The Job of an Editor

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is a creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. This coming February, Sean and I are doing another Story GRID certified Editor Training. And I've been getting some stuff ready behind the scenes, and I'll tell you more about it at the end of the episode. But it just got me thinking about the origin of StoryGrid, how Sean developed it, and how it's really changing the way editing is done inside of publishing. And it got me thinking about what it's meant for me to have an editor to work with so closely. So it's a really fun episode where Sean explains kind of where StoryGrid came from, how he used it to work with authors early on, and then what is becoming inside of the publishing world. So it's a really fun episode. Let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, as I'm working through the spreadsheet of the threshing of the second draft after last week's amazing episode, I thought it would be good to talk a little bit. I was thinking about what to talk about this week, and then I was thinking about the subtitle of the book, storygrid, what Good Editors Know. And so I remember, you know, storygrid is this set of tools that you can use for all kinds of things. Planning your book, editing your book, and everything in between. But originally you developed it to make yourself a better editor. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the editor side of things and a little bit about how StoryGrid changes an editor's viewpoint. So when we think about normal editing, whether you're hiring a freelance editor, whether you're getting an editor at a publishing house, versus what it looks like when somebody comes to the table with a tool set like storygrid. So just talk a little bit about how you developed it and how you feel like it changed the way you approach the work with authors as an editor, because that's where it all came from.

Okay. The way it really organically developed was I was at a loss. Like anybody, when I started in book publishing, I was very ambitious. I wanted to be Maxwell Perkins. And I thought that there was a systematic process sort of akin to learning how to be a great car mechanic or how to Learn how to be a neurosurgeon. I thought that there was an institutional sort of series of steps that would take an ambitious person and interested in developing writers and literary works that would teach them how to do that. Right. So if, if you want to learn how to fix your car, you can go to a great technical school and they'll teach you, you know, the, the first principles of the internal combustion engine. They'll teach you how to diagnose the rattle in an engine, what's going on there, what kind of, you know, pistons are at. You know, I'm not a. My only point is that I truly believe that there was an internal system within the book publishing world that would teach people how to be editors. So when I got into the world, what I discovered is, yes, there is a system, but it's very impossible to really get a full, like, quantitative look at what it actually means. So what I mean by that is that the system is an apprentice system. It's a system where if you are hired, you're sort of. It's the luck of the draw about who needs what kind of assistant when. So if you're young, 24, 22 year old person coming into the industry and say one of the premier editors in the business, someone like in my era was like Robert Gottlieb, say Robert Gottlieb's assistant is finally. Or Sunny Maida, and their assistant has been promoted to junior editor. So now they have to hire a new assistant. So if you get lucky and you get hired and Sonny Maida hires you, guess what? You're really in pretty good shape because you're able to sort of be at the place where you're watching him do what he does, or Reagan Arthur, who's at Little Round. The majority of great editors in publishing are women, by the way. So the fact that I brought up Gottlieb and Sunny Maida does not mean that there aren't. The majority of them are women. Jennifer Enderlin at St. Martin's Press is another great editor. There's so many, it's hard to spit them out right now. But anyway, so it was apprentice system, and it all depended on how great of an editor and how much they really cared about helping a young person learn the craft. Okay, so what happened for me is I had a couple of those editors, but then I was so ambitious that I threw myself into the tests so quickly that I burned pretty quickly and I got promoted very quickly, and that was great. But then I didn't have the ability to ask questions of these great editors. And I worked with a woman named Jackie Farber who was editing Elmore Leonard, Maeve Binchy, all these great best selling writers who wrote all kinds of books. Sara Paretsky, crime fiction, love story, et cetera. So after I finally got promoted, which was very quick, she now Jackie, hired another assistant. So I had to learn myself. So here I was. And there was no book that said this is how you edit a book. So what I decided to do was study myself and study story and structure. And the goal at first was to, you know, climb the hierarchy of the publishing world so that I could become a big shot editor and get to go out to lunch. So it was a very externally driven thing for me at the time. And you know, I love to read and I love stories. My goal was to, you know, have bestsellers and move up the ladder. Now, gradually, over time, what I discovered is that I could find these very, very talented writers whose books just didn't work right. So they would come in, I would read them and I would say real.

Quick, talk about that. What do you mean by talented writer? Like how could you tell they were talented? Whose books don't work? What does that mean?

