The Martian and A Christmas Carol

Hello. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Welcome to the Story Grid podcast. My name is Tim Grawl. I'm your host and I am a struggling fiction writer trying to figure out how to write a story that works. Sean Coyne is going to join me soon and he is the creator of the Story Grid, the author of the book the Story Grid, and he has 25 plus years experience as an editor and he's answering all of my inane questions on writing. This is a special episode. It's based on a survey we did to all of the Story Grid email list subscribers, asking them what story they would like us to run through the story grid. And by far, the Martian won the survey. So we are taking this episode to run the Martian through the story grid. Also, as part of this Christmas episode, we are running A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens through the story grid as well. So this is an epic long episode, an hour and a half, but I think you'll really enjoy it and it will help you understand better than ever how you can use the story grid method. So we go through the entire full SCAP story grid for each of the stories. So we're going to dive right into this epic episode. See you on the other side.

So, Sean, I've been really looking forward to doing this episode because we're breaking out of our normal mode. This is our Christmas holiday episode and for that we're going to go over the Martian and the Christmas Carol and Story Grid them and talk through it. And I've been really looking forward to doing this because I know this is what a lot of people want to hear. And it was good for me to go back through it too.

Yeah. Yeah. This is always a fun time because it's. The great thing about story gridding is that you can. And as soon as we get into it, we'll see like, different people have different interpretations. And, you know, it doesn't mean that because I say one thing and you say something else that one of us is wrong. It just means that there's a different read that is inherent in the actual writing itself, which is testimony to how good the writer is. So this should be really fun.

So I used this as like a open book test for myself. So what we did is we went through the full SCAP global story grid where you. You outline.

The entire book on one sheet of paper.

Right.

And without looking at yours before you sent it to me, I did it myself. And it was a really good exercise. And, you know, for those that are listening, I would really highly recommend you do this to books that you're reading. Because I went back and I read the Martian. I read it when it first came out as a self published book years ago and then I saw the movie, but I went back and reread it and then I filled out the Foolscap global story grid. And it was cool because I was like, okay. So I, you know, the first thing is the external genre. So I flipped to the external genre section of the story grid and I went through all of them and I found what external genre I thought it was. And then I did the same thing for kind of everything. So it was really fun to actually take all this stuff I've been learning and put it into practice.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. It really is. When you're able to categorize things and break it down in your own mind, then it's easier when you're approaching your own story to say, oh, well, one of my favorite books is this genre and I want to write in that genre. So let me sort of use that as my benchmark to get the thing going, you know.

Yeah, and it was good because as I read the Martian, you know, I was reading it with this in mind. So I'm like looking for the inciting incidents and I'm looking for, you know, when, when does the middle build start? And I was looking for all of those things. Oh, and just FYI, this is going to be huge, huge spoilers if you haven't read or seen the Martian. So turn it off now and go read the book if you're worried about that. Because we're, we're going to talk all the way through the ending.

So. But it was really good to like think of it that way. But when I actually sat down and started working through was harder than I thought to pinpoint some of these things.

Yeah, it is.

So I will say so for those of you listening, we're going through the fullscap global story grid. If you go to storygrid.com, you go under resources, you can download a blank version of this. This is what I did. I downloaded it from that from storygrid.com I printed it out and I filled it out with a pin. So if you want to follow along, that's how you can along. And then of course, you can download both Sean's and my version of the Foolscap at in the show notes for this episode@storygrid.com podcast. So that said, we start with external genre, so. Or I guess global genre.

Yeah, I added, I added global genre because In a lot of cases, there are two genres at play. There's an external and there's an internal genre. In the case of the Martian, there's only one genre at play. There is really no internal genre. And in fact, Andy Weir, somebody had mentioned this to me. I think it was Kent Favor. Andy Weir had been interviewed about writing the story, and he said one of the things that he was happy about is that he made the decision not to have an internal sort of shift for his main character from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. And you can do this, and I'm glad we're starting with this, because it's sort of like if you have a big action story, which is what the Martian is, you don't have to have your lead character have an internal metamorphosis. He doesn't have to move, you know, on a morality worldview track from sort of bad to good, as we'll discuss later on. He can just sort of like, deal with the situation as it arises. And when you have a great action hook or story, it's great because all you do is just keep throwing, you know, throwing fireballs at the guy or the. Or the woman who's your lead protagonist, and then they have to constantly be reacting to them. And if your premise is great, and if your world is great, as the Martian certainly is, then, you know, you don't have to worry so much about the internal, you know, misgivings or comings and goings of any one particular character. So the great thing about the Martian is that this is. This is why it was, you know, picked up by Ridley Scott and made into a movie, because it's a great action story and it's like a early James Bond where there was no internal movement on. On James Bond.

So, yeah, I was going to mention that because we've talked about that before and we've usually mentioned that as the example is, you know, James Bo does not change now. And I would say he does in kind of the recent movies.

Yes, he does.

In the. In the books that I've read, he's just the same person from start to finish.

Exactly, exactly.

So, okay, so I was extremely excited to see that we. We had the same external genre. I actually agonized over this. I'm, like, looking at all the external genres, and I'm like, I think this is the right one. I want to write down the same one. Sean's gonna wr. So what'd you put down?

Okay, so I put down the global genre is action, and the more specific plot line of the action and you can get to. All this in my book is the action adventure, man against nature story. And within that, there are, you know, there are four choices that, you know, you can have within the man against nature stories, and they are the labyrinth plot, the monster plot, the environment plot, and the doomsday plot. Now, the labyrinth plot is sort of like Die Hard, where the guy has to sort of get around a maze of difficulty in order to get out of the thing alive. The monster plot is like an animal attack, like Jaws. And the environment plot is where the actual setting, the global setting of the entire story is, you know, the villain. And, you know, a great example of that is gravity. And then the doomsday plot is when you have sort of. You have to save the environment from a disaster. So like a movie like Independence Day would be a doomsday plot. So what I said for the Martian is it's an environment plot. The environment itself is the villain in this story. And I suspect that you said the same thing.

Yeah. And I honestly.

I was worried I was writing down the right one. But when I saw in the book that you had gravity, I'm like, well, they're both in space, so it must be right. But, yeah, that's what I put down, too, is man against nature and the environment plot.

Great.

And I had the external value at stake as life and death.

That's exactly right.

Okay. Because you have life to unconsciousness, to death, to damnation.

Now, the reason why I put all of those down is that, and I talk about this a lot in the book I like to put down when I'm putting my value shifts to go from.

The best good to the absolute worst. So the negation of the negation. Now, the Martian does not get to the negation of the negation in the storytelling. And this is another great thing to remember. You don't have to go to the end of the line all the time on your value, and the Martian does it.

The stakes move from life to unconsciousness. And unconsciousness doesn't mean literal unconsciousness. Although in the story, in the Martian, he does go literally unconscious a couple of times.

