Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
I started this book thinking it was about writing. It is, but it focuses on story structure, and it's even more of a revision and editing book than a writing book. Coyne's system is fairly complicated, which is going to be exactly what some people love to work with, and which will send other writers screaming and running for the door. He explains his system thoroughly, using The Silence of the Lambs to illustrate the process from start to finish. My main criticism of the book is that I would've liked it if it had been clearer what parts of this system will help you plan your novel out before you start writing vs. which parts you'd use when revising your first draft. Coyne went back and forth between these, which was a mite confusing (but nothing that quality time with a highlighter and some sticky notes can't fix!). And Coyne is a stickler for genre conventions: if you find the idea of writing in a genre is suffocating your creativity, you'll probably be arguing with him all the way through this book. If a well-structured system of organizing and editing your novel appeals to you, then you may love this book. But be warned that it's not a Writing 101 book, and if you want writing help beyond story structure, you'll need to look elsewhere.
There are a lot of writing craft books out there for writers. I’m sure many of them are useful for fledging writers to get better at their craft of writing fiction. However, I realize that a certain writing craft book comes into a writer’s life at the right time.
The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne is that book for me.
I published my third fantasy novel, Diondray’s Roundabout, and I have reached the point where I want to learn how to tell stories better. I want to learn how to tell stories from the ground up. To write stories that want to make people stay up all night to read them. Stories that make people tell their friends how much they loved that book and recommend they read it too. I want to craft stories that have a special connection between writer and reader. Stories that matter in a reader’s life and something they will return to repeatedly.
How does one learn to write stories in such a fashion? Well, I believe The Story Grid by veteran editor Shawn Coyne has created an exhaustive blueprint for story writing. Coyne has edited some of the biggest names in the publishing business during his twenty-five-year career and created a tool with The Story Grid to reveal what every successful story has regardless of genre.
The Story Grid explains the importance of choosing the correct genre for a story, the five commandments of storytelling, and how each unit of a story (Beat, Scene, Sequence, Act, and Subplot) work together to create a cohesive work of fiction. Coyne provides The Foolscap Global Story Grid and The Story Grid Spreadsheet as tools to show how a writer can breakdown their story into the proper components to write a better novel.
He uses those aforementioned tools to show why The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is one of most innovative and groundbreaking thrillers ever written.
The Story Grid is a detailed writing craft book and provides a lot of information on how a story can come together from the first page until the end of the book. Coyne makes the point throughout the book that The Story Grid is a tool, not a formula. It is a tool to help writers become their own editor and learn fundamental story structure.
The Story Grid will become an indispensable reference tool for my writing and a must for writers who want to understand what makes a story work. Highest recommendation.
The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne is that book for me.
I published my third fantasy novel, Diondray’s Roundabout, and I have reached the point where I want to learn how to tell stories better. I want to learn how to tell stories from the ground up. To write stories that want to make people stay up all night to read them. Stories that make people tell their friends how much they loved that book and recommend they read it too. I want to craft stories that have a special connection between writer and reader. Stories that matter in a reader’s life and something they will return to repeatedly.
How does one learn to write stories in such a fashion? Well, I believe The Story Grid by veteran editor Shawn Coyne has created an exhaustive blueprint for story writing. Coyne has edited some of the biggest names in the publishing business during his twenty-five-year career and created a tool with The Story Grid to reveal what every successful story has regardless of genre.
The Story Grid explains the importance of choosing the correct genre for a story, the five commandments of storytelling, and how each unit of a story (Beat, Scene, Sequence, Act, and Subplot) work together to create a cohesive work of fiction. Coyne provides The Foolscap Global Story Grid and The Story Grid Spreadsheet as tools to show how a writer can breakdown their story into the proper components to write a better novel.
He uses those aforementioned tools to show why The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is one of most innovative and groundbreaking thrillers ever written.
The Story Grid is a detailed writing craft book and provides a lot of information on how a story can come together from the first page until the end of the book. Coyne makes the point throughout the book that The Story Grid is a tool, not a formula. It is a tool to help writers become their own editor and learn fundamental story structure.
