Hello and welcome to the Storygrid Masterwork Experiment. My name is Anne Hawley, and I'm an experienced

novelist trying to ground my craft more solidly in Storygrid methodology. So I've agreed to be

the lab rat in the Masterwork experiment, which Sean Coyne is conducting as a test of his latest

writing and editing methods. Sean is the creator of the

Story Grid method. He's the author of the book, The Story Grid, What Good Editors Know, and he's

an editor with many years' experience in the big New York publishing houses. In the masterwork

experiment, Sean and I analyzed the brilliant short novella,

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Prue, with an eye to understanding what it's made of right down to the beat level.

Then my job will be to write a novella of my own, using exactly the same beats and structure,

but with a different setting, style, and voice.

Last week, we did a little planning of my Regency England characters and setting, and

defined the major scene structure of Brokeback Mountain. In today's episode, I misconstrue what

Sean meant by last week's assignment to discover the beats in the beginning hook of the story.

I drop way down to the micro level, and there I find eight microbeats inside the prolog

alone. Sean, meanwhile, gives us all a lesson in the deep reading of a scene, finding meaning

and story cues that I completely missed with my microscope.

It's a fun episode, so put on your white coat and safety goggles

and step into the lab for episode four of the masterwork experiment.

Good morning, Sean.

Good morning, Ann.

How are you?

I'm fine.

...