What does Shawn think?

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. Now, for those of you that have been around for a while and been listening to all the episodes of StoryGrid, you know, whenever I turn in some writing to Sean, it's a little iffy on what the feedback is going to be. And so I had sent Shawn my manuscript, and now he's gotten a chance to read it, and we get his feedback and what we're going to do next. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, I think a lot of this episode may be in your court because I sent you the manuscript last week right before we recorded, so you hadn't gotten a chance to look at it, and then you sent me back kind of your rework of the first 3,000 words. But overall, now that you've. Well, one is, I'm wondering how much you've read of the manuscript because it's only been a week, and then how you feel about it so far.

Yeah, I've read the whole thing, and I think we've got all the materials that we need to create a really great book. I think what I love about the material is that it's extremely personal. And it goes to my theory that, and I'm not the only one who shares this theory, that with specificity comes universality. And so you're telling your story without, you know, sort of pulling out all of those tools that you initially wanted to just put string together in a kind of like almost like a, you know, spiral binder for people, I think are going to make the tools land better and stick in somebody's head. You know, it's like when Malcolm Gladwell talks about stickiness in the Tipping Point. That's what he's talking about. Stickiness being a thing that the reader immediately references when they hear a particular concept. So the way to create stickiness is to set really amazing scenes so that the imagery of the scene with the tool becomes indelible to the reader, and then they're able to recall the thing. Right. So it's sort of like that story I talk about during 9 11. One of the women in the tower, the second she heard that they were in distress, she immediately picked up her coat, got her purse and left the building. And pretty much everybody else in her company stayed put because she was an anomaly, because she acted without really having a lot of information, while the other people in her company tragically didn't have a story to tell themselves that would make them leave. So anyone facing that horrible kind of situation now will know immediately, I need to leave the building as soon as possible, because we're not sure what's going to happen next. So that story is something that anybody who is familiar with that story now knows. That's an operating procedure for them in moments of chaotic mayhem. What I need to do is to effectively leave the premises without panicking, but quietly and effectively getting out of the building. And so that's what a story can do. It can immediately click in a reader's mind when they face something similar. So, for example, in your book, you talk about very, very harrowing moments that we all face and all have faced something similar, our own lives. So the fact that you reveal that there was a moment when your wife went to the grocery store and had a full basket of groceries, had checked out all of the groceries, handed over the credit card, and it was rejected because you didn't fill, you didn't pay your bill. So that's a moment of great, great distress to anyone. Big idea having that in the book. If you just didn't want to put that in the book, nobody would remember what the tool is associated with that book. And the tool associated with that book is a very important one, which is, as I recall, it's something like, you need to take responsibility for the time that you spend. Every moment of your day is a choice. And so what you need to do is to track your choices and start making conscious decisions about what you spend your time doing. And then things like that won't happen to you, which is great. It's a cautionary tale with prescriptive underpinning. So anyway, the story, the way it is presented now for me is like, this is kind of where an editor with a lot of experience who knows what they want to do and has a vision, which is a lot of things. If you are lucky enough to work with somebody like that, then when you hand them this raw gold, this is like gold bullion as far as I'm concerned. Because what I can do is I can literally start from the beginning of this stuff and slice and dice it and, you know, like, vegematic it and add additional context and layers into it that will make it even more effective. Because if we just take A very large step backward and ask, you know, the fundamental story grid question. What's the genre of this book? What's the genre, Tim? It's a big idea nonfiction work. Okay, great. So we know that. So what do you need in the big Idea? You need ethos, logos, and pathos. All right? The ethos is your bona fides. Why should we read Tim Grohl's book about how to organize your life so that you can, you know, reach your goals? Well, you're a marketing guy. You're an expert in book marketing, and you've already written a book about bookmarking that has been very successful. Okay, so check. We've got sort of the ethos taken care of. The logos is sort of the logical elements within the book that make sense now. I'm going to get back to logos in a second. But the logical elements you have in the book are very strong right now because these are all tools that you have used yourself personally to change your life from one thing into another. All right? So the third thing is pathos, and pathos is another word for dramatic storytelling. So a big idea book needs all three of those things inside of it. So the big problem that we were having for the past year or so, you were reluctant to create the pathos, this story. So I could have said to you a year ago, hey, Tim, you need to put some pathos in here. And you would go, what? What are you talking about? And. Or. And then I could say, well, you need to tell a story. And then you go, oh, okay. And then you tell a story that's too generic. Right? It's sort of. It was sort of okay. You know, it was something people could relate to, but seemed sort of also someone who's withholding a lot of information. Not that you were doing it to. To trick anyone. You know, what we discovered is that you were kind of withholding the information to protect yourself. And you realized after some time, you know what? This isn't really protecting me. In fact, if I. If I could actually dump all this stuff on the page and share it for the rest of the world, I might even, like, kick it out of my bad part of my brain, and it will, like, cease to be a big deal to me anymore. And, in fact, I could probably laugh about it.