The Story Grid will become an indispensable reference tool for my writing and a must for writers who want to understand what makes a story work. Highest recommendation.
I'm nowhere near being ready to edit my novel, but I was curious about the process in this book since you can use it before or after you've finished a project. It's a little repetitive, I think some abbreviations could have been used just to make it feel a tiny bit less like you're being spoon fed every bit of information and its associated context every time. But the process was an interesting one and I want to try it on my novel because I've been stuck in it for years without knowing why. Coyne claims this book will help you figure out where your novel isn't "working" and breaks down the structure of a long form story in ways no English or Creative Writing teacher has ever taught me. It's not a craft book, at all, but a math/analysis book book almost. It takes you through The Silence of the Lambs as an example to show you how it can work, and even if you don't use the full story grid (because it is a LOT of work), there's the Foolscap/mini grid that can help make sure you have every aspect required to make a story that works and readers will want to read.
The book contains really good information. This alone grants at least three stars. The best sections are about the breakdown of genre classification and comments on the publishing industry. The section about Free indirect style is also very informative.
Unfortunately, while Coyne might be a great literary editor, he is pretty bad at technical writing. The book is a complete mess, with little to no logical structure. The book lacks introductions, summaries and thematic focus. It reads like it was written in a train of thought fever then left untouched on it's way to printing, or what others have pointed out, like it was ripped from a WordPress blog straight to ebook without human intervention. This makes the good info contained inside difficult to find and analyze. For example, information about the foolscap method can be found in three different parts and over half a dozen chapters. The description of genres is intermittent with info spread all over the book and only a single illustration trying to summarize. Some chapters are almost literal repetitions of info in previous chapters.
There's also an entire chapter using the stages of grief as a metaphor and taking it as a psychological theory which is patently false. The stages of grief are widely disregarded as pop-psy in the academic world. Something dismissed by sciences that only lives-on in popular culture where is abused despite having no scientific support.
Overall poorly written book that contains good info that is hard to find somewhere else.
Unfortunately, while Coyne might be a great literary editor, he is pretty bad at technical writing. The book is a complete mess, with little to no logical structure. The book lacks introductions, summaries and thematic focus. It reads like it was written in a train of thought fever then left untouched on it's way to printing, or what others have pointed out, like it was ripped from a WordPress blog straight to ebook without human intervention. This makes the good info contained inside difficult to find and analyze. For example, information about the foolscap method can be found in three different parts and over half a dozen chapters. The description of genres is intermittent with info spread all over the book and only a single illustration trying to summarize. Some chapters are almost literal repetitions of info in previous chapters.
There's also an entire chapter using the stages of grief as a metaphor and taking it as a psychological theory which is patently false. The stages of grief are widely disregarded as pop-psy in the academic world. Something dismissed by sciences that only lives-on in popular culture where is abused despite having no scientific support.
Overall poorly written book that contains good info that is hard to find somewhere else.
informative
slow-paced
informative
I've been listening to the Editor Roundtable podcast, the sister podcast to the main Storygrid one, but way less irritating because it doesn't include Shawn Coyne. This is where Shawn Coyne's gaggle of editor underlings (mostly women) talk about the narrative structure of a movie. They pick an interesting selection of films, and they seem to be going through one stand-out example from each of the genres.
Coynes' breakdown of genres is why I read his book. I couldn't get a handle on this aspect just from the podcast. I keep a massive Scrivener file of writing/storytelling stuff -- the file is now about ten years old -- where I note everything I've ever found useful. A problem I have is choosing whose notion of genre to organise the files by. So far I've picked a mish-mash. But after reading this I've rearranged my folders according to Coynes' unique method. I hope this works, because it was quite a bit of effort and I don't want to rearrange them again!
Coynes is a Robert McKee fan (and cross-promoter) and is therefore an adherent of three act structure. He acknowledges several other big influences, but in the end he's saying the same things others have but attaching different terminology. They all do this. It's a consolidating intellectual exercise to read yet another narrative how-to guide and categorise how the different gurus say exactly the same thing using their own terminology.
For instance, Coynes calls Act 2 the 'middle build'.
