Hello and welcome to the Storygrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better

writer. My name is Valerie Francis. I'm one of the certified Storygrid editors, and I'll be filling

in for Tim today while he continues to work on editing his debut novel, The Threshing. Those of you

who regularly follow the show will know that in February 2019, we're holding another

certification training session.

If you're thinking of applying or if you're still wondering why you should bother putting in the

effort to learn StoryGrid, and trust me, it does require effort, this episode is for you.

I've been following Sean Coyne and studying his method since January

2015. For the past year, I've been working with authors, teaching them about the fundamentals

of storytelling, and helping them become better writers. Of course, as an author myself, I've also

been applying Sean's method to my own work, and that has really improved

my writing. But one of the things I've struggled with is explaining what exactly the story

grid method is and how it differs from other structural or developmental editing approaches.

So I finally managed to get Sean to sit down with me and talk about it.

Now, we cover a pretty wide canvas. From the origins of story grid and the time Sean sent

Stephen Pressfield back for a page one rewrite, to the moment during my editor training when

I thought Sean was wrong, only to find out months later that, of course, he'd been right on the money.

Okay, so now, as Tim says, let's jump in and get started. Hello, Sean. Hi, Valerie. Wow,

it's great to hear a different voice. This is really exciting. Okay, so today we're going to talk about

what it is to be a story grid editor and what it means for a writer to have a story grid edit done to their work.

But even before we get into that, I think we have to take a little step backwards because, I mean, I've been doing this for a year.

And one of the most common questions

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