But unconsciousness is sort of like this place in between life and death. So if you're going to do a spectrum of life and death, you have life, unconsciousness, and then you have death, and then you have what you call the fate worse than death. And that's sort of what I call damnation. This is when you die. And, you know, you die in such a way that you Know you're damned.

Yeah, well, yeah. And I would say in this, there was. This was. Even like, if he died, he'd be a hero, you know.

So there was even this level of like.

Well, it's a little bit. It would be an unnatural death in a way because he would be. He would be cast out of humanity. You know, if you look at it in big thematic terms, he would be the only man to die on a distant planet. And that's an unnatural death that, you know, when we die, we all sort of assume we're going to be dead. You know, we're going to die and fall into the ground and be part of Earth again. But he would. Would be exiled from Earth. So, I mean, in a way that would have been the threat of damnation. But damnation, I usually look at it in terms of, you know, have you done a moral wrong? Or are you. Are you. Do you have a fate worse than death? And we're going to talk about this later on when we talk about A Christmas Carol. But so anyway, the Martian does not sort of bring damnation into the equation beyond the fact that he could die on Mars, be the only person there who dies. And that. That's a little heroic too. So anyway, it. When. When I. Like in the differences in Silence of the Lambs, there's literal damnation. If you. In. In the case of Clarice Starling, if she doesn't sort of like throw her entire career and her put her life in jeopardy to save the woman who's stuck in the hole with Buffalo Bill, she will be spiritually damned. In her own mind, she will know, oh, my gosh, I did not try and save that woman when I could have. And for her to live with that guilt for the rest of her life would be a level of damnation. So let's move forward again. There's no internal genre. So I just wrote negligible on both. You probably just left it blank.

Yeah, I put none and then na.

Right.

Not applicable because. Yeah, he does it. He's the exact same person, I think. And that's the whole point is. Well, we'll get to that when we get to controlling idea. So now you have. You had on yours the narrative device. I didn't have that on mine, so I didn't even think about it. But I'm still. I mean, we talked about narrative device a few weeks ago and I'm still a little fuzzy on what that even means. So you have down comedic epistolary. What does that. Yeah.

Okay, this is great because this is going to sort of tie into.

The five clover genre mishigas that I have created. So remember, in the five clovers of genre you have, you know, you have the reality genre which is.

You know, is it realism, is it factualism, is it fantasy?

And because this is a hard science story, this is not possible at this time. What Andy Weir did was to think to himself what would it be like if this were possible now? And he rooted all of his work in real science, which is really an incredible feat and he does such a great job of it that you actually feel as if this is a realistic.

You know, story. But it is fantasy, it's science fiction, it's hard science fiction. So, you know, that is, is part of the reality genre. That's how I would classify. It's so well done that it almost feels like realism, but it's, it's actual.

Well, so I actually saw this article after the movie came out and it, the title was something like a disturbing. Number of people think the Martian is true story.

But, but yeah, like reading through it. I remember talking with a friend about the book early on again when it was self published and barely anybody heard about it. And we're talking about how like it seemed like Andy Weir had just read all this science and was like, well, I need to do something with all this knowledge, so I'm just going to put it in a book because there's so much like he walks you through, like how he distills hydrogen and turns it into water and like all this kind of stuff, but yet somehow it stays interesting.

Yeah, exactly. And that, that's, I'll tell you why it stays interesting. And, and I think he really nailed it in his narrative device. Now what we talk about, when we talk about narrative device is who is telling the story, what is the flavor of, of the sort of storyteller. And this is really a great thing to crack very early on because it helps you really get the flow of the story. Because if, you know, kind of like, oh well, this is kind of a grandfatherly storyteller, you know, sort of how to present that kind of quality just intuitively. So what Weir did here is he decided, look, this is a, this is a science fiction story. And what would be fun, I think this, I'm just, you know, extrapolating what I think maybe his thought process was instead of this being like all serious and dramatic like, like early, you know, the, the first season of Star Trek with William Shatner, you know, where everybody's very stoic and dramatic and every Everything is taken very seriously. What Weir decided to do for his narrative device was to present a guy who's sort of a dorky, fun kind of comedic sensibility. Somebody who's going to. We can relate to somebody who complains about, you know, the disco music on his boss's, you know, hard drive. This is the only music he can find. And it's driving him crazy. And, you know, the very first words of the book are like, I'm basically fucked up. You know that? I think that is the first line of the book, which was brilliant because.

There was that whole section too where it's like this two page argument that ends with him being able to call himself a space pirate.

Yeah, exactly. So it's sort of, you know, it's this really sweet kind of. This is a guy who's facing imminent death and so what he does to get away from that reality is to be funny about it. So comedy is all about not dealing with real truthful emotion. It's about avoiding emotion and truth, emotional truth at all cost. So if this was very like, how am I gonna stay alive? It would get kind of pedantic and boring after a while. But because this guy's a fun guy to be around, you do find yourself being really interested in hydrazine and how is he going to get water, how is he going to grow his potatoes and all that sort of thing. So. And the epistolary element is that Weir was like, I'm just going to use what Captain Kirk used in Star Trek. I'm going to do a Captain's Law. So what he did is he has, you know, it's Watney. The lead character's name is Mark Watney. Mark Watney is writing his diary entries for the logbook of the mission. So.

Right off the bat.

The name of each one is the Sol, which is Mars Day. What day he's on Mars. So it's like Sol 36. So he's been on Mars 36 days and that's the log entry for that day.

Right. And it's fantastic because with that kind of structure immediately in place for the reader, they feel like, oh, I know this kind of story. This is like, you know, this is like the captain's log of Star Trek. Or this is like any number of diary entry kind of storytelling devices. It feels familiar. You know what's going to happen. You know, you're sort of in the, in the cockpit of the cockpit of the guy's life who's writing the diary entries. So his narrative device is comedic Epistolary meaning it's a funny guy writing diary entry. And that's a really great idea.

So you have that. Is there like a list of narrative devices somewhere that I would find comedic epistolary?

No. Okay.

Part of what an editor does is he's constantly, or she is constantly thinking about.

What'S at play here. How do I keep this story consistent? How do I make sure that the author doesn't fly off the rails, introducing a narrative device at the very beginning of the story and then abandoning it later on never to come back to it? Now he does shift to third person omniscient later on when, you know, when we head back to Earth. And that's in the beginning of the middle build.

But the reason why I always track narrative devices and the reason why you should think of them as a writer is that they're really, really helpful. They're really, they give you so much information and they, they always kind of put you back on track. If you fly off the rails and you decide to go into the backstory about Hydrazine a little bit too long, you're going to read that passage. Later on you go, this doesn't make any sense that this guy was going, would, would go into such depth about Hydrazine when he already knows all that information and he's writing for an audience of NASA people. He's not thinking that this is going to be read by normal everyday Joe. So that's a really great device and it basically stops you from going overboard with explanation.