What it means is that I open up page one. It's a great opening scene. I'm completely hooked. The inciting incident of the global story is just great. Then my blood starts to pump as an editor. I'm really excited. The next scene isn't so good, but I forgive them, right? Because I think, you know, that opening scene really showed a lot of potential. And then the third scene gets worse and the fourth scene even worse than that. And then it gets into cliche and. And so globally, the story doesn't work. I know what's going to happen after reading maybe 10,000 words of an 80,000 word manuscript. And guess what? It does happen. It doesn't. It fizzes. Right? So the global macro story, the 15 core scenes that I talk about all the time, there's some really good ones. So like out of those 15, there's maybe four that are really well done scenes. The micro scene is extremely engaging and when I'm reading those scenes, I go, oh my gosh, I bet this is going to work out great. And then it didn't. So at that point I was extremely frustrated because I'd have to reject the book, right? And I would have to say, no, this isn't for me, sorry, it's not right for our list at this time. You know, and then the writer would go away and probably would Never write another book. And there goes, you know, a talented person who, if they had a mentor who could walk them through some general principles of storytelling, perhaps they could convert their micro talent into a macro, global idea. A macro story that works. So when I say something works, I'm talking about macro. I'm talking about something that immediately pulls you in at the beginning, builds a lot of momentum in the middle, and really surprisingly pays off with something unexpected at the end. It's inevitable, but unexpected. So the criminal is found, but the criminal that we thought it was originally is not like Presumed Innocent. There's a great story that's very, very, you know, it's a very standard crime story. Whodunit, you know, our hero, the protagonist, is accused of a crime that he does not commit. So throughout the novel we're worried about is he going to get convicted and thrown in jail for something that he didn't do, or maybe he did do it. So the suspense throughout Presumed Innocent is whether the protagonist actually committed the murder or not. And then by the end of the novel we understand, oh my gosh, of course it was blank because she was blank about his, you know, doing X. I didn't want to ruin the story for anyone because it's a great novel. So that's an example where Scott Turow, who wrote Presumed Innocent, is a wonderful micro writer. His scenes are terrific. But if his macro didn't work and oh boy, the protagonist ends up to have been the villain all along, he gets convicted at the end and thrown in the slammer. That macro wouldn't have worked. The ending wasn't surprising, but inevitable. It didn't build the right way, it wasn't set up the right way. But the fact is, is that Tarot did deliver the macro and the micro. That's why it was, you know, an immediate huge, million copy bestseller of a story that's, you know, a very similar story since film noir in the 1950s. So it's not you have to reinvent a genre, you just have to do it extremely well. So I didn't know any of that stuff back in my late 20s when I was, you know, just became a full editor. I had to learn that. And the way I learned that was a. I read all the masterworks in the genres that I was responsible for. So I read Presumed Innocent because it was my job to be the crime editor at a publishing house. So I read all those and then I picked apart the obligatory scenes and conventions and I discovered that there were sub genres.

When you say because some of this stuff like, again, I've been deep in story grid for over three years now. So when I hear obligatory scenes and conventions, I'm like, oh, yeah, but were those, like, were those common understood things?

