John Wick Analysis: Part 2 - Acts and Structure

Story Grid Writing Podcast

Shawn Coyne

Books, Language Learning, Authors, Education, Story, Publishing, Arts, Creativity, Writing, Fiction Writing

4.8 • 767 Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Access the full Story Grid analysis of John Wick at https://storygrid.com/wick. This is the second in a four part series analyzing the movie John Wick using the Story Grid methodology. This 2014 movie, written by Derek Kolstad, is a genre leading action movie. Story Grid Certified Editor Rachel Arsenault (https://www.rachel-arsenault.com) and Tim Grahl start by looking at the Story Grid Five Leaf Genre Clover before diving into the quadrants and controlling idea.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Storygrid podcast. My name is Tim Graal. I'm the CEO of StoryGrid, and I'm a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works.
0:11.0	Joining me shortly is Rachel Arsenaal. She's a StoryGrid certified editor, an editor-mentor in the StoryGrid Guild program, and she's here to make sure I stay on track as we break down the movie John Wick.
0:24.9	Now, last week we came out with the first part, and this week we're going to be looking at the axe and structure of the movie and going even deeper into those.
0:33.3	It's a really fun one.
0:34.5	But before I get into that, let me bring up a different Keanu Reeves movie that you may have heard of, titled The Matrix.
0:41.7	If you are interested in a deep dive into genre, of really understanding how genre works, how structure of a story works, how to map out the 20 skeletal scenes that work at all six levels of genre,
0:56.5	you're going to want to check out the genre blueprint training that Sean Coyne is going to be
1:01.5	teaching coming up in the next couple weeks. I highly recommend you go to storygrid.com
1:06.6	slash blueprint to see more about it, but this is the most in-depth Sean has ever gone on teaching
1:13.1	genre, and he's doing it using the Matrix as the masterwork. And as you're going to see,
1:19.8	this goes really deep into looking at the six-core genres of action, status, love, morality, worldview, and horror, and how all of these are
1:31.5	working in a masterwork, and how you can apply this to your own masterwork story. So definitely go
1:38.9	check out. This is going to be a live training that Sean teaches over 14 weeks. It's starting
1:43.6	in just a couple weeks to see more
1:45.7	information. Make sure you go to storygrid.com slash blueprint. Okay, so now back to that other
1:52.0	Keanu Reeves movie, John Wick. I'm going to go ahead and jump in and get started with me and
1:56.8	Rachel as we look at the acts and structure of John Wick.
2:01.8	Okay, so next let's look at the quadrant.
2:04.1	So we break up a story into the beginning hook, middle breakdown, middle buildup, and ending payoff.
2:13.2	And so let's talk a little bit about where we think those show up and what's interesting
2:21.2	about those moments.
2:22.6	So what do you have for the beginning hook?
	...

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