So the one I reread was the original that came out self published. Like there's some spelling mistakes and things. So I was wondering if there was any differences. And one, one of the ones I wondered is there was like three spots in the book where he, he throws in a completely different narrative device. So there's. So yeah, it's first person, him making these log entries for him. And then it's third person back on Earth where you hear a conversation, that kind of thing. But there's a few spots. One in particular when he's going into the final canyon and he flips the rover. You remember that part?

I do.

And there's this one space and I'm. I don't know if it's in the, the version you've read, but it was in mind where like all of a sudden your third person on Mars where you watch him like skid out, it tells like what happens and that the rover flips over and you don't know what happens to him because he's inside. And I was. I was a little kind of jolted because it broke. What. And that was the only time he did it in the entire book. Was that in the version you read?

Oh, man. This is going to be embarrassing, Tim. But I really can't remember. Okay, that's. That's really something that would be interesting to know. So it wouldn't.

I'm going to. If it got cut, because I remember feeling.

Well, I know his editor and his guy named Julian Pavia, and he works at Crown Publishing, and Julian's a terrific editor, and I suspect he might have tweaked that, but I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna say that he did or didn't, because I kind of think that you shouldn't do that. That's my. You know, I think if that is in the final book, it would be an error that, you know, because the book is so good and the storytelling, it's not going to make it not work. You know, it's not going to make the right. Not work. So. But I would. I would have advised him to go back to the first person for that.

Yeah. Because, like, thinking back to the first time I read it, I don't remember thinking, oh, well, that was weird. Like, that really messed up the book for me, you know. But it didn't stop you, I bet.

I bet it did stop you for a second. Then you're like, well, who cares?

Yeah, I just want to know if he lives or not, so.

Exactly.

But, yeah, it was interesting because just there was like. There was that spot. There was another spot where like all of a sudden he starts foreshadowing to the hab, ripping apart.

And you start like. He starts, like, kind of foreshadowing. You're seeing these workers build something. But it's a completely different narrative device than the rest of the book. And again, it felt weird. It felt like it was kind of shoved in there.

Yes.

That's why you really want. You want to be able to track everything. And that's why the story grid spreadsheet is such a good idea to do, because it'll stop you. Because you have to fill in the narrative device for every scene that you write in the spreadsheet. So if you see that you switch so haphazardly, you're going to catch that very quickly and you're going to fix it. But if you don't do spreadsheets, then that can happen. And I'm sure Andy Weir does not follow the story grid.

Not yet.

You have the point of view as first person, third person I thought that was free and direct. Is that not the same thing?

It is free and direct style. It's not really, because first person just means that you use the word I. So because Watney's writing.

Diary entries, he's using the word I, and he's sharing his thoughts and he's sharing his feeling. The difference between first person and free and direct style is that free and direct style is this sort of hybrid between third person and first person in that you have an omniscient narrator. In the case of Silence of the Lambs, you have Thomas Harris, who's writing this story, and he's talking about. And he's putting Clarice Starling into situations. And then now. And then, he will actually use her thoughts and put them into italics on the page. For example, when she goes to meet Chilton at the psychiatric, you know, hospital. And Chilton's the. Just to remind everybody, Chilton was like this skeezy loser who runs the psychiatric hospital. And he kind of comes on to Clory Starling, and she realizes that this guy's really a creep. And so, you know, we get her thoughts like, what an asshole. You know, on the side, on the page. That's free indirect style, where we're getting inside the brain of the lead character.

But it's also written in third person. Now, Jane Austen is, like, a master of this. And Flaubert, this is really where it started was like, in the. In the late 1900s, maybe a little bit Stendahl maybe did it a little bit. And. And now it's sort of like, you know what? A lot of people use order to get you inside the head of a character without using first person. I know that's a little bit long and convoluted, but first free and direct style is a combo plate between third person and first person. That's not really in this book because we don't get a lot of thinking in this book. This is all about action.

Yeah. Okay. So free and direct is more. It almost sounds like third person that occasionally dips its toe into first person.

Yeah. But you can only do it. You can't do it for more than one character in one scene. So you can't go into somebody's head.

Like Thomas Harris couldn't do Chilton's.

Brain and Starling's brain at the same time because then it would just be too weird.

Okay.

But he does go into Crawford's brain. When Crawford has his own scenes and Starling is nowhere to be found.

That goes to point of view. But the great thing about the Martian is that it's a very, very simple story. It doesn't mean it was easy to write. It's a very straightforward action story that uses first person and third person and that's it. There's no deep thoughts, no deep feelings, no internal Ajita here. This is just a great thrill ride from beginning to end.

Okay, so Object of Desire was pretty straightforward. I have to live and escape Mars. And you said once to go home. There is no deeper need. So that was pretty straightforward.

Right.

I thought it was interesting too.

He doesn't even talk about his. Like he mentions his parents a couple times, but there was like no talk of like, I want to see anybody on Earth.

You know.

The only people he talked about were his crewmates that were, that were on the ship Hermes going back to Earth without him.

Yeah, yeah, it's. That was a wise choice.

Because, you know, why get into this guy's personal life? You know, he's a scientist. The lead character, he's a simple guy, you know, he loves science. His closest relationships are with the other astronauts of his crew and he loves his mom and dad. The end.

We don't want to hear about his sweetheart back home. Or, you know, I'm glad he doesn't have kids. I'm glad he doesn't have a wife because if he did, then it gets very. Like in the movie Gravity when she has that. I'm sorry, but I found it a little bit cheesy when she's having the crisis moment about the death of her daughter and all this rigmarole. I just wanted her to get back to Earth. And when she has that, that suicidal moment.

Where George Clooney comes into the spaceship while she's, you know, considering killing herself, it just didn't. That seemed like a stretch to me and it seemed like somebody trying to add more gravitas to the story than it really needed.

But yeah, I like that the book was so straightforward of like he. It's like it's my job to live and so I'm going to just do what I can to live, you know, like so, okay, so controlling idea theme. I had science and this is where we start to diverge and basically don't find each other again for the rest of the fool's cap. So I put science and level headedness can rescue you from impossible situations. And you have individual ingenuity plus community equals survival.

Yes.

So, well, I guess I have science and level headedness and that would be the same as ingenuity.

