Are you stuck? Staring at the blank screen (literally or proverbially)?

As a writer, there is nothing more important than having a framework, building an outline and understanding how it all ends, before you even write that first word. Brands struggle with storytelling, because so few of them understand the dynamics of what makes a story interesting and compelling to the viewer. It’s like hopping into the car and driving off without knowing where you’re going. With that, the people who create the content can sometimes be too close to it to know if there’s anything substantive in it. They may have missed some key opportunities. It happens. This is why most writers work with an editor. But what, exactly, do editors do? Do they have a system? Is the system strong? Shawn Coyne is a book editor who has worked with Steven Pressfield (one of my personal faves… you have read, The War of Art, right?). He recently published a book called, The Story Grid, which is based on his system for editing books (and making the stories better). It’s a process that he developed over the years… and it works.

How does the story grid work for you?

Just this week, Coyne published a mini-overview of The Story Grid to YouTube, and it’s centred on how a decent story can become a great one. It’s fascinating. In five different videos, this tutorial is less than 45 minutes and makes one of the most compelling cases for why brands needs to rethink how they set out to tell stories.

Here’s The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne: