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Write the Novel That Actually Works.

The Story Grid is the diagnostic system Shawn Coyne developed across 30+ years of editing bestsellers. Now yours, free. Learn to see your draft the way a professional editor does, and know exactly what to fix.

Find out if your story is actually working
Pinpoint exactly where your draft is breaking down
Get the same diagnostic editors use on every manuscript
Stop guessing. Start fixing.

★★★★★ 1,000+ reviews on Amazon · Introduction by Steven Pressfield

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The Story Grid is an intensely practical tool. Like all tools, when you use it, it works. It will change you, your writing, and most of all, the people who read what you write.

Seth GodinBestselling author of This Is Marketing, Linchpin, and Purple Cow

Inside The Story Grid

What you'll learn

The Story Grid breaks any story into its component parts so you can see exactly what's working, what isn't, and what to do about it.

The five commandments every working story obeys

Inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax, resolution. Why every scene needs all five, and what happens when one is missing.

The genre conventions readers expect

Every genre has rules. Break them by accident and readers bounce. Learn the obligatory scenes and conventions your book has to deliver.

How to diagnose a broken draft

Stop the vague "something feels off" feedback loop. The Story Grid pinpoints the exact scene, the exact problem, and the specific fix.

The editor's spreadsheet, demystified

The actual tool professional editors use to evaluate manuscripts. Walked through line by line with a complete worked example.

Why "the middle sags" and how to fix it

The most common structural failure in unpublished manuscripts. Why it happens, why it kills momentum, and the specific architectural fix.

How to revive a draft you thought was dead

The Story Grid was designed for resuscitation. If you have a manuscript stuck in a drawer, this book will tell you whether to fix it or move on.

About the Author

Shawn Coyne has edited 374 books.

Over a 30+ year career in publishing, Shawn Coyne has analyzed, acquired, edited, written, marketed, represented or published 374 books, with dozens of bestsellers across every genre, generating over $150 million in revenue.

The Story Grid is the system he built to do it. The diagnostic tool that turned vague editorial instinct into a method any writer can learn and apply to their own work.

374

Books edited

$150M+

Revenue generated

30+

Years in publishing

Also from this book

Introduction by Steven Pressfield
Bestselling author of The War of Art and The Legend of Bagger Vance
Endorsed by Seth Godin
Bestselling author and marketing legend
Used in MFA programs
Taught alongside McKee's Story and Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces
Foundation of Story Grid Methodology
The framework taught to thousands of writers worldwide