Story Grid Podcast

Shawn, Leslie, Danielle and Tim face a hard question...Is the Story Grid Podcast still worth doing?You might be surprised by what they have to say.

What happens when you can't connect to your protagonist?This week Tim makes some progress on his scene,  but it's still missing something. The soul in the writing isn't there.Shawn, Leslie, and Danielle talk through how to use emotional pain to connect into the story.  

There are times in your story when you need to switch out the protagonist. This can even happen in the middle of a scene or short story.But how do you do it the right way?This week Shawn, Danielle, and Leslie look at Tim's draft to see how you can hand off the protagonist to a different character without confusion.Click here to read Tim's scene: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T9K3Reuspp3oXJdBm_Aj8QLuUXv0Lcj7wPTG9SZKKGI/edit?usp=sharingTo see the transcript of this episode, visit: https://storygrid.com/episode-270—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.comThis is Episode 270 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast

Great stories always answer two-factor problems.In this episode we see how Tim's mistake of choosing the wrong protagonist messes up the two factor problem. Shawn, Danielle, and Leslie help him sort out how to fix this problem.Click here to read Tim's scene: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNGyDX5dkbchjT6UcrixUNv_2PI_WT7GrZn04H0nIh0/editTo see the transcript of this episode, visit: https://storygrid.com/episode-269—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.comThis is Episode 269 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast

In this episode we start comparing the Story Grid 624 Analysis of the first draft of Tim's scene to EYE WITNESS by Ed McBain. Pretty quickly we see that Tim made one small mistake that ends up having a huge impact on the rest of the scene.In EYE WITNESS, the author switches the protagonist near the beginning of the scene. Tim doesn't do this and, as you'll see, this causes a lot of problems!Click here to read Tim's scene: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNGyDX5dkbchjT6UcrixUNv_2PI_WT7GrZn04H0nIh0/edit?usp=sharingTo see the transcript of this episode, visit: https://storygrid.com/episode-268—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.comThis is Episode 268 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast

Tim has written a first draft of his scene based on the in-depth analysis of Ed McBain's EYE WITNESS.Listen in as Shawn, Danielle and Leslie give their feedback and start diving into the analysis of the first draft.  For the transcript and downloads for this episode, visit https://storygrid.com/267—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.comThis is Episode 266 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast

Tim has written a first draft of his scene based on the in-depth analysis of Ed McBain's EYE WITNESS. Listen in as Shawn, Danielle and Leslie give their initial feedback and start diving into the analysis of the first draft.   For the transcript and downloads for this episode, visit https://storygrid.com/266 — Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.com This is Episode 266 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast

How do we use all of this masterwork analysis to actually iterate our own short story?In this week's episode, we look at the 624, Beat, and Trope analysis for the short story EYE WITNESS by Ed McBain (https://amzn.to/3Q2UpqV) and start discussing what kind of short story I might write based on all of the analysis.This is where things start to go off the rails.As you'll see, Shawn and Tim aren't always on the same page and struggle to communicate with each other.We decided to leave this episode in so you can see what it looks like when an editor and author don's see eye-to-eye.For the transcript and downloads for this episode, visit https://storygrid.com/265—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.comThis is Episode 265 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast

What are Tropes and how can they actually help your writing?Tropes are a toolbox of common components to build a certain kind of story. You can put these building blocks together to create a story that meets the reader expectations for your particular GENRE.Most lists of tropes are a grab bag of story types and/or their components and aspects. They don’t fit together, so they don’t provide a process for consistently crafting scenes and stories that satisfy readers.In the Story Grid Universe, we provide this process by limiting the definition of a trope to a particular level of Story. Story Grid tropes are small story units that are the building blocks writers need to create the arc of change within scenes.In this episode, we start working through the Tropes for the short story EYE WITNESS by Ed McBain (https://amzn.to/3Q2UpqV).To download the Trope Breakdown, visit: https://storygrid.com/episode-264—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://st

Learn how your line-by-line writing can be improved by the Story Grid Beat methodology.In this episode, we show you the final line graph generated by our beat-by-beat analysis and how this can help you write better scenes.—Get a free copy of our book Story Grid 101: The First Five Principles of the Story Grid Methodology: https://storygrid101.comFor episode transcript and downloads: https://storygrid.com/episode-263This is Episode 263 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcastThis is our in-depth analysis of the short story EYE WITNESS by Ed McBain: https://amzn.to/3Q2UpqV

In this episode, Danielle continues walking Tim through every single line of Ed McBain's EYE WITNESS to help him identify the beats and what they are doing. This is a perfect episode for the story nerds!

Now that we have finished up the Story Grid 624 Analysis of Ed McBain's EYE WITNESS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WLiCyxIsCk), it's time to dive all the way down to the line-by-line writing. In this episode, Danielle begins walking Tim through every single line of the short story to help him identify the beats and what they are doing. This is a perfect episode for the story nerds!

We have wrapped up our 624 analysis of Ed McBain's short story EYE WITNESS. In this episode, Leslie does a review of the 624 then Danielle does an introduction for Tropes and Shawn follows up with introducing Beats.

Continuing our 624 analysis of Ed McBain's short story EYE WITNESS, we are talking through the Five Commandments of Storytelling.This is the third in a three part episode as we deep dive through each commandment. In this episode, we go through the Climax and Resolution.

Continuing our 624 analysis of Ed McBain's short story EYE WITNESS, we are talking through the Five Commandments of Storytelling.This is the second in a three part episode as we deep dive through each commandment. In this episode, we go through the Crisis and Crisis Matrix.

Continuing our 624 analysis of Ed McBain's short story EYE WITNESS, we are talking through the Five Commandments of Storytelling.This is a three part episode as we deep dive through each commandment. In this episode, we go through the Inciting Incident and the Turning Point Progressive Complication.

There are four story analysis questions you must answer for every scene in your story: 1. What are the Avatars literally doing?2. What are the essential tactics of the Avatars?3. What universal human value has changed for one or more Avatars in the scene?4. What Story Event sums up the scene’s global value change? In this episode we make it to the final one! Last week we covered the first three.

There are four story analysis questions you must answer for every scene in your story: 1. What are the Avatars literally doing?2. What are the essential tactics of the Avatars?3. What universal human value has changed for one or more Avatars in the scene?4. What Story Event sums up the scene’s global value change? In this episode we make it through the first three! Next week is a whole episode on the fourth question.

Is it first or third person? Past or present tense?As you'll see in this week's podcast episode, Point of View is about way more than this.See more here:https://storygrid.com/point-of-view/A story’s global Point of View includes the technical choices writers make to deliver the story to the reader. The POP premise and Narrative Device suggest Point of View combinations that create the effect of the story told by the Author to the single Audience member.Person refers to the vantage point from which the written story is presented the reader.First Person: I (or we) wrote a story.Second Person: You wrote a story.Third Person: Alex (or she or he or they) wrote a story.Tense distinguishes the timeframe of the story.Past: I wrote a scene.Present: You write (or are writing) a scene.Future: Alex will write a scene.Mode: The final technical choice focuses on how the information is presented. This is the storytelling Mode.Showing is an objective and immediate mode that creates the effect of being present and observing t

Figuring out the Narrative Device for your story will unlock your writing in ways you never thought possible. There are three questions you must answer: - Who is the Author of the story? (Hint... it's not you, the writer) - Who is the Single Audience Member? - What is the Problem? See more here: https://storygrid.com/point-of-view/