Hello and welcome to the Storygrid 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's the creator and founder

of StoryGrid. Along with him, we have Leslie Watts, StoryGrid Publishing's editor-in-chief,

and we have Danielle Kiyoski, the chief academic officer at Storygrid

University.

This is the second in a three-part series where we're looking at the Five Commandments of

Storytelling.

And we're looking at it specifically through the lens of the Ed McBain short story eyewitness.

We've been doing the full 624 analysis for the past several weeks,

and we're in the second week of looking at it through the Five Commandments.

So let's go ahead and jump in and get started.

Yeah, that's excellent.

And I think that that's a really great bridge to go into the crisis too, because the crisis, and as Tim alluded to before, the crisis matrix is going to be an illumination of the exploration of the problem that Sam faces up until the point where the protagonist, who Sam has identified with,

will need to make a decision based on the dilemma laid out in the crisis matrix.

So the third commandment is the crisis.

And coming out of the turning point, uh, in, in the wake of the

destruction of the initial strategy that the protagonist is using to deal with the inciting incident,

the choice of what to do, um, it collapses down into a binary set of options. So the protagonist faces a choice between two options.

And that's the crisis.

So the crisis matrix that you were talking about, Tim, is looking at the two options

and breaking down the stakes that the protagonist faces in each option

along the Trinity planes of perception. So what are the on the surface stakes? What are the

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