Hello and welcome to the Story Grid Masterwork Experiment. My name is Anne Hawley, and I'm an experienced

novelist trying to ground my craft more solidly in Story Grid methodology. So I've agreed to be

the lab rat in the Masterwork Experiment, which Sean Coyne is conducting as a test of his latest

writing and editing methods. Sean is the creator of the story grid method,

the author of the book, The Story Grid, What Good Editors Know, and an editor with many years

experience in the big New York publishing houses. In the masterwork experiment, Sean and I

analyze Annie Prue's short novella, Brokeback Mountain, with an eye to understanding what it's made of

right down to the beat level. Then my job will be to write a novella of my own, using exactly the

same beats and structure, but set in Regency England, with the very different style and voice

that that setting demands. Last week, we continued examining the beats of Brokeback Mountain, and I, as

usual, got a little bit down into the weeds. This week, I finished the microbeet analysis,

and we both get a little lost in admiration of Annie Prue's remarkable, multi-layered prose.

It's another fun episode, so put on your white coat and safety goggles and step into the

laboratory for episode six of the masterwork experiment. Well, good morning, Sean. Good morning,

Ann. I went over what we said last time, and we said we were going to start on scene nine,

but we actually finished scene nine and we're going to start on scene 10. Oh, okay. Well,

what I always like to do whenever I start anything is to just go back and, you know,

even though we both know what we're doing, let's just state it again.

And so what the whole masterwork experiment is about is looking at a masterwork,

and in this case it's Brokeback Mountain, at the highest level of resolution that we possibly can so that you,

the writer, Ann, can go through that high resolution analysis and use it as a template to create

your own original work, which will be inspired by Brokeback Mountain, but will be in a different

...