No, they're not even common and understood today. Okay, so you wonder why I wrote the story grid. It's because all the things that people who have sort of followed storygrid for a while and understand, like obligatory scenes and conventions, believe it or not, these are not words that are. Or concepts that are used all that often at the major publishing houses. You know what? I really can't say that because I haven't been in a major publishing house for over a decade. But my gut, and because I know friends who are still there, my gut is, is that the technicalities and the craft of editing is not, quote, unquote, up for discussion at the major publishing houses. And for good reason. They don't have time to listen to my theories. You know, when I was an editor, they didn't have time to hear my story grid theories. They wanted to say, sean, should we acquire this book or not? Why should we? Why shouldn't we? And so to talk about obligatory scenes and conventions in a business meeting was kind of stupid because people's eyes would glaze over. You think people's eyes glaze over now when I talk about it? Think about being in a business situation where people were like, sean, should we buy the book or not? Don't tell me about whether or not the third act works. I don't care. Can you fix it? So that's what it became, right? Could I fix it? How good of a mechanic was I? So it occurred to me that if I could take a writer who was great at the micro and work with them on the macro, they could perhaps write a book that worked, that could find an audience, that could build a career. And I was. That was my business. I was in the business of building careers. I was publishing people like Ian Rankin when, you know, he had published one or two books in the uk. You know, Reagan Arthur, I mentioned her earlier. Reagan Arthur was at St. Martin's Press at the same time I was. She fell in love with Ian Rankin's books. She was publishing them in hardcover. I had a paperback line of crime. So she came downstairs because I was beneath her and said, would you consider doing this in paperback? And I read the book and I loved it. And I said, sure, but his. His hardcover track sales track record is not very good. And she goes, why do you think I want you to put him into paperback? Because he could build an audience if he gets the right number of people to read him. And she was right. I published Ian Rankin's books in paperback, his John Rebus crime stories, and now he's a huge bestseller in the UK and in the United States. Now, that didn't happen overnight. That took 10 years. Similarly, somebody like Harlan Coben, I discovered him when I was at Dell Publishing. I published him in paperback. It took him five books to reach the best seller list. That's five to six years. And I don't know, you know, probably he probably wrote seven novels before he even got his first one published. So my point was, if I become a very good editor, I can help people become better writers and then they can get more readers. And book by book by book, they can eventually have a career. If they have a career, I have a career. So the story grid principles came out of a very practical problem. The problem was, how do I make people who have real talent and real ability and help them become writers that can write books that work? And so I have to give a hat tip. Seth Godin, who, when I was talking to him about the story grid, you know, years before I wrote it, you know, he looked at me and he said, you know what that book, the subtitle of that book should be, is what Good Editors know. Because that is what good editors know. And whether or not they know my particular terminology, they know when the thing doesn't work. Sonny Maida doesn't use, or regular Arthur does not use story grid principles when they edit a book. But they will say to the writer, this scene doesn't work because it doesn't set up your payoff. And your payoff can be a little bit better. Now they're talking in generalities and they're helping their writers scene by scene. And. But it all goes to the same story principles that we all learned, you know, the hard way. There are some books that I've published that I absolutely adored, knowing full well that there were some idiosyncrasies and some things that could not practically work in the marketplace. And every single time, the marketplace agreed and the book didn't work.

Can you give me an example of that? What you mean by that?

Well, oftentimes we can be seduced by the artists or the creative voice's vision. So, for example, say I was editing a crime story where the ending kind of came out of nowhere and it seemed like a deus ex machina, meaning there was no setup. And all of a sudden they go, the butler did it. And there hadn't been any build up to revealing that the butler could have actually even been a suspect. So I would say that to a writer, hey, you know what, this kind of comes off as not quite believable. And then they would give me a very elaborate reason that was very, very intelligent. That made sense. That and they usually the, the grounding for the decision was I didn't want to write another cliche. I didn't want to abide something that I thought was tired and old. And so what I've done was, and they would usually say the keen reader, the reader really paying attention would understand that that would be feasible. So when you fall into the intellectual shenanigans of sort of not telling a good story the right way, that's when you can sort of know that very few people are really going to adopt that book. This is why really high end meta fiction literature, like super intelligent big word meta psychological analysis, like this is why Ulysses, like James Joyce's work, you know. Is it brilliant? Sure. Can you read it? Not really. Because it's so brilliant, it's not all that accessible. So is it a cool concept to write a brilliant novel all set in one day from one person's point of view, from their interior psychological consciousness? Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And did he pull it off? Yes, he did. But is it the kind of thing that, you know, now we're getting into critical theory. But that's my point is that my job was to be commercially driven, right. So even though I published, quote, unquote, some masterpieces that, you know, actually didn't sell all that well for me, I had failed the writer because I think there is a place where you can be brilliant and extremely accessible. And I guess that is sort of my goal with Story Grid. My goal with StoryGrid is to level up people's craft so that their micro storytelling is extraordinarily well done and that they take each scene extremely seriously and work to make them as good as they possibly can be. But that the macro story still is popcorn engaging. So that's kind of, I'm trying to sort of really press impress upon commercial fiction writers the payoff of leveling up craft. You don't have to write Ulysses to be a genius. I think some of the like for me, a novel like To Kill a Mockingbird, right. A very extremely engaging. Can't put it down read. That literally changed the world more than any political rally or anything in this country. That novel was so brilliantly achieved and done that it changed the world in such A way that it doesn't matter what your education is. If you're, you know, just learning how to read and you're starting to like my. My young daughter is a nutty reader. She reads everything. Right. When she read that, it changed her life. And she was 7 years old or whatever. So that's sort of what. Where. Where the story grid sort of evolved to. It used to be, when I started out, it used to be a very sort of cynical, for lack of a better word, formulaic diagnostic thing where I could take a writer with potential and smash them into a genre that could sell 10,000 copies, that would make money on the bottom line for my profit and loss report for a corporation that would eventually, if I had enough of those, would get me a bigger salary and a bigger office. That's kind of how it started. And now it's really. To the place where my vision is, and I've said this so ubristically so many times before, is to help people create a thing that lives longer than they do. That's truly. I mean, what I think is. Is really the great thing about stories is that they live so they can be immortal. So our great stories, the Odyssey, the Iliad, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, all of these great classic myths, those things are hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years old. Pride and Prejudice, you know, those are novels and stories that were written not for a very small intellectual audience, that is getting a PhD in critical studies at Harvard. No, they were written for the man who runs the newspaper store at Harvard. You know, they were the ones that everyone can absolutely become absorbed by. And they end up changing their lives, they change their worldview, they help them during circumstances that are very difficult to navigate. And so, you know, anyone who's read To Kill a Mockingbird is so fully cognizant of the silliness and ridiculous nature and absurdity of judging people by the color of their skin that it's. It doesn't make any sense. Right, because you've been so changed by that novel that you would. It's a fait accompli that you just can't think that way anymore. And that is the. The brilliance of stories. So as editors, the payoff for an editor and the reason why I'm so strident about making my material really talk about editing as opposed to, hey, I'll teach you how to be a better writer. And you will be. Let me teach you how to write. It's more like, let me teach you how to edit. Edit yourself. Because if you are capable of understanding the grand ideas behind story. And you're capable of understanding the macro and the micro of storytelling. Not only can you help yourself, but you can help others. So in fact, you're actually end up being extraordinarily helpful to people who are in the same game that you are. In fact, you're usually a better editor of other people than you are of yourself. But the more times you use the tools as a craftsman to help other people, the better your own writing craft becomes byproduct. So every single piece of copy that's written at a publishing house is written by an editor. So editors are great writers. The sales copy. They don't hire professional advertising people to write sales copy for books. No, that is the editor's job. The editors have to write all the time. Tip sheets and sales copy and flat copy and catalog copy and sales copy, all kinds of copy. That's a lot of your time is spent writing. So editors become really good writers because they have to constantly be churning out copy, as well as understanding the whole concept of hook and payoff and build and all that stuff.

Can you talk a little bit more about how your work was? You know, you looked at developing a writer over a long period of time, and it sounded like you've done that with lots of writers where, you know, you would acquire their first or second book and then keep being their editor for a long time and helping them change over time. So could you talk a little bit about what that process was like? Because it sounds like, you know, the first book is. Does, you know, you help them get it to a point where you could publish it. It did. Okay. Then the next book was maybe better and found a bigger market and so on and so forth. Could you talk a little bit about what that process was like for you?

