Speaker 1: 0:50

If you look at the very first scene of Pride and Prejudice, elizabeth Bennett, darcy, they're not in that scene, it's Mr and Mrs Bennett. Well, somebody has to be the antagonist. And the antagonist is the person that causes the inciting incident that knocks the protagonist's life off balance. So it's Mrs Bennett. When she comes to Mr Bennett and is like hey, you got to go down the street and see this guy that just moved in, right, yeah? So yeah, it's understanding. The antagonist isn't the bad guy or the evil person or the villain, it is the whatever is getting between the protagonist and what they want.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week, I'll bring writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Have you ever wondered why some writers seem to make rapid progress while others stay stuck for years? Well, the secret isn't talent or luck. It's something called deliberate practice. And in this episode you're going to hear from Tim Grawl, who is the CEO of StoryGrid, about what he learned from reading and giving feedback on over 2,000 scenes from aspiring writers. He's going to share the eye-opening shift that happened at StoryGrid when they realized that teaching the big picture story structure wasn't enough, and why they now recommend that writers master the fundamentals of scene writing first. You'll learn why most writing advice keeps you stuck in endless loops of starting and stopping a specific exercise that can transform your writing in just weeks, and why getting expert feedback, rather than just writing in isolation, is the missing piece that separates writers who improve from those who stay stuck for years. So, whether you're just starting out or you've been stuck in cycles of starting and abandoning manuscripts, this conversation will show you exactly where to focus your efforts to finally start making real progress on your writing.

Speaker 2: 2:56

So let's dive right in. Okay, so, tim, I wanted to ask you a question before we get into the details about writing scenes, and the question is that, in the past, storygrid has always talked about starting with genre. So what is your genre? How can you then use genre to inform the rest of your story? And I know now that StoryGrid has switched their position on this just a little bit. So, yes, of course, genre is important, but now StoryGrid actually recommends starting with learning how to craft a really solid scene. So can you talk about that a little more before we get into all the details?

Speaker 1: 3:31

Yeah, we realize now that starting at that macro level is really putting the cart before the horse and I think the reason this happened was, you know, sean Coyne was the founder of StoryGrid, created StoryGrid and when he created StoryGrid he was an editor at major publishing houses.

Speaker 1: 3:48

So by the time manuscripts got through all the gatekeepers and hit his desk, the writer knew how to write line by line in scene writing. They could write a working scene and most of his job as the editor was to fix big macro problems. So this is where he started developing his big global macro understanding of how story works. When, at StoryGrid, we started teaching this and trying to get people to understand this, what we started seeing is people trying to get people to understand this. What we started seeing is people could understand the macro movement of story, but when we looked at their individual scenes they were unreadable, and mine was too Like. This is where we had the big kind of turning point in story grid several years ago now where, like I kept turning and writing to Sean that line by line was unreadable.

Speaker 2: 4:34

And so what does unreadable look like? Because I'm sure some listeners are wondering, like, what does that actually look like in real life?

Speaker 1: 4:41

It means a lot of things right. There's always. There's way more ways to mess something up than to do it right.

Speaker 2: 4:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:51

So you have to understand what the reader is wondering is what happens next. That's what you're trying to always get them wondering and fulfilling. Is them constantly like what happens next? That's what you're trying to always get them wondering and fulfilling. Is them constantly like what happens next? What happens next? So anytime that you stop to explain something, you tell, you put in description, you put in backstory, you're pulling up the emergency brake on that narrative drive. And so what I mean is, if they're not wondering what happens next and you're keeping them constantly wondering what happens next, even when you resolve something in a scene, it still leaves an open loop that they have to fill. So they turn the page. You're going to lose them.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So, this is where I'll see people that can write beautiful description. I mean way're going to lose them, yeah. So this is where, like, I'll see people that can write beautiful description I mean way better than I can write and then I'm halfway through it and nothing has happened yet.

Speaker 2: 5:42

You're like what's the point?

Speaker 1: 5:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:45

Okay, cool, I just wanted to make sure, cause the word unreadable can mean so many different things, so it's it's more like it just was failing to do what you needed the scene to do, and there's many reasons why it could have failed.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Think about like music, right. So there is, let's take Taylor Swift, all right, you may love Taylor Swift, I may hate Taylor Swift, right? My favorite artist is Jack White. A lot of my wife hates Jack White's music. Okay, jack White or Taylor Swift, it's objectively working music. It works. It actually sounds right. As music Now is subjective, it's like no, it's not. I actually just rewatch Whiplash again about music and one of the characters was talking to. The protagonist is like, well, it's just subjective, right. And he's like no, it's not.