I'm not quite there yet, but. Yes.

Well, you'll get there. You will totally get there. Because, you know what funny people do is they tell the truth. And so it's kind of funny when you think about it. Oh, my gosh. And I mean, I bet you and Candace can laugh about it now to a certain degree. Remember that time I went into the grocery store, Tim, and you go, oh, my God. Yeah, that was crazy. So that's kind of what we've been doing over the last year is in my mind as your sort of developmental editor, as I'm developing you as a big idea book writer, I'm thinking, okay, how do I move Tim from having the ethos firmly established? And when you have an ethos firmly established, meaning you have, quote unquote, a brand or reputation in which you have an audience prepared to buy what you have to sell them, okay? That's a great big fat temptation. And Steve and I talk about this temptation in our weekly business calls a lot because you have to make choices. So when you have the ethos and the quote, unquote, brand of. I'm an expert in a particular field, okay? So that's number one. So inside of you, you're like, I'm not exploiting my brand enough. I am not creating enough value in order to put more money into my bank account. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying there is. But when you go short term thinking and say, I know what I'll do, I'll bang out a book. I'll bang out a book, 50 Tools to Get you what you want. And bang, I'm done. And I'll just have a list of. It'll be like maybe a hundred page book, and there'll be 50 tools in there. Each tool will be a page, page and a half. People will really appreciate that because the toolbox will just be in front of them and they'll buy it. And guess what? That is absolutely valid. And I think people would buy that, but they might just buy it and not read it. They might buy it and say, oh, this is a good reference book that I'll put on my shelf. And when I really want to go get my dreams, that's the book I'll go to. And guess what? They end up never reading it. They don't talk about it to their friends. You end up selling 9,000 copies, 11,000 copies, and then it slowly dies. And one day, five years later, you'll look at your, you know, your Kindle account and you'll say, gee, why aren't I selling any more of those Kindle editions of my 50 tools to get you what you want? I don't know. Well, anyway, I'll move on to something else. And so that's not a big idea. Book that's called of exploiting your ethos and in a prescriptive self help, you know, quick, here it is kind of situation. I'm not saying that people who do that are bad people. What I am saying is that they are solving a short term solution to getting some cash flow. And I'm not saying either that the tools that they're providing aren't good. I'm just saying that's not what you wanted book. It's a different book. It's a different book with a different goal. And at the very start, that's what you were talking about writing. And for better or for worse, I convinced you not to read that book because for me, yeah, I mean, just personally for me as an editor, I'm not interested in working on a book like that. You know, that's you don't need Sean Coyne to write that book. You really don't. And so that's not really interesting to me. And it wouldn't have been interesting to me as a publisher because I'm the publisher of Black Irish books. Steve is the editor in chief. And basically that means that we're both partners and we just have these silly titles. But any decision that we make in Black Irish Books, both Steve and I have to approve it. So if Steve doesn't want to do something and I do, we don't do it. If Steve wants to do something and I don't want to, we don't do it. We both have to agree. So I was not going to call Steve and say, hey Steve, Tim Grohl has this book. Very, very solid book, Self Help. It's prescriptive how to. And you know, we can bang this thing out and make a few bucks on it, but it's probably not going to backlist. And you know, this isn't a book that you're going to tell your friends to read. And he would say, do we really want to do that? Because you know, we only have so many hours left. I mean, I'm not trying to be morbid, but it really does come down to do I want to Because I'm going to have to do. I would have had to do all the marketing and cover and all that stuff that we've been talking about on the side. I'd have to do that for that book too. And when you don't really have an emotional investment in the title, you can do a good job and it can even become a bestseller, but it doesn't really make your life all that different from what it was before. And once you reach a place in your career where you've done that book, you've done it probably published and been a part of over 400 books. Probably more than that in my career. So once you're at the batter's box 400 times and you know your batting average, you know, it's kind of more interesting to wait for the. To the fastball over the middle so I can try and hit a home run. I'm not interested. You know, I love singles and doubles, and that's great. And I hate striking out, but I want to hit some home runs. I'm now at the point where I'm teeing up for home runs, because why not, you know, how many more Ed plate appearances am I going to get? So my point is that I think the raw material that you've given me is. It's similar to the raw material that Steve gave me 20 years ago when we created the War of Art. It was Steve's thing was very, very similar to yours in that it was a lot of story about Steve with a lot of really fascinating stuff inside of it. So now when you deliver that, then I started thinking to myself, okay, how am I gonna sell this piece of shit?

