the best pickpocket of Balaam. So for her to leave that environment is threatening to her because she won't see her parents anymore and she won't be the chosen one anymore. She will be challenged in ways that she's not really interested in being challenged. It's sort of like when you play a game with a little kid and all they want to do is win and when they get challenged, they sort of quit. They'll quit the game. I quit, you know. Well, you can't quit. So she's a child. So what she wants is to maintain her security and her, you know, her feeling of well, being. And what she needs is to grow up and to recognize that the world is riddled with paradoxes that are difficult to navigate. So this is accurate. You might want to clarify it and say wants to maintain her supremacy in her environment or whatever. Wants to go home is a little bit vague. It's accurate. But home is a little bit. Home to one person is not home to another. So if you could be specific about why she feels secure in that environment, that would be helpful to you later on. When you have to make choices about tweaking your scene.

Okay.

Needs the global truth that the world is full of grace. I think that's solid. I think that's good. And it's. Paradox is a word that is. We can often get confused about a paradox. It's just an absurdity. It's sort of. You know, when you. What's a good example of a paradox? I don't really need to give one. I think everybody knows what a paradox is.

It's a.

When you're in a situation that seems ridiculous, it's like going to the Department of Motor Vehicles, you know, for nine hours, just so that they can take your picture. And you could have taken it with your cell phone. That's the paradox. You know, you gotta. It's absurd. Okay, so the next thing on the foolscap is the controlling idea theme. Now, this is obviously. This is the ghost in the machine of your story, right? This is the thing that you want. If somebody said to you, well, what does that book, you know, why did you write that book, Tim? What did it mean to you? This is the answer that you would give them. And what you have written is true. Family is not blood. It is those that are there for you in your toughest times, and you must be willing to sacrifice everything for them. That's pretty solid. That's a really interesting theme. But technically, the controlling idea is an expression. It's a. It's a formulaic sentence. So what it. What you have to do is put in the value that's at stake in the story and explain how it has changed. So in this case, and the traditional controlling idea, generic controlling idea for the thriller is that heroes sacrifice themselves. Tyranny. Justice prevails when heroes sacrifice themselves for the good of everyone else. So you'll see that in the thriller. In a crime thriller, justice is the. The core value at stake. So in this case, the core value at stake is life and death, and it's also justice. Right? This is a dystopian world. This is a place where people are used as automatons in order to serve a minority group of people. So justice to Jesse is in democratizing the universe of these people who are locked in these virtual reality ridiculous dopamine machines. So the value at stake would be, you know, it could be tyranny falls or justice prevails, or this could be a core maturation plot where what's at stake is. Is the worldview of the character. And what you have here is a really nice mix. So what I would suggest Is, is you do something like justice prevails when heroes recognize the values. And I'm just winging it here, so don't feel like I've spent nine hours figuring this out. This isn't, you know, a declaration from an all knowing figure and not even close. So justice prevails when heroes recognize true family and sacrifice to sacrifice for that true family. So what she is required to do is to recognize that her brother is not her real family. Not only that, but to support those who are. That's the core of the story. And so until she makes that choice and she makes that action, the story is not done. So justice prevails when heroes recognize their true family and act accordingly. Or something like that. Do you see where I'm getting what I'm getting at here?

Yes. Yeah.

So basically what you want. Yeah. What you want to do is, especially for a genre mix like this, is you want to take both of your very, very strongly expressed genres and combine them in your controlling idea theme so that justice prevails. That says this is a story that has a central crime in it, which is a very big part of the thriller. Justice prevails. Go ahead.

Well, and so the whole. And the reason why getting this right so important is, this is the question I'll be asking as I go back through each of my scenes is is it being true to this theme?

Exactly.

Is that okay?

Exactly. Exactly. And also it's a grant. This is the grand test. Did you pull this off? Did you make this clear in your story? If somebody were to read your novel, would they walk away saying, would they start to like, think about their own family? Would they say, oh my, you know, my brother's kind of like Randy. He would, you know, he would sell me down the river for, you know, whatever's good for him. But you know who's really, really great is that that woman I married. She would never do that to me. Because that's a pretty great message to give people is like just judge people based upon genetics and blood value. In fact, that's a grand mistake. That's what immature people do. Right? That's what immature people do. So even though somebody may be 48 years old and they say they read your novel, they're probably immature and they probably in some ways. So this is what art does and this is what's why stories are so important. If you were able to captivate that 48 year old male reader who's reading a book like I read the Hunger Games and I got a lot out of it. I thought it was terrific. So it's not like 48 year old men don't read young adult thrillers. They do when they're really good. I heard that the Hunger Games is really good, so I read it. I paid my own money for it. I do that all the time. I'm sure you do too. So if you're say your 48 year old man reads this, your novel, and he walks away with it and says, you know what, I'm done. I'm done with my sister, I'm done with the way she treats me. The way she treats me is not good for me. And you know, I, or you know what, I am really lucky that my blood family, actually my real family too. So this is what stories do. They get into our subconscious and they have us reflect about our own lives. So the controlling idea theme is really important because if you're evaluating your story to see if your controlling idea theme is clear and if each unit of your story is, each scene builds to that moment of revelation where Jesse understands that her brother is the bad guy, then it's going to work.

And so when we say the internal value at stake is naivety, masters sophistication all the way down to maturation, then that applies to the controlling idea. So what I need to be doing is making sure I'm moving her from, from, you know, naivety, massive sophistication to naivety to uncertainty, to maturation in the storyline of her interaction with her family.

Exactly, exactly.

Okay, so like I'm even thinking of like. Right. So if I need to mask it in sophistication, then I need her to like, I could go back to those first few scenes and really make her steadfast in the face of all evidence of the contrary, that her dad's going to stand up for her.

That's correct. That's correct. And that her mother, you know, when, you know, Push really comes to shore.

Really does love her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's exactly right. And there you go, there's a huge note, a huge revelation that you came to just by going through your foolscap page. And we're not even a third of the way through.

Right. And it's kind of exciting because now you're like, oh my gosh, now I know what I have to do. Because you know, the ultimate story grid is when you track these values from scene to scene, right. And you subjectively, I think it's actually objective. But when you plot the points on where the character is in terms of both of Those values on the life and death value, where are they? On the maturation value, where are they? And then you connect those dots, and what you see at the end are the, you know, the. The rises, the peaks and the valleys of the story. And if you're really doing a great job, those peaks and valleys mirror the peaks and valleys that Kurt Vonnegut talks about in his. You know, there's only six stories, so you would have man in a hole. Man in a hole. Cinderella, tragedy. That's the universal story that really attracts the biggest audience. Well, I'm not going to get into. I just jumped ahead to, you know, seven weeks from now. So don't freak out, all right? But it's really important to understand these values and not just say to yourself, well, I know where she is on the value spectrum. That's not enough. You actually have to prove it in the scene. So what you were talking about just five seconds ago is going back and looking at those early scenes and saying, I need to really amp up her steadfast dedication to her father and her mother and her brother and Balaam and. And all those things that give her a sense of sophistication. Sophistication means knowing and believing that your worldview is righteous and that you see through the chaotic universe. You're sophisticated. You're not just bumbling around like a marble in a pinball machine. You are sophisticated.

Right.

Go ahead.

Yeah. And so when you. When we've talked about Pride and Prejudice, how Elizabeth Bennet in the beginning felt like she knew where she stood and that all rich people were jerks and her family, you know, was, you know, was good. And, like, the first step was for her to actually start questioning that.

Yes. Yeah.

Right. So in these first ones, I've got to amp that up. And then I probably need to, like, add some stuff early in the middle build where she starts questioning that for the first time.

Right.

Okay. Because that's when she moves into uncertainty.

How did Jane Austen solve that problem? How did she bring the sophistication. I mean, naivete as masks. Sophistication. How did she make that, Bring that to a head? Do you remember?

