Past and Present 1: Telling your story out of order
What if you don’t want to start your story at the beginning? Join Kim Kessler and me for a discussion of stories with nonlinear timelines.
Story Grid Editing
Podcasting with Shawn Coyne
Ten weeks writing a novella in public with Shawn Coyne as my editor…and a whole series of very strict constraints. What could go wrong?
Bite Size Editions
At the Story Grid Editor Roundtable Podcast, we’ll be taking a break for the festive month. To make sure our subscribers still get a little something from us on our Wednesday posting schedule, we’re making some short episodes on topics that interest us as writers. The first Bite Size Edition goes up tomorrow, December 5, …
Studio in a closet
When a casual study group turned into the official Story Grid Editor Roundtable podcast, it was suddenly important to go for a better sound than I was getting on Skype with a cheap headset mic, and the echoing void of my living room. No way was I going to bike to some rented sound …
Dialogue or narrative?
One of my editing clients posed this great question: Do you have any thoughts about when to write dialogue and when to just say “they talked about this or that” or “she told him about the project”? Why yes. Yes I do. Every time you use narrative as a substitute for dialogue, you’re telling. Dialogue …
Announcing the Roundtable podcast!
Story Grid Roundtable Podcast Team New! Now! The Story Grid Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to helping you become a better editor. Each week, I and four of my fellow Certified Story Grid Editors analyze a movie from one of the twelve main content genres, answering the Editor’s Six Core Questions…including (ta-da!) the elusive Obligatory Scenes and …
The stack
I got rid of my books a few years ago in a total home decluttering. This was at the thin end of the massive wedge that smartphones were becoming, and I was no longer reading much. Too distracted. And besides, I live in a very small house. Why cover the walls with bookcases? Anything I …
I’ll be published soon in nonfiction
Exciting news: I’ve been contracted to write a Story Grid Masterworks Edition in–of all things!–the Western genre. One of Shawn Coyne’s most powerful Story Grid tools is his study guide to the Love Story genre, in the form of an annotated Pride and Prejudice. It was instrumental to me in completing Restraint. As a Certified Story Grid Editor, …
The turning point
The turning point in my Story Grid story was right where it needed to be: at the Midpoint Shift, in the morning of Day 3 in Nashville. That’s when Shawn Coyne revealed his plan for disrupting the decrepit New York publishing model, and I realized that I was part of something way bigger than just …