Make Sure Your Story Moves with the Story Grid
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There’s a lot out there when it comes to writing craft books.
If you’ve spent any time in the writing community, you know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books about plot, character, scenes, beats, and all of the other writing craft elements. It can be hard to know where to start, and there certainly isn’t enough time for a writer to read and learn from all of them! Because I analyze stories and fine-tune words for a living, I try to read writing craft books when I can to refine my own understanding as well as to learn different ways of approaching revisions and describing story that may be useful to the writers I work with.
I recall a fascinating conversation I had with fellow students in my English master’s cohort about how we would describe our writing processes. One writer described the process as stringing beads, ideas following one after the other in order. Another said her writing was like a tree—she could always see the branches first and only later discover the trunk uniting them. Just as every author’s story is unique, so, too, is their process—so if you haven’t found a writing craft book yet that sparks with your style, keep looking. What works for one writer may not suit you. But keep an eye out also for the gems in the books you peruse—while the overall concept may not fit your approach, you can usually find one or two useful tools for your toolbox.
Taking a look at the story grid as a process
I recently finished reading Shawn Coyne’s The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know. Written by a fellow editor with years of deep experience in the field as a writer, agent, and manager, this book has long been on my list. The Story Grid is Coyne’s own method for analyzing a manuscript, breaking down the narrative to see where the story is working and where it’s not. The book presents his process with the goal of teaching a writer how to edit their own work. The first part involves creating what he calls the Foolscap Global Story Grid, which breaks down the essential components of the novel, such as genre, what the external/internal values at stake are, the bare bones of each act, and so on, to fit on a single piece of foolscap paper (8.5 x 13.5 in. paper, so named because the paper used to be stamped with a watermark of a fool’s cap in the 1700s). The second part of the process asks the writer to create a much more extensive chart of each scene in the manuscript that includes details like the number of characters in the scene, the key action, the point of view, and even how many words it is. The result is an extremely comprehensive chart of the story at hand. When plotted on a graph, the story can be charted with two lines indicating the external story and the internal story
A key takeaway from The Story Grid: the story must move
While some writers may find the Story Grid a daunting endeavor, others may find that it is the perfect mix of detached objectivity and practicality to tackle their book. Whether or not you find the highly detailed and analytical approach useful, I wanted to touch on an element that I thought was a gem that any writer could find useful. It’s a simple enough premise that, on some level, we all know as writers: a story must move. To be precise, a scene must move from one state to another. Scenes are the building blocks of a story, and if a scene doesn’t introduce a change, the story isn’t progressing. In The Story Grid, Coyne offers two very useful ways of looking at change in a scene.
Story Technique 1: Polarity shift
No matter what’s happening in your scene, you can assign what Coyne calls “polarity” to it. This is simply noting whether the scene is positive or negative. Importantly, however, is that the polarity of a scene, to feel dynamic and real—not to mention serve a purpose in your manuscript—cannot remain the same. That is to say that a scene that begins positive (+) should not also be positive when it ends. Polarity shift offers a way to evaluate your scenes in a straightforward way: Is the prevailing emotion or action positive or negative?
There are many possibilities for what this polarity shift can look like:
+/– A scene starts off well, but then things take a turn for the worse.
–/+ Our heroes are in a tight spot but manage a victory.
+/++ Our character is starting to put the mystery together and discovers another clue.
–/– – A scene goes from bad to worse.
And remember that scenes should connect to each other, which means that if you have a scene that is – / – –, consider if it makes sense for the next scene to start with + or + +. You may find that – –/– – – fits better (if things are definitely out of the frying pan and in the fire now). Powerful scenes should be moments of enormous change, change that can be easily seen with polarity. A climax, for example, could be rendered as – – –/+ + + (the lowest low to the highest high).
Mapping out the polarity of your story
Take a handful of scenes in your manuscript and try annotating them with the polarity system to see if your scenes are moving forward, showing change from where the scene began. Do you have any scenes that don’t shift? Do your scenes follow a pattern of polarity shifts or do you have a variety? Are the most negative or most positive shifts found in the key moments of your book, like the crisis or climax?
Also check to see if your scenes are logically building on each other. For instance, do you have any scenes that start positive even though the previous chapter ended with a double negative?
Story Technique 2: Value shift
The polarity shift notation is a very useful tool for visually depicting the movements of a story, especially if you use Coyne’s method of graphing these high and low points with the x-axis representing the progression of pages in the book and the y-axis representing a neutral state. An equally valuable technique that Coyne discusses is charting value shifts in individual scenes. This is getting even more specific about the work that each scene is doing and ensuring that change is taking place. Instead of talking about positive and negative, this involves naming the primary values at stake in the scene. I’ll show you what this can look like using our examples from the polarity section:
+/– Safety to risk
–/+ Vulnerable to in control
+/++ Protégé to colleague
–/– – Captive to prey
I find this way of looking at a scene fascinating, and it can be incredibly useful to see what important change is taking place in the scene—in essence, why is this scene included in the story? Once you know what the value shift is, you have a goal to work towards as you revise that scene, honing dialogue and even character movements to reflect that change. If you find that you don’t know how to describe the value shift in a scene, that may be a sign that the scene isn’t focused yet and could use some reworking.
This can also be a useful way to look at the structure of your story, as well as themes. In The Story Grid, Coyne uses Thomas Harris’s novel The Silence of the Lambs to illustrate his method. When you look at the story just through the lens of the value shift, you see a few reversals, like “vulnerable to in control” followed by a scene that is “In control to vulnerable.” Pairing scenes can be a very effective way to heighten emotion and emphasis a character’s struggle. A few scenes later, we see “Vulnerable to powerful.” You can see how the writer is intentionally picking up a value from a previous scene to introduce continuity not only to the action but to the character arc as well. It also serves as a miniature character arc for the protagonist in a story that is a series of victories and defeats of varying sizes. Looking at the big picture, you can also chart the main character’s growth as the scenes mark changes from “Ignored to chosen,” “Protégé to colleague,” “Hero to trainee” (a brief setback), and “Protégé to pro” (at the end).
Charting your story’s value shifts
I highly encourage you to try out this technique on your own work, looking at a few scenes to see if you can identity the most important value shift taking place. Is this a scene that goes from progress to failure? Outside to inside? Dismissive to concerned? Humiliated to proud? Death to life? Doing this exercise will help you identify scenes that could be doing more heavy lifting, discover opportunities for resonance between scenes, and even pinpoint themes.
Sound like your jam?
These two techniques are just a small part of the much more thorough Story Grid method, but even on their own, they can offer you valuable perspective on your story. A manuscript is only revised one scene at a time, so give these two methods a try if you’re in need of a new way of looking at your work or a way to practically assess how each scene is working in your story. For those of you who have been intrigued by this little glimpse into the Story Grid, I encourage you to read Mr. Coyne’s book for yourself. It’s a unique method that gets down to the clockwork of how and why stories work, and it’s certainly a treat to follow along with a master of the craft as he explains each moving piece. If that sounds like your jam, you can find a copy at your local library or wherever books are sold online.
Ready for a set of professional eyes on your manuscript?
Thanks to Glenn Carstens-Peters for the beautiful image for this post via Unsplash.