Speaker 1: 6:48

And in writing the same way and writing is the same way. So I think when I'm saying working, it has to reach an actual objective standard of this is a working piece of fiction and then it can become subjective, Like I don't like reading horror, but I can look at a horror scene and decide whether or not objectively it works.

Speaker 2: 7:09

Right which I think should be almost reassuring for some people that if I can learn how to write a scene then it's up to the reader right so we just we're talking about the mechanics of does it work or not, objectively, and then let people decide.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Yes, also, a scene is a practicable length. Right, you're talking a thousand to 2000 words, where you know you can't iterate quickly on a novel, right, you know so. And this is I mean we could get into the theory of this. But, like, the more that people understand how to structure scenes, the easier it is for them to understand how to structure longer pieces of fiction. So I stopped working on anything but scene writing for two years and then, when I came back to plan out a novel, it was so much easier because I understood how stories work, because I knew how to write a really good scene.

Speaker 1: 7:56

One of the other rules that we made in our programs was you're not allowed to work on your work in progress because, like, you're too emotionally attached to it and you keep trying to shoehorn this big thing into a small thing. So what we're learning more and more is like can you write one scene a thousand words or less, with an antagonist that wants something from a protagonist that the protagonist doesn't want to do, and write it in third person limited? Can you do that in a way where it's interesting, it's fun to read? You don't tell instead of show, you don't put a bunch of backstory in there and a lot of times people will at first will be like what?

Speaker 1: 8:37

I just got to come up with this stuff from scratch and then somehow make it work in a scene. It's like, yeah, you got to, you have to be able to do that and so you can get better at that, to learn skill, just like everything else. And so we try to constrain it down and say can you do that? Try to constrain it down and say, can you do that? Because if you can't do that, you probably can't write things that are much more nuanced and complicated yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:01

So, for instance, a A student was asking yesterday well, can I just write a scene two people having coffee? And I'm like, yeah, but it's much harder than one person trying to chase and get a hold of another person, right, like it's just a harder thing to write. And again, I don't think we understand like there were like easy things to write and hard things to write and then really hard things to write. So the number one thing people have to learn how to write is the physicality of what's happening on the page. So people always want to go up into characters' heads or do a bunch of backstory or exposition, and I mean the word for this is boring.

Speaker 1: 9:39

And again, this is coming from somebody who did this for years and years and years wrote terrible writing, just reams of it, and so if you can't get the physicality on the page, then nobody cares about anything else. I could go into all kinds of theory about why that is, but it's just true. It's how we interact with life, as I'm sitting here watching you, picking up on your cues, trying to understand what you're thinking and feeling by doing a good job, right. So if you think about two people having coffee, the physicality of that is much more nuanced than two people having a fight right.

Speaker 1: 10:13

A physical altercation. There's so much more physicality to describe than two people having coffee, so it's easier to start with something where there's tons of physicality and getting that on the page than the more nuanced like where somebody's eyes go or how their ear twitches, like that's just a harder thing to write.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Yeah, cause there's subtext and there's all this other stuff. Okay, so now let's go back to the part you said about. There are things you tell these writers who are doing the practical exercises you mentioned. There's a character who wants something and an antagonist in the scene who wants something different, or who wants the same thing but for different reasons or whatever. Right, yeah, okay. So you mentioned there are practical exercises that you lead writers through in these workshops. Can we talk about that a little more? And let's just pretend we're guiding listeners through one of these exercises. So what is our first step here?

Speaker 1: 11:06

The number one thing you have to learn how to do is get the five commandments of storytelling in with a clear object of desire. So that means something has changed in the scene, and in order for something to change, there has to be conflict, and so a story without conflict isn't a story. It's a list of things that happened, right. And so the way that you get conflict in, and the first thing to practice is two characters that want different things, right, and I'm the antagonist because I want something from you and you don't want to do it for me. I was the inciting incident by asking you for $50,000.

