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 am struggling. Oh, how I am struggling to write a story

that works. Joining me soon as Sean Coyne, he is the editor of the book, the story grid, the

creator of Story Grid, and he is walking me through

this process of becoming a writer. In this episode, Sean gives me feedback on my very first draft

of my very first novel, and it's a pretty tough one for me. We walked through some big

questions, like what is our theme, what is my genre, things that I

thought I had already answered, but I didn't. We also talk about some specific things in your first

draft that you've got to look at and go through before you can call it done and start working

on the second draft. In fact, this week's

homework, I'm not even allowed to write. He gave me other things to do. So I think it's going to be

really helpful for you as you are thinking about your first draft and finishing your book and the

kind of big questions you should be asking when you get to that point.

So let's jump in and get started. So Sean, I read the book, my book again, and I tried to

answer your questions the best I could, and we can go over that. But I just wanted to first

hear your first impressions on reading it. Okay, the first thing

I have to say is for years now, I've been trying to find somebody who had the courage to go through

the process that you're going through. So the first thing I need to tell you is what you're doing takes

an extraordinary amount of fortitude, hard work, and just cranking it out and doing the best

you can each and every step in trying to depersonalize the problems that I'm going to

talk to you about today is going to be your major, major goal. Because this is the moment when every

editor sort of has a moment when they say to themselves, how deeply do I want to go on this criticism? What is the best

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