What is the Theme of your Story?

Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. My name is Tim Grall. I am a first time novelist trying to figure out how to write a story that works. Joining me soon is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of Storygrid. He is the guy that wrote the book Storygrid and he's an editor with over 25 years of experience and he's helping me to write my first book. In this episode we talk about theme. I finally gotten past the outline of my story and started writing and of course I'm running into all kinds of roadblocks. So we talk about theme, we talk about how it applies to your story, how to figure out what it is and how it can help you write your story. We also talk about specificity and some other things that you may run into the first time you sit down and start writing your next book. So I hope it's helpful for you. Let's jump in and get started. So in the last week I finally started writing. So I finished up my outline as best I could. Actually, I want to start there because I got stuck about 2/3 of the way through my middle build and didn't know what to do next. And so then I just, I knew what I was going to do to get to my ending payoff and then through the end of the book. So I outlined that. But I'm still like five to ten scenes short. Is that okay to go ahead and start writing if I don't really know what's going to happen in the middle of the book?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Again, I mean, I've gotten a bunch of emails over the last couple of days from people asking about, you know, they're basically very worried that they're getting paralyzed by analysis. And I think that's a very important thing to bring up because the thing about the Story grid is that it's really, it can be really, really very helpful when you're planning a book like you are right now and you're doing your outline and you're using the principles of the story grid to give you a map. But remember that if you get so intense, overwhelmed by the minutia of each individual scene, you can get to a place where the love and the fun of the writing is just absolutely out the window. So I've been getting a couple of emails, actually more than a couple from people who are saying I really appreciate the Story grid, but it's really brought me to a point of despair. And that's not what it's for. It's really not.

Any writer loves to hear that about their book.

That's true. But I don't get too upset about it because the suggestion I make is once you start getting freaked out, feel good about it. Because what it's saying to you is that you're getting deeper and deeper into the work to the point where you're starting to self sabotage. And this is something that we all seem to think is a bad thing. And it feels terrible. But as Steve Pressfield writes in the War of Art, resistance and that bad feeling and that panic moment and the paralysis that can result is an indication that you're on the right track. It means that you are getting close to sort of that place where the nasty being inside of you lives and he or she inside of you is starting to get threatened by the work that you're doing. So what they do is they marshal an offensive against you. And I know I'm speaking a little metaphysically here, but it's actually a great metaphor to think about that you have this sort of dragon inside of you that doesn't want you to do anything. It wants you to just sort of hang out, enjoy your life, and not get too deep about anything. So the fact that you're worried about whether or not you should proceed with your work because you're five scenes short of your goal, of your 20 scenes in your mental build, or your 25 scenes or whatever it is that you've decided to use is a good sign. Because what it's saying is that your insides, your inner resistance is marshaling forces to make you stop. It's trying to get you to quit. It's trying to bring you to your knees. It's trying to give you a great sense of despair so you'll quit. So, you know, when we face that demon, we often want to quit because we think it'll make the demon go away. But that demon is a great sign that you're onto something. So that's my advice when you hit these moments when you say, oh my gosh, this story grid stuff is just way too, way too in depth. It's driving me crazy. Okay, that's absolutely valid. It can drive you crazy if you let it. But the tool itself is a very valuable tool. And it's one that is primarily a great tool for editing as a tool for outlining. It's a perfect way to get you from New York to Pittsburgh. But don't worry about whether you're going to take the Pennsylvania Turnpike or, or you're going to take, you know, side roads. You just want to get to Pittsburgh, you know?

Yeah, I found myself. I just kept, like, I lost the thread, and it's such a weird feeling of, like, I'm trucking along. Because I think last week I talked about how, like, one day I worked for an hour and a half and got one scene planned out. Well, the day after we talked, I got, like, eight in two hours. And so I was trucking along, and I just hit this wall, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what to do next. And so I knew how I wanted to end the story, and you had been talking about the ending of the story, so I just skipped ahead and did that, and I went back, and I still couldn't find it. And so I was like, well, I'm just gonna start writing.