Not literally.

You just said it was a home run.

I know, that's what I'm. No, no, no. It's not a home run yet, dude. Okay.

I'm now stepping up to the plate. So when I say, how do I sell this piece of shit? All it means is how do I look at this from the point of view of a reading experience? What is the best way that we can present this material and add to it and subtract from it, organize it in a way that will have a very straightforward and addictive quality to it? How can we get people to start reading this thing and just before they know it, read the whole thing? The stories that you tell in this are the way to do that. But we need to have a surgeon's touch about sort of stringing them along and giving them little bits and pieces and moving them forward through design and sensibility and structure. So another thing that a publisher or an editor has to understand is don't try and come up with a brand new system if you've already created a system that has worked before. So when you sent this material, I said to myself, okay, this is a kind of a. Is a really nice through line story. How do I break it up into bits that will make the reader want to keep reading it? How do. And in addition to that, how can I add supportive material to the toolbox that Tim is describing here so that people just won't say, oh, that won't work for me. I don't think that's true. This is just one guy's opinion. Who cares? Blah. This guy seems kind of pathetic. This is weird. I don't get it. This won't work for me. I don't have a check for my parents. Nothing ever worked out right for me. This guy is completely. And on and on and on. Now, one of the things that we often do when we start thinking about those sort of reactions is to start trying to hedge our bets, right? So when I first started editing this, I kept, like, poking in paragraphs and saying, now for all of you out there who don't have parents who sent you a check, this book still has. You know, the point is, is that it might not be a check. It could be the fact that your brother said, you can stay in his garage, you know, and. And then I realized, no, if they can't make the leap from understanding that everyone has a check in some manner, shape, or form that they can use to get them out of trouble, then sorry, they're not the right audience for it. So anyone who's turned off by that, we have to say sayonara, God bless. We get it. You don't buy into this. That's perfectly fine. This book is not for you. So if you complain enough, we'll give you your money back. So that's what you don't want to end up doing. Because then you start trying to anticipate arguments against what you are writing and dumping your counter argument into a narrative that should just be left alone.

Yeah, I've learned that long ago. Like, it's that idea that, like, if nobody will love you unless there's people that hate you, like, if nobody reads this book and absolutely hates it, that means there'll be nobody that reads it and absolutely loves it. If I shoot for the middle, the most I'll get is somebody that thinks, oh, that was nice. So I definitely don't want to rub off the edges.

Okay, so back to sort of like, the structure of what I'm trying to get across here is that as now that I put on my editor hat, I'm thinking, and publisher hat, I'm thinking. Okay, so what. What are the givens here? Well, the givens are that Steve and I decided to publish this book. Great. The Black Irish Punching Boxing Glove is going to be on the spine. Does that mean anything? And whether or not it means to Anything to anybody else doesn't really matter to me.

Right.

