Story Grid

Default category for all Story Grid posts

Stories Are About Change

Story Grid

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the seminal book On Death and Dying (1969) in which she laid out a psychological model for the stages of extreme change…coping with the death of a loved one. In the years after publication, psychologists, sociologists and economists have applied Kubler-Ross’s work to the process of dealing with many varieties of life… Read more »

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Hook, Build, Payoff

Story Grid

After we’ve laid out the global elements of our Story at the top of our Foolscap Global Story Grid, we need to nail down the actual major movements. So you’ll see that the final three quarters of our Foolscap is dedicated to mapping out the Beginning, Middle and End of our Story. Boiling your pile… Read more »

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The Big Takeaway

Story Grid

The next line on our Foolscap Global Story Grid is a space to fill in the protagonist/s Objects of Desire.  Here’s Story Fuel, a post I wrote on these essential choices. It’s worth reading through it again to clarify how best to write it down on your Foolscap. After Objects of Desire, we come to… Read more »

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Free Indirect Style

Story Grid

How can you best tell a story? Through the vantage point of one character? Or multiple characters? If you decide to write in first person, I went across the street to buy an ice cream cone, then you have taken on the central limitation/strength of the novelist. Choosing to write a novel gives you the… Read more »

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Point of View

Story Grid

Next up on our Foolscap Global Story Grid is the space to fill in point of view. Point of view is the vantage point the writer chooses to tell the reader a Story. Your point of view choices will dictate the tenor of each beat, each scene, each sequence, each act and the entire work…. Read more »

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The Monster Mash Up

Story Grid

We’ve been working our way down the Foolscap Global Story Grid.  Up today are the spaces to fill in the conventions and obligatory scenes of your chosen genres.  As our big payoff down the road will be a complete creation and analysis of The Story Grid for The Silence of the Lambs, here is the breakdown… Read more »

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The Universal Appeal of the Thriller

Story Grid

We’re working our way down the Foolscap Global Story Grid and the next line we need to fill in are the Obligatory Scenes and Conventions of our chosen genre/s.  But before I lay out the nuts and bolts of the form, it’s absolutely worth taking the time to consider why The Thriller exists in the… Read more »

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An Editor’s Six Core Questions

Story Grid

An editor handed a pile of manuscript pages must answer a whole bunch of questions before he can even begin to diagnose the effectiveness of the storytelling. While he’ll know after one read whether or not the book “works,” in order to take the book to the next level, he’ll have to figure out exactly… Read more »

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