He talks about climaxes plural, because each sequence has to have its own climax, but here John Truby's 22-step guide remains far more useful as Truby avoids an airy-fairy word like 'climax' and calls his steps something far more specific.
Ending Payoff is the Battle phase and Self-revelation combined.
And so on.
Definitely watch Silence of the Lambs before reading this book because it's the one big case study running throughout. Or perhaps like me you've seen it so many times you have it memorised.
An enduring irritation I have with all of these story guru guys: An alien from outer-space reading this would assume women only occasionally write, and when they do, they only write romance. The examples offered are entirely works of art created by men. This may be glossed over at first, since Clarice Starling (the character) is female. Coynes uses 'he' as default, even when 'they' would render the sentence perfectly fine. Part of this gender imbalance is a reflection on Hollywood itself, but unlike the other story gurus, he does talk quite a bit about novels. In that case, he is a man who has caved in to his natural tendency to focus on the work of other men, about other men, and makes no effort to rectify any of that via his examples. This sticks in my craw because he employs women (who you'll get to know from the Editor Roundtable podcast).
You can safely skip the first entire section of the book, which is an extended publishing rant and name-dropping exercise in which the reader is persuaded to use Shawn Coynes' method. Surely if you've bought the damn book, you've been persuaded of that already.
In fact, don't buy this book. It hasn't been well copyedited and the hyperlinks don't take you to the right places on his website. As he says himself, all of this can be found on his website.
I do recommend the Editor Roundtable podcast, but only after you go to his website and scan the way he breaks down genre. This will be very useful to you if you've already seen the films in question.
However, if you haven't already read Story by Robert McKee, Into The Woods, The Anatomy of Story and How Fiction Works then you may get a lot more out of this how-to guide.
Coynes' breakdown of genres is why I read his book. I couldn't get a handle on this aspect just from the podcast. I keep a massive Scrivener file of writing/storytelling stuff -- the file is now about ten years old -- where I note everything I've ever found useful. A problem I have is choosing whose notion of genre to organise the files by. So far I've picked a mish-mash. But after reading this I've rearranged my folders according to Coynes' unique method. I hope this works, because it was quite a bit of effort and I don't want to rearrange them again!
Coynes is a Robert McKee fan (and cross-promoter) and is therefore an adherent of three act structure. He acknowledges several other big influences, but in the end he's saying the same things others have but attaching different terminology. They all do this. It's a consolidating intellectual exercise to read yet another narrative how-to guide and categorise how the different gurus say exactly the same thing using their own terminology.
For instance, Coynes calls Act 2 the 'middle build'.
He talks about climaxes plural, because each sequence has to have its own climax, but here John Truby's 22-step guide remains far more useful as Truby avoids an airy-fairy word like 'climax' and calls his steps something far more specific.
Ending Payoff is the Battle phase and Self-revelation combined.
And so on.
Definitely watch Silence of the Lambs before reading this book because it's the one big case study running throughout. Or perhaps like me you've seen it so many times you have it memorised.
An enduring irritation I have with all of these story guru guys: An alien from outer-space reading this would assume women only occasionally write, and when they do, they only write romance. The examples offered are entirely works of art created by men. This may be glossed over at first, since Clarice Starling (the character) is female. Coynes uses 'he' as default, even when 'they' would render the sentence perfectly fine. Part of this gender imbalance is a reflection on Hollywood itself, but unlike the other story gurus, he does talk quite a bit about novels. In that case, he is a man who has caved in to his natural tendency to focus on the work of other men, about other men, and makes no effort to rectify any of that via his examples. This sticks in my craw because he employs women (who you'll get to know from the Editor Roundtable podcast).
You can safely skip the first entire section of the book, which is an extended publishing rant and name-dropping exercise in which the reader is persuaded to use Shawn Coynes' method. Surely if you've bought the damn book, you've been persuaded of that already.
In fact, don't buy this book. It hasn't been well copyedited and the hyperlinks don't take you to the right places on his website. As he says himself, all of this can be found on his website.
I do recommend the Editor Roundtable podcast, but only after you go to his website and scan the way he breaks down genre. This will be very useful to you if you've already seen the films in question.
