The Story Grid in Action (Part I)
Today’s post is a wild card, so here it is: me killing two birds with one stone and showing the Story Grid in action.
This weekend our family was struck. For more on that, see my Medium piece. To make a long and very vomity story short, I haven’t had the usual amount of time to myself to work on my writing. Also: I marked this one down as a “Rave/Wild Card” on my monthly post schedule which always equals no inspiration whatsoever. The ironic thing is, last week I was considering abandoning the schedule. Letting this blog breeeeathe. Following it organically.
Clearly if I let myself do that, I’ll abandon this whole project, just like I’ve abandoned every other blog prior to Em’s Notebook. Le sigh.
So anyway. Now it’s Thursday and I need to write a post! But I also want to work on Lucy in Love because I haven’t taken a gander at it since last Friday! Soooo…
So I’m killing two birds with one stone. I’m reading the next bit of The Story Grid (a Somewhat Irritating Book by Shawn Coyne with lots of helpful Information nonetheless in spite of the ridiculous Capitalization) and writing down what applies to my own story. Er, Story.
Today, I’m reading about Genre. (I’m serious. I’m going to capitalize every single darn thing this man capitalizes.) Apparently some guys named McKee and El-Wakil have come up with five things Genre tells us about a book: how long it will last, how far we’ll need to suspend our disbelief, the style/experience of the Story, how the Story is structured, and what the general content of it is.
Here are my answers to each of those Genre questions:
Time Genre: Long form — it’s a novel.
Reality Genre: Realism — it could happen IRL. I’m no A.S. King. At least, not yet I’m not. (Don’t worry Amy. I’m not coming after you.)
Style Genre: Comedy, I’m almost certain. I’m nothing if not a lighthearted writer. Or maybe a comedy/drama, because it’s not all gags. Is that allowed, Shawn? Definitely not literary fiction coming from these fingers!
Structure Genre: He says more on these later. So, more on this later. Although it looks like it will be a standard Arch-plot.
Content Genre: External — love, internal — hmmm. This is where I’m struggling, and I think it’s what will make the whole thing come together. I can’t just have a romance plot if Lucy, my protagonist, isn’t striving for something else internally. Is “fulfillment” an internal content genre? The twenties are a weird and uncertain time, man. I was lucky enough to be married and somewhat settled, but I think for a lot of people it’s chasing after something. Lucy is trying to find that contentment she’s never felt since graduating from college. Or even high school. Okay, now that I’ve turned the page to Coyne’s Five-Leaf Clover graphic, I’m seeing that maturation is an option. So it’s something like that, I suppose. Or revelation…
Okay, that’s about all I have time for today, because I still need to pump some milk to leave for the baby while Jarrod and I go to see Dune tonight, and then there’s my half-written Medium post that’s supposed to drop tomorrow. And is that a baby I hear stirring now…ah, well. C’est la vie de la maman. Or something.
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