I think the Message, the simple message and the controlling idea of the story. It requires not just individual ingenuity because Watney has plenty of that. It also requires community. He needs the crew to come back and get him. And he also needs all those wonky guys at the Jet Propulsion Lab and at NASA to come to his aid. And, you know, especially another individual who comes up with the maneuver that will, you know, eventually save his life. Rich Purcell. You know, if he doesn't have a Rich Purcell, he's not going to live. You know, if his crew doesn't come back to get him, he's not gonna live. So he can't do it by himself. He needs the community. And I think this is a global. A global controlling idea that needs to be reinforced in our everyday life. And we all say stories are really important because they teach us about how to navigate our worlds. And here's a perfect example. Here's this really fun story about. It's a science fiction story about a guy stranded on Mars. But underneath all of that is this very, very important message that says, hey, everybody needs to be themselves. Everybody needs to be an individual, because everybody has certain talents that will enable them to, you know, to survive. But without other people, we're lost. We are exiled. So I know this sounds super deep, but it's true. And this is the important element. This is one of the major reasons why this book and this movie are so successful, is because they reinforce these things that we all kind of take for granted, or we need to be reminded about these things. We need to remember, hey, I can be the smartest guy in the world, but if I don't have people supporting me, who care about me, who will risk their lives to save my life, then what's it all about? It's about community. So community plus individuality will let us survive. If we don't all come together and solve global warming sooner rather than later, we're going to destroy our Earth now. That's terrible. We have to be reminded. We all have to come together as a community. We have to leverage individual genius in order to save ourselves. That's the message of the Martian, and it's a great message.

Okay.

So before we dive into beginning.

So what's next is the beginning, hook, middle build and ending payoff. And then the inciting, incident, complication, crisis, climax and resolution for each of those. Yeah, so this is where I started to get fuzzy because.

I had trouble coming up with one complication. Because in the book, it's like, first he runs into this problem, and then he Fixes that problem. Then he runs into another problem, and he fixes that problem. I mean, it's just that that's the entire book. And so when I was trying to nail down, like, I was. Guess I was looking for an overall complication that. That kind of covered everything.

So. So let me just kind of go over what we have down, and then we can talk about that. So, okay, inciting incident is I have. Watney gets left behind. You have the same thing, except you have wounded. Watney is marooned on Mars. So on the complication, you have need water to grow food. And this is where I was kind of getting fuzzy, because I was looking for, okay, what's the first part of the story? That's roughly 20%. What's the middle part of the story? That's roughly 50%. And then what's the ending payoff? And so I put down for the beginning hook complication is there's no way to survive until they can rescue him.

Because at first, once he survives the inciting incident, he realizes, like, there's. There is no possible way for him to survive. That's the. And but you have a very specific one, which is he needs water to grow food. So I'm just fuzzy on, like, what.

Well, let me just jump in right there, because it's a good point. The important thing to remember about the Fool's Cap, you know, one page is that you don't want to. You don't have to get the whole book on here. What you want are sort of guideposts. And the reason why you do the Fool's Cap, either before or after you complete a draft. Usually it's. I think it's a good idea to do it both times is to just sort of give yourself some guideposts so you don't have to get jam every complication into each one of these sections in a brilliant way. You just need one. And the reason your complication is perfectly valid. My complication is valid, too. It's an escalating. It's a progressive complication from the one that you're talking about. You're talking about the primal complication of the story at the very beginning. There's no way this guy can survive unless he is rescued. Okay, that's totally cool. Now, the beginning hook for me is. I'll just talk about it globally. Beginning hook is, you know, it's establishing, you know, the world, in a way. It's establishing.

You know, the predicament. And it's like the beginning hook of the movie Rocky, which we Talked about a while back, the first Rocky I heard. The new one's great. I haven't seen it yet. But the beginning of Rocky takes a while because we want to get into the world, we want to learn. And Stallone, who wrote the screenplay, knew, hey, you know, we need to get a sense of who this Rocky guy is. So it takes a good 20 minutes, a good 20 pages a screenplay, before you even get the inciting incident of the main story, which is when they say to Rocky, hey, we're gonna give you a shot at the championship. It's the same thing here with the Martian, is that Weir knew, hey, I've got to establish this world, and I've got to make it interesting. And I gotta sort of suck the reader in the best way possible. So he gives us a big chunk at the beginning, which is just on Mars. And it's dealing with the realities of this guy's situation. So your complication is perfectly valid. Mine is, too, because he realizes he has to grow food. He has to grow his own food. And the order to grow food, he has to make water. In order to make water, I went all the way up to the crisis point of what I think the crisis of the beginning hookage is, which is that he realizes the only way he's going to be able to make water is he's gonna have to make little explosions. He's gonna have to bond hydrogen and oxygen together from the hydrazine, and that's gonna require a flame. So that's a crisis moment. That's a, like, best bad choice situation. I either, you know, I either risk blowing up the entire place and myself with it, or I starve to death. You know, which one am I going to do? That is the crisis of the beginning hook of the story. Do I risk blowing up the hab or starving? And the climax is he chooses to risk blowing up. And he almost does blow himself up, which was a really smart choice by Weir because it wasn't easily solved. He just barely didn't die.

Yeah. So it was. That's an interesting way, because I was looking.

I was looking at this as, okay, I need to kind of wrap up the whole thing, the whole beginning hook in this kind of. So I have. The crisis is. And. And this is where I knew writing it down this was weak. So I have the crisis is, will he try to live or die? The climax is he decides to do everything he can to live. And then the resolution is. So he gets to work, basically.

And that's a little unspecific, right So.

I was thinking that's the way it should be where yours was much more specific.

But, yeah, you want to be really specific.

So what bothered why I didn't think that, though, is that that whole I need water, does something risky to get water.

And then, you know, he gets water, whatever, like, that happens. That series of events happens, what, 20 times in the book where, you know, oh, okay, I need this thing. It's really dangerous to get that thing. I'm going to go get that thing anyway.

And then it.

And then it resolves. And so it was just. I was thinking it needed. The fool's gap was more overall instead of extremely specific. So when I think of it as signpost, it's a little easier to think of instead of, like, overall.

Well, I think it's really important to be really specific on your foolscap because.

You have to pick out the very specific active moment, not the general thing, because generalities.

They make you a little bit lazy. And when you have to say. Like when I say you have to tell me the exact place in that book or in that story that is the global. That is the climax of the beginning hook, you really have to rack your brain because you have to say to yourself, you know, all of those little progressive complications have to lead to a very dramatic moment. And there are big dramatic moments that happen at the end of the beginning hook, at the end of the middle build, and at the end of the ending payoff. And they are specifically events that are bigger than everything else. So the reason why I chose the water thing for the bending hook, beyond the fact that it's almost at the end of.

The first person.

Diary entries, is that it goes to a very critical decision. And that critical decision is, I could blow myself up. Here I am facing death by lighting this match or by using this cross of wood to create this flame. This is the last thing you want to do in space, is to have flames. And it's a setup later on for the ending payoff, too. You know what the ending payoff of this story is? Is that they have to blow up that hatch.

Oh, man, I didn't even think about that.

So it's a setup. So remember when I always say your beginning hooks and your ending payoffs have to sort of mirror each other.

And he said, you know, Weir did this.

I don't.

I can tell you this. I will bet you he did not consciously think of that. I think he did it organically. And because we're all so good with story, he just. It was almost like coincidence. And I think if. If anybody ever asked him, he might say, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's true. You know, I guess it does mirror. There's an explosion at the beginning. And there's an explosion at the end. And they both. Both of those explosions saved the guy's life. Yeah.

