Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. My name is Tim Graal and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works.

Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator and founder of Story Grid.

Along with him is Leslie Watts, our Story Grid publishing editor-in-chief, and Danielle Kiyoski, our chief academic officer at Story

Grid University. This episode, we're kicking off a three-part episode where we're going to walk

through the Five Commandment Analysis of Eyewitness by Ed McBain. This is a short story we've been

working through the 624 analysis on for several

weeks, and we're really going to deep dive into the inciting incident, the turning point

progressive complication, the crisis, the climax, and the resolution. So let's jump in and get

started with this first episode. Thanks, Tim.

Today we're going over the Five Commandments, and these are the core principles of storytelling

that are present in every unit of story.

So by looking at them in Ed McBain's eyewitness, we're going to get a really good foundation

for how to apply these principles to any unit of story from a scene all the way up to a global

story because the short story is both. So we'll be looking at them one at a time and we'll go over

a little bit of what each one entails and then look at how it's executed in the story. So the first of the five commandments is the inciting incident.

And this is an unexpected event that kicks off the events of the story.

It comes from outside of the protagonist and incites the protagonist to action.

So this is something that knocks the protagonist's life off balance,

and they have to come up with a strategy to deal with the inciting incident that has come into

their life. So, Tim, what would you say the inciting incident of Ed McBain's eyewitnesses?

I think it's off the page. So I would say that since this is a crime story, we've established that and since it is about,

which means it's about justice versus injustice.

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