Yeah.

So, two. This is day three, and I'm 6,500 words in.

Wow.

Yeah, I'm trying to, because I'm very obsessive about things. And so I knew, like, once I started, that's all I'd want to do. So that's why I was trying to get myself to a point where I had everything kind of mapped out, because I'll just kind of bullhead through it and get the first draft done before I kind of look back at it.

That's exactly what I would recommend. I'm similar in my practices as you are. So when I actually wrote the story grid book, I had outlined 70 or 80 chapters that are pretty. Pretty close to what they were in the final. I went on wild tangents that I had to rip out and edit after I had written a first draft, but that. And we talked about this last week with the Writing Habits episode. But intention to have a clear intention every single day, a great way to get work done, even if you don't quite finish or accomplish or it doesn't quite work. At least you know that you. You hit that wall with your hammer as hard as you could for a good two hours, and you might have worn it down a little bit. It's like when you're trying to unscrew a really tight pickle jar. You know, sometimes you have to get out a different tool, but as long as you keep twisting that thing, you're eventually going to get it off. So the intention of twisting off the cap of the pickle jar is the same as, I need to get this scene done today. This speaks to living with uncertainty. Living with a little bit of doubt can be a good thing. And the reason Why I bring that up is I was just watching this great documentary the other day that I've seen before, and it's always a terrific thing to watch whenever you get really panicked about your work. It's a documentary. It's called Hearts of Darkness, and it's the story of the making of Apocalypse Now. The point of view of the documentary is Eleanor Coppola, who is Francis Ford Coppola's wife. She went. She's a filmmaker herself. And when they were filming Apocalypse now, she took a camera and she shot stuff and. And she interviewed Frances while he was in the throes of creating, you know, Apocalypse Now. And there's a moment in it very early on where, you know, it's great because it's a wife getting an authentic panic from her husband. It's not an interviewer interviewing a director who's trying to get something from him. So he's very candid. And there's these great audios of him saying, I'm so upset. I have this vision that I want to bring to the screen, and nothing's working. It's all falling apart. I don't even know what my ending is. I don't like the ending that's in the script now. It's too. It's just. It's not big enough. It's not anywhere near where it needs to be. My biggest fear is, I'm going to blow all of our life savings, which he had put on the line to make this movie, and ruin my career, my family's life, everything. And it's a wonderful thing to see the moments of panic and dread and suffering when you really, really stick your neck out. Now, Francis Ford Coppola is, like, famous for really going to the end of the line in his work. And after Apocalypse now, that kind of. That movie, I think, just really broke him in a way. I think the movie itself, when you watch that movie, it's such an amazing work of art that it's so suspenseful, it's so exciting, and yet it's so deep. And the themes in that movie are so resonant that, you know, it travels through time. I mean, he. He and John Milius, who wrote the screenplay, they'd been working on that thing for years before they eventually had the crazy idea to actually film the thing. So he had these major roadblocks and signposts in his mind of what he had to get on film before he shot it. But he didn't solve the ending of that film until while he was in the process of shooting It. And he had the courage to say to himself, I have a place marker ending here that I'm not completely thrilled with, but I'm gonna go and I'm gonna start anyway. And he did. And the ending to that movie is so devastating. And so it's one of those moments on screen when you say to yourself, oh my gosh, the guy really just nailed the Heart of Darkness. He really did. And he was never the same after that movie. But my point here is that a lot of times you're going to hit these very big walls and the wall that you've hit so far, they're not so big yet. You're going to hit these moments of panic, you're going to hit these moments of great despair and treat them like really great artists treat them. They feel it, but they keep fighting and they keep pushing forward because you can't let those things stop you. And if you're having a crisis of analysis, stop analyzing and start writing.