And where. That one is a little. When you say that, I see it, but I didn't see it without it. Where, like. Did you. Did you read the bird box yet?

No. So read chunk of it. I. You know, I had to do this.

Yeah.

I'm sorry. Yeah. So I'm gonna. Again, spoiler alert for bird box. So I'm gonna spoil it for you, too.

That's okay. That's okay.

So it starts with her finding out she's pregnant. And it ends with her giving birth. Sure. Which sounds so straightforward. But it's done so well in the book, which I raved about that a few weeks ago. So I won't do it again. But. But I saw it in that one where. This one. Anyway, so what I think is interesting here is. So you have the. For. For. On your full scap. You have him going after water. So it's basically the first big problem he has to face once he, you know, figures out he's there. The inciting incident. And then in the middle build. Which I actually realize now. We had the same thing. Well.

Oh, yeah, we did have the same thing where I have the complication. Again, I was not specific on my inciting incident and complication. But our crisis was the same, which is, you know, you have. Do we risk all for one? And I have. Are they same. Same thing in the book, which is, are we going to send Hermes back with six astronauts to get him. Or are we going to just send him supplies and hope that lasts until the next mission?

Right.

And then the climax is that they do the Rich Purcell maneuver. And I have the Hermes disobeys orders and goes after him, which is the same thing.

Right.

And then the. You have the resolution as the team goes back to save Watney. I have NASA does the supply run to Hermes. And so what I think is interesting in yours, that is that you have this very specific thing. Which is he's got to get water to grow food and that. And then you have the team goes back to save Watney. And then everything in the middle is just.

Building. Middle, build. Building towards that event.

Yes.

So now I see a little bit better about how to use this foolscap, which is. Yeah. So the. My first post in the ground was, you know, he gets stuck on Mars. What's the first thing he's got to do to survive? Very specific. And then the next post is, the Hermes crew goes. His crewmates go back to get him. And then now when I go to actually write the book, I'm just filling in between those two.

That's right. You've got, you know, you've got your map out and you're. You're in New York. And, you know, you have to get to, you know, Columbus, Ohio. And then from Columbus, Ohio, you know, you have to get to Denver. And then from Denver, you get to la. So that's exactly. That's exactly why you do these things. And it also. The middle build of this. Of this story, you know.

This is a great example of somebody who really loves his research. And he loves all the minutiae of science and physics and all that great stuff. And he does it in such a way that involves. It's very humane.

It's not boring. Because everything doesn't work out.

Most of the time, everything screws up. Whenever one of these people in this story thinks that they've got a solution, it doesn't work. And then they have to work their brain on the fly. And so what I think Weir is so good at doing is never accepting and cheating. He does not cheat.

What do you mean by cheat?

By cheating? It's like. Well, I think this is. You always have to have plans and little set pieces and an action story. And. And so a lot of people, when they're writing an action story, say, okay, I know what I'll do. I'll have my protagonist decide that in order to make water, he's going to use the hydrazine. And then he's going to bond the hydrogens and the oxygens. And then he'll be able to get water. So he'll just burn the water. He'll just burn the hydrazine, and it'll make the water. And they won't have the explosion. Right. They won't say that the protagonist made a huge mistake. He miscalculated. He's not as smart as everybody thinks he is. And he beats himself up. He did not weigh in the factor that he was exhaling oxygen into the atmosphere at the same time he was doing his calculations. So with the excess of oxygen, it caused the explosion.

Yeah, I can remember other times he did that, too. Like when he. When he was making the bedroom for his long trip. And so he cut up the hab. And when he first put it back together, like, there was holes. So he had to fix that. And then when he first tried to inflate his bedroom, the whole thing popped apart and deflated.

Right.

You know, so that happened over and over where he would try and it would fail. And he's like, well, now what am I going to do?

Exactly. And it's that. I mean, this is what. You know, a really great action writer is constantly doing that to themselves. They're constantly saying, I cannot accept the fact that this guy was successful on the first chance, because nobody is ever successful on the first try of doing anything. So a reader will intuitively say, oh, that's. I don't believe it. There's no way that would have worked. But once they fail and then fix it, then. And then it progressively gets more and more difficult and more and more difficult and more and more difficult. And the way he solves the problem of communicating, I mean, it. This is just a great action story writer who really loves the minutiae of active choices and active failures. And you've got to load. You've got to have so much of this stuff in an action story because you don't have any of those moments where the guy can sit in the corner like Hamlet and contemplate the loss of his loved ones back home, you know, because he's inherently saying that at the very beginning of the story. This is an action story. It's going to be kind of funny. We're going to avoid all the big dramatic moments. We're just going to make it play it as it. As it goes. We're going to play it as it goes, and we're going to. It's going to be as if you were at NASA and as if you were at the Jet Propulsion Lab. And here we go. And you go for the ride because, you know this. You're in the hands of a guy who did the research and did the work.

Yeah. Oh, man. There are so many things that.

Yeah, he.

The amount of research that went into this book. Now my guess is he was. It was. You know, 90% of it was in his head already because he just likes this stuff. And then it was like, okay, I'm gonna make a story.

But okay, so let's get to the ending payoff. So actually, we're pretty in sync here.

So I have.

Watney has to get to the mav, which is the rocket that's far away. You have that Watley. He's got to get there. Now, my complication is.

I have.

Driving to the.

Yeah, driving to the MAV was a complication. And then taking off you have, Watney burns out the Pathfinder. So no more direct communication. So talk about that.

Yeah, yours works, too. Mine is a minor complication. Yours is a much larger complication. Complication again, you don't have to. You can put down whatever complication you want here. You just got to make sure you have one, at least one. So I think we're both right on that count. Now.

The crisis of the ending payoff is brilliantly executed. And again, it goes to what we were just talking about with the crisis at the beginning. It requires an explosion and, you know, all the physics and all the work that he did to lead up. The great thing about the ending payoff is that things just keep screwing up.

It's never going to get there. They're never going to make it. They're always off track. They're always off course, and they have to keep thinking on the fly. And each one of the members of the team contributes to these solutions. It's another great element of, you know, the controlling idea. You know, all those guys on the crew, if they were one person, it wouldn't be as good. Right. Because we want to feel like there has to be a community of people pulling together to do this. And the real heroes of this story are. Those are his fellow astronauts. Right?

Right.

Because in every action story, you have to have a hero, a villain, and a victim. Now, the victim here is Watney, who's our protagonist. The villain is the environment. It's an indifferent universe. Right. And the hero are those. Those five crew members who decided to turn back and go get that one guy. All for one and one for all. Okay, great story.

I have to stop here and take a little bit of a side side note. So I was watching Lord of the Rings with. With Candace, my wife, a while ago, and we were talking, and at the end of the. The third week, for some reason, we sit down and watch all three of them, like, once a year. So at the end of the. The movie, the third movie, I was like, frodo isn't the hero of that movie. Sam is. And when you said that, it made me think like, Frodo was the victim, Sam was the hero. Would you agree with that?

