The mission statement for Story Grid Universe and Story Grid Publishing.

The Story Grid Universe: Leveling Up Your Craft

Reference

Shawn Coyne

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Story Grid Publishing LLC

What if you could look inside a novel and see exactly how it works, like a doctor analyzing an x-ray or MRI scan? 
In The Story Grid Contenders Analysis Guide to The Threshing Tim Grahl and Shawn Coyne look deep into the heart of Grahl’s dystopian action novel set in a grim future where people compete in a virtual world to survive in the real one. 
What essential actions lie beneath the moves the characters make? 
How does each scene propel the story forward? 
Coyne opens the Guide by analyzing the structure of the Action Story, the first and most primal fiction genre. Why have humans shared heroic tales that pivot on life-or-death choices ever since we began gathering around campfires? Why do Action stories persist at the top of bestseller lists? Because they speak to our desire to experience heart-stopping fear and excitement and learn hard lessons vicariously. Coyne’s analysis provides the framework you need to satisfy those desires in readers. 
Then Grahl takes you into his process of crafting a story that works by dissecting the structure of each scene, from inciting incident to crisis to resolution. You’ll see the critical choices he made to deepen his characters’ dilemmas and surprise readers again and again. 
There is simply no better way to learn the craft of storytelling than to study a novel scene by scene. 
This Story Grid Contenders Analysis Guide is a valuable tool for any writer or editor interested in the art and science of storytelling. By showing you the inner workings of this contemporary action story at the macro and micro levels, Coyne and Grahl give you the tools to analyze your own work, diagnose and solve problems, and level up your craft.

The Threshing by Tim Grahl: A Story Grid Contenders Analysis Guide

Coyne, Shawn

Grahl, Tim

Jane Austen's masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, has been admired, adapted, and copied by thousands of writers. Her work is still adored by readers all over the world two centuries after it was first published. Have you ever dreamed you and Austen could take a turn about the room or walk the grounds of Pemberley while she explains exactly how she wrote her timeless love stories? In this Masterwork Guide, Shawn Coyne applies his Story Grid tools of analysis to Austen's classic, transforming the reading experience into writing inspiration. Coyne dissects each and every scene of the novel to show how it works. And he reveals the "must-have" moments readers crave in any love story so you can craft one of your own. The Story Grid is a curated set of writing and editing tools that helps writers pinpoint weaknesses, learn how to fix them, and produce "stories that work." After a long career as an editor, agent, and publisher, Coyne has a deep understanding of what resonates with readers. He wants you to know that you are not the problem-the problem is the problem. Let the Masterwork Guide help you see the love story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy through a new lens. Then let the Story Grid approach help you re-envision your own stories, and fall in love with writing again.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide (Masterworks Analysis Guides)

Business & Money

Skills

Action Stories speak to ancient human desires. Readers want to experience heart-stopping fear and excitement and learn lessons of survival. How can you write a story that satisfies those desires? In Action Story: The Primal Genre, Story Grid founder Shawn Coyne takes you on a journey deep into the meaning of the genre. Coyne boils down insights gained through more than 25 years as an editor and writer to teach you Action Story's fundamental constraints and patterns. He explores subgenres and setting, and proposes a new way of understanding the traditional cast of characters to reveal their power as agents of light and darkness. In keeping with Story Grid Publishing's goal of helping all writers level up their craft, Coyne provides a practical twenty-point game plan, showing how action stories move forward from beginning to end. Action stories are part of our DNA, fundamental to our humanity. Let's learn to write them together.

Action Story: The Primal Genre (Beats)

WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?Think about the story creation process (writing) as one big "problem."You want to travel from where you are right now (without a story that works) to a place where your story takes on a life of its own. Your desired destination is where stories entertain and enlighten.The practical way to unpack that explosively complex problem is by breaking it down into smaller, more easily solvable units.Just as performers make active micro-decisions they call beats, so do Story Grid Beats pare down your story problems into specific high-resolution mini-puzzles.They're like global positioning system reports for when you find yourself lost on your writer's journey. And once they define the problem, they offer procedural advice about how best to reframe your approach and solve it in your unique way.After all, you can't begin to solve a problem until you know what it is.YOU ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. THE PROBLEMS ARE THE PROBLEM.

