What Shawn has learned

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grohl, 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. In last week's episode, our 100th episode, we heard from you on how the podcast and what the podcast has meant to you. And in this one, Sean gives his reaction to that and then shares a little bit about what he's learned over the last two years as well. And then we jump right back into the middle build of my novel. So it's a fun episode. I think you'll get a lot out of it. So let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, this is the 101st episode, and I took the leap that you don't actually listen to the podcast and put. And spent, you know, a few weeks inviting people to leave us messages, put those as the hundredth episode. And so I just wanted to. You've listened to that episode. Just wanted to get your thoughts because it, you know, they've heard. Everybody's heard from me on my thoughts of the hundredth episode and have doing this for two years, and we've heard from the listeners now, so just wanted to hear your reactions and your thoughts after doing this for two years now.

Well, I was just stunned by the comments, and I can't thank everybody enough for taking the time to do that, because I don't know if I would do that for a podcast.

Just really, really shot in the arm to let me know that, you know, I'm not as crazy as I think I am. So the big takeaway for me from listening to all of it was that the thing that I've learned over the past two years that I wouldn't have been able to learn without the experience was is this notion of sort of the. The bedside manner of the editor. Like, how do you help somebody without overwhelming them? How do you give them the room necessary to, you know, ask themselves their own questions and not. Not to the point where they just want to quit. And I think I got lucky with you because you're kind of a masochist and you don't.

You don't quit so easy. But I think that's a really important lesson for an editor to learn. I always kind of thought in the back of my head, oh, well, if they can't take real constructive criticism. It's their problem. And I'm just trying to help. And sorry, it's overwhelming. But now I understand that there's only a limited amount of input that any normal human being can take when they're in the creative act. So hearing people's stories and how that was what made that's what sort of stuck out to them was that I've learned to not shoot down, you know, all of your stuff all the time at the deepest level. And I've also learned that.

Every idea that I have, only about 20% of them are really that viable in that my suggestions are sort of like pick at around the edges of a problem. They're not, you know, silver bullets that are going to solve everything. And I think that's an important thing for writers to understand about editors, is that it's not their job to give you the silver bullets that are going to fix every single one of your problems. It's their, you know, the best editors. What they do is offer a lot of different solutions to a single problem. So, you know, one of the things that you and I talked about, I don't know, two years ago just off the air, was, you know, how would you recommend somebody, you know, come up with the right scene? And one of the things that I thought would be a good idea is to write out 10 different scenarios and how to solve a particular scene and then, you know, let them sit for a while and then look at them again and, you know, pick one and try it out. And. And I think that is what the editor's role is, is to help the writer think and expand and. And for lack of a better word play with different solutions to single problems. And editors helping their writer actually try and enjoy the editorial process is an important element too, because writers need to understand that the editor can't fix everything for them. They can only point them in the right direction. And it's their job to suss out all of the options that the editor gives them and to choose a path and try it. If that one doesn't work, try something else. And this is something that you and I had trouble with. We hadn't really figured out what's the global genre of the story until three weeks ago, right. Or four weeks ago when when you came to the. You personally thought, I need to make a choice here I'm doing two things. I'm doing a rebellion plot and a labyrinth plot. One of those. I need to pick one. Which one should I pick? And you asked my opinion. You asked other Storygrid, editors, opinions. And you really collected a lot of evidence. And now that you've made that choice, I think you're going to find from here on out, your. Your goals, your understanding of what you need to accomplish are going to be more and more clear. Each scene is going to take on a real specificity because now you know what the end game is. You know, at the end of this story, she gets out of the labyrinth. She's learning throughout the middle build what the labyrinth is about at the end of this story, and she's out of it. But now a whole other set of problems are beset on her. And that's the end of this first sort of novel in this series. The hundredth episode really helped me understand the importance of the bedside manner of the editor, to enjoy the process as much as the writer does in discovering things and not being so locked into. No, no, no. We're doing a rebellion plot. I told you from the beginning, you have to do a rebellion plot instead, to listen to the writer and listen to what they're talking about and go with them and help them make the choice, instead of you imposing a choice on that.