Speaker 2: 11:50

Right.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Now we decide. Well, how far are each of us going to go to get our object of desire? So why do I need $50,000? Is it because I want a new Tesla? Or because my daughter was kidnapped and if I don't have that money to them by 9 am they're going to kill her Right Now. How far will I go to get that $50,000? Right?

Speaker 2: 12:10

Yeah, which means we need that strong motivation.

Speaker 1: 12:12

Yeah, yeah, and you could see it could become physical between us. If that's how bad, I want that $50,000.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:19

So it's like can you write that very simple setup of a scene that changes to the point where either you didn't give me $50,000 or you did give me $50,000. Somebody has to win the scene.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Right.

Speaker 1: 12:32

And so that's where we start writers is, can you write those types of scenes, and then you can start getting more nuanced.

Speaker 2: 12:39

Yeah, and I'm sure there's discussion around like, okay, yes, you can write it. And I see this happen sometimes, where they'll be like you gave me a budget of 1500 words and I just got to the inciting incident at 1500 words, and so it's like, yes, you can write it, but it also needs to be balanced with the descriptions, the showing and telling, the you know, action, things like that.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Yeah, we actually start people at 800 words. I started when I was running the workshops at 1500 words and what I found is, if you can't do it at 800 words, you can't do it at 1500 or 3000 or 4000 words, and straining it down does is it forces you to cut out all of the fluff and get right to the point. Right. Then what we found is, once people can do that 800 words and we start loosening up the word count, they get right into the point and the scenes actually become better and better and better. If we start somebody at 2000 words and they just fill it with fluff, it's so much harder to get through and get feedback on.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yeah, and I think most of us probably will fill up the 2000 words if that's our budget.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Yeah, you know, because we like to write, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Okay, so I'm hearing you say so far, I'm just thinking for the people who want to practice this, you get 800 words and we want to start with, like the five commandments, of course, but and also thinking, what do these characters want? Who's the protagonist in the scene, who's the antagonist, what else?

Speaker 1: 13:57

Yeah, so that's the first thing, and somebody has to win the scene. So, the protagonist got what they wanted, or the antagonist got what they wanted.

Speaker 2: 14:05

at the end, and actually can I interrupt you Because this is something that we saw come up with the Harry Potter analysis that writers were surprised about, and it was this idea that someone like a Neville or Hermione could be the scene antagonist.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:18

So do you find in your classes too, that like writers are like? Well, the antagonist isn't present in this scene. So what do I do?

Speaker 1: 14:24

Yeah, so this is where, like when you're looking at a scene, you have to evaluate that scene all by itself, right? So the antagonist is not the bad guy and in fact, in our own lives we need to change. Right, there's things about us that aren't what they need to be, and whatever is making us change is a form of antagonism, and we usually don't like them, whether they're our spouse or our best friend or our dog, right? So antagonism is not a bad thing. All it is is whatever is getting between the protagonist and what they want. So, if you look at the very first scene of Pride and Prejudice, elizabeth Bennett, darcy, they're not in that scene, it's Mr and Mrs Bennett.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Well, somebody has to be the antagonist, and the antagonist is the person that causes the inciting incident that knocks the protagonist's life off balance. So it's Mrs Bennett when she comes to Mr Bennett and is like hey, you got to go down the street and see this guy that just moved in, right? So, yeah, it's understanding. The antagonist isn't the bad guy or the evil person or the villain. The antagonist isn't the bad guy or the evil person or the villain, it is the whatever is getting between the protagonist and what they want.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Yeah, okay, cool. I think that's important for people to hear, because we tend to get overwhelmed and think, well, if the antagonist isn't there, then what do I do? And you know, the best friend isn't really a bad person and it's like, yeah, it's okay, it's just for this scene.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:44

Okay.

Speaker 1: 15:44

So then, what were you going to say is next yeah, and let me say one more thing on that Often the global protagonist in a scene will fill the role of antagonism in a scene.

Speaker 1: 15:53

So I was actually talking to Alison Fairhurst, who we both know, and we were talking about crime stories and we're like, well, all the scenes where the global protagonist is interrogating somebody, they're the antagonist of that scene, you know, yeah, so once people have the five commandments and an object of desire, they have a working scene right. So we think of it as signal and noise. So I always think about, like when you're tuning in those old radios trying to find the station, and it's all noise. If you don't have anything changing, no conflict, no tension in your scene, it's all noise. But once you have the five commandments and object of desire, you have a signal but there's still probably noise. So now we got to figure out what's causing that noise. The first thing that I often see is that people are telling instead of showing, so where they want to just tell the reader what's happening instead of just showing the reader and letting the reader understand.

