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:...

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.com This is Episode 266 of the Story Grid 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:...

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...

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...

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.com For episode transcript and downloads: https://storygrid.com/episode-263 This is Episode 263 of the Story Grid Podcast:...

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.

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/

How do you boil your story down into one "What If" statement? There are four parts to building out the answer to this question and Shawn, Leslie, Danielle, and Tim walk through it together in this week's episode.

The genre of your story is way more than one thing. In this episode of the Story Grid Podcast, learn the five important pieces of understanding your genre — Time, Style, Structure, Reality, and Content.

Shawn discusses the two sides to every story.

Shawn and Kim go back to the beginning and discuss the origins of Story Grid.

Shawn Coyne walks through the role you, as the Artist, plays in getting your own wants, needs and desires into your story.

Shawn Coyne discusses the role backstory plays in your avatar's wants, needs, and desires.

Shawn Coyne walks through character wants, needs, and desires and how they impact your storytelling.

Shawn and Kim discuss Objects of Desire and how they work with your characters and storytelling.

Continuing the discussion on the three different types of Beats that build up to Scenes, how do Expository Beats work inside a scene?