Conceptually, the way it would work is I would just be a fountain of bad ideas. And sometimes the bad ideas would goose the writer into coming up with a concept that they hadn't quite thought of before that would bring a new dimension to their work. So as an example, years ago, I was working with a great crime writer named Robert Crace. And he was sort of at a crossroads in his career, and he was doing very well, but he really wanted to take another leap. And so he sent my publisher, Steve Rubin, a manuscript his agent did, and Steve shared it with me. And then Bob and I started working together. And the concept of the manuscript was fantastic, but it was a step out of what he had done before. He had a character who was very intelligent, very funny, Kind of wisecracking. He was a private detective. But this new novel that he had written was quite a bit darker. And it really focused on sort of the sidekick character to the detective, a guy named Joe Pike. So we talked about it for a long time, and eventually we came to the place where I kind of said to him, what you need here is some third person omniscient. You know, you need to get out of your first person point of view and get a wider, wider angle. And he took that to heart, and, boy, did he run with that idea. And he wrote a novel called La Requiem, which was really, you know, wonderful. And the reason why I say that is that I didn't do anything magical other than to give Bob the freedom to consider a new idea. It's difficult when you've had success doing one thing, to branch out and try something that could end up blowing up in your face. And then from that point forward, we did a couple of more books that were standalone thrillers that I loved, and eventually I left Doubleday, and I think Bob did too. I think he's at Putnam now. But that was really. As an editor, one of the really great fun things to do is to say because as the editor, you look at the. There's a great quote from Walker Percy, and the quote is, the wounded man has a better view of the battle than those still fighting. And I always love that idea where once you are outside of the battle, you can give a new perspective to a writer. So the writer is literally in the trenches fighting a war, an internal war, to create his or her next novel or next story. And so the editor's role is sort of to be the outsider who knows the global strategies involved in the war and can sort of pipe in with advice like, hey, maybe you want to move seven paces down that way and try this in order to solve that problem. And that's how StoryGrid tools evolved is that sometimes I can say to somebody, you really need to think about, you know, the progressive complication, turning point in that scene, because it's really not on, you know, it's not on the value at stake that you've presented in the scene. And they look at me glazed over, and so then I have to pull out another tool. And I would say something like, well, I don't think that character would do that thing because they were brought up a different way. So maybe you should approach and think about that character's motivations to do that thing from the point of view of the experience they had in Chapter seven. And so it depends upon, you know, the writer and the story grid toolbox is I'm constantly trying to add more little analytical tools and levels of analysis to make those problems easier for the individual writer to digest. So, yes, the problems are the problems and they're not the fault of the writer. But sometimes the writer has a way of thinking that is different than the editor. That's why, you know, I've. I've had plenty of projects where I've edited them. I never really got in sync with the writer, and the writer and I parted ways and the writer found another editor who could speak their language, so to speak. So it's not that you're building yourself to be an infallible source of story gold, but what you're doing is you're learning many different techniques to solve specific problems that arise, you know, all the time. You know, the problem of the middle build is going to happen every single time you write a novel, every single time you tell a story. And knowing, well, what do I know about the hero's journey? Well, there, there are trials in the middle. That's a huge win for a writer. So I'm going to have like three escalating problems in the middle that my protagonist is going to have to deal with. So three, that's at least three scenes, right? And then that way, knowing these sort of levels of analysis and saying the middle build is a problem, how can I solve the middle build? Well, what does the hero's journey say about the middle build? And then you get the answer, oh, I should have a series of trials in an extraordinary world for my protagonist to have to contend with.

Yeah, Well, I was just thinking that that's one of those specific things you could say is like, if you're reading a middle build and something's not working, and even if the writer knows, like something's not working, you could come in and say, well, according to the hero's journey, you're supposed to have three trials, and I can only find two. And now it's like a specific job to work on.