Yeah, that's what I tried to do. I feel like so far whenever I've hit a wall, I just kind of go find something else to do with the story. There's always more work to do. But it's been fun though to finally just sit down and start writing the story and see it coming out, you know. I had a couple questions though. So one is, I was reading Steve Pressfield's blog and he's been doing a series on theme. And this is where I get really kind of tied up because it's like he talks out of both sides of his mouth in this articles or these articles he's writing because on one hand he says you can't write your book without your theme. And then he lists out all his best selling books that he wrote without knowing what the theme was. And he talks about how like you had to tell him what the theme was, go back and fix it. And so I feel like I have an idea of what the theme is, but I just, I don't know, like coming up with a theme almost seems like coming up with a clear definition of God. You know, it's like, what, what do I say? You know, because then what was it you that was saying somebody was telling me or I was reading, I don't know, I've been reading so much around this stuff lately. But basically like every scene should speak to the theme.

Yeah.

And then the other thing is like your antagonist should be the opposite of the theme and your final showdown or whatever should be like about the theme. And I'm just like, I Don't. I don't even know what the theme is. You know, sometimes I'm like, well, maybe I'm just not deep enough of a person to, like, have a theme for my story. I just want to tell a fun story. So I'm just. I don't know.

Okay. Okay. This is a really good question, and it's something a lot of people struggle with. Obviously, Steve struggles with it too. But let me just simplify it for you. A theme can be as simple as love conquers all or justice prevails. Themes and controlling ideas. And I use the phrase controlling idea in the story grid, and you can. You can substitute the word theme for that too.

Yeah, I went back and read. Maybe that's where I read. Is that where I read? Like, every scene should go to the theme or the controlling idea?

I stopped reading stuff I've read so many years ago.

You don't have it all memorized? Come on.

No, I always find things that are poorly worded or. So sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie. But here's my bit about theme and controlling idea. If you choose a genre that is very specific and very. Has very strong rules and obligatory scenes and conventions, a lot of times your theme is baked into the genre. So if you're writing a crime story, Crime stories, the core value at stake in a crime story is justice. Will justice prevail? And so the theme of a story where justice does prevail can be as simple as justice prevails when the investigators outsmart the villains. So that is a perfectly valid theme. And this is what Steve and others who write mean when they say, know what your theme is before you sit down and write. Doesn't mean the specificity of the theme that can go deeper than the external sort of controlling idea of the story itself. So you are writing from what I understand generically. And I don't want to get into specifics on what you're writing because I don't want to ruin what you're. You know, that's the other thing, is that when you're writing, you should really sort of keep as much of it to yourself as you possibly can until you feel confident enough in the material to seek advice.

Well, it's too late. I posted my full scap global story grid and the first 17 scenes I outlined with last week's episode.

Oh, okay. Well.

Well, that's why you're a hero.

You have a lot of courage. And the other thing is that everything that I say and I. I try and remind people this it's my opinion, and a lot of people work in different ways. This is what I think can work best for somebody. But everybody has their own thing. So just back to the idea of theme. That's another situation where you can overanalyze your theme to death. And you can spend hour upon hour upon hour coming up with the perfect thematic phrase that will encompass all of the vicissitudes of the deepest emotional turmoils of your characters. And that is a process of self sabotage, especially when you're doing your first draft. Now, the reason why Steve writes and reveals that a lot of times he'll, he'll write a book and he'll send it to me. I'm his primary editor and have been for 20 years. And then I'll get back to him and I'll say, this is what your book is about and these are the things that you need to do to amplify what your book is about. It's not that it's a huge surprise to Steve when I tell him your book is about self deception. It's not about who wins the battle at the end. It's about X, Y and Z. And he's, he's not overly. It's not like a big light bulb goes off in his mind and says, oh geez, I never knew about that. He was writing around that subconsciously as he was working. And he needed an editor to say, this is really what's underneath your war story. And a war story is really about whether or not the war is justified or not and do the means justify the ends. That's a theme of war. You know, is war a valid, Is it a valid choice to solve a conflict or is it ignoble and bad? That's the core theme of a war story. So Steve writes a lot in the war genre, but the themes underneath those are expressed by his protagonists and his antagonists. They come out while he's in the process of getting from A to B to C to D and to climax his story with an epic battle at the very end. So just back to simplifying theme. I think if you're working in a specific genre, and a lot of people do, and that's I really recommend, if it's a coming of age story, the theme is going to be about coming to a level of deeper understanding about humanity. That's what's baked into a coming of age story. It's losing your naivete and becoming an adult and learning that things are neither black or white. There's all shades of gray and it's a difficult thing to navigate the world because of the difficulties in every situation. And every context has its own logic to it. So a again, in your first draft, and Steve writes about Paddy Chayefsky and him writing down his themes before he wrote his masterpiece screenplays and his themes were probably very short and concise and to the point. Media will destroy us was probably just the simple theme that Paddy Chayefsky put on his typewriter when he was writing.