All right. A lot of the people said that we had to keep going, so I took a few weeks off because we were busy behind the scenes, and I just couldn't get around to moving on the story. And then even as I sat down and started writing again this last week, just realizing, like, all these stories we tell ourselves. So I kept telling myself, well, now that I figured out I'm writing a labyrinth plot, this is going to be much easier. But I was still scared to sit down and write anyway. So.

I tried to finish the first sequence of the middle build where she's introduced to the new world, and then she starts meeting the mentor and her allies. And I ended up making the switch to.

83. I always forget the numbers. The guy from the number is going with me.

That's 61, not 83.

That's right. The guy that, like from the number that, but not the woman that was in charge. And I thought that would be good because he's already been there. He could get sent along with her as her mentor. So that. Because I kind of established him as a mentor anyway in the beginning, Hook. So I thought it would be good for him to go with her. So that was one of the big changes I made. And then I'm also still trying to establish the world that they're in. So she ended up going to, like, the main building in the faction and you get to see some of that, and then you get to see. I introduce you. This is stuff I did at the beginning of the middle build of the first draft was introducing you to like, well, this is how the threshing works and here are the people and you're going to have a team, and here's one person and the other person, and here's what they do, and then she meets them. So just wondering your thoughts on where I'm at right now.

I think it worked really well. I think the choice of having 61 be the mentor was a really good one. One of the really nice things that you're starting to get a feel for is what I like to call, like stringing the reader along for an upcoming event. And it's. Jane Austen was great at doing this too. Where she would talk about, oh, you know, later on we'll go up to the lakes and we'll take a trip up there. But anyway. And then they would continue to confer, converse in the present time. But there's this expectation in the future that Jane will be traveling or Elizabeth will be traveling to the lake region for a vacation. So that's a way of planting something. And this is what we do in everyday life, right? We're always thinking about, well, Halloween's next week, or I wonder what they're going to do for Thanksgiving. And when you. When you don't have things like that inside of a novel, it feels like there's only the present time. And the trick in writing novels is to give the reader a sense that there's been a past and that there's a future. So the reason I bring that up is that in the early. I think it's the second scene you wrote, you have as say things like, well, I gotta hurry up because your mentor is gonna be waiting for you in your room. Anyway, here's a sandwich. Let's walk around here and show you this. And that's. And so that keeps the reader going, oh, there's a mentor coming up. I better hang on. And that is a great technique for people, you know, for writers to use to get some narrative drive moving. Using 61 was great too, because it's not. You know, when we last left him, everybody said he was crazy and he's a nut and, you know, nobody trusts him. And he's the sort of the joke of the numbered. The fact that they brought him in shows like, you know, these people aren't messing around. That's the other thing is that you've really established that this whole Threshing thing's a really big deal. You know, the guards look at her with, you know, they don't give her any trouble. Everybody, because she has this new pin, everybody thinks that she's a. She's a big deal and nobody hassles her, and you get away with things. And.

Yeah, I just. I tried to do that in little ways, too, when, like, as just throws the trash on the ground and, like, somebody scrambles to pick it up and. Because, you know, the whole thing is this is supposed to be the opposite of where she came from.

Yep.

So, yeah, so I tried to do that in little ways throughout the whole thing of just, like, she's not comfortable with her position, but everybody else knows where she belongs.

