Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer.

I'm your host Tim Grawl and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works.

Joining me in a minute is Sean Coyne, the creator of Story Grid and an editor with over 25 years experience and he is helping me figure out how to

write my first book. As I was looking back over my notes for this episode, I was trying to figure

out what this episode was all about. And what I think it is is about calibrating your scenes

and calibrating how you build your story. So you'll hear him talk

about a couple of scenes that I wrote, and those are going to be in the show notes, of course.

But he keeps talking about how I go too far in some ways and not far enough in others. And I think

it's this really nuanced thing

that I'm trying to learn about how to keep the reader engaged without just hitting them

over the head with it. And it's this hard kind of middle ground to find. And so that's why I call

this episode Calibrating Your Scenes, which seems like a really boring title. But I think it's really

important, especially for those of us really getting into writing for the first time and making

sure that our story is building at the right pace and we're not going too fast and slowing down.

So that's what this is about. And we talk, of course, about villains again and inciting incidences

again, but we go over my scenes as well and really get into the weeds on it. And I think it's

something that you're going to really enjoy and learn a lot from. So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, based on our conversation last week, I went back and I wrote two scenes,

two different opening scenes for the book, and I sent those to you. What did you think?

Well, I think you did, first of all, your ability to, you're getting into a groove of leaving out things that are really important to leave out.

So the exposition problem that you used to have is slowly fading into the background,

and that is a huge step forward for a writer.

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