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

I'm your host Tim Graal and I am 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, and an editor with over 25 years experience.

In this episode, we continue the Q&A.

So this is part three where we continue to just dive into the questions that you've submitted

via Twitter and Facebook, and they range all over the map, but we've got a lot of great

feedback on these episodes so

we're glad you're enjoying it so let's just jump in and get started all right sean so for this

part three of our Q&A I think we may actually get through well we'll see how many we get

through but we're getting towards the end of my initial list of question so So I'm just going to jump in and start with this one. So Sean and Steve Pressfield have worked

together on many epic war novels. What are the most important obligatory scenes and conventions

of the war genre? Oh, okay. Well, the core event, meaning the thing that every reader or listener or watcher of a

war film is looking for is the big battle scene. And it's like the hero at the mercy of the villain

scene for a thriller. It's like when the, you know, the first kiss or the breakup scene and the lover's love

story, it's really the pivotal moment. So war novels really have to focus on the buildup to that,

you know, that big battle. For example, in Gates of Fire, Steve came up with the notion of what

motivated, what actually

got these Spartan people to sacrifice the 300 best warriors in a suicide mission.

You know, these 300 Spartans went to Thermopylae, which was this very narrow pass in the

mountains.

And, you know, they had to hold back the Persian army,

which was, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of fighters for as long as possible

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