She. I'm cheating. I have the spread foolscap for.

Prejudice right here in front of me. So ask me the question again.

Okay, Jane, I'll just give a little thing here. Jane Austen had to solve a problem. Her problem was, how does she make Elizabeth face facts? How does she make Elizabeth start to doubt her worldview? And, you know, there are.

Was it when her mom acted a fool at the party. No, no. I'll let you talk.

Now it comes. I gotta say, it's either. It's like. It's in the middle build. It's when Darcy gives her his letter. Darcy. After Elizabeth screams at Darcy, tells him he's a jerk. There's the last man on earth she would marry. How dare he think that she would ever fall for him just because he's rich. He's a jerk. The way he behaves is the worst. And by the way, you ruin my friend's life by not giving him the rectory at your house and blah, blah, blah. So Darcy goes home and he writes her a letter. And he writes the best letter, one of the best letters in literary history. And he basically, in the kindest way, says, you, young lady, are an idiot. That is not the case. You aren't looking at this clearly. The fact is, I live at a higher level than you do. That's just fact, sweetheart. And your family are a bunch of, you know, they made fools of themselves at Bingley's party. So he basically lays it out for her that the way she looks at the world and is. Is really off kilter. And in the novel, she doesn't have an immediate change of heart. She screams and yells about the letter, hates him for it. And then it's. She actually uses Jane Austen, uses two chapters, two scenes for her to metabolize this letter. So she solved that problem by having this very dramatic moment, very active moment, where Darcy proposes to Elizabeth and then she rejects him. And then she is thrown into.

A real, you know, uncertainty about her worldview by the end of that. So that's the way she pushed Elizabeth Bennet from naivete masked by sophistication into uncertainty. Deep uncertainty. So anyway, that's what you have to think about. At what moment in your story are you going to have Jesse feel that deep and uncertainty about her worldview? First, you have to establish her worldview in a much stronger way. And that's what you're going to do later when you, you know, in seven weeks, go back to start working scenes. But after you establish it by doing little tweaks in the language. I'm not talking major surgery here. This is just really adding details inside of your chipping away at your marble so that it's more clear. And then you're going to come up with some idea where it really hits her in a moment. And that moment for me in your novel was when she freaks out in the second severing and she panics because she can't do it anymore. She's not smart enough anymore. She has a real crisis of conscience. She doesn't know what's going to happen and who comes in to save her but the ghost of her brother. So she's going to look to her brother as being the real family. Mom and dad aren't really my real family. It's my brother. And then she's gonna get that double whammy at the end of the middle build when she discovers, oh, brother is even worse than mom and dad.

You see how that's working?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so controlling idea, theme. It's always a nice place to always reconfigure yourself if you. If you get confused as a writer. And you know, it's why Robert McKee always tells that great story about Paddy Chayefsky that once he had his controlling idea and theme, he typed it up and he glued it on onto his typewriter. So everything that he wrote, he would be looking at his controlling idea and theme. And hopefully, you know, what came out of his brain would be on theme. But he never forgot it. And he wrote some of the best satire Network. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but network, the movie is 50 years ahead of its time. It's just great. Okay, so that big quarter of your foolscap page with the global story, this is something that you're going to come back to again and again and again. It's a checklist. And it's important to really make sure that you keep honing in on all of those elements in it so that your book gets more and more clear. So the rest. The rest of the full scaffold page is really about the big, major, major moments in your story. Your beginning hook, your middle build, and your ending payoff. And these three sections are about clarifying that. Your beginning hook is doing what it should be doing, your middle build is doing what it should be doing, and your ending payoff is doing what it should be. So what we do.

When you say doing. When you say doing what it should be doing, what should it be doing? What should it be doing?