Exactly. And there's also. I also think that you've expanded the vision of this world in a really, really large way. The moment when she walks into that big facility and there are all those people, hundreds of people in chairs plugged in to, you know, the grid, it's just a stunning sort of set piece. You know, I could see. I could see that cinematically being portrayed by a movie director in a really frightening and strange way. So I think that idea of having this sort of monolithic, large building and then all these people just, you know, in these chairs with these things stuck in the back of your head, that's a really scary image. And it's everyday life for these people, so it's not strange to everybody else, but it's really weird for her. And the way you comment on it from her point of view is great. You know, she's seen this kind of stuff before. She's seen people plugged into the grid before, but never like this. This is serious. These people aren't, like, in their bedrooms plugged in. These people are literally in a facility where they're. That's a big, big moment. And it's, you know, as she's entering and going into the. The sanctum sanctorum of this. Of this world. It's. That's a frightening early introduction. Like, you know, they don't really. Like a lot of individuals in this kind of place. You really. This is all about, you know, sacrificing for the collective. So this. There's a really nice juxtaposition between how this society is really about the collective. I mean, outwardly it says that, but they rely upon the individual to, you know, keep the ship going. So. And then when she gets up to her room, to be met by 61 is terrific. He's kind of. Doesn't Care. He's kind of over it. He's got other things he wants to do. He takes her to see Alex and Ernst. They treat her with sort of contempt or they're frightened, they don't know what's going on. They leave. It's a very nice sequence of events that causes a lot of tension. It brings a lot of suspense. We have no idea how Jesse's going to handle herself in this situation. Her walking past these rooms where these people are plugged in and there's, you know, syringes and comms and medics and the way the mentor is explaining things to her. It's familiar, but it's unique and interesting. I think it's a really nice transition from this very dystopian, weirdish numbered world into this is how the top 1% live. These people, they live at a higher level, but the stress on them is as great, if not greater than, than those who are in the number. All in all, I think it's a really nice jumpstart kickstart into now. We're thinking, oh my gosh, how, what, what kind of trials is she going to go through? And you've got plans for three really good trials that are going to escalate the stakes. They're going to be progressively more complicated. We've sort of had this ghost lingering in the story of her brother who went to this academy and she never heard from him again. But you're not hitting that, you're not hitting that note until he actually appears, which I think is a good choice because you know what, the reader is going to anticipate that when you mention him. But if you do, if you play your cards right, they will have been sort of, they will have forgotten it by the time he actually arrives because the reader has been entertained by all this other sort of action. So all in all, I think you're. You're on. And it has that labyrinth feel. We don't need any mustache twitching villain now because the setting is strange enough. The setting is sort of playing the role of, you know, the ambiguous negative forces that she can't really quite understand yet. And you also introduced that strange place down the hall where, you know, there are guards and it's locked and nobody goes behind that door. Which I thought was good.

Yeah, that was in. When we were doing all the story grid tools for draft one. You said we needed more MacGuffins. Yeah, that's gonna be one of them. Where like, you know, one of the sequences is them working really hard to get behind the door. Because that's what they think they need, but there's nothing there or they find something there that's not. I don't know what. But I. That was in my notes to like start setting that stuff up early in the middle build so I could pay it off later. So that's why I dropped that in. I also, one of the main reasons I switched it to 61 was if I'm setting up a rebellion plot for the future books, I need this to be a very kind of insidious thing that's been going on behind the scenes and everybody's been setting their pieces early. So that's where I thought like Balaam, Randy, 61 and the mayor of New York have all been working together on this for years, waiting until they could send Jesse in as kind of their Trojan horse.

Oh, right, right.

So that way, like, so 61 was involved in the original plot with Randy to try to overthrow that failed. And so now he's back and he does not want to be back and. But he kind of got roped into it with everything else. So I thought it would be good to have like you. Like you just said of, you know, this story exists with inside of a past and a future. There's a great series by Brandon Sanderson. It's called the Mistborn series. And it's a rebellion plot too, that starts out in a similar way. So I think about that a lot as like the first book Stood Alone. We've talked about that where like they win at the end of the first book, but they unleash a bigger hell.

Right.

You know, and we've already decided at the end of this, she beats the labyrinth, but unleashes a bigger hell. But that was. We want that to have been the plan from the beginning by this rebellion that she and the reader don't know anything about till the very end to set up book two is kind of how I've been thinking this. And then we'll be able to see how everybody was in on it from the beginning except for her.

