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 a writer in the Storygrid universe. Joining me shortly as Sean Coyne,

he is the creator of Story Grid, the author of the book Story Grid, and an editor with over 30

years experience. This week we have a great question from a listener about how to define masterworks.

So you know if you've been around StoryGrid for very long, we talk a lot about studying

masterworks, but how do you know if a book is a masterwork?

So that's what we dive into this week.

So let's jump in and get started.

So, Sean, we got a question here from Rebecca. She says,

what defines a masterwork? It can't be just a bestseller as books can simply hit the zeitgeist

of the moment. Is it a book that's lived beyond the author? Then what about contemporary

masterworks? If the line is is books everyone associates with that genre,

how can people who never experience that normal exposure or traditional education figure those

out? So how do you define a masterwork? And I would say too, especially if I'm wanting to

study masterworks to become a better writer, like, how do I know which ones to pick?

Okay, well, whenever you have a category of something, you have to think about what kind

are we talking about? And then when you have the kind of thing of category, then you start

talking about degree. So the kind of masterwork that we're talking about has many,

many different definitions. So there's high resolution definitions where I can talk about the

granular detail of the movement from scene to scene, even beat to beat, and why that masterwork

is operating at that level of granular detail.

Now, that's not for everyone. That's probably for a very small number of people.

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