Media. Mass media will destroy us. And of course, there are far more deeper themes in Network than just that global blanket theme. But that's the thing that when he had to turn a scene, he had to come up with an idea that would be within that realm.

Well, and that's, I guess my question with it is because I've written down something for my theme because there was a space for that in the full SCAP story, so I had to write something down. But so is that how you use it where, like, each scene almost turns back towards that? Almost like that's the light that we're all trying to get to, and at the end of every scene, you got to kind of point back towards that light?

Is that what the theme is for? Because, you know, it's one thing to say you need the theme, but then it's like, okay, you got your theme. How does that affect my scene by scene writing?

Well, to look at it in these terms, and when I did the global story grid, scene by scene, the big thing that's on the COVID of my book for the Silence of the Lambs, a lot of people ask me, how do you know scene by scene, where to put the positive and the negative data points for the external and internal genres?

The answer to that question is that you look at the scene in terms of the global value. So the global value of the story of the Silence of Lambs is life and death. You know, how closer is the world of the story to life or death or life? Unconsciousness, death and damnation. Those are the four, you know, the two positive and the two negatives on the spectrum of the value. So every time I looked at a scene, I evaluated in my mind, is the global story world closer to that global value? Now, here's a trick. If you find that the scene that you're looking at or thinking about writing has nothing to do with life or death, or it doesn't move the story forward it in terms of that spectrum value, meaning it's not shifting from life to death or death to unconsciousness or unconsciousness to life or all of those little small movements in the global movement of the story. If it's not moving it on that value, then chances are you probably don't want to put that scene in there. But what you can do is look at the scene that you want to write, and if you find that it's heavily towards another value like justice or tyranny or something on that spectrum, then you want to bring it back to, can I put in a level of the life and death value to this scene that can be clear? That's a way of modulating the story so that there's differences and innovations and surprises, but are still on theme. And the other thing to think about when you're writing your global stories, that there are thematic values that a lot of genres share, like the horror story and the action story all also, as does the thriller. They move on the life and death value spectrum too. So thinking about alternative genres that have great scenes in them, can you adapt one of those genre scenes for your work? See, now's the time when I bet a lot of people listening are saying, oh, my gosh, this is getting like, crazy specific and complicated. And I don't know what Coin's talking about. This just is getting just way off the charts. So the simple answer is, just write your first draft. Don't worry about being on theme with every scene before you write your first draft. Write your first draft because chances are you're going to do it without thinking about it. You're not even going to think about global value story, global value shifts or anything like that. You have in your mind a certain path you want to get from A to B to C to D to E. Just get the car to Pittsburgh. Don't worry about if you make it.

See, I. I have this, like.

Idealistic, like, if I do enough work first, I will get it so much closer to done on my first try than just sitting down and writing. But I'm having trouble deciding when to do that. You know, when to just be like, okay, now it's time to just forget about everything and start writing.

Now's that time. And here's the thing, is that you are the kind of writer and you're like me, who indulges in analysis. You're a big plotter. You like to know exactly what you're going to do every single day. And you want to go in there and you want to get your work done, and then you want to go and go to the gym or pick up your kids at school or do whatever it is that you Also have to do. And that's perfectly valid way of approaching writing. But the thing that you need to work on and learn is to free yourself from that, because that is a. It's a crutch. It's a way of avoiding the mystical element of writing. And when I say the mystical element of writing, I feel a little weird because I am in your camp, and I prefer the grind. I prefer to analyze until I'm blue in the face.