Well, this is gonna be a big confession, Tim, but I'm not a huge Lord of the Rings guy, but I do. You know, I remember reading the books when I was a kid. The thing about Lord of the Rings, and a lot of people ask me about this is because they're all. Everybody's fascinated by it, and it's such A large universe. There's so many books in it. There's so many characters.

Well, I will confess, I hate the books. I cannot get through them. The movies I like. But I have tried to read the book I don't know how many times, and it was. And I just. I usually can't even get past the part where he, like, gets lost in the. Like, right when he starts out. It's just so long and boring. But.

But there's a whole. There's a whole clan of. Of heroes. You know, that whole group of people who come together that. The elf woman and the archer and the. You know. Yeah.

Because all along he would. Frodo would have never made it without everybody else.

Exactly.

And at the very end. Now I'm just going based on the movie because, like I said, I haven't read the book. But at the very end, like, Frodo just sits down. He's like, I'm not climbing this mountain. And Sam carries him the rest of the way. Right. And that's when I was like, frodo's not the hero. Sam's the hero. Because Sam stuck with it when he should have stopped. And Frodo was the one that kept trying to stop.

Yeah.

Anyway, so, okay, so the resolution. So the crisis is they got to set off the bomb. The climax is they go out and they get Watney and. And they pull. And they pull Watney back into the ship so he's saved. And it's a pretty abrupt ending. It's like, they get him. They're all happy. There's this one short scene where he's back on Earth and a little kid asked him if he's going back, if he'd go back to Mars. And he's like, nope. And that was the end.

Yeah, you know, that's. You just needed that little scene at the end for the resolution. And we are wisely put it in there because if it just ended, you know, he's in the ship, you need to come down a little bit. So. And he makes it, you know, a little comedic too, at the end, you know.

Well, I will say, because. Have you seen the movie yet?

Yeah, I did.

Okay. So. Holds extremely true to the book. It. The two. The two. Well, there's three significant changes to the end. The first is in the book. He talks about how if he punctures his hand in his suit, he'll be able to fly around like Iron Man. But he never does it in the book and he does it in the movie. So I kind of got a kick out of going back and reading the book and remembering that he didn't actually do that in the. In the. In the book. The second is the captain goes out to get him in the movie and she. She doesn't. In the. And I like the book better because it stayed true to their jobs. It was like Beck is the guy that's in charge. And then I hated the ending monologue by Matt Damon at the end of the movie. I just thought it was like a complete waste. I wish they would have just ended it with him sitting on the bench and saying he's never going back.

Yeah.

I don't. I don't really think it's, you know, it did not. It didn't kill the movie. It was sort of like, you know, it's like, we're paying Matt Damon $50 million. Let's get a full day out of him.

You know.

I don't want Matt Damon to clock out, you know, before 9:30 in the morning. We're going to do a scene and he's going to be Matt Damon for at least 20 seconds at the end of this movie because he was the perfect casting choice. It's Matt Damon. Everybody wants Matt Damon to come back, you know.

Yeah. So. And I.

That's like, that. That's a dollars and cents Hollywood decision if there ever was.

Yeah. So I. And I broke down because I want Candace to watch the movie with me, and I had to tell her that he survives or she was. She wasn't going to watch it, of course.

Okay, so that is pretty much the full SCAP global story grid for the Martian. Is there anything you wanted to add to that?

There really isn't. The only. I'll just say one thing. Now, the fullscap global story grid is one element of two that you need to create the actual, you know, nifty whiz bang graph of the movement of a story. The second one is the story grid spreadsheet. And so what you would do to create the story grid spreadsheet would be to go through each chapter in the book. And you can see all this@storygrid.com and, you know, fill out this very large Excel spreadsheet that, you know, shows the movement from scene to scene. What we've just gone over are the major movements of the story. Now you can do this exact same thing for each scene. And then once you have the spreadsheet and the foolscap done, then you can do this really cool graph like I did for the Silence of the Lambs, that will show the actual Movement, you know, the positive to negative charge and the movement of the story on an actual graph, which people seem to love. And I would certainly do it. It would just, you know, maybe I will do it. So if I do do it, it'll be on this, it'll be on the notes, but I probably would do something less specific than the full deal I did for Silence of Lambs just to. Just to be easier to get that done. But anyway. Well.

And you wouldn't recommend that somebody tries to do that before they write the book?

No, no, it's really. It's really sort of like a fun infographic for story nerds. The story grids themselves.

They'Re a great thing to have as reference for moments in your own crises when you're writing and say, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do about the hero at the mercy of the villain scene? And if you have a whole collection of story grids, you just walk over to your bulletin board, you look at the hero at the mercy of the villain scene of your favorite stories, and you go, oh, that's how they solved it. So it will help inspire you to create your own answers to your own problem.

All right, well, let's. Let's dive into A Christmas Carol. So as a holiday thing, we're looking at the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

So I just have to say this is, like, one of the most perfect stories ever created.

Well, you know, this was the first time I didn't do my own full scout for this one, but this was the first time I've actually read the book. And what was funny is, like, as I'm reading the book, I'm remembering, like, the. The Mickey Mouse version and then, like, Scrooged with Bill Murray, like, all the different iterations of this story and realizing I'd never actually read the source material.

Oh, it's so good. And it really. It just takes you back to that era. There's a. My favorite adaptation is one with Alistair Sim, or Sim, and he's. He's just the impeccable Scrooge, and he's. It's such. And it's in black and white. It feels so Dickensian. So just for fun, Tim, let me just run this through, because this is a great example of a very simple story that has both an external and an internal genre and is impeccably done. And it's relatively short. Yeah, yeah, it's very short. It's only five. I think it's five chapters. And within those chapters, there are maybe 12 scenes, tops. Maybe 15 scenes. So anyway, the, the global genre, this is a redemption plot.

And a redemption plot I've written about it. Storygrid.com it's one of my favorite kinds of stories. It's where we have a shift of moral, you know, moral stature or worldview from a negative one to a positive one and somebody redeems themselves. So the global genre is redemption. Now the external genre is a horror story. It's a horror supernatural. And that's because we have ghosts who come and arrive on the scene. The external value of the horror story moves from life to unconsciousness, to death, to the fate worse than death damnation.

And it's very. Horror is sort of a turbocharged action story. And the fate worse than death is living.

For eternity shackled with chains and having to. I'll get into it when I talk about the visit of Jacob Marley.

The internal genre is morality redemption. And all this terminology again is in the book. The internal value at stake for a morality redemption story.

It's about altruism. It's about moving from a place of pure selfishness to being altruistic, meaning caring for other people.

