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 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 Grid, and an editor with over 25 years experience.

In this episode, we are back on my novel. So we start out talking through the entire

beginning hook of the story. That's what we spend about the first 20 minutes or so of the

episode talking about. And then the conversation took a turn where we start

talking about the middle build and the villain and how what the villain wants is driving the

story and where there were problems in my story with this. So I think it's a really important

episode because things seem to be going well with the second draft, but I kept

just having this nagging fear that something was wrong, and sure enough, there was. So,

Sean and I dive into that, and I think you'll enjoy it. So let's jump in and get started.

So Sean, it's been a good while now since we actually have gone back to the novel.

So we went through some nonfiction stuff and then we spent some time doing Q&A and then I did my rogue, Me Only episode.

And so now we're back on the novel.

And we've gone over about the first half of my

second draft of the beginning hook. So, and it was where I kind of wrote a bunch of new stuff and

got about halfway through and was wondering if I was on the right track. and you told me to keep going.

So I just had to finish the beginning hook, which I ended up having a lot of resistance on.

I just, I don't know, I think I'm scared of the middle build.

So if I never finished the beginning hook, I never actually have to go back and rewrite the

middle build. I knuckle down and work through it. A lot of it, so I added a ton at the beginning

of the beginning hook and now I've been reworking it. So finish that up. It's about 23,000, wait, 23, 22,000 words, something like that,

...