For me it’s Usenet newsgroups and a good reader program but in the decades since I stopped using it the name has now passed into the ether though I do remember it had an logo/icon of a man wearing a fedora. Also for bix based on University of Guelph’s cosy system. Although KOM at RIT was wonderful to use (and I got to play with that for work.)
I’ve never heard of the Story Grid Guild, which may be all the evidence needed to show I am but a wannabe.
A question I might have is what level of involvement Shawn Coyne has with the story guild. He is an apex editor yet this sentence jumps off store.storygrid.com:
Grounded in philosophy, history and and cognitive science, the Story Grid framework comprises the lifetime work of writer, editor, and nine-figure generating publishing professional Shawn Coyne.
I see a duplicated word and a comma error.
The course may well be worth $700 a month. I’m not trying to be snarky.
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This Story Grid thing promises to be the Holy Grail of writing success, after all. Something like that appeals to the engineer in me, but has never helped me in practice to actually get a novel done.
Another system for the hardcore is Dramatica, a theory that abstracts storytelling to the hilt, so that the software offered outputs the 100 percent plot via a large set of parameters. I find this theory can actually give you some deeper insights, but my actual creative process just looks different.
My personal choice, by the way, is the BYU creative writing lectures by Brandon Sanderson.
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As someone who has studied the Story Grid method in the early days of their business, I used to be a fan. The system was already complicated enough to get one’s head around. But now, with the developments over the past few years, I think they have ruined their story telling system through over marketing and over complicating it.
It used to be a system which extended the base scene mechanics of Goal, Conflict, Outcome and emphasised character change and goal changes, labelling them Turning Points.
This system appealed to me as it kept me on track as a writer, emphasising change in each scene. Now the Story Grid focuses on line by line writing and archetypes in story telling. All well and good but their system has theorised writing to the extent that you need a brain like Einstein to be able to hold all of the intricacies in your head as you write.
In short, for me at least, it has become more of a distraction than a facilitator for my creative thoughts.
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I guess that’s always the problem with starting a big business from a few bright ideas that can be found elsewhere on the web, and not just there.
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YMTD
When I first became aware of Story Grid its emphasis was on editing a manuscript to take it from draft to publishable.
They now seem to be more interested in monetising it than getting people to use it. There is no way I could afford to sink $700 into one of their training videos.
Resources that were once free to download such as the spreadsheeted form of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice suddenly became a for-profit product. (I download all those resources when they were free.) And chapters of the original book were republished as supposedly new books.
One of many such schemes amongst them Snowflake, Save the Cat, Truby 22 Steps Method, Flashlight/Headlight, No Plot! No Problem. Though, to divert the thread drift slightly back toward the original topic there do not appear to be forums to discuss them (other than occasional threads on NaNoWriMo forums).
Only watched the first few of an earlier iteration. They are good if somewhat biased toward the fantasy genre.
FYI, the Save the Cat! Writes a Novel author, Jesica Brody, has a forum focusing on this method but encompassing many of the other aspects of novel writing, called the Writing Mastery Academy. It’s open to those who pay a small monthly subscription that provides a number of writing courses, online interviews, “office hours,” writing sprints, etc.
At first, I found it useful, since I am a new fiction writer. (I founded a nonfiction publishing house many years ago but the world of fiction is a strange and wonderful new direction for me.)
After joining the forum, I soon realized that it had a facilitator who, on a daily basis, tossed out discussion topics, scheduled group writing sessions, and so on. Here’s a screenshot of a small portion of these postings:
I think she does a great job, but there was one person who was missing from the forum: Jessica Brody. I soon formed the opinion that she probably avoids such participation because she needed to use her time writing, promoting her books, promoting her courses, and generally living her life. I am grateful for her example and, after a few weeks of participation, dropped a friendly note to the facilitator that, while I would continue to subscribe to the courses and participate in some of the educational events, I was dropping out of the forum as a regular participant. I explained that I would put the recaptured time into writing my novel. She was gracious and gave me her encouragement. It was the right decision, as I’m making substantial progress on my first novel.
As an aside, but relevant to the thread, I created a number of discussion forums (listserves) for nonprofit/NGO professionals many years ago, which grew to over 100,000 participants. I had a team of volunteer moderators to help me. Fortunately, nonprofit professionals are a committed, professional bunch and rarely gave me/us grief. Eventually, I handed everything off to others so that I could recapture my time and do other things. Because of that experience, I have the greatest respect for those who create and manage discussion communities – even those who, in my estimation, struggle to find the right balance in overseeing things.
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On a side note, polite off topic discussions such as this thread and kept separate from technical questions, probably strengthens Aeon’s overall support mission. Banter and camaraderie are a reason to stay in touch. Serious questions will get quicker attention the more people check the forum every day.
Nice to see the discussion, and I’m happy to learn of new sources for writing guidance. I’ve written a lot, mostly news, and all from an untrained and poorly educated foundation. I need to do better.
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Chuckling. Coyne is a big brain on everything conceptual about narrative design. He employs a professional editor, a data scientist, a marketing guy (Tim Grahl), an admin person, and at least one other part-time person. A couple of the staff serve as ‘Shawn whisperers’, translating his mad-scientist content into training. Unfortunately, they do not employ a professional adult learning specialist or course designer, so their instructional videos really make you work to pull out the salient concepts. Their course materials are decent, though a pro-course designer would improve them dramatically. They choked their own Discourse community into silence, so ‘Guild’ connotes a master-to-apprentice relationship, not a community. I’m making it sound bad, but there’s a lot of value for those who want to write with more depth and nuance. For those who want to write to market and stay on a 20booksto50K sort of high-speed treadmill, it’s not a match.
Now I recommend their individual courses, not the Guild, unless you are a very motivated narrative theory buff. While it’s full of conceptual content, their Heroic Journey 2.0 course helped me a lot. Friends who’ve taken their Narrative Path course say it’s their best offering. It’s being retooled now. I hope they don’t ‘improve’ it too much.
Free Save the Cat seminar coming up. Save the Cat!® Super Panel - Save the Cat!®
I like it, but it’s just one of several tools with promise.
Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Book (that’s one of my Amazon affiliate links - search the title if you prefer not to click it) helps me. Nash also has Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book (affiliate link), but I’ve not read it. I expect it’s as useful.
Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story (affiliate link) and Story Genius (affiliate link) are excellent for character-driven fiction.
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Thanks for the information and your replies to my post and others. I’ll check him out.
The fedora is the graphical image of Redhat, but that may not be related to your Usenet group. I was a pre-web internet user too. I don’t miss my 300-baud acoustic coupler.
No, it wasn’t Red Hat’s Fedora. It is ForteInc’s Free Agent newsreader Agent 8 + Usenet that I used (before switching to Linux, BSD, and ulitmately macOS — a move I have never regreted).
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