One other person, a tribe of people, and ultimately all of humanity more than you do yourself. So the spectrum moves from, you know, selfishness, which is sort of disguised as altruism. It's somebody who pretends that they're very, you know, they're. I'm only here. Like politicians always come to mind. Like I'm here for the people, you know, and meanwhile they're all about themselves. And then that, that would move to just purely selfish, somebody who's straightforwardly selfish. And that's the case of Ebenezer Scrooge in the Christmas Carol. This is a guy who does not hide the fact that he's a miser, that all he cares about is money and work. Then it moves to caring for one other person. So if you care for one other person.

It can become an obsession. Then it moves to a group of people and then ultimately all of humanity more than yourself. So I'm quickly going to go over the obligatory scenes and conventions and redemption stories because somebody, everybody loves the redemption story. And I think a lot of people always, people always ask me, can you just give me all the answers to all the stories and then I can just do whatever I want? And this one is actually, I love doing these because they're, they're my favorite stories. Okay, so the first thing is you need a self obsessed protagonist. All they do is care about themselves. And with Scrooge, you don't get much better than that. He's kind of like the archetype of the redemption plot to begin with. The second thing is you need a spiritual guide as a sidekick. And of course, we have that here. We've got Jacob Marley, who plays who is Scrooge's old business partner. And Marley was as much of a miser as Scrooge was, so he's a great sidekick. And then the third thing you need is the truth will out. This is the moment when the protagonist discovers their fleet, to their horror, just how terrible a person they are. And it's a pivotal moment in a redemption story. It's that moment when they go, oh my gosh, I am terrible. I just cannot believe how terrible I am. And that is usually the truth Wild scene usually comes at the climax of the middle bill, just before it moves into the ending payoff. And then right after you have the truth wild scene, they usually have a moment of contemplating the abyss. And this is another convention of the redemption story where your protagonist contemplates the fact that they're going to rot in hell, they're going to be damned. And then you have the big event. The big event is when the protagonist makes that big decision and that big action that changes the course of their life. They stop being one way and they become another. And then the final thing is you have a winning for losing resolution. And what that means is that your lead protagonist wins by giving up.

Their old way of thinking.

And usually. And also. So I'm just going to keep running through this because it's. It's just easier that way. Okay.

Go ahead.

See that? A lot of the obligatory scenes, as I've looked through a lot of this stuff and read your stuff, they seem very kind of end loaded. Like a lot of them come right at the end of the. At the end of the book. Like everything's building towards these obligatory scenes.

Yes, there's. In every single genre has a, you know, a core event, the most important event in the story. And so for the internal genres, the worldview, it's always a revelatory moment.

It's that moment when the worldview of your protagonist shifts and changes. In the action story, it's always the, you know, it's usually the hero at the mercy of the villains. And also for horror, thriller, crime stories, it's the. For crime stories, it's when you discover the perpetrator.

That'S the big core event when the perpetrator is outed. And then it becomes, will they, you know, will justice prevail or will it not? So each one of the genres, they have that big moment, that big core event. And for the redemption story, it's when the protagonist changes their worldview and changes the moral compass from purely selfish to altruist.

Now, the point of view for A Christmas Carol is third person omniscient. Charles Dickens is the master of the third person omniscient voice, which is the. The great narrator, the disembodied narrator who's sort of looking down from above in a godlike fashion, telling the reader a story. And Dickens is like, forget it. He's the king.

Okay, now, for the redemption story, the objects of desire are usually the lead protagonist wants respect or third party validation. And what I mean by that is they want the community to recognize them as a very, very important person. And all they really want is that sort of recognition and respect. But what they need is enlightenment. They need to understand what's really important about life.

And so they're chasing respect and third party validation, believing that they will eventually reach a place of nirvana and happiness. When they get that validation, like becoming a New York Times bestseller, a lot of people think, oh, boy, once I'm on the bestseller list, everything will be great. And that's usually just the beginning of your problem.

So the character needs in light. Now, the controlling idea theme of a redemption story is just so great because it's one of those messages we all need to hear over and over again. And I get this from Robert McKee, and it's kind of a long sentence, and feel free to read it on the notes, but I'm going to read it anyway. The compulsive pursuit of contemporary values will destroy you. But if you see this truth in time and throw away your obsession, you can redeem yourself. Basically, what this means is that once you discover that getting a McMansion and a new Ferrari is not going to make you happy, then you can redeem yourself. You can understand that chasing all the riches in the world is not going to make you happy. What's going to make you happy is to have a community with your fellow man. Okay, so the beginning hook of A Christmas Carol is, hey, it's Christmas Eve. And that's a coincidental inciting incident for the beginning hook. It's Christmas Eve. So what that entails is next day is Christmas, and everybody gets off for Christmas. Now, the complication for the beginning hook of the story is.

Scrooge is this miser. He's sort of like a banker, probably some kind of run some kind of Factoring business back then, I'm not really sure. But he's interrupted during his work, so it's complicated because he likes to do his calculations. And these people keep coming in and saying, merry Christmas and good tidings, and would you like to donate to our poor folks fund? And he's finding it very, very irritating. The crisis of the story at the beginning Hook, is for Scrooge is. Is he going to call off work tomorrow? Is he going to give that guy Cratchit the day off for Christmas? And it's sort of like a best bad choice for him. He's thinking, it's not going to be, you know, if I let Cratchit off of work, I'm going to get behind on my workload. If I don't let him off, he's going to moan and be a baby for the rest of the year. So the climax of the beginning Hook, is Scrooge reluctantly agrees to give Cratchit the day off, only with the one condition, that he comes in early on the 26th. It's that kind of guy.

And then the resolution.

Of the beginning Hook is Scrooge goes home alone, and he has to walk through the streets where everybody's very happy. But Scrooge likes being alone, so he heads home. Now, that's the end of the beginning Hook, which is basically an introduction to the world of Ebenezer Scrooge, what it's like to, you know, be a miser. And, you know, a lot of us, you know, can sympathize with Scrooge sometimes because he makes very. He's a very smart guy, and, you know, he makes very good points about, you know, the fake frivolity of the holiday season. So it's a really great sucking in of the reader into the story, because either we think this guy is just funny to read about, or we relate to him a little bit.

It's like Larry David on Curb youb Enthusiasm.

Exactly. Larry David would be a great.

Well, you. I thought it was interesting. You just said it. You entered. You get introduced to the world of Ebenezer Scrooge. And that was the same thing that went along with the Martian, which is the whole point, kind of the whole thing about the beginning is this is now the world that he's living in. Yeah, okay. I just thought that was interesting.