Right. Or the trials are not escalating in importance. Right. So they're not getting progressively more. And that's my levels of 10, you know, tool, you know, have the writer analyze each one of those trials and say, if you had to put it on a scale of 1 to 10 and 10 being, you know, completely life changing, irreversible, and 1 being totally reversible and it doesn't matter, what would you evaluate that scene being? And usually what they find is that they've written a three, a three and a four. And so you say, well, I don't think, you know, the stakes are all that high if it's not an irreversible change. So these are the things that I can always. It's like this big fat tool belt that I have. And when I read something and if something isn't working, I can try a different tool. And the tools are usually specific to the writer. Some writers like some tools, some like different ones. So brings up the question. A lot of people always say things like, well, aren't you just giving a formula? And no, I'm not. I'm giving you a global concept. It's like building a bench, right? There are all kinds of different kinds of ways to build a bench. You can any kind of material, different materials, different paints, different cushions, different. All kinds of things. So the formula to build a specific bench for a story, it really doesn't exist, thank God, because each person has to bring a level of subjective truth to the story that I can't provide for them. So, for example, in your novel, you know, you struggled quite a long time to even understand what. Why you were writing the thing in the first place and what it was really about, what was the controlling idea of your story. And you didn't really figure that out until last week, right? So it took you three years. But I think I'm hoping that understanding the different levels of analyzing your story and thinking it through enabled you to be more aware of your everyday life in such a way that a stranger that you didn't know gave you a piece of information that turned out to be a turning point for your own story. Now, years ago, you probably may not have even listened to what she had said at the moment. So editing is almost becoming even more hyper aware of your own life. And the better an editor you become, the more perceptive and the more attention you give to the actual moments of your life. Which is. It's amazing. It allows you to look at something in a completely different way and apply sort of a eureka moment in your mind directly to a work of art. So, you know, Steve Pressfield always talks about, and I absolutely agree with him on this, is that, you know, there's. There's two levels of reality. There's the reality that we live in, and then there's a higher realm. And the higher realm is, you know, it's filled with whatever you want to call it, the collective unconscious, muse, spirits, ghosts, angels, whatever you want to call them. But I do believe that it's the place where we get the eureka moment. So for whatever reason, your training allowed you to hear that woman at that dinner for party give you the core idea behind the novel that you've been working on for three years. And I think that's magic. I really do. And I really believe in that concept. And I think the way to get more and more of those things to come to you is to apply more and more of your critical thinking to why stories work, why structure can lead you to an epiphany. The structure is a tool to lead you to moments like the moment that you had at that dinner party. And editing is the course that you can use to have more epiphanies in your life. And, you know, that's why I'm so strident about the word editor. I think the word editor, it's a really important craft that nobody really knows much about except the editors who do the work all the time. When they have a beer, they can go, yeah. So it was obvious it was just the third act problem and they needed to, you know, zig when they should have zagged on their payoff. And the editor goes, yeah, yeah. I don't know how many times I've said that to my people I've worked with too. And I think the more people who can understand how to give that kind of advice, the better our stories will be. And if you're a writer, learning the editor's craft will make your life so much easier. And the reason why is that then you will have the language and the vocabulary to boil these problems that sometimes takes 45 minutes to go over into a five second discussion. Like, yeah, your progressive complication didn't work there. Okay, next. So if you share the same language as your editor, you can fly through and really fix a lot of problems very quickly and constantly level up and get better and better and better with each draft.

Yeah, I think that's been one of the most fascinating parts of this process is now, you know, when you get to the end of the book and you finish the last page and then the next page is the acknowledgments. There's always like, thanks to my editor. And it's always like this really nice statement. And I was kind of like, okay. But I never really understood, like, because I think about. People talk about how like the writer's room of a TV show, you know, there's like 10 people in the room and they're all bantering on different things where the writer is kind of off on their own, trying to come up with these ideas. But what you're describing here, and, you know, what I've experienced with you, too, is this different thing where there is the back and forth. There is this feedback on what you're doing and where your work is and how you can make it better that I just had no idea was what was going on behind the scenes. And it just seems so strange, I guess, because when you think about, like, a movie, you know, the producer who pretty, you know, a lot of times just funded it, you know, they just wrote the check. And then you have the director, like, everybody kind of gets their say. The biggest, you know, the big players in the. In the movie right at the beginning in big, bold letters, and they even promote it as like this. You know, this movie is by the director that did these other movies. This movie is by the person that did. That wrote the screenplay for these other movies. But with books, it's just like this guy wrote the book, you know, and.

Editors have had their own particular sensibilities, too. And, I mean, I think one of the great failures of the major publishers is to give the editors credit. Because if you were. If you knew the editors of. So many editors have published really amazing books in a similar theme. Like, Steve talks about this in the Artist Journey, where the artist, like, if you go through the record catalog of somebody like Bruce Springsteen or the Rolling Stones or Joni Mitchell or whatever, you can sort of see this really cool progression of thematic movement. Movement. And they're exploring a particular kind of sensibility. So it's the same thing for editors. And if you. You're able to track the books that they're editing over time, then you can kind of see the editor's vision and what they're wrestling with. There are particular novels that I'm attracted to in stories that other editors aren't. And if you looked at what I've edited over the years, you would, you know, see a portrait of me. So I think there is a real art and craft in the editing process itself. And that's part of why I started the Story grid. Because there's no language that gives them the credit that they really deserve.

Well, and I think too, like, if I, you know, especially if we think about independent editors, I think inside of publishing, there's pressures on editors to have so many books in a period of time and appear in a genre and all that. But I think about, you know, there's got. I'm making assumptions here, but I'm assuming, you know, there's this also not just the sensibility of how they mold the project, but it's also the kind of projects they're even willing to work on. You know, that's what movies play against is like, in theory, you know, this director could pick whatever they wanted. And because they picked this movie, you should go see it, you know, because they only pick these types of movies. And I would think the same thing is true of editors of, like you've talked about on here. You're not just editing whatever comes across your desk because somebody writes you a paycheck. It's more like, am I interested in the project? Is this something that I think I can actually have an impact on? Is this a type of writer I enjoy working with? So it's not just the sensibility of, I guess, crafting the project. It's also which projects you even take on anyway.