Speaker 2: 16:47

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:48

This is like a big one. That took me a really long time to understand, but that's the first one is the writer just starts telling the story to the reader instead of showing them things and letting them decide what's happening.

Speaker 2: 17:00

And do you have an example of that for someone who might not know what that means?

Speaker 1: 17:04

Yeah. So an example would be like he was feeling anxious, right, and what I always say is like, hey, if you were at a coffee shop and you looked across and you saw a guy and you realized he's anxious, how did you know? Because he didn't come over and tell you he was anxious and you didn't see a thought bubble over his head saying I am anxious.

Speaker 2: 17:25

Right.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Right, it would be the drumming his fingers and his foot moving on. Right, it would be the drumming his fingers and his foot moving on the stool. It would be like the way he looked and like the way he kept cutting his eyes at the door. Yeah, and so our definition of showing is it's simply describing what is observable. So, whatever I can pick up with my five senses, that's what I'm allowed to put on the page. So I wouldn't say he was anxious. I would say he drummed his fingers on the table, his legs shook and he kept glancing at the door every three seconds. Right when he picked up his coffee, he shook and it spilled over and he like hurriedly spilled it up. You know, it's like all I'm doing is describing what I can observe. Right, you know he's anxious. So it's like you're painting a picture and letting the reader decide what that means.

Speaker 2: 18:07

Yeah, Right Must well have context from the scene and potentially the setup before that. So, yeah, it's kind of like let the reader interpret everything and form their own conclusion, versus having a thought bubble above the character's head. That's like hello, I am anxious today. Somebody help Makes total sense, All right, so so far we've talked through a word count. You said about 800 words. We've talked about having a scene, protagonist and antagonist and then including those five commandments of storytelling, as well as showing readers what our characters are doing. So what's the next thing that a writer would need to think about at this stage?

Speaker 1: 18:42

So the next two things I would say are pretty even, and I would put info dumping and bad dialogue, and so let's just take them one at a time. So info dumping is simply when you're giving the reader information they don't need to know. They don't need to know or they don't need to know yet. Yes, so this is where, like at the beginning of a scene, you like give me a bunch of backstory or you just describe a bunch of things that I may need to know, but, as the reader remember, I just want to know what happens next, and we're writing for the reader, not for ourselves. So what I like to say is do just-in-time exposition. If I have to know something as the reader, don't tell it to me until right before I need to know it. So, like, if a major character is this person's father, don't tell me in chapter one about the father. Tell me about him right as he enters the stage.

Speaker 2: 19:36

Right.

Speaker 1: 19:36

So save that exposition and drip it and weave it into the action. Don't give it to me all at once. Right, drip it and weave it into the action. Don't give it to me all at once. And usually what you find is, if I have people, if I see info dumping and I get them to weave it in, at least half of it just gets cut because the reader doesn't actually needs to know it, and then it's woven into the action in a way where the reader is just kind of smoothly going through it. It doesn't feel like the handbrake's being pulled up.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Right. It feels more like invisible context in a way, because you're skimming through it.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 20:10

Okay, so that's info dumping. And if I'm a writer listening and I'm going to do this exercise, I might be thinking okay, you're asking me to make up a scenario and write this scene. How do I know what's relevant if I don't know? Like a bigger picture, which is kind of the point, right, because we don't need to know what else is relevant, we just need to know what's happening in the moment.

Speaker 1: 20:30

That's right. I mean, think about again. If you're out on the street and two people start having an argument you don't know their backstory, you don't know who they are, you don't know where they're from You're going to look at them, how they're dressed, how they're acting, what they're holding. You're going to start already filling in the gaps of who they are, why they're fighting. You know, taking what they say and you automatically fill in Just have things start happening and they'll keep up with it. We do this every day in our life, automatically, as we automatically fill in the details, just based on dropping in right when something happens.

Speaker 2: 21:19

Yeah, yeah, and it could be as simple as a word heard in dialogue. That gives us a ton of context. So I think you're right. Give us like the least amount we need to know and exactly when we need to know it. And then what was the other thing you said after info dumping?