What does the boxing glove mean to me? Sean Coyne, co founder of the publishing company. Okay, well, what it means is this is a publishing company devoted to really helping people raise the courage to pursue the things within them that will give them the most meaning. Okay, so what is the thing that sort of started Black Irish and that was the War of Art. And the War of Art was, you know, a really fun creation that Steve and I, Steve mostly put together, you know, 20 years ago. So what was the really defining characteristic of the War of Art that was interesting to a brand new audience of people? Well, it was the very, very short, succinct chapter breaks the book. Now, some people hate that and some people complain about it and I don't care. I don't. Those aren't people who are going to like Black Irish books. And again, I say, fare thee well. But for me, I love that format. I absolutely adore it. And the reason why I do is because it's sort of like having a really nice conversation with somebody and you take pauses. And so when you read these short snippets of story or explanation, you can actually, as you're turning the page, they actually sink in a little bit into your consciousness. So you're not required to hold, you know, 95 paragraphs in your head to understand the 96th and how it turns based upon the first paragraph. You're just required to really give up to 2000 words. A very intense read to. That was a terrible sentence, but I think you know what I mean. So what I said to myself is, wouldn't it be great if I could turn Tim's project and adapt it so that it has the feel of a Black Irish book, that it has the feel of something like the War of Art? And so I like that. I think that's a really good idea. I think it will make your story even more effective if I could somehow make that work. So what I did, what I sent to you a couple of days ago was like the first 3,000 words of the, of the book. And the way I approached that, putting together was how can I make this a lot like the War of Art? How can I make it feel, feel like, oh, this is familiar. It's completely different, but familiar. It's uniquely familiar. That's. That's one of my favorite phrases. So anybody who's read the War of Art, if they start reading your book, they're going to have a feeling of uniquely familiar. This is a format that I Love isn't this interesting. But my problem was, is that you wrote a story. You didn't write sort of as Steve writes, which are global axiomatic ideas as your chapter headings and then supportive material underneath, you wrote a story. So what I tried to do.

Well, that's what you told me to do.

That's right. So what's great is now I had to say, how can I. Is it possible to take a story and make it have that kind of resonance that Steve puts in the War of Art? And I don't know if it works yet, but that's why you saw what I sent you. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I love the way it read because like, you know, when I first opened the file and just kind of scrolled down, you know, I've read, you know, all the Black Irish books, so I know the format. And then I started reading it and I really liked, I really liked how you did that. So I'm happy with that for sure.