Yeah. That's why you have to be really specific about your storytelling, because, you know, you want people to go into a new universe, so give them a little bit of the world. Have fun with it. You know, Dickens certainly had a lot of fun bringing you right into Scrooge's workspace. I mean, the way he talks about what a mind he. I'm like Cratchit. He gives him one lump of coal to heat his little space, the entire. I mean, it's crazy. It's just so delightful to read. Okay, so the middle build is really when. When things start to really get fun in a Christmas gale. So Scrooge goes home, you know, and of course, he doesn't like to use, you know, candles or anything. So it's. So it's pitch black on his way home, and he finally gets up to his door, and he's about to pull the knocker to pull his door open, and he notices that Jacob Marley, the face of Jacob Marley, is in the door knocker. And it's this apparition, and it's very strange. And Jacob Marley was as big of a miser as Ebenezer was, and he's dead. And in fact, Dickens begins this entire story by letting the reader know Jacob Marley is dead. He's absolutely dead. So when Scrooge sees Marley in the door knocker, it's a very, very sort of chilling inciting incident that, hey, things aren't. Are getting very weird.

Now, the complication of the middle build is that this is one of them. As Scrooge goes into the house, he's, you know, he's gonna go upstairs and stay in his little bedroom with his little eating, you know, chamber there, his reading fireplace. And as he's walking up the stairs, he swears that he sees a hearse with a dead body, you know, with horses going up his staircase as he's walking up. So there's another apparition that things are getting stranger and stranger and stranger for this guy as he's moving forward. Now, the crisis of the middle build is when Scrooge has to sort of say to himself, should he ignore these visions and sort of just maybe go to bed and try and get this night over with, or should he go seek help? Now, the last thing Scrooge is going to do is seek anybody's help. So he decides he's just going to ignore them. He's going to say, bah, humbug. He's going to talk to himself. Things are going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right. Now.

The climax of the Middle Build is when Jacob Marley comes to him and he literally walks through.

The bedchamber, walks through the walls, and he says to Scrooge, I'm Jacob Marley, I've come back from the dead. I am a ghost. I've been walking around for eternity with this chain of all of this money that I was groveling and groveling for when I was on Earth, and it's wearing me down. And I've come to tell you that you are going to be visited by three ghosts. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Christmases yet to Come. So Scrooge, at this point, he accepts that he's basically in his own mind going a little crazy, but he accepts it because he does not want to seek help. He doesn't want to be this crazy old guy running down the street saying, these ghosts are visiting me. So he's going to run this. Run this thing out until the very end. Now, the resolution of that acceptance in the middle build is that the first ghost, the first two ghosts, the ghosts of Christmas Past and the ghosts of Christmas Present, don't harm him. They sort of. They're pretty nice to him, actually. They. They take him on these journeys. They show him, you know, what. What life was like when he was a little boy. The. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge. You know. You know, you had a really good boss who was really nice to you when you were growing up, and he brought you a lot of joy. And Scrooge is starting to start starting to warm up, like, hey, you know, old Fezziwig or whatever his name. I think it was Fezziwig. He was a really, really good boss. And, you know, boy, you know, there was that woman I wanted to marry and, you know, I got really, really miserly at that time, and she told me she didn't want to marry me anymore. So the ghost takes him to see what happened to that woman, and she's happily married and they're having a wonderful Christmas. And so he's starting to warm up and he's accepting, you know, these. These truths about the choices that he's made in his life. Now, the next ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Present, you know, is nice to him, too. You know, when he wakes up from meeting with that guy, there's all these, you know, great treats in his. In his bedchamber. All the people in the street are happy and jovial. So these ghosts aren't like really scary ghosts. They're sort of, you know, spiritual companions.

Now, this leads all up to the ending payoff. A Christmas Carol is when the Ghost of Christmas Future, of Christmas Future comes. And this ghost isn't so nice. He doesn't even talk to Scrooge. He won't he's in a very dark cloak. Scrooge can't make his face out. He's basically the Grim Reaper. This guy is going to take Scrooge and make him face the realities of his future. And his future doesn't look so good. And he takes him to Cratchit's house and Cratchit's, and he shows him Tiny Tim has died. Cratchit's son, Tiny Tim has died because they don't have the money to give him the kind of medical attention that he needs. And this is really, really bumming out screw. Like, oh, boy, I don't. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I could have, you know, thrown the guy a few bucks and maybe saved his kid. That's not so cool. But that's not even the crisis. The crisis is when.

When Scrooge sees.

His. His grave.

The ghost takes Scrooge around town, and everybody is saying, oh, that's so great. That guy's dead. Oh, what a jerk that guy was. I couldn't stop understand that guy. And Scrooge is like, who are they talking about? Who are they talking about? And then the ghost takes him to his grave and he sees that he's talking about Scrooge. And it's at this crisis moment when Scrooge has to. This is the big, big moment, the big event when Scrooge has the truth will out scene. He discovers that he's been a terrible person. And if he doesn't do something now, he's going to be just like Jacob Marley and have to walk around through eternity dragging all the money that he made on earth.

So he pleads with the ghost for a second chance.

To live. He doesn't want to die. He thinks he's going to die. He thinks that this ghost has brought him to the end of his time and he's going to die.

And so the climax of the story is that he doesn't die. He wakes up the next day and he's a completely changed person. And the resolution, of course, is when Scrooge sends the boy down below and he says, hey, what day is it? And he says, it's Christmas Day. And he says, go get the best, finest turkey, the prized turkey, and send it to Cratchit's house. And then he goes and he visits his nephew. And then he becomes very friendly with Cratchit. And he, you know, he gives him a raise and he takes care of Tiny Tim and he's a changed man. And that's the resolution and the ending payoff of the story, it's a beautiful story. It's superbly done. It's a message that is eternal. And it's one of Dickens best stories he ever wrote. And it's one of the best in Western culture, too.

Yeah, I find it, you know, when we first started talking about doing this, I just, I think it's interesting how, you know, the concepts you talk about in the Story grid hold true for such two vastly different types of story.

You just kind of threw out there, you know. Well, you know, you're in. You're getting introduced to Scrooge's world, and I'm like, oh, well, that's. I don't think. I don't remember you explicitly talking about that in Story Grid, but now I see through our conversations, like that's what you're trying to do in that beginning. Hook is not only, you know, hook them in with the story, but you're trying to kind of set some parameters around the world that you're inviting them into.

Yes, yes, that's a really good point. And it's, it's one I often forget talking about.

But, yeah, you've got to sort of. You've got to give the reader a sense of the universe that they're entering. And these are two great examples. Weir does such an amazing job of. You feel like you're on Mars when you're reading it. You just buy in immediately. And Dickens is so. His language is so. It's very accessible, but it also has a lilt to it. It has a really great industrial revolution, 18, whatever, 1800s feel to it. You can see the gas lamps on the street, you're in London, you can see the poor people, you can see the great apples and pears in the windows. And it gives you a real sense of what life was like back then. And it's, it's the same as it is now, except, you know, you had to use candles then and there was no Internet.

Thanks so much for hanging on for the entire hour and a half episode of this special edition of the Story Grid podcast. I hope you really enjoyed it and I hope you learned how running a movie or a book through the Foolscap Story Grid will help you understand that story better and help you write your own story better as well. As always, if you want more StoryGrid, all you have to do is go to storygrid.com, sign up for the newsletter.

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