However, if you haven't already read Story by Robert McKee, Into The Woods, The Anatomy of Story and How Fiction Works then you may get a lot more out of this how-to guide.
I am annoyed that I have to give this book two stars instead of one. ANNOYED. For a book written by an editor, good lord did this book need edited. For clarity. For organization. To not sound like a bunch of blog posts cobbled together. To not repeat itself over and over and over and over and over. To tone down the Silence of the Lambs fanboying just a tick. To, perhaps, suggest that if you're going to say that genre-obligatory things are SUPER IMPORTANT that perhaps you might want to define what those are for all genres, not just the one that YOU like. And so you don't repeat yourself over and over. Did I say that already? It's catching.
Also, if you want to write anything other than thriller/action plots, he has very little to say but the most basic advice. He went on about how genre conventions and obligatory scenes are a must, and he covers what those are very comprehensively for action thrillers, gives passing flybys to it for other broad categories like romance or westerns, but says zero on it for scifi/fantasy. It's super obvious that he really didn't know about those other genres and wasn't going to bother to research them so he could speak about them.
So yeah, reading this book was terribly annoying, and I am CERTAIN that other books more clearly give the same advice he does on scenes, story structure, themes, etc. In fact, if you look at who he namedrops, you could just go read their books. But, I gave it two stars because I think for a certain kind of person that actually graphing out the theme progressions the way he describes would be useful. And because the scattered advice on story structure and progressing plots (despite the author's best efforts) gave me things to think about and got me plotting about my own work. So, yeah - grudging two stars.
Also, if you want to write anything other than thriller/action plots, he has very little to say but the most basic advice. He went on about how genre conventions and obligatory scenes are a must, and he covers what those are very comprehensively for action thrillers, gives passing flybys to it for other broad categories like romance or westerns, but says zero on it for scifi/fantasy. It's super obvious that he really didn't know about those other genres and wasn't going to bother to research them so he could speak about them.
So yeah, reading this book was terribly annoying, and I am CERTAIN that other books more clearly give the same advice he does on scenes, story structure, themes, etc. In fact, if you look at who he namedrops, you could just go read their books. But, I gave it two stars because I think for a certain kind of person that actually graphing out the theme progressions the way he describes would be useful. And because the scattered advice on story structure and progressing plots (despite the author's best efforts) gave me things to think about and got me plotting about my own work. So, yeah - grudging two stars.
In some ways, this book is super valuable. It has good insights on what makes scenes work, on genre, and on the philosophy of writers needing to be their own editors today.
This book is about editing a completed manuscript, not planning a book. It aligns fairly well with Save the Cat, if you use that method to outline.
However, I find the actual guidance on using the grid to be completely missing. He leads you through a time-intensive process that leaves you with a detailed spreadsheet that collects data about your book scene-by-scene, and a pretty grid. When I finished these, I eagerly turned to the next chapter to see how I was supposed to interpret them, now that they're done—and there's nothing. (He spends way too much time, instead, laying out the entire grid of Silence of the Lambs, which is somewhat worthless unless maybe you're writing a thriller.) There's no guidance of how to use all of this data you've spent ages putting together.
I can figure out how to use the data myself, so it's not as if the exercise was a waste of time—but I just can't figure out why he wouldn't have discussed this in depth, as it seems like the most important part of the process.
This book is about editing a completed manuscript, not planning a book. It aligns fairly well with Save the Cat, if you use that method to outline.
However, I find the actual guidance on using the grid to be completely missing. He leads you through a time-intensive process that leaves you with a detailed spreadsheet that collects data about your book scene-by-scene, and a pretty grid. When I finished these, I eagerly turned to the next chapter to see how I was supposed to interpret them, now that they're done—and there's nothing. (He spends way too much time, instead, laying out the entire grid of Silence of the Lambs, which is somewhat worthless unless maybe you're writing a thriller.) There's no guidance of how to use all of this data you've spent ages putting together.
I can figure out how to use the data myself, so it's not as if the exercise was a waste of time—but I just can't figure out why he wouldn't have discussed this in depth, as it seems like the most important part of the process.
informative
inspiring
slow-paced