Okay, good. So, as everyone knows, the beginning of the War of Art is really about setting the scene, acclimating the reader into the world in which they're going to explore. So the first, I think nine or so chapters of your book, what I did is I broke up your beginning hook introduction into these sort of nine little bite sized pieces of story that move from one to the other in a way that I think is very fluid. And it's the kind of thing that I'm hoping once people start reading it, they'll just keep turning the pages. And so that brings me to the next point is, okay, now that we sort of have a global concept for the structural life of the book, we'll have these really kind of interesting hooky sentences from your actual story at the top of each page, followed by anywhere from 100 to 2000 words. Then the next thing is, how can we divide the book up into movements? Like if this were a symphony, what's the first movement of the book, what's the second movement of the book? And what's the third movement of the book? So the first part I think is. Is okay, you face the reality of your situation. You're basically in a car crash. You're in a psychic car crash. You've been thrown into the abyss of sorts. So the first, you know, section of this book is about, okay, the very first thing you have to do to get your dream is to sort of like crawl from the wreckage. You know, this is how you're going to get out of the car that's just crashed so that's why after we did this sort of introductory thing, then I put in book one, and then again, I took a page from the War of Art, and also from one of those Roman Stoics, I put the chapter. The Book one title is First Principles. And the first principles are those things that we start with and build from. They're the foundational ideas from which we build methodologies for the story grid. The first principle is stories have structures. That's the first principle. Right. Stories are not random. That's my first principle that I started with. So the first principles that you want to start with are at the beginning of your book, which are the tools for you to use to really just stop the bleeding, just get things under control. Just for now. It's not about anything bigger than that. We can't solve the big problems until we tie off the tourniquets, get, you know, just settle down. Let's just settle this shit that down. So that's kind of like book one. And, you know, I haven't moved really much further past that. I'm doing a little bit each morning, but that's generally my thought pattern. And the question I have for you is I'm trying to think of the other two books. And the things that come to my mind are, you know, like, book two would be like hitting the wall, you know, when. And that's also thematic for running. You know, when. When the marathoner hits the wall, it's when they have an all is lost moment. Like, maybe I'm just, you know, maybe I'm just not good enough. And I do know in your story, there is that moment in the book. And then the third book would be, is that All There Is? And I love, obviously, I love song titles. So the wall, you know, would be Pink Floyd. And Is that All There Is? Would be Peggy Lee, which would be book three. And then in that sort of global sense, we have three books like War of Art. We have first principles. We have whatever the second book chapter heading would be. And then the third book. And thematically, it goes from stopping the bleeding to realizing you're not that good yet. And then the third is, well, that's kind of disappointing. I just went through all this hell, and I'm not really all that happy. What's up with that? And that pushes us into the ending payoff of your book, which I think is a really nice thing. That's when your big idea really comes into its own. So what I love about your book is that traditionally you tell the reader what you're going to tell them. You tell them, and then you told them what they. What you told them. Now what you're doing is you're luring them in with the candy that says, I'm going to make your dreams come true. And then you pay it off with the actual big idea. And the big idea, I think it's transformational for people. When you understand that life is a series of projects that engage you and bring you meaning, then it's almost strange that whether or not the project is successful or not isn't really all that important. And it's a great payoff to your story because it's almost counterintuitive to your brand. Your Tim Grohl brand is, I'll teach you how to sell more books now. Right? You're almost like a carnival barker in a way. I'm not ridiculing it. That's a very powerful, you know, thing you can do. You know, not realizing your power, stating your power is just stupid. You can tell people how to sell more books. There you go. Great. But what I love about your. This book is like, yeah, I can tell you how to sell more books, but really, whether you. When you do, you're gonna really need this book, you know, so generally, that's my overall editorial vision for the book. And as. As you know, just to show the levels of analysis, it's in keeping with the black Irish sensibility that Steve and I are really, really committed to maintaining, often at great emotional and financial cost. But it's that important to us. Like, you know, dollars come and go, but you can. Once you tart up your vision to get a couple of bucks, it's kind of over at that point. So the one thing we always said to each other is, let's patrol each other and make sure that we don't tart up what we both want in the end. So that's a really good thing about having a business partner who's on the same wavelength with you is that they stop you from doing things to get money, and you stop them. And together what happens is that you have a consistent vision, and the projects that you create and you put into the world end up magically to have the same constituent elements. And it reinforces a thematic message that is important. It's like the Simon Sinek thing. Start with why? And so whenever Steve and I get confused, we think about, why are we doing this again? You know, it's, what's the point again? Because I don't really understand why I have to deal with this. Copy editing stuff. So anyway, that's generally what an editor, publisher, what, you know, in my estimation, this is my responsibility now is to say to you, Tim, I've flogged you with so many whips over the last year and a half that now is the time for me to put up or shut up. Because I can't expect you as a writer to carry 30 years of experience in book publishing editorially to deliver the thing that I'm sending back to you. So a lot of people always say to me, don't you feel like you're messing with the entire intentions of the writer to a degree that is overstepping the boundary? And what I say to that is any really good writer welcomes that. They do. And I'm not saying I'm always right and plenty of times I'm absolutely wrong. And a really terrific writer who is okay with themselves has no problem saying, no, I don't think that's not going to work for me. Oh, I don't like that title. No, this structure doesn't work. I don't like the thing in the middle. That's a little weird. I'm going to fix that. What Steve always says when I send him my editorial comments and we talk about publishing stuff is he always says, look, I have no idea whether I agree with you or not, but let me think about it. And then like a week later he'll either say, I successfully made all the ideas that you had my own. Which is the point. It's ABS that's exactly the point. That is what an editor does, is that they give the conceptual ideas to the writer and the writer comes back and goes, I've now stolen of all of your ideas and now they are mine. And that's fine. That's what an editor and a writer should do. The editor has to lose their ego. They have to say to themselves, how do I serve the king or queen? How do I encourage them to deliver the thing that is the closest to the masterwork genre that I've chosen to hold up against their project? So from the very start, the very first thing you ever said to me about this book was, I want to write a book for everybody who just wants practical tools to win the war of art. And so when you did that, what you said to me is the top of my hierarchy of self help books that I want to reach. At the top of that is the war of art. How close can I get to that? That's what you said to me when you said, I want to write a practical Guide like the War of Art, only with really, really intricate, practical tools. What you said to me is like, steve is a lot smarter than I am in the abstract. There's no way I can compete with him on that level, nor would I want to, because he's the guy who, you know, helped me actually come up with these tools. So what I'd like to do is to look at it at a lower resolution than Steve. I would like to look at it at the very micro tool obstacle level, whereas Steve's looking at it as the mythic, deep Jungian, holy cow, I can't believe this. This is the way the universe is organized kind of way. So his. The way the lens he has looking at this world is very, very specific, and it's very, very convincing, and it's very, very inspiring. But what you said to me is like, hey, man, I can't write that book. But I know I can write the book about how to crawl from the wreckage of a life that's falling apart. And IRS sheriffs are at my door knocking and demanding payment. I can tell people how to get out of that shit. So that's what your book is, but the genre choice that you made is. And I always say this to anyone who wants to write a book. What's your masterwork? What's the book that you hold up and say, if I could go into the matrix and put my name on that book instead of the writers, I would do that tomorrow, because that's the book I want to write. And so when you said, I want to write a book like the War of Art, I'm like, well, yeah, I can help you do that. But it wasn't easy. Right?

