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 Grawl and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a

story that works. Joining me soon is Sean Coyne. He's an editor with 25 plus years experience. He's the creator of Story Grid, the author of

the book Story Grid, and he is helping me fumble around in the dark as I figure out how to

write a story that actually works. In this episode, after a few weeks off where we had the

Stephen Pressfield episodes and the publishing

101 episodes, we're diving back into my story and we talk about the importance of villains.

We talk about how to open up a story that works and really nailing that first scene and

hooking people so that they stay in for the rest of the book.

So we dive into that, plus a lot of other stuff.

I think you're really going to enjoy this episode as we continue down this journey of helping

me figure out my first book.

So we're going to jump in and get started.

So Sean, after taking something like five or six weeks off, and we both were traveling,

but I had these big plans of getting all this writing done while I was traveling,

and I think I wrote like three days while I was on the road,

but still just trying to figure out this story and now that I'm back

in the swing of things again, trying to figure out how to land on a story that is actually

worth writing. So we've been exchanging some emails, which I'll share a lot of those in the show

notes for this episode, of just trying to

figure out what story I'm trying to tell. So where are you at with, I guess, this thing I'm

working on? Well, the thing about it and the thing about writing and about storytelling,

...