Conventions and Obligatory Moments: The Must-haves to Meet Audience Expectations
Written by Kimberly Kessler and Leslie Watts
Edited by Shawn Coyne

As writers, we all struggle to transform the messy raw materials in our minds into stories that will reach readers’ hearts. When it works, it feels like magic.

But what really makes that magic happen?

A few essential components, which Story Grid calls conventions and obligatory moments, can span the distance between writers and readers. It’s those conventions and moments that fulfill readers’ expectations in every story—from gripping action tales to tender romances.

In Conventions and Obligatory Moments, veteran Story Grid editors Kimberly Kessler and Leslie Watts provide the first comprehensive Story Grid guide to these essential elements of the writer’s craft. Kessler and Watts illustrate each concept with examples from classic masterworks, including Treasure Island, Murder on the Orient Express, and Pride and Prejudice. And they situate conventions and obligatory moments within the larger world of the Story Grid methodology, including the Four Core Framework and the Five Commandments of Storytelling. They teach writers precisely how each genre’s conventions set up critical changes, and how obligatory moments pay off those changes to meet readers’ expectations.

Ready to make your own magic?

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kimberly Kessler

As one-fifth of the Editor Roundtable Podcast, Kim has the divine privilege of nerding out every week studying story. She is obsessed with the internal genres and specializes in helping writers craft authentic character arcs in any setting. Her favorite stories use humor to explore and cope with grief and heartache. Her favorite clients are hungry to learn and bring their full authentic selves to the collaborative process. Nothing is more rewarding than digging in together to uncover the breakthroughs they need.

Leslie Watts

Leslie Watts is a certified Story Grid editor, writer, and podcaster. She’s been writing for as long as she can remember: from her sixth-grade magazine about cats to writing practice while drafting opinions for an appellate court judge.

When the dust settled after her children were born, she launched Writership.com to help writers unearth the treasure in their manuscripts. She believes writers become better storytellers through practice, and that editors owe a duty of care to help writers with specific and supportive guidance to meet reader expectations and express their unique gifts in the world.

ABOUT THE EDITOR
Shawn Coyne

Shawn Coyne is a writer, editor, and publishing professional with over 30 years of experience. He has analyzed, acquired, edited, written, marketed, represented, or published 374 books with many dozens of bestsellers across all genres, and generated over $150,000,000 of revenue.

He graduated in 1986 with a degree in Biology from Harvard College, with a distinction of Magna Cum Laude for his thesis laboratory research work at the Charles A. Dana Laboratory of Toxicology at the Harvard School of Public Health. After Coyne left the laboratory, his findings were acknowledged and served as the inspiration for Mandana Sassanfar and Leona Samson’s Identification and Preliminary Characterization of an 06-Methylguanine DNA Repair Methyltransferase in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae publication in the venerable The Journal of Biological Chemistry (Vol. 265, No. 1, Issue of January 5, pp. 20-25, 1990). 

In 1991, early in his publishing career, Coyne began an independent investigation into the structure, function and organization of narrative, which he has since coined Simulation Synthesis Theory. His synoptic integration of Aristotle’s Poetics, Freytag’s The Technique of the Drama, Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, McKee’s Story, among many other story structure investigations with contemporary cognitive science, quantum information theory, cybernetics, evolutionary theory, behavioral psychology, Peircean and Jamesian pragmatism, Jungian depth psychology, Theologian and Philosopher Paul Tillich's conception of "ultimate concern," and fighter pilot John Boyd’s OODA loop serves as philosophical, scientific and spiritual foundations for his teaching.

In 2015, he created Story Grid Methodology to begin teaching and further developing Simulation Synthesis Theory. Since then he has given lectures on the origin of story, the integration of storytelling and science, and the necessity of telling complex stories to thousands of students all over the world. 

In addition to The Story Grid and Mentoring the Machines, he’s authored, coauthored or ghost-written numerous bestselling nonfiction and fiction titles. His most recent lecture series, “Genre Blueprint” applies his Simulation Synthesis Theory to popular works such as The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Matrix by Lara and Lana Wachowski.