Okay, so before we close up the episode, I have a couple kind of just grunt questions here. So the first is, should I be giving feedback on this, or should I wait for you to give me the whole thing back?

All I need is global feedback. Is this a direction that you're okay with me pursuing?

Okay, yes. I love that. But when I read it, there was just things that, like, you added or switched around that I'm like. I wouldn't say it that way. I would just make, like, this tweak to it. Is that, like, later?

Yeah. Basically, this is what happens with Steve. I go in and I mangle everything he writes, and I even rewrite stuff that I think is vague, and I'll rewrite it as if I'm Steve. So I don't write in my voice. I write in Steve's voice. And then I. When I send him back the manuscript. I say, you need to go through this line by line because I didn't do it a lot, but I did do it. I took artistic license and I mimicked you and I effed around with a lot of the stuff that you have in here. And he goes, understood. And then he goes through everything that I did and he makes it his own. That's one of the things that he means about making it his own. So he'll like cut and, you know, paste and redo and take out all the stuff that I've written. Occasionally he'll go, yeah, that's not bad. I'll leave that. And you're welcome to do the same thing, but that's something to do when I send it back to you. And you go, you know what? I'd rather move this chapter here and that chapter here. And this line is weird. I don't talk like that. I'm going to fix that. Great. That's. You're actually line editing my line edit. Okay.

Yeah.

So I'm super happy with this, the direction you're going. So. Okay, so that's good. The other thing I was having is Candace. I had Candace read this because I kind of stopped having her read versions of it because it was changing so much. And so now I'm like, okay, I need you to actually read this because this is the book now. And so we were talking about. So her view is. So I'm just going to give you kind of her feedback. And then our discussion what I think I should do and then would like to hear your view of it. She was like, I really don't like when you promise to fix people or you promise that you're going to fix yourself. Because she's like, one is, you wouldn't tell anybody that you have fixed yourself. That is not anything you would ever claim. So why are you claiming that in the book? I was like, well, it's setting up the ending payoff of when I say this other thing. And she's like, yeah. She's like, you weren't trying to fix yourself. You were running from the voice that was telling you that you were a fuck up. And you kept thinking, if I do this, that voice will go away and if I do this, that voice will go away. She's like, and then when you reach the mountaintop and the voice was still there is when everything unraveled. And so I really liked that. And I was wondering what you think about making that little tweak to it. Do you think it still Sets up the ending payoff the right way. And I feel like that rings a little more true. She's like. She's like, everybody has the voice. She's like, not everybody uses the language that you're broken and need fixing. She's like, but everybody has the voice. So what do you think of that?