The Four Core Framework (Beats)

Four Core Fiction: A Story Grid Short Story Anthology

Literature & Fiction

Watts, Leslie

Sperry, Shelley

Olson, Rebekah

Thorn, J.

Kessler, Kimberly

Monterusso, Rebecca

McGinn, Mark

Harrell, Courtney

Ramirez, Rachelle

Blair, Julia

Genre Fiction

Raiders of the Lost Ark playing A Game of ThronesThe Sand Sea takes place on an alternative Earth roiled by war and conquest that mirrors our own Gilded Age. The treasure that ignites greed and folly in this parallel world is not petroleum, but beserite-a mineral of immeasurable value. Captivated by an ancient prophecy and the call of adventure, inexperienced nobleman and scholar Peter Harmon (think of a young Winston Churchill-like naif) joins an expedition to stake his nation's claim to a global empire. Harmon's destination is a vast and inhospitable desert halfway around the world, dominated by the iron-fisted Grand Vizer Jemojeen Jongdar. A tyrant on a mission to secure the ancient and supernatural Staff of the Ram, the Lion, and the Serpent, Jongdar knows the truth that others can only imagine: The one who controls the staff will possess the power to rule the world. Before he can seize his destiny, Jongdar must find and destroy the one person capable of thwarting his ambition, the rightful heir to the Sand Sea realm, an innocent woman named Selena Savanar. Can the brave and indomitable Selena accept her true destiny and rally her people in the eye of a gathering storm? To do so will require her to outwit the man who burned her father alive and left her an orphan and beggar a lifetime ago. Or will Peter Harmon and the cadre of opportunists he rides with conquer the divided empire?With the mythic structure of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy in a world as rich and real as George R.R. Martin's Westeros, The Sand Sea is an immersive experience made to order for epic fantasy fans and anyone who enjoys grand-scale historical fiction.

The Sand Sea

Michael McClellan

What are the first principles in writing a story that works? At Story Grid, it's easy to get distracted by the tools, spreadsheets, commandments, macro lense, micro lense, and on and on. However, all of this eventually comes back to five first principles. In Story Grid 101, Story Grid founder Shawn Coyne distills 30 years of experience working with writers to build their stories into five principles: <ul><li>Stories are made up of distinct parts, or units.</li><li>Stories are about change.</li><li>The change that happens in stories concerns Universal Human Values, the things that most people would say are necessary to survive and thrive in the world-or alternatively, the things that keep us from surviving and thriving.</li><li>Each unit of story has a Story Event, a one-sentence distillation of what's happening and what value is changing.</li><li>Within each story unit we find a pattern of change we call the Five Commandments of Storytelling.</li></ul> Also inside of Story Grid 101, Shawn also introduces you to the fundamental tools: <ul><li>The Foolscap and Editor's Six Core Questions</li><li>The Spreadsheet</li><li>The Infographic</li><li>The Four Core Framework</li><li>Story's Boundaries</li></ul> Story Grid 101 is for anyone new to Story Grid who needs a primer on how we approach our craft.

The Story Grid 101: The Five First Principles of the Story Grid Methodology (Beats)

What if you could look inside a novel and see exactly how it works, like a doctor analyzing an x-ray or MRI scan? In The Story Grid Contenders Analysis Guide to Four Core Fiction the authors look deep into the heart of these short stories written by Story Grid Certified editors along with Story Grid founders Shawn Coyne and Tim Grahl. How does each scene break down and work on its own? The scene is the essential tool in a writer's arsenal. In this guide you will go beat-by-beat through each scene and look at how and why it works. Digging deep into a scene beat-by-beat is an amazing way to study writing. This Story Grid Contenders Analysis Guide is a valuable tool for any writer or editor interested in the art and science of storytelling. By showing you the inner workings of each beat-by-beat of the scene is the way to level up your craft.

Four Core Fiction: A Story Grid Contenders Analysis Guide

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?

Conventions and Obligatory Moments: The Must-haves to Meet Audience Expectations (Beats)

Words, Language & Grammar

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Books by Story Grid Publishing LLC