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 is 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 start off talking a little bit about how it's going for me with the

second draft of the novel and some things around that.

And then we keep talking through the rewrite of the introduction of my nonfiction book, but more importantly, we talk about

just overall specificity and how to tell a great nonfiction story and how it applies to fiction,

but also how to do it the right way in nonfiction. So I think you'll really enjoy this,

so let's jump in and get

started. So Sean, before we look at the rewrite of the introduction of the nonfiction book

I've been working on, I wanted to talk a little bit. I've been working on the second draft

of the novel. And of course, you know, I've been scared of it second draft of the novel.

And of course, you know, I've been scared of it.

So I was procrastinating it.

And now I'm finally working on it again.

And one of the biggest issues with the first draft was I was rushing everything.

In fact, you know, I had Candice, I had my wife, Candice, read the book. You know,

this was a couple months ago. And like after like the first 10 scenes, she's just like,

the whole thing feels rushed, you know, and she doesn't know anything about this stuff. And I was

like, yeah, I know. Because like all my scenes were like 800 words, 900 words, 900 words, 700 words, maybe like 1,200 words.

And so on my first, on the first scene of the second draft, it was a 3,000 word scene.

And I was just like, what is taking so long?

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