Yeah, yeah. That's an important thing to learn too, as an editor is what. What specific genres are you really attracted to? How can you find the writers and the best fit? And the really great thing about. About the story grid experience for me has been just the pure focus on story. Just what is it? How does it work? What are the genres? I don't agree with you there. I agree with you this at least. There is now very clear discussion about, you know, principles that have been in play for. Since people could talk. And, you know, there is no. Unfortunately, I mean, and this is a great opportunity, but there is no degree in editing. There is no college you can go to. There is no online, you know, institute that it's really. And storygrid is sort of. For me, it's this. This place to introduce people to the way of life of being an editor. And I think it's a very fulfilling experience to be able to work with people on stories that are theirs and yet you can help them. It's almost not psychotherapy, but it is two people facing a problem that together they're much better at solving than one person alone. And when you learn the craft as a writer to be an editor for other people, you can help other people solve their story problems. And then when you head back to your own work, your work is so fully informed by that experience that you don't make the mistakes that the people that you've worked with do. You don't even contemplate them because you. By fixing somebody else's broken pipe, you don't put in the plumbing where it'll break. You know, it's. That's the experience that I found is that the writers who have. Who have worked in the story grid arena with me, their writing just, you know, takes very large leaps forward by understanding how other people are facing difficult problems and helping them solve it. And then coming back to their work, they're less intimidated by the problem than they would have been in the first place. And so they're able to, at the very least, not, you know, run away from their desk in horror.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I think sometimes about. Because how long have you been working with Steve Pressfield?

24 years, maybe.

You know, and I just think about. Because it sounds like you've worked with lots of writers over, you know, several books, but you've worked with him the longest. And so when you look back over all the work he's produced, there must be some satisfaction there about just getting to be involved, because I think sometimes, coming back to my world of marketing, I think about how satisfying it is to have my own following and to have my own impact on the world. But at the same time, for years, I got to dabble, and I got to have a much larger impact than I ever have on my own because I've gotten to be involved with so many different people's platforms and getting so much work out into the world. And so even when I look at writers who I haven't worked with in a long time, and I see them launching a new book or doing something new on their platform, even when it's without me, I know that there's still, like, a piece of me in that work. And that's just satisfying to feel like, you know, not only do I put my own work out, but I get to be a part of other people's work, too. And I'm sure it's the same for an editor.

Well, yeah. I feel that my DNA is in every single book that I ever worked on. And I said this to Steve before, and he doesn't believe it, but I get as emotionally involved in the. In the commercial performance of a title as the author does. So I almost feel physically ill when I read a bad review of a book that I've edited or. And that's because you can't help but care when you are applying and giving ideas that are coming out of a mystical place. So whenever you give advice or point out a problem and then offer a possible solution, you are stepping into the unknown heroically. So editors are doing that along with the writer. So it's almost as if the writer just needs someone to say, hey, I'm heading into the darkness by throwing out this really stupid idea to know you. And then they Go. They say to themselves, oh, at least my idea isn't going to be as stupid as Sean's. And now I can try my own. And so that it gives. It gives the writer the ability to have the freedom to just explore the unknown. Now, just in terms of Steve, I think Steve is a great example in that I told this story a million times before, but when we first started working together, I insisted that he lock himself into a genre. I said, I will acquire your novel. At the time, it was called Thermopylae if you agree to do another novel in this same universe, meaning, you know, classical Greek historical fiction. And the first thing he said to me was, no, there's absolutely no way I'm going to be jammed into that. Into that world. And I had to withdraw the offer because it was contingent upon, you know, him doing what I said. And then about two days later, he called me back and said, I've thought about it, and I've got an idea in my drawer that's in your arena. Would you consider me doing a novel based upon Alcibiades, who's a famous Peloponnesian War figure? And that's what started our beautiful friendship. Because at first, he was. Didn't want to go into a realm. He didn't want to be pointed in the direction that I was pointing him. He's following the muse. He's not following Sean Coyne. So when I said that, he got his hackles up, and. But then, because he's a professional, he went back and he said, I wonder if my muse has already given me something that is in the realm that he's talking about, because he has a file of ideas that come to him. And so we pulled out this file, and in that file was a piece of paper that said the Michael Jordan of ancient Greece was Alcibiades. Literally, it said that. And he. And when he called me, he goes, look, I've got this piece of paper in my file, and it says the Michael Jordan of ancient Greece was Alcibiades. At the time, Michael Jordan was, you know, at the pinnacle of his career. Would that interest you? And I'm like, yeah. And that was a way by which he was able to live within the commercial realm that I was pressing on him while also being true to a higher realm. So that's to his credit. And I think a good editor will push the writer in the opposite direction in which they want to go. So that gooses them into reconsidering their worldview. Oh, but I'm a X kind of writer. I only write Regency romances. I can't write a contemporary thriller love story set in at the Pentagon. I can't do that kind of thing. Well, why not? If an editor says, I'd be interested in seeing that from you, Because I think you could do that. That allows a writer to have the freedom to dip their toe into the black unknown and know that somebody is standing behind them, willing to help them out when they get lost.