Speaker 1: 21:31

Bad dialogue.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Bad dialogue. Okay, so what does this mean?

Speaker 1: 21:34

All right. So there's two, the two big mistakes I see in dialogue. The first one is putting exposition in the dialogue, and the way I think about this is you have the characters talk to the reader instead of each other, right? Yeah, probably one of the worst I ever saw was somebody. There was a daughter talking to her dad and she's like as you know, father, you were mean to me my whole childhood, all nine years that I lived with you, you know, and it's like he knows that he's her father, he knows that they lived together for nine years. She would never say that to him in real life. And that's the writer trying to get information to the reader in the dialogue. Yeah, so that's the first thing. The second thing is agreeable dialogue, and this is 95% of most people's conversations, right? Especially any like, hey, how's it going? Oh, I'm doing pretty good, how's your day? You got to cut all of that out. And what I usually tell people just go watch any TV show and pay attention to where the dialogue starts and ends, right?

Speaker 2: 22:40

They never hang up the phones, which drives me nuts, but I get it.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Well, and they never pick up the phone. It's hey, how's it going? Oh, pretty good, you know, it's like it starts right away.

Speaker 1: 22:49

And and I mean agreeable too where you can't have two characters that want the same thing having a conversation, because there's no conflict it's the point, yeah yeah, and so basically, every action and every piece of dialogue your character says, every action they take, every piece of dialogue they speak, has to be them pursuing their object of desire, which will automatically create conflict if the other character is doing the same thing, only only actively. So when you read through, when you're editing, this is what I'm looking for. Is that them pursuing their object of desire? Is that? If not, we need to cut it. And I find this in my writing. I often will write the first phrase and then I go to write the next phrase. I was like, oh, there's like no conflict in this, so I just cut both of those and started whatever the next line was going to be.

Speaker 2: 23:40

And you're like oh, it still works. And I could almost hear people thinking they do this. I see this a lot in the stories I edit. But they'll write things like the hello, how are you? I haven't seen you in 10 months. And they're like but that's realistic, that's how we do it. What would you say to that? Because I see that all the time.

Speaker 1: 24:06

So the point of writing fiction is to not write real life, right, it is hyper-realism, right. So it's taking all of the interesting bits of life and putting them together. So if you're trying to write something that's real life, you should just write a biography and be done with it, right. A textbook biography wouldn't be done with it. If you're trying to write a story, you're showing something to your reader, helping them understand something really important in their life and helping them solve a problem in their life, and so you want to cut out all of the boring stuff and focus on the parts that actually change something in the character's life. So, if you're realistic is not the point, that is not what we're trying to do as writers is create something realistic. Otherwise, there would be no science fiction genres, no fantasy genres, like most stories, wouldn't ever work, because they would be realistic. You know what real life is most of the time, boring, yes, and it's not that interesting.

Speaker 2: 25:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:05

If you think back on your life at the points that stand out, it's because there was conflict. Your life was probably burning down in some way. Like that is the parts that stand out, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Yeah, okay. So now let's say that we've done this exercise. We've written our 800-ish word scene. We have characters who want something, they're pursuing their goals, we have the five commandments, we have dialogue. That is not bad, and we don't info dump, or maybe we do. What do we do with this? Like, how do we know if we're getting better?

Speaker 1: 25:36

So the number one way to do this is to get feedback, and this is what I think was missing for me for the longest time is I was just writing and writing and writing and the only like feedback I could get was from writers groups. That was usually. It was vague, it was very subjective of like well, I like that or I didn't like that, and a lot of times it was even contradictory. So one person would say one thing and somebody would say, no, I actually like that part and it's like well, now I have more information and no way to actually make a decision.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Right.

Speaker 1: 26:09

And so this is why, like about a year and a half ago at StoryGrid, I decided I'm just going to give away as much of our training as possible. So that's when I started putting all the videos on YouTube, because I'm like, really what people need is expert feedback, and that's the one thing that we can do is we actually have a rubric and I can look at somebody's writing now that I've done it hundreds of times and be like, oh, that's what's wrong, fix that. And so if you Google deliberate practice, you'll probably find James Clear's site and what deliberate practice is. And it's not mindless repetition, it's not just getting your thousand words in every day. It's breaking a complex skill down into individual skills, trying it and then having somebody give you expert feedback on what you did right, what you did wrong, and then what you need to do to try again. And so, like when I was learning how to do Olympic weightlifting so the clean and jerk and the snatch I would go into the gym with my coach. He would sit there with a cup of coffee, I would do a snatch. He would be like you did that right, you did that wrong, try it again. And I'd do it again, and then I'd do it again and I kept getting better and better and better.

