Hello and welcome to the Storygrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better

writer. I'm your host Tim Graal and I'm a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story

that works. Joining me shortly as Sean Coyne, he is the creator of Story Grid, the author of the

book Story Grid and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we

wrap up our discussion of the big idea nonfiction book and how this applies to story grid.

So we continue walking through the editor's six core questions and answer some other questions

around the big idea nonfiction and how story grid applies to this

genre. So if you've been enjoying the last couple episodes, you're going to enjoy this one as well.

And we wrap it up with this one. So let's jump in and get started.

So Sean, we've been spending a few weeks looking deep at nonfiction and how that works with story grid.

And we've talked through the four different subgenres of nonfiction.

We've talked about the differences in those.

And we started getting into some of the specifics, like the beginning, middle, and end of the big idea.

And now we're looking at conventions and obligatory scenes.

And normally in Story Grid, when we're looking at these, they're kind of these, you know,

the 15 scenes that every book has to have.

And then we're looking at specific obligatory scenes for a genre

and then conventions. Do these same things apply when we're thinking about big idea nonfiction,

or is this not really something that applies in this case? I think it does. Just as sort of a

starting point for anyone is to constrain yourself with some

principles that big idea books share across, you know, business big idea, personal memoir,

big idea, et cetera. And, you know, after reading hundreds and hundreds of big idea books in my career,

...