Yeah. One of my favorite things that I've heard from you and Steve is I think this was relatively recent, too. He had written a draft, sent it to you, and you sent him just, like, pages and pages of notes about how it didn't work or whatever. And he's like, give me a few days. And then he wrote back. I've successfully turned all of your ideas into. To my ideas.

Yeah, That's. That's literally the critical process where the writer has to absorb. It's not that Steve ever agrees with, you know, he probably agrees with 61% of what I tell him, but he needs to basically metabolize the thinking of the writer and then convert it to Steven Stevie's. And I think that's the way it works for really good relationship between a writer and, like, you and I. Over the past three years, I've given you a million ideas that didn't work. I've spouted off on theories and things that you just. You're like, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to use that. But it pushed you into, well, maybe I do need to think about that. And then you came up with your own thing, and that's the role. That's the role of the editor.

Yeah. I've experienced that so many times with you, for sure, where, like, you're like, there's times where you're talking and giving me this idea, and about halfway through, I completely check out because I found what I was looking for. But you were kind of goading me in all these directions. And then I'm like, oh, I think that's it. And so. Yeah. And I just can't. When I think about. I mean, the reference I always like to make is Stephen King's on writing. When he talks about this, the years and years that he was just writing by himself because all he was doing was collecting rejections and all he could hope for was, like, one sentence scribbled. I think the most famous one is he's like, second draft equals first draft minus 10% or something like that. And it was like that. He's like, that One thing helped me so much, and I'm like, oh my God, you're having to do this forever by yourself. That one sentence changes things. And so, yeah, I just can't. For me, I feel like again, my progression has just gone so fast because I've been able to have that shorter feedback loop. And I'm not just creating in a vacuum. And having an editor to work with along the way has just made all the difference.

Well, yeah, I mean, and you also took a really difficult path in that. Well, difficult and not difficult in that you didn't have to publish four books. I mean, in three years you could have set, you know, published four books that didn't work. And you could have undergone a lot of pain and then you could have reached a point where you are now, but you didn't have to go through the four books worth of pain and effort and all the marketing and all that. And then seeing the glazed expressions in your friend's eyes when you made them buy the book and they hated it and they didn't want to tell you. And.

Oh geez. Thanks for listening to this episode of the StoryGrid podcast. So I mentioned at the beginning that I would tell you a little bit more about this StoryGrid editor certification program. We're holding another training this coming February. If this is something you think you may be interested in, you can find out more by visiting our website. Going to storygrid.com certificate. That's C E R T for certification. This is something you may be interested in learning more about about becoming a Story Grid certified editor. This is the way to do it. We don't hold these trainings very often. It's really intense. It's a really great way to dive deep, deep into Story Grid. It's in person here in Nashville and it's coming up this February. So if this is something you may be interested in, you can go read a little bit more about it and fill out the application@storygrid.com cert again, that's C E R T as always, for everything StoryGrid related, you can check out storygrid.com make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, all of that can be found@storygrid.com podcast. If you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter StoryGrid. Lastly, if you would like to support the show. You can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating and review. Thanks for subscribing and being a part of our work here at Storygrid. We will see you next week.