Speaker 1: 27:16

Writing is the same way. It's like write something short, give something short. Give it to somebody that is an expert and can look at that and tell you that's what you did right, that's what you did wrong, here's what you need to work on next week. So when I first did this, we ran a six week workshop and I did it all by myself and I was like I have no idea if this is going to work and people would send in their scenes and I would send them feedback and I'm like I don't know.

Speaker 1: 27:41

And by the end of just six weeks, people had made more progress than they made six years on their own. Now we've had like we're coming up on like 400 people have gone through our workshops and over and over and over, we just see it work. I'm just so confident in it. Now it's like this is what actually makes a difference, because we're all out here on our own trying to read books. Listen, this is what actually makes a difference, because we're all out here on our own trying to read books, listen to the podcast, watch my YouTube channel. But we're doing it all by ourselves and we can't tell if we're doing it right, and so that's the big key that's missing for the vast majority of people.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Yeah, and not only have you seen it work with your students, you've also lived it. This was literally your reality for those two years.

Speaker 1: 28:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:22

And I agree that you have to get feedback. And I know there are going to be some people that are thinking feedback isn't nice to have or like maybe I can't afford it or whatever. But I'd like to think about well, what's the flip side of not getting feedback and you're just going to ingrain these bad habits or these things? Like, let's say, you're a big info dumper, you're going to write 40 scenes full of info dumping and then that's the practice you're putting into practice. Right is info dumping?

Speaker 1: 28:47

Yeah, in a specific way. People will say, like well, you know, that's not how Stephen King learned how to write. I'm like well, let's talk about Stephen King. He started writing when he was 10 years old. He started submitting stuff to magazines and getting rejections, so he kept, and every time and he talked about this in on writing if they just wrote him like one line of don't do this draft minus 20% equals edited or something whatever that was, and it took him 15 years to get to the point that he wrote Carrie and it got picked up and published, and so it's like I can walk into the woods and wander around and eventually maybe end up where I want to be, on the other side of the woods, right, maybe? Maybe let's say I don't die in the process and most writers die. This is the thing People don't hear from the people that gave up. Yeah, maybe let's say I don't die in the process and most writers die. This is the thing People don't hear from the people that gave up.

Speaker 2: 29:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:41

Right, where? What if you had somebody that was a professional orienteer, that went in there with you and when you went to make a wrong turn, they're like oh no, don't go that way because of this reason. This is how you know, this is the right way Great, this is how you know, this is the right way, great, okay, let me keep going and try again. Oh, don't make that mistake. It's like you would still. It would still be hard and frustrating, but it would take a lot less time and energy, right, right. So, of course, people can learn without feedback in this kind of way, but it takes 10 to 20 years of just like blind effort, and this is the same thing it's like.

Speaker 1: 30:18

When I learned how to play the guitar, what did I do? Well, we didn't have the internet then. God, I'm old, but I bought the magazines, I got a guitar teacher and I did all of these things, and I didn't just pick up a guitar randomly, put strings on it and start trying to strum and figure out by listening to music and trying it randomly. That would work. I would eventually learn how to play, but it's like the worst, most painful, inefficient way to play.

Speaker 2: 30:47

And that's assuming you didn't give up before you learned how to play, because that's frustrating.

Speaker 1: 30:50

Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Yeah, so I totally understand that, and it's interesting to me too, also being someone who edits a lot of scenes. It's so cool sometimes to see that there could just be one thing, like a lot of people, it's the crisis moment in the five commandments that they're like, if I can just nail that in every scene. Everything else filters down and starts to work, work. So it's just amazing that, depending on how your own writing, those listening like Tim and I probably have different things that we would need to work on in a scene and you do too but you won't know what that is until you get someone to tell you if it's working or not.