Okay, well, the beginning is supposed to hook, right? The beginning is supposed to hook your reader in such a way that they. They want to turn off all Internet connections and just stay with your. Your story for the rest of the night. So you're. The beginning is all about the hook. All about bringing the reader in in such a way that they can't. They just have to finish your book. The build, the middle of your story. The build is about deeply complicating the story beyond the imagination of your reader, creating complications that the reader doesn't see coming and resolving them in ways that are really outstanding. And the middle build is all about reaching a level of intensity that it brings your character to an all is lost moment. Your story hits an all is lost moment when it seems as if there is absolutely no possible way that your protagonist is going to. To get over this. They're going to have to change their behavior, they're going to have to change their tactics. They're going to have to look at the world in a new way, because if they don't, they're going to die. In the thriller, they die. And they don't just die. They face the fate worse than death, which is damnation. So the middle build is all about building your story to the edge of a precipice. And then the ending payoff is the moment when you pay off your hook and your build in a way that your character changes, the story changes in an innovative way that is surprising but inevitable.

That's it. That's all you have to do.

Simple enough.

Yeah.

Okay. So I had pulled up both the Pride and Prejudice foolscap and the Silence of the Lambs full scap to kind of give me, because I was. I can't remember when we first talked about. It might have been when we went through the Martian and the Christmas story One Christmas Carol, which is like 15 months ago. And I was thinking at first that this was like a particular scene. That's what was in my head. But then when I looked at those, you had like several. Like several scenes kind of mashed together to do the inciting incident. So am I. What am I looking at to find? Is it the inciting incident, complication, crisis, climax, resolution of the entire beginning hook, the first scene, the first sequence. What am I looking at when I'm finding these moments?

That's a really great question. What you're looking at is the entire big chunk. So for the first 12 or 11 or 12 scenes of your novel, if you had to boil down those two or three or four sequences into one thing, what would that thing be? One thing, meaning the five commandments. How would you characterize the entire act? Not a scene, you know, now of course you're gonna have a scene that is the inciting incident of your global story. Right. So the inciting incident of. Of your thing, I think is pretty accurate where it says Jesse is caught stealing from the plugged in.

Well, you know, now that you say, as you're talking, as you're saying, like, it's for the entire beginning, Hook, and this one's actually for the entire story is the inciting incident. Really. So as I'm looking at it as a global story and as the entire act, would the inciting incident actually be when she got invited to the Capitol as opposed to when she got caught stealing? Because that's the real crux of the matter, is not that she was stealing. It's that they want her in the Capitol.

Well, that's a good question. I think the inciting incident of the story is the moment that pushes all of the events forward. So when she gets invited to the Capitol, that's the same thing as when she gets caught stealing. Now, if you throw in that.

So really, it's when she says no, it could be. Or am I overthinking this?

Well, I confess that I haven't thought at the level that you have. Well, yeah. So it's not that you're wrong. It's that I'm a little bit behind. So I have to think of that. The inciting incident of the global story could actually be. If you were to put in that prologue, the moment when she survives scrambling, when her brother discovers that she has a gift. So that could be the inciting incident. Because that's the thing. Before that happens, nobody cared about her, really. She wasn't on the radar screen of anybody. So what an inciting incident is, is the moment, the action, or either a cause, a cause or a coincidence that upends the life of your lead character. So the inciting incident of your story is when third parties discover that Jesse can survive scrambling in the alternative reality. And the first third party to understand that she can survive is who?

Her brother Randy. Right. Yeah.

So Randy discovers that she is special when he's 12 years old. For a very, very long time, nobody else knew that she was special until she started working with Balaam and the other rats. But she never got fully scrambled with Balaam and the other rats. She was just a really good hacker.

Mm.

