Hello and welcome to the Storygrid 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 Cohen 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 with a different setting, style, and voice.

Last week, we started into the beats of Brokeback Mountain, and I got kind of carried

away at the micro level. So this week, we just keep going and get to about the midpoint of the story.

I was afraid that I was looking at things wrong, too abstractly, too minutely. So Sean identifies

my approach as the writer's view, while the way he looks at a story is from the editor's view.

He gives me a great epigrammatic piece of advice, worthy of embroidering on a pillow or maybe tattooing on my arm.

It's another fun episode, so put on your white coat and safety goggles and step into the laboratory for episode five of the masterwork

experiment. Let's just take a step back and try and ground ourselves of what we're trying to do.

Okay. The whole concept of this experiment is to deconstruct and break down Brokeback Mountain into its constituent

beats, and then to take those beats and use them to inspire your writing a brand new story,

however, following these very, very specific beats and adapting them to the time period and characters that you wish to create yourself.

So the process that we're in right now is we're in the middle of breaking down the beat by beats of the beginning hook of Brokeback Mountain, and we'll probably finish that today.

And then we're going to do the middle build and then the ending payoff.

And then once we have this document for you to work from, then you can begin your work, which is to use these beats as inspirations

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