Speaker 1: 31:26

Yeah, and what I found is writers tend to like go to two ends of a spectrum. So a lot of writers I see these are the ones that have usually been writing a long time on their own. Their line by line is really beautiful but nothing happens, and getting them to actually make something happen in the scene is a lot of work. I'm always jealous of them because I couldn't do that for the longest time. That was like the biggest pain, because I was the other type of writer. I could figure out how to make something work in a scene, but the line by line was so unreadable you didn't care by the time you got there, and so most people fall in one of those two camps. One of those comes more naturally and it's always getting them to cross the chasm and be able to do the other side.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Yeah, and balance it out more. So I think it sounds like we're saying step one is do this kind of deliberate practice where you're writing in a container with certain things you're trying to achieve, and then step two is getting some kind of feedback, ideally the right kind of feedback, and then I know you have a free resource for people to download as well.

Speaker 1: 32:29

Yeah, so this is the checklist that we use to check people's scene and it's a storygridcom slash checklist, so really easy to find, and I also have like our method, how we use it and then a little video walkthrough on how to use it as well. But this is that thing of like it's an order. I always say it's an order of egregiousness, so it's like the thing at the top is the most important, that's the five commandments all the way down to I think it's like well-developed setting and characters. And I put that at the bottom because when I put it too high people, it gave people a chance to info dump.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:03

So it's. It's really helpful. In every workshop we've ever run, the last thing we teach them is how to run writers groups, and so literally every single one of them has spun off writers groups that they, we, I still. There's still a group of five women that meet every week from my very first workshop over a year and a half ago.

Speaker 2: 33:21

Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Okay, so we'll put the link to the checklist in the show notes and also, I think it's worthwhile. You have a ton of videos on YouTube that are breaking down scenes. So if you're like I don't know if I'm ready to try the 800 word exercise, then at least just go listen and start to get the terminology in your brain and things like that.

Speaker 2: 33:38

And we're also going to post a link I believe you gave this to me about where we can find more information on your workshop if listeners want to, but is there anything else that you would like to tell people, especially those who are just starting out about writing scenes or getting started?

Speaker 1: 33:54

Yeah, first of all, I want to say it is a learned skill, so you're born with certain levels of talent and different things, but you can also learn how to do things. And I think there's this pervasive feeling that, like I mean and again Stephen King says this in on writing that you can't become a good writer if you're a bad writer. And I am living proof that that's not true, because you can go back on our podcast, look at my early writing, completely unreadable, and then you can read my most latest book and it's a really good and well-written book, and so I think that's the first thing is that this is a learnable skill. The other thing is I think it's worth learning right. So I've gotten lots of really cool emails from people that have read my book.

Speaker 1: 34:39

But, like, I've gotten some really touching emails from people where, like, they're making really positive life changes because of reading my fiction novel a fiction novel called the Shithead of all things, and it's like those are the kind of things that, like, I dreamed of doing, of writing something that changed people in the way that writing changed me, and so I love it so much. And my favorite thing is when I watch a writer get better and they see it, cause that's the other thing is, you go from not being able to write to being able to write something and you can see the difference and that feeling of I've wanted to do this since I was 14 and I just actually got better.

Speaker 2: 35:19

It's a big deal.

Speaker 1: 35:20

It's huge, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:22

And it's you know. To go back to what we first started talking about and echo what Tim said about it is learnable and it's worth learning. There's a way to do it where you're going to feel overwhelmed and a way to do it where you're going to learn systematically, and I think this is one of those things that it's like if you're going to put the effort in put it into something that we're telling you is useful and can make a difference, instead of Googling all the different character profiles and filling them out ad nauseum and doing things that just aren't going to help you get better.

Speaker 1: 35:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:53

So all right, Well, we will post all the links to everything we talked about in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me again.

Speaker 1: 35:59

Yeah, thanks for having me Savannah.

Speaker 2: 36:02

So that's it for today's episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and for showing your support. If you want to check out any of the links I mentioned in this episode, you can find them in the show notes listed in the description of each episode inside your podcast player or at savannahgilbocom forward slash podcast. If you're an Apple user, I'd really appreciate it if you took a few seconds to leave a rating and a review. Your ratings and reviews tell Apple that this is a podcast that's worth listening to and, in turn, your reviews will help this podcast get in front of more fiction writers just like you. And while you're there, go ahead and hit that follow button, because there's going to be another brand new episode next week, full of actionable tips, tools and strategies to help you become a better writer. So I'll see you next week and until then, happy writing.