Well, I think it's a perfectly valid and brilliant look at the story, and I think it is in your manuscript. Now here's sort of like the nuts and bolts philosophical point of view is that the operative structure of self help uses the metaphor of tools, right? So even though, you know, not lying to yourself doesn't seem like a tool, it is a tool, right? So when you're using the language and the metaphor of actually using a tool, what do you use a tool to do? To fix things? So when you start sort of straying off the central metaphor that you've chosen as a way to hook your reader, that's why I think the payoff of your book is so wonderful. Because the payoff of your book is, guess what, dude? You were never broken to begin with, right? So we all think we are broken. And I think that is the message that people will relate to. Will people relate to the voice that's telling them an asshole? Yeah, absolutely. That's the voice of resistance. So the voice of resistance. You know what? I added a couple of things in your thing just to sort of pump up that idea, because, you know, basically saying to people, look, while I was fixing this in my head, I was hearing what a loser you are. Look at you, you pathetic piece of shit. And you have to say to yourself, hey, it's totally cool that guy's going to be there. But you just have to keep, you know, moving forward. That's how you beat resistance, is you just keep moving forward. You crawl, you run, you sprint. You do whatever's necessary to keep moving forward. So if you really stress the voice, then the tools, it's like the tools are real. These tools fix problems. These tools fix external problems that keep you from attaining a goal. So if you start sort of giving too much voice to the negative guy in your voice in your head, basically, Steve's book tells everybody about resistance. Steve's book tells them, this is an internal bastard that you're going to fight your entire life. So what your book is doing is, how do I fight that internal bastard? Well, here are some tools to beat it from the other side, right? So if you solve your money problems, if you solve your lying to your wife problems, if you solve Your lying to yourself problems. Guess what? The resistance gets beaten, but the climactic moment is resistance never goes away. So what do you do now? And so that's really like the climactic moment of the book. And then the ending payoff is, I've got an answer for that. Here's the answer. So I think Candace is absolutely right about the very, very common. I mean, everybody has that voice that, that's, you know, Jung. And everybody's been talking about that for the past 150 years in different ways. And it's. They talk. They talk about is. I mean, Candace knows more than I do because she's in the. She's becoming a therapist. But I think that's kind of a different book than, hi, I'm just Tim McGraw, and here are some tools I can. I can teach you to fix you, right? Because the beauty part of your pitch is, I'm going to fix you. And then the payoff of your book is, guess what? You were never broken. But if you lead with, you're not broken, here's how to silence that bastard who tells you you are, then people will get confused because what they're buying this book for is to get the ethos of Tim Grohl to tell them how to get the shit that they want. And you're going to do that. You do deliver that. So the bonus value is the psychological kicker at the end. But if you lead with the psychological kicker, you're going to alienate the people who just want the tools.

One more question, because this is the.

First time you've read the end of the book.

Because it's the first time I've tried to write. Write it. Do you feel. I mean, I know we've got editing and you'll put it in this new structure and everything, but do you feel like I nailed. Like that I got that. Did I end the book correctly? Because that was like the one piece of the book you've never seen before.

It needs work, but it's generally there. I know where you're going. I get the idea. I mean, we've got to set off some dynamite in different places and we got to amp up and. But yeah, it's generally there. I mean, the other thing that we haven't really talked about is I want to dump in like five or six really great psychological studies that back up your tools. But those are things that. That's the logos element that I was talking about at the beginning. So there are a lot of great and thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, who, you know, Points out, it's not hard to find these psychological studies and boil them down into a paragraph. There are all kinds of great, great neuropsychological studies that back up every single tool that you have in your book. Now, we're not going to litter it with wonky stuff from, you know, Princeton University in there, but what we will do is pick select moments that people might say, all those naysayers who say that's not true. Then you go, well, actually, this study backed up this idea. And here it is in here's a two paragraph summary of what these guys at University of California, Santa Barbara found. You know what I'm saying? So we can dump that little stuff in to, you know, really amp up the logos within your story. So then we've got ethos, logos and pathos, hopefully all working at the same level, which. And then you add the Black Irish thing. And, you know, then at the, when the book's done, I can say to myself, you know what? I gave it everything I had as the editor. Tim worked his ass off and we move on to the next project. We launch the thing, we do everything we can to sell it, we try and get into 10,000 people's hands, and then we can say, what's next?

Okay, that sounds good. So I'll wait for you to get me the rest of the manuscript and then I'll dive in and start going through it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. This week I have two special announcements. The first is we've put up a brand new StoryGrid website so you can go to storygrid.com to see that we have all the past episodes there. All the content is still there, but we've spruced it up a little bit, hopefully made it a little easier to find what you're looking for. And so if you've never been or haven't been in a while, make sure you go to storygrid.com and check that out. Also, for those of you that don't know, my day job is doing book marketing. We have talked about a little bit on the podcast, but, you know, surprisingly, running this podcast is not my day job. And so as the other side of this, you know, on this podcast, Sean and I are talking a lot about the writing and the editing of Running Down a Dream.

And.

But if you want to kind of see behind the scenes on me launching this book, I'm doing that my other podcast, book launch show. And you can find that@booklaunchshow.com or search in any of the podcast platforms, you should be able to find it. So again, we're going to be talking about the writing and the editing and all of that kind of stuff here. But if you're ever interested in running a book launch or the book marketing side of launching a book, I'm going to be giving all the behind the scenes details over at my other show@book launchshow.com and then, as always, if you'd like to support this 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.