That's. That's very much in sort of the traditional mythic hero's journey path where like in the Hobbit, you know, Bilbo Baggins sort of. He's clueless, right? He doesn't know what's going on. Gandalf shows up at his house and tells him, you know, I've got this great adventure for you. And he's like, no way do I want to go on an adventure. And then the Dwarves show up and then it's it's like Gandalf and the Dwarves have. You know, they've made this plan, we'll get this Hobbit to come and do this deed for us. But Bilbo Baggins has no clue. So Baggins serves as sort of the reader in that he's discovering this information as the story moves forward. And Jesse and you're. Is. Is discovering this information as she's moving forward too. So to have your protagonist sit in that place of, you know, naivete, not knowing any of this stuff has been orchestrated on her behalf is a great, great way of making this payoff in a bigger way at the very end. And how she reacts to being used in that way is going to be interesting to find out too. I think all of these changes are adding a depth to the story. Even though you don't have any of these people on stage, you're setting the scene of the extraordinary world here is really terrific. It's a completely different universe than the dystopian world in New York. I love the transitional scene on the plane. It's a great signal to readers. This is completely different world. And then you deliver the world. I think you're on track. I really do. And.

What you're also setting up is, you know, that great moment when the power recognizes the genius of Jesse. So when that moment happens, it's going to be thrilling to the reader because now they're going to meet Marcus. They're going to meet the man behind the curtain and be. And before knowing Marcus so early on, the story was a big mistake. And I'm glad you corrected it, because now Marcus doesn't even know who this person is until she shows herself to be a special bear. He's not going to take an interest. But after, you know, that first incredible performance in. In the severing, he's gonna be like, whoa, we never had anybody think like this before. I gotta meet this girl. And then it's, you know, then you've got that. You get to play that scene. So. And the readers don't really see that coming yet. So, anyway, I think. I think you're. I think this is definitely on track.

All right.

And so, I mean, the next part is to do the first severing. But, like, I had scenes in there of, like, her and Alex and Ernst getting to know each other, going to see the one, their old coder, who's, like, up in the, like, mental ward, and then them getting called in to do the severing. And now I feel like I have something kind of Neat, because I'll have. I'll be able to use 61 and weave him in and out of these stories as the mentor too. I guess I'm wondering at what point do I diverge from my. Because I keep struggling with, okay, do I need to write something completely new for this scene, or do I need to go back and, like, pull what I've written? Or, like, do I need to just use what I've written to kind of, I guess, is that the next step is to just start going down the first test.

I think the idea of throwing her into the fire with this first severing, as I recall, that's what happened in the first version. You know, I think having 61 being the force that delivers that information, usually what the reader is going to think is going to happen next is what. What do you think the reader would think it would happen next? After reading this section, having read Ender's Game and all those kind of books, what. What is traditionally done next?

Well, they start training.

Training, right.

Yeah.

So your reader is going to be like, oh, great, now we're going to get some training. We're going to get that really cool training scene. And instead.

They'Re not going to train her or they're going to get very. They're going to start to, like, think that they're going to get some training. And then, bang, she's already in. She's already in that first severing.