Because then there's control.

Yes, you have to start to learn to give up control. And that's what Francis Ford Coppola did. And that's why he created one of the greatest movies ever created. And it's because he gave up control. He set himself up to lose control. That was what is. Was that brought him to the verge of madness. And even he said he went insane when he was making that movie because he set himself up in such a way that he knew he wouldn't. He wouldn't be able to control the weather. He went to film it in the Philippines, and he was using the. He went to Ferdinand Marcos, who was this terrible dictator in the Philippines in the 1970s, and he said, hey, the US government, because this is a movie about Vietnam, they don't want to lend me any helicopters. Would you mind lending me the Philippine army's helicopters to shoot my Hollywood movie? And Ferdinand Marcos was, you know, he was a tyrant. And he's like, yeah, sure, if people in the United States will think the Philippines are cool, I'll lend you my. My army's helicopters. But little did Coppola know that there was an uprising of communists in southern. In southern Philippines who wanted to overthrow Marcos during this entire shoot. So in the middle of filming, the helicopters would leave to go fight the communists. And so Kabul is like, oh, my God, I just spent $50,000 setting up this scene. And the helicopters just left. I just lost $50,000. And so he put himself in this impossible situation, and he did it on purpose. He did it because he knew that was what the movie was about. That's what Apocalypse now was. So what he tried to do, and he was very successful. Do it. He put himself within the thematic world of the story, so much so that he went insane. And so when you watch that movie, you can. There's such a pervasive sense of dread when you watch Apocalypse Now. And it's to no small effect that that came about. By the way it was shot. While he was shooting it, there were huge typhoons that would come and ruin his days of shooting he had to fire his lead actor, Harvey Keitel, after two weeks of shooting film because it wasn't working out. Then he brings in Martin Sheen to take on the role of Captain Willard. And Martin Sheen smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, he has a heart attack in the middle of the filming. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. But he was triumphant because he said to himself, I know the theme of my movie. It's about darkness. It's about losing control of yourself and being a megalomaniac. And that's what he became. And, you know, that's what happens to Colonel Kurtz at the very end, played by Marlon Brando. And it's all based upon Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad in the 1800s. So my point here is that as an artist, sometimes you have to set yourself up to let go. You need to let go of the control sometimes, and you have to allot time. You're never going to write a perfect first draft because what's within you will not allow you to do that.

Yeah, it's like, logically, I know that, but then there's this whisper of, like, if you just work a little bit longer, you can. Yeah, but I've. I've. That is why I basically just stopped and started writing a couple days ago. Because I've, you know, I've realized, you know, early on when you told me, I'm like. I started asking like, well, should I do this or should I do this? You're like, just write a scene. And I'm like, well, that's the one thing I'm scared of. And you're like, exactly. So I realized, like, me trying to churn on the outline some more was me basically avoiding actually having to write the thing and see what came out the other end.

Right. So now you can see that how Steve, in his blog post isn't really talking out of both sides of his mouth. What he's saying is that there are two parts of a writer. He plays the role of the writer, I play the role of the editor. But when I wrote the story grid, we switched parts. But within each individual person, what we're saying is that. And this is the thing that writers often ignore, there is a very analytical editorial point of view within every writer and that person, that being that thing, is what you really like to give power to you as Tim. Now, a lot of most writers, traditionally, maybe it's inaccurate to say most writers, but I think a lot of writers prefer to give control to the creative person. And they. They like to, you know, Contemplate the tea leaves and, and think about the, what the character had for breakfast and, you know, have sense memories about how the scene would work in their head. And they try and, you know, attach themselves to the muse and all those things. And that's their form of resistance and self sabotage is that they won't allow for the editor to have any breathing room. You're going on the other side. You're not allowing that creative part of yourself, and he's, you know, that creative part of yourself is desperate to get out.

So how do I, how do I let them out?

