YouTube
This week’s podcast episode confronts the big fat elephant in the room over these past 60 weeks of pontificating and instruction. At the current pace of writing, Tim won’t finish this novel until sometime in 2018! Wasn’t Shawn supposed to teach Tim how to write a workable novel without all of the mess inherent in… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>The Story Grid Podcast
For podcasts and transcripts
Got Live If You Want It
Tim and I took a recording week off during the American Thanksgiving holiday. So we thought it would be fun to release the live recording of our appearance together at Jeff Goins’ Tribe Conference last September. The audience was terrific and the experience was the thing that convinced me to offer a Story Grid seminar… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>Four Dimensional Settings
What’s in a setting? There’s period. There’s duration. There’s location. and there is the one that is often forgotten and/or ignored… Levels of Conflict. In this episode of The Story Grid Podcast Tim and I discuss Setting in detail. As you’ll recall, a couple of weeks ago we got stuck with Tim’s middle build. We… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>The Cure for Writer’s Block
Tim and I got stuck working on his Middle Build. The sticking point reminded me of the ancient Greek poet Archilochus’s famous saying: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Here’s a big thing trick I’ve learned having edited more than 300 books in my career. [I fear doing an… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>The Meaty Middle
The middle build of a longform story is extremely intimidating. It comprises half of the book and can drive even the most seasoned storyteller into despair. So how should you approach the middle? In this episode, Tim decided to keep pushing forward scene by scene. To see where that approach left him, click the play… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>Knowing When You’re Done
How do you know if you’ve done enough to make a big move from the beginning hook of your book to the middle build? This is when understanding the global emotional arc/s of your story becomes so important. In this episode of The Story Grid Podcast, what was clear to me…wasn’t so clear to Tim. … Read more »
Read the Transcript >>The Man In A Hole Sequence
If you’re recall from a while back when we discussed Kurt Vonnegut’s Six Story Arcs, we talked about the “man in a hole” arc, which requires that your protagonist fall in a proverbial hole and then struggle to get themselves out of it. In this episode of The Story Grid Podcast we examine Tim’s second… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>Love and An Immersive Story Grid Experience
Last month Tim Grahl and I spoke at Jeff Goins’ Tribe Writers Conference in Nashville. One of the first questions that came up was “I’ve been struggling with my epic novel and I find myself very reluctant to dedicate my work time to it. Why do you think that is?” I proceeded to tell the… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>The Fundamental Genre
If your goal is to support yourself as a fiction writer, the most important Genre to master is the Love Story. In this episode of The Story Grid Podcast Tim and I talk about why that is and how to go about learning the fundamentals of the form. There was so much content to cover… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>Revelation Turning Points
What struck me about this episode of The Story Grid Podcast was Tim’s confusion about how to use Revelation Turning Points to best effect. We talk about one scene in particular when Tim was unsure of his use of a piece of exposition (the length of his protagonist’s jail sentence) as a means to turn… Read more »
Read the Transcript >>