So the inciting incident of her life is when she is discovered to have a gift that upends her life. She will never be the same after people know that she has a gift. Like, that guy would never come and recruit her to go to the Capitol if he didn't already know that she had a gift. Right, right. And when she goes to the Capitol, all the other kids are like, what's with this kid? You know, skipping three years of this regimental training. Well, she has a gift. Well, what is the gift? We don't know. She doesn't know. That's part of the mystery of this story. You want the reader to not really know what her gift is. You and I have been talking about this gift since the beginning of time. And anybody who's listened to this podcast knows what this gift is. But we got about. Think about a kid 20 years from now who picks up your book and has never heard of it. He doesn't. She doesn't know what the gift of this girl is. So let's use that reality that that kid's not going to know to our advantage when we're planning the story. So her gift, when. When her gift is discovered by the reader, that's not going to happen until the, you know, almost the end of the middle build, right? So when you're doing your scenes, you should always say to yourself, is this a good place to put in something about nobody knows her gift? Like, what's up with that kid? Why does she get to come here? You know, you could have Alex say that. What's with her? Why does she get to. I don't know. Well, what do you think it is, Jesse? Hey, if I could tell you, I would tell you. That's what she would say. She doesn't know what her gift is. And that if you add stuff like that throughout the story, you're getting honing more and more into the hero's journey. Because the hero's journey is all about a hero who doesn't know what their gift is.

Right? And it's not until they discover that gift at the all is lost moment. We don't know how gifted we are until we're so far up against the wall that all we can do is change. When I was in college, I had to take organic chemistry. Now I was terrified of organic chemistry because it was the class that would wipe out 60% of the pre med students in college. I knew that going in. Everybody who takes organic chemistry knows that if you don't pass organic chemistry, you can't be a doctor. So I was so terrified of that fact that I didn't study.

I failed test after test after test. And at college, there was this one great saving grace. If you pass the final, all the other tests didn't matter if you got a better grade on the final than all the quizzes and tests. Your final grade stood as your final grade. Your final exam grade stood as your final examination. So what I did is I pushed myself subconsciously to my all is lost moment. I needed to, obviously I Needed to put so much pressure on myself that I had to learn organic chemistry and reading period, which is a two week period. I had to learn 12 weeks, 13 weeks of instruction in two weeks by myself with a textbook instead of doing the homework. And guess what? I did have the organic chemistry gift. I didn't use it, but I did pass the course. But that, I'm not trying to say this as like any great thing about me, but my point is, is that what we do is we avoid dealing with pressure and conflict until the moment where we can't anymore. We either change or we fail. So that's what the hero's journey is about, is getting the hero to avoid facing the reality of their situation so long that they reach an all is lost moment, when all they can do is summon something within them to rise and find a gift to get them through a problem.

So is it a problem that her gift is something she's not in control of?

No, nobody's in control of their gifts. Do you think, you know, this is why guys take steroids in baseball? They can't control their gift. Right. Roger Clemens was one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but he started to lose his fastball. He couldn't control the gift. And when somebody said to him, allegedly, if you take these steroids, you can have your fastball back. You know, I don't think he did it for money. He didn't. He did it because he could see his gift, the gift that he invested in his entire identity in starting to fade. And so when somebody said, I got this magic syringe that will give you your fastball back, he took it. So these guys who take steroids, they're not doing it to get. I'm sure some of them do it to get a lot of money, but they're doing it to keep their gift in their life. So this is the hero's journey, is finding. Now, what Roger Clements was doing was avoiding finding another gift within himself. You know, that's what he, you know, that's what these guys face. Derek Jeter, on the other hand, I hate to be Mr. Baseball. Derek Jeter recognized his gift had diminished and he stopped baseball at a really good time in his career. If he played one more year, he, he would have been batting.205 and would have made errors. He would have had no range. And what did he do? Did he just hang on and start taking steroids? No, he retired and now he's trying to find other gifts in his life. You know, maybe he will and maybe he won't, but at least he's trying. And this is why the hero's journey is so important in your storytelling.

Okay, so at this point we're reaching the end of an episode and we have just, we've gotten to the first inciting incident of the beginning hook and even bounce that around a little bit. So why don't we just, Sean, make this like a two parter and in the next episode we'll keep going through and walk and you'll be able to walk me through the full scab all the way to the end because I have questions of course about the five different parts, but also like I mentioned, the external and internal charges, I'm really kind of lost on that. So we'll just keep going and through this for the next episode and then we'll move on from there. How's that sound?

That sounds great.

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