You give yourself an intent, one single intent for every single writing session. And you say, today I'm not going to worry about any of my outline. The only thing I'm going to worry about is scene number six. And I'm going to get a draft of scene number six down, and I am going to start with the inciting incident of scene number six. And I'm going to vaguely know or specifically know what the crisis of that scene is going to be. I'm going to progressively complicate it so that it gets to that crisis. Things aren't going to go so great. He's going to make plans. They're not going to work out, or he does make plans and they work out, but they don't work out in the way that he thought. And then I'm going to have him make a decision in the climax and then I'm going to resolve the thing, and that's all I'm going to do. I'm going to write. You know, learning the craft of just writing scenes is really something that I need to help people understand better. Because if you can master the skill set of writing one basic story unit and that the crucial story unit for a novelist and a screenwriter and a playwright is a scene. If you can really get good and comfortable allowing yourself to bang out a draft of a scene and then going back and saying, oh, let me, let me see if all of my parts are in there. Now let your creative energy. And we talked about this very, very early on in the podcast and you kind of took me to town for it. But I think now's a good time to go back to it, where you said, no, no, no, no. I like to know that I need to get to the climax and then I need to resolve the thing and I need an inciting incident. And that's, that's the way I'm going to write my scenes. And I said, if that's going to work for you, great. As long as you write the scenes. Yeah. So the scene. I mean, when all else fails and you're. You're just going crazy, you can't shut your brain up. Just go back to a scene and say, okay, scene four. My hero is confronted with the villain, and he has to get out of a tough situation. How am I gonna write that scene? What is the situation? What introduces the villain into the scene? How can I make it interesting? How can I innovate it so it doesn't read like everybody else's scene? That's where you can focus on your intention for that day and then give yourself a little bit of time to get set up your inciting incident and then just run. Run out the scene. Write as much as you can and try and get to the end and resolve the thing. Then if you have time at the end of the day, go back over it and say, how did that work out? And nine times out of ten, the scene will work. It won't be perfect, won't be even near perfect, but it'll work. It's like that. You know, you. You learned how to write a scene pretty quickly, Tim. I mean, the first scene that you wrote had really no inciting incident, too many characters, no real clear beginning, middle, and end, no value shift, nothing. But the second scene that you wrote with the guy lurking in the shadows who wants to, you know, asking for help with his flat tire, that had a beginning, middle, and end. It worked. It had a clear shift. It had a value at stake. All that minutiae that I talked about in Storygood was all in there, and it worked. But when we went over it, I said, may, maybe you can make it better.

Yeah, I want to. I want to ask, too. So one thing I've been struggling with, it goes back. We mentioned it a couple weeks ago, talking about. Oh, man, I can never.

Specificity, Specificity. I know.

I have to. It's like saying cinnamon anyway, or syllabilistic or. Well, that's even worse. So, like, right now, I've realized I haven't pinpointed. So my story lands. It's taking place in, like, a metropolitan city where people can walk the streets, take cabs, that sort of thing. But I haven't really specified what city it's in. Is that something that's important? Like, do I need to put, like, this is the city that it's in and lay it out? I mean, not just say, you know, one day in Atlanta or something, But I'm just struggling with. I'm realizing now, like, I don't really have in my mind exactly where this story is taking place, which means it's kind of taking place in nowhere.

