Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast.

This is the show dedicated to helping you become a better writer.

I'm your host Tim Graal.

I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works.

Joining me in a minute is Sean Coyne.

He is the creator of Story Grid, the author of the book Story Grid,

and he has 25 years experience as an editor

in helping authors write bestsellers. In this episode, we discussed the fact that I finally

finished the first draft of my novel, and we start diving into what I need to do next. There's

some pretty excruciating parts for me. There's some very big

unknowns in my future. And we start walking through what I have to do with my story to start

figuring out how to make this something that actually works and is publishable. So I think it'll be

good for you to listen along with me as I work through all of this.

And Sean gives me some really good advice about where I should start.

So let's jump in and get started.

So Sean, yesterday at approximately 1.30 p.m. in the afternoon,

I cracked open an adult beverage and celebrated that I finished the first draft of my novel.

Wow. Wow. That's, I can't believe it. That's, you know, that's impressive. It is not easy to get that done.

And, you know, you can put that thing in a drawer now and say you already wrote it home. So you're good.

You're all done.

Yeah, well, it's been neat because I've written some other fiction before, but I always kind of gave out before it was done.

And even the books I've written that are nonfiction, they were like around 30,000 words. So this is also, because it came in just under 60,000 words. And so this is also the longest thing I've ever written. So I was

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