Ah, the Story Grid. It’s like putting on a comfy sweater – I love this thing. A fact that should be pretty obvious, it being the first resource I’m highlighting on the Blog. Buckle up, it’s gonna be a long post.
How I Found Story Grid
When our first child was a baby, I’d put them in a backpack and go for walks to develop a naptime rhythm. It’s common for babies to fall asleep to continuous, rhythmic motion (think: rocking, walking, swinging), and our baby was no exception.
But, after falling asleep to the motion, they didn’t stay asleep after the rhythmic walking stopped. This means that we could get them to sleep by going for a walk, but to get a good, full nap in, we had to keep walking. Fortunately, we live in an area where I would take safe, quiet walks that stretched on for more than 2 hours.
After falling into the rhythm of long daily walks, I started looking for podcasts to fill the silent hours. I eventually landed in some writing-based ones, and that’s where I found the Story Grid in all it’s unashamed story-nerd glory. I loved it, I could have listened to it all day.
But just a few episodes in, I realized that the information was stuff I wanted to take notes on, and it would benefit me more if I was listening to it when I actually had a writing project in the works (at the time, I hadn’t written anything in almost a year). So, I put the podcast aside and was excited to return to it in early 2019 when I started writing seriously.
Since then, I’ve listened to all the podcast episodes of the original podcast series, read the book, use the method to outline my writing, and am working on typing up all my notes.
I was absolutely sold on the concept that bubbled from Shawn Coyne, and that Tim Grahl painstakingly learned. It’s awesome to see how much they have grown – now a huge resource with certified editors, a publishing house, blog posts, conferences, online courses, a guild, and three different podcast series.
What the Story Grid Is
Story Grid is a long game within the long game of writing. It’s not a quick fix for your writing or editing, but a method that you learn, then apply to a work, and evaluate the results.
It is, at its heart, a method of analyzing story structure of any story – book, play, movie, whatever. The creator, Shawn Coyne, is an editor, and Story Grid is geared towards editors. But it can definitely be used by writers – especially when they need to switch from creating their story to editing it.
Through it, a story is broken down into parts and evaluated at the micro level. Then all the points of evaluation can be used to easily pinpoint areas where something is missing, or figure out why a specific part might not feel right. You can now get more detailed notes on where and what to edit, not just vague notes on how something just ‘didn’t work’.
The Story Spine
I’ll do a quick run through of the Story Grid Story Spine, which is part of the bigger Foolscap Global Story Grid (check that out here). I use the Story Spine to put together a rough, working outline for my stories (see my post on outlining here). The Story Spine is basically just 15 core scenes within your story – five scene types that are repeated for each of the three parts of the story.
Story Grid works with a three-part story structure: Beginning Hook, Middle Build, Ending Payoff. Pretty simple.
The five repeating scene types are referred to, within Story Grid, as the 5 Commandments of Storytelling.
- Inciting Incident – I think this one’s self-explanatory
- Turning Point Progressive Complication – while there are many progressively complicating scenes within a story, this particular one is usually and event very difficult to go back and change, and it launches the story into the Crisis.
- Crisis – a choice (usually irreversible) that must be made. Could be a choice between irreconcilable goods (both choices are good, but you can’t choose both), or the best choice between the bad choices (when all choices lead to the same undesirable result, which choice takes the better path to get there?).
- Climax – this is the active choice/ answer to the question of the Crisis. (NOTE: just because it is the choice/ answer, doesn’t mean that characters need to sit around and mull through it, it can be an instinctual choice too.)
- Resolution – what happens when the Climax choice/ answer is made.
Now, let’s put it all together. The Inciting Incident knocks the character out of balance. Progressive Complications keep the character out of balance until they reach the Turning Point Progressive Complication that gives rise to the Crisis question. The character’s answer (through their action or inaction) is the Climax, and the Resolution is what happens as a result of the Climax.
This five-scene rhythm is present in all three parts of the story; the Ending Payoff’s Crisis, Climax, and Resolution also serving as the Global Story’s Crisis, Climax, and Resolution.
How to Get Started With Story Grid
I don’t really want to go more in depth here, otherwise this post will become painfully long. If you want me to put another post together about Story Grid, leave a comment to let me know.
If you want more info on it now, follow some of the above Story Grid links, check out their website, or the podcast. There are also a few YouTube videos that go through some of the beginning concepts.
Again, this is more of an editing tool than a writing/ drafting tool. While I do use the Story Grid Story Spine to help me loosely outline, I won’t be delving into any deep Story Grid stuff until at least after my first draft is finished.
Don’t forget to tell me if you want another post on Story Grid. Also, let me know you you’ve use Story Grid before in some way!