Right. The answer to that question is really genre dependent. If you're writing a superhero story, you know, the Batman universe is Gotham. And Gotham is just an amalgamation of every, you know, big city that alienates people and nobody wants to help anybody else. And they walk on the streets and everybody's alienated, and it's dark. And so what the creators of Batman did and all the interpreters of Batman do is they. And, you know, is it Christopher Nolan, the last guy who sort of did the Batman? I mean, his universe is so wonderful because it's such a hybrid between realism and super, you know, caricature, whereas Tim Burton's Gotham is all caricature. So it depends upon the sensibility of the writer. But I think it's important for you to know what genre you're working in. If you're writing a historical mystery set like the Alienist, there's a great crime mystery slash thriller set in Teddy Roosevelt era New York City in the early or late 1800s. And so Caleb Carr, who wrote that book, he really, you know, he sucked you into the world. You know, you went to Delmonico Steakhouse and everybody was eating their oysters and, you know, everybody had spats on. I don't know, I'm making it up, but that kind of specificity is necessary for a particular genre. If you're writing a historical thriller or something, you really need to nail that. But if you're writing fantasy, science fiction, superhero, H.G. wells kind of stuff, then steampunk stuff, then what you do is you might, you know, you. You get yourself into the world of that genre and you play with the conventions of the genre and the way things are. Like, I'm not really an expert in steampunk, but what I do know is that it comes from that sort of late 19th, early 20th century sensibility that we can create machines that will take care of us and like H.G. wells and the Time Machine and all those sort of things. So it's very mechanistic and people are. They wear sort of Victorian garb only. Anyway, I could. I could go on like this all the time. But the answer is it depends on your genre. But with that said, make up your own universe and make some rules and give us some geography of the world. It doesn't have to be. It's Atlanta and it's 2006. Unless you're writing a thriller about Atlanta in 2006, right? But so, you know, for a superhero thing, I think it's fine to create an other world that is very similar and realistic to the world in which we are living now. Like the Hunger Games. That's a completely different universe, but it's also familiar. We can understand the rural nature of the Hunger Games universe. And we can understand. I mean, that was such a wonderful creation because it did mission mash all kinds of different time periods. And so it felt as if it was sort of a rural 1930s Grapes of Wrath kind of world matched to a steampunk universe, matched to Ridley Scott. And it all worked together because. And J.K. rowling does this, too. They invent the universe in their mind, and they're very skilled at describing what they see in their own mind. So when you get confused and you go, I don't know whether or not I'm giving enough specificity, think about. Because we all think in pictures as well as we do in language and words. Mostly pictures actually describe what you're seeing in your own internal world and give yourself the freedom to describe things in strange ways. That's the great thing about the Hunger Games. You know, there's a lot of strange. Like Mockingjay, you know, how did she come up with that? Like a cross between a mockingbird and a blue jay. And it has a specific sound. And. And so what she did. And I'm sorry, I forget her name. I think it's Suzanne. No. No, that's not right. That's not.

No.

What is it? Oh, man. I know. It's really. It's criminal the way my brain has. Has just shunned all specificity of names. But I'm sure she's not going to be too upset about me forgetting. Yeah, but really just her ability to give herself the creative freedom to go with the imagery that she saw in her mind and to say, you know what? People might give me crap about the Mockingjay idea, but I like it. I'm going to use it. Screw it. And it works because she's so confident in the internal world in which she is putting her characters. So when you're worried about whether or not you're describing something, take a little time and say to yourself, give yourself an intention. One day. Today, I'm going to describe the ordinary world. You know how we talk all the time about the hero's journey. You know, J.K. rowling was great at doing this, and a lot of great authors are, is that they get you immersed in the ordinary world early on. Rocky is a great example of how you. You understand the world of Rocky Balvola in the first 20 minutes of the movie. And nothing is really happening in that movie except we're getting. We're immersing ourselves in Rocky's life, in his world. Same thing in To Kill Mockingbird. At the very beginning, you immerse yourself. She immerses you in the world of Alabama. In that world, Maycomb, Alabama, I think. So that's a good thing to give yourself an intent. Like, describe. Give yourself a little wind and some words to describe the setup of a particular scene. For example, in Rocky, one of the great things at the very beginning of the movie is the introduction of Adrian and the introduction of the love interest to Rocky. And it's a beautiful scene because Rocky's got the dog. You know, he's got Butkus the dog. And he makes it his daily trip to go to the pet store because Adrian works at the pet store. And so, you know, he could get all the supply of meat and food that he needs for his dog, you know, once a month. But he goes every single day. And it's that little detail where we follow. Rocky goes into the pet store. He plays with the turtles. He's trying to make jokes to impress Adrian. Adrian's got the hat over her eyes. And you just fall into that world and you say, oh, man, I've been in the pet store like that. I know a woman like that. Yeah, there. There's always that really pretty woman with a hat on who works at the pet store, doesn't think she's pretty enough. And then there's the. So that's a way of thinking of an intention. Like, today I'm gonna write a scene that isn't a life and death thing. Today I'm going to introduce the love interest for my hero, and we're going to get the reader attached to my. My hero by the woman, the kind of woman he falls in love with. Because Rocky's. He's an enforcer. You know, he beats people up for the mob. People welsh on their bets. He goes and he breaks their. Their arm to get the money. That's not a very, you know, attractive thing. It's not very sympathetic. But when we see the woman that he's in love with, we go, oh, you know, these. Not all bad.

