Hello and welcome to this 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 a creator of Story Grid, the author of the book Story Grid, and an editor with over 25 years experience.

In this episode, we continue diving into the hero's journey.

So last week's episode, we looked at the eight different archetypes that have to show up in your story.

And then this week is all about the 12 different checkpoints, the 12 different moments in your story

that you have to have to abide by the hero's journey.

So again, this is another lens to look at your story to make sure that it's working.

Also, if you want to see, I put links to the book that we reference, a couple images I was referencing throughout this

episode. All of that's going to be in the show notes, so you can check that out as well. But from

here, let's just jump in and get started. So, Sean, last week, we started on the hero's journey,

looking at that as a way to look at my novel.

And so when we've been going through, so this whole thing is trying to get to a point

where I can write a second draft, which has been really interesting because 99% of the

advice out there is how to write your first draft, how to get a manuscript

done, which obviously is helpful.

But then once you have that first draft done, it's kind of an opaque process to get to a

second draft.

And we are now on the kind of third step right so the first one was the story grid spreadsheet

filling out the first half dozen columns and making a long to-do slash brainstorm list and then

...