Tim Grahl surveyed 506 unpublished writers and found they'd been working on their craft for an average of 14.9 years. In any other creative field that would be a sign something is broken. In this episode, Shawn Coyne explains why studying plot, structure, and character development doesn't get most writers there, and what does: learning to write a single sentence that conforms to the mythic pattern of everyday experience. He and Tim get into why Story Grid starts students at the sentence level, why feedback matters more than theory, why a flow state can fool you into thinking bad writing is good, and the difference between journaling and actually writing for a reader.
Tim opens with a stat that frames the whole conversation: the average unpublished writer he surveyed has been at it for nearly 15 years. He puts the question to Shawn directly. What is Story Grid trying to do about that?
Shawn's answer starts with the mythic patterns that make stories like The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, and Pride and Prejudice last, and lands somewhere most writing advice doesn't: the sentence. His argument is that the same beginning, middle, and end that shapes a novel also shapes a scene and a sentence, and that the sentence is the smallest unit capable of carrying a transformation. Get that right and the larger structures follow.
Along the way, Tim and Shawn cover:
Also mentioned: Brent Spalding, a Story Grid student whose novel was published by Story Grid Publishing.
Books referenced