So do you think, like, a good exercise would be to just sit down and spend some time describing where the story takes place, what the general mood of the city is, the name of the city, and just kind of take time to describe all of that? So While I'm writing.

I know what I see. Does that make sense?

That's the traditional advice.

Which I would like to modify. Okay. My suggestion is to get your character to do something in a world that you have to describe. Don't just talk about and write about the opacity of the light that comes through the window of the pet shop when the sun just barely creeps over the horizon. You know, that is just a waste of time. But if you write a scene and say, you know what I'm going to describe, I'm going to put a lot of shoe leather in here. Shoe leather, meaning, you know, actions that are very descriptive, that may or not be all that enthralling. But I'm going to give myself some air to describe an actual scene that has far more detail than, you know, I would normally put in. And so describe that scene where somebody has to go and get on the bus, you know, and on the bus, it's like that movie Speed.

Yeah, yeah. Like, what does the city look like outside? And who's on the bus with her?

And exactly.

Each of those things will give a description of the.

That's exactly what happens in the movie Speed. When we see Sandra Bullock at the beginning of the movie, she's at the bus stop. And they don't immediately have the bus be taken over by the psychopath and put on the bomb on it. You know, she's on the bus, she's interacting with the other people. We're getting a sense of what Los Angeles is like from the point of view of a bus, which is a very interesting thing, because nobody thinks of riding a bus in Los Angeles. So that's the kind of thing, and that's an action story. But the filmmaker knew I need to lure my viewer into this world before I turn all hell loose. I need her to smile at the lady across the way from the bus who's got the little kid or whatever it is, and describe those things that are interesting. Like the kid has snot in his nose and he wipes it on his jacket. And then the woman sees him wiping on the jacket and he wipes it on his pants. Anything like that that is specific, that can say something about who your protagonist is. A good way of getting the details of the story and the exposition. It's a way of putting exposition into a story with a purpose. So your question. I think we may have gotten a little bit off topic, but the question that you said is, should I sit down and just describe the world? And my suggestion is no. What you should do is write a scene where somebody does something. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. Somebody does something and you describe the experiences that they have and what they see and what they smell and what they hear as they are going through the process. And if you, if you pad your first draft with some of like every now, you're. You're going to intuitively know this is a good scene to do that in, because I just had the bomb go off in the last scene. So you want to. You want to regulate and you want to.

It's a way of slowing it down.

Yeah.

Okay.

And it's especially true when you're introducing a new character. You want to give them some space and some. Some life that tells something about them and also the environment and the way they see the environment. So the way you would describe Bernard Goetz going into the subway is a different way than you would describe Sandra Bullock getting onto a bus in Los Angeles. Right?

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Think in those terms.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast to find all the past episodes, all the show notes, any downloads we mentioned in the episode, like my outline and my full scap story, StoryGrid, and the spreadsheet of the Harry Potter story grid. All of that is@storygrid.com podcast in addition, you can go to storygrid.com to make sure you don't miss any blog posts. Sign up for the email list. You won't want to miss anything that Sean is working on. Thanks as always, for continuing to listen, continuing to share it with your writer friends and spread the word about the StoryGrid podcast. Shawn and I are having a great time doing this. We have some great stuff in store for you in the future and we can't wait to share it with you. So stay tuned and we will see you next week.