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 is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of StoryGrid, the author of the book StoryGrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience.

In this episode, we start talking about how to plan the second book in my trilogy.

I'm completely lost, have no idea where to start, and Sean starts walking me through

some basic ideas about systems thinking and how I can apply that to my book.

So for those of you that are struggling with

where to step into a new novel or maybe even your own sequel, this is a really great place to

start and I think you'll get a lot out of it. So let's jump in and get started. So Sean, I've been

thinking a lot about what we talked about last week with doing the second book

in the threshing and thinking about the middle part of a trilogy.

And I started actually writing down like who's the cast of characters.

Because I feel like a lot of, and this one of the things I want to do is talk to you about

like should I be going out and, you know, watching. feel like a lot of, and this one of the things I want to do is talk to you about like,

should I be going out and, you know, watching and reading like famous middle books of

trilogies? Should I story grid, some like spreadsheet some of those out? Obviously, the one that

comes to mind as Empire Strikes Back in the Star Wars trilogy, but there's that.

And then I just started thinking, like, a lot of what happens in the middle book of the

trilogy is a lot of kind of side characters come into the forefront.

It's just anecdotally thinking through the different books and started thinking of like all the

characters that got just a little bit of play in the first book and how there's so much

to explore there.

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