Who is telling your story? Who are they telling it to? Why are they telling it?

This is the Narrative Device!

The Narrative Device consists of three main components:

• Author: The Author is someone who is capable of telling the POP premise as a story to shed light on the problem another person has.
• SAM: The Single Audience Member is a person with a problem related to the one the protagonist faces in the POP premise.
• Problem: A specific problem that the POP premise can shed light on.

What Shawn, Danielle, and Leslie are trying to teach Tim this week is how this affects every single word of his writing.

Click here to read Tim's scene: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ugNstol1I3DGyIcOQ13pdkkgyKKGddFvAE7LH_-OLng/edit?usp=sharing

To see the transcript of this episode, visit: https://storygrid.com/episode-273

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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 273 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/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=sharing

To see the transcript of this episode, visit: https://storygrid.com/episode-270

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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 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/edit

To 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.com

This 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=sharing

To 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.com

This 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.com

This 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.com

This 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

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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 264 of the Story Grid Podcast: https://storygrid.com/podcast