Story Grid

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The Story Grid Spreadsheet: Analyzing Your Manuscript Scene-by-Scene

Story Grid

What is the Story Grid Spreadsheet? The Story Grid Spreadsheet is a tool writers and editors use to analyze scenes across an entire story. The spreadsheet helps us to improve our scenes and stories by diagnosing problems in our own works in progress. We also apply this tool to the studying MASTERWORKS to see how… Read more »

How to Run a Writing Group: A Proven System to Keep Feedback Positive and Helpful

Story Grid

Are you tired of going it alone as a writer? Joining or starting a writing group is a wonderful way to build community and improve your writing skills. But beware. For every good experience of participating in a writing group, there are ten horror stories. Too many times unclear goals, personal egos, and loose structure… Read more »

How to Give Helpful Writing Feedback

Story Grid

As a writer, it’s nearly impossible to get helpful, specific, actionable feedback on your writing. Even if you join a WRITING GROUP, most of the feedback you receive is vague, unactionable, and often more about the person giving the feedback than the actual writing. To that end, we decided to provide this guide to giving… Read more »

How to Write Scenes: Structure, Examples, and Definitions

Story Grid

What is a Scene? Scenes are the building blocks of our stories. These STORY UNITS dramatize definable VALUE SHIFTS for the AVATARS (or characters) and their CONTEXT (or setting). The value shifts that occur in each working scene of the story incrementally build the global arcs of change. Many writers define scenes by chapter breaks… Read more »

Foolscap Global Story Grid

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 the book “works,” in order to take the book to the next level, he’ll have to figure out exactly how it… Read more »

Content Genre: Objects of Desire and Values in Story

Story Grid

What is the Content Genre? Each of the twelve Content Genres sets the tone for what the audience will experience during the story. Content genres can be external, focusing on change from forces of antagonism outside the protagonist, or internal, focusing on change within the protagonist. A story’s Content Genre is one of the five… Read more »

Masterworks: How and Why to Study the Greatest Writers in History

Story Grid

As writers, we should always be reading. We hear this advice constantly from the pros. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” — Stephen King “For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: to read the best… Read more »

Genre Conventions: Must-Have Elements of Story

Story Grid

What are Genre Conventions? Genre conventions are specific requirements for the story’s ALTERNATE WORLD, AVATARS, and catalysts that create conflict and enable solutions. Without specific genre conventions, the reader will be confused, unsettled, or bored and quit reading. Genre Conventions set up genre audience expectations and create the potential for specific change in the OBLIGATORY… Read more »

Worldbuilding in Story: How to Create a Compelling Alternate World

Story Grid

What is Worldbuilding? Worldbuilding is how we create an Alternate World for our story where the AVATARS interact and the story events unfold. It is the whole system setting for the story, which includes all the objects and AVATARS inside it and the relationships between them. In Story Grid, we use the term Alternate World… Read more »

Character Development: Writing Believable Avatars that Change

Story Grid

What are Characters? Characters are what most people call the simulated people who populate stories. They may be realistic contemporary humans, historical figures, aliens from a fictional world, or anthropomorphized animals, but they stand in as models of humans who act like humans do. What is Character Development? In the Story Grid Universe, we call… Read more »

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Story Grid

The Story Grid Spreadsheet: Analyzing Your Manuscript Scene-by-Scene

Story Grid

How to Run a Writing Group: A Proven System to Keep Feedback Positive and Helpful

Story Grid

How to Give Helpful Writing Feedback

Story Grid

How to Write Scenes: Structure, Examples, and Definitions

Story Grid

Foolscap Global Story Grid

Story Grid

Content Genre: Objects of Desire and Values in Story

Story Grid

Masterworks: How and Why to Study the Greatest Writers in History

Story Grid

Genre Conventions: Must-Have Elements of Story

Story Grid

Worldbuilding in Story: How to Create a Compelling Alternate World

Story Grid

Character Development: Writing Believable Avatars that Change

Story Grid

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Story Grid

Still not finding whatyou're looking for?

The Book

First Time Writer

Resources

Still not finding what
you're looking for?