Hello and welcome to the Storygrid podcast. My name is Tim Graal. I'm your host 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 the

creator of Storygrid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with 25 plus years experience

and he is helping me learn how all of this storytelling

stuff works. In this episode, we talk about where good book ideas actually come from and how

you can come up with them. And then we dive into character development and how you can create

characters that are realistic even when they're characters that are nothing

like you. And I have a lot of questions around that, and he answered them really well. So I'm

excited to share this with you. This is a great episode. I know you're going to love it. So let's jump

in and get started. So I want to talk today a little bit about where story ideas come from and from what i've learned

just reading about other people this is like the question writers hate the most so i figure i'll

ask it so in your experience working you know writing yourself working with so many writers like many writers, like, how do you, like, where do these ideas come from?

And how do you know when you've landed on one that's worth pursuing?

Well, that's, I get this question a lot, and it's a very good one.

I'm going to answer it by recommending a really terrific American Masters edition that had Philip Roth.

And the reason why I'm going to recommend this is that Philip Roth, you know, he's a preeminent writer in American letters,

and everybody talks about what an amazing literary figure he is.

And what was really great about this American Masters, it's about an hour-long documentary about

him. And he's basically speaking the entire time. So it's like getting a direct contact

with a terrific writer.

And the question came up.

Now, his famous book, the one that really took him to the stratosphere,

...