So I think your idea, the original thing, works, and having both Ernst Alex be negative forces kind of against her in this first severing is a good idea. I think. Maybe they don't show her the. The old coder up in code, you know, in icu, until after she shows her medal. And it could be, you know, a scene after she does this incredible win. The reason why we're kind of nasty to you is we didn't really want to attach to you all that much because let's just show you. And then they take her and they show her what happened to the other coder, which is going to freak her out completely. But. So I think you're avoiding what the reader is expecting is a good choice. Okay. And making her, you know, be the thorn or whatever and have Balaam come in that moment is good too, because it says, it's sort of like, talk about the Hobbit again. But, you know, the first adventure of the Hobbit is they meet those trolls, right? The Hobbit and the Dwarves set off on the adventure and there's a big storm they're out of food. And they send up Bilbo Maggins to check out this fire. And he goes up there and there are a bunch of trolls there. And trolls are really, really bad, you know, beings. And they eat dwarves. They cook them for supper and they love to. They just devour other animals. So Bilbo gets caught, right? And then the dwarves come to see if he's okay, and they all get caught too. So you're wondering, wow, gee, how. How's this gonna end? And then what. What Tolkien does is he brings in kind of, he brings in Gandalf and Gandalf saves them by outsmarting the trolls. The trolls stay up too late, the dawn rises and they're frozen as statues. And it's. It's a little bit of a cheat because we don't know that the trolls are going to get frozen into statues when the sun rises. But it works. Basically. My point is that the protagonist gets rescued the first time and if they show too much metal early on, if they show like they know everything early on without some help, then it becomes, oh, that seems a little weird. Why would they be so confident and competent at this time? So the fact that Jesse gets that, that clue from Balaam, I think works. And it also introduces Balaam as an underground force in the overall story so that that setup will pay off much later on in the novel. So this is a very long way of saying that Jesse wins that first severing, but she needs some help. And she does get it from Balaam. He doesn't tell her what to do, but he gives her a very good.

Clue in the way that I wrote it in the first draft. She gets help from other coders too. She, like, they catch her and then they send her ahead as their scout. And so she kind of helps anyway. Yeah, so. And in this version too, I introduced Balaam in the very first scene, so there's like two or three lines from him as well.

Right.

Because that's one of the things I realized going back through the first draft is in the ending payoff. I need. I need like everybody to close ranks and help, you know, And I didn't have anybody from my first draft, so that's why, like, establishing balaam more, having 61 there, having the rats, like actually on stage in a couple scenes, having. And then of course, Randy will come in, having all of that.

Don't forget, you gotta have. You have to have a shape shifter in there. Don't forget that.

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Is having as end up Being a bad guy, Is that like shape shifting too early? Because, you know, he seems to be helpful in the beginning because I actually did think about who my shapeshifter is going to be, because now that I have a much more clear mentor, I was thinking him, but I wouldn't. I didn't know. I didn't really think further than that.

Well, that's a good question. And it's probably not something that we'll be able to answer until you hit that. That moment. Because it might work. Having just, you know, doing the shapeshifter with as, he is very friendly to her at the beginning, and then he shifts into the enemy and then he shifts back. You know, remember he makes that sacrifice that ends up saving her life or something.

Right.

So that could be enough shape shifting. And you don't need thing in. In the Labyrinth plot is you often need a Judas character, a Judas shapeshifter where somebody inside the, you know, the. The group turns.

Yeah. Like in Matrix.

Yeah. So maybe you don't need that. I don't really. I'm really not sure right now. It might be a situation where, like, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a Harry Potter scholar, but, you know, Ron and Hermione, they never become negative. They never shapeshift. Correct.

They never become like, evil or anything. No. There's one book where, like, him and Ron don't get along for most of the book, but it ends with Ron helping him.

Right.

But no, they don't shape shift like that.

It might be okay not to have the. The Judas character within. It's hard to say, you know, it's really hard to say at this point.

Okay.

If you were to do it, you know, it might be somebody like Ernst. It's usually the one who has the most to gain by. By sticking true to the team who. Who sells out, you know?

Okay.

But you can solve that later. I think it'll be okay. I really think it'll be okay if everybody just joins forces at the end to help her, you know, win the villain at the mercy of the villain scene or hero at the mercy.

Yeah, yeah, I figured that out.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. For everything Story Grid related, check out storygrid.com. make sure you pick up a copy of the book and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss anything happening in the Story Grid universe. If you'd like to check out the show notes for this episode or any past episodes, all of that can be found at Storygrid do podcast. If you would like to reach out to us, you can find us on Twitter @StoryGrid. Lastly, if you would like to support the show, you can do that by telling another author about the show and by visiting us on itunes 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.