I took the StoryGrid Scene Writing Workshop.
Discover What I learned, and if it was worth the investment!
What is StoryGrid?
For anyone who is unfamiliar, StoryGrid is the brainchild of editor and author, Shawn Coyne. It’s a tool he developed to help uncover structural issues in books he was reading while working as an editor.
It was back in 2015, when he released the book titled, ‘StoryGrid, What Good Editors Know’. This book made his methods available to any writer or editor who felt interested enough to read his textbook.
Inside, it covers things like genres, the five pillars of good storytelling, the different sized chunks that make up a story and many more things! He provides sample charts and graphs that show you how you can apply his methodology to your own work, or to study a masterwork.Â
Why a Workshop?
The concept that all books could be distilled down into the core components that Shawn wrote about might feel formulaic to some writers, but the success of the book and the ongoing efforts of the Story Grid YouTube channel made me curious.Â
I’d been reading some of my current work in progress at a local open mic night, and felt like there was something off with some of my scenes, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what that was.Â
I’d even shared my writing with other writer friends, and while we could pick out some areas to work on from the scenes I wasn’t happy with, they were more isolated apsects, and weren’t to do with the overall structure of the scene.Â
I wanted answers.
What is the StoryGrid Scene Writing Workshop?
Knowing I had an issue, and wanting to try and decode the problem, I watched a YouTube video from StoryGrid, with Tim Grahl. He was talking about scene structure and writing good scenes.Â
I’m not normally a sucker for advertising, but the offer was too good to pass up. He promised that taking part in the six-week scene writing workshop of theirs would result in me leaving as a better writer – or my money back.
Tim Grahl is a marketer, and damn he’s a good one. An offer like that shows confidence. I wanted to know more!
The main benefit of their workshop was real feedback rounds from a real editor. This feedback loop is the opposite of what many of us writers are inclined to do. We keep our early drafts locked up tight until we have fluffed and fussed with them several times over. That means it can be years before anyone reads our work.
Their theory was skilled feedback = forward momentum.
Not only would their editors give us feedback, they’d also assign our weekly homework based on our skill level. This wasn’t some generic color by numbers situation, we would all be given exaclty what we needed.
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That Sounds Expensive...
This is a tricky one. Yes, and also no.Â
The cost of the StoryGrid scene writing workshop was $1290. This is at the time I did it. I expect it will increase in price over time, everything does.
I understand that not everyone can afford to spend that much on a writing course. I work full-time and am lucky enough to have been in a position to make it happen. There is an option at checkout to pay over 3 months, which may help some writers to spread the cost a bit.Â
While it may seem like quite an investment, it’s also a less expensive way to get some structured writing education under your belt, compared to going to university for a creative writing program, which would cost much more in both dollars and your time.Â
Unfortunetly, time is something I’m poor in at the moment. Even those six weeks felt like a big commitment while already trying to juggle a full-time job, married life, a blog, writing my novel, studying craftbooks like my life depends on it, my bi-weekly writers group, weekly scene exchanges with a critique partner, a discord feedback workshop, and making AuthorTube content for YouTube. Phew…
I didn’t want to waste my valuable time, or money, on a course that didn’t help me. So knowing there were real editors looking over my work, coupled with the moneyback guarantee, made it feel like a safe bet.
The StoryGrid Scene Writing Workshop
The StoryGrid scene writing workshop was split up over six weeks. You can watch my reactions over the entire course in the video above.
Housekeeping Call With TIm Grahl
Prior to the workshop starting, Tim spoke to us all on Zoom. This call was general housekeeping, setting expectations, and giving us a chance to ask any questions.Â
I’d had some technical weirdness, where I could see an old cohorts homework when I logged into my dashboard, so I spoke to Tim afterwards and he got it fixed in a few minutes.Â
So far so good.
Week One
In week one we had a zoom call with the two Story Grid editors who would be running our weekly live workshops. To begin with, they shared a presentation covering that weeks lesson about scene writing.
We’d been given a sample chapter to read ahead of time, and we disected this according to the StoryGrid methodology live on the zoom call, where we could ask any questions we had in real-time.Â
We were then given our first weekly homework assignment. Write a ‘working’ scene, using the StoryGrid five pillars. This would need to be submitted in the next three days for our editor to review.Â
Each weekday, we also had daily exericises we could participate in. These ranged from valencing a sentence, writing a description, exploring objects of desire, and evaluating aspects of scenes.
Week Two
Again, we were given a scene to read over prior to the live class.Â
We were shown a presentation, then jumped into analysing the scene we’d be given. What was fun this week, was that we then read one of the other students scenes, and reviewed that on the call too.Â
By this point, I’d been given my first round of feedback. I technically had a working scene, but it could be made better with some tweaking.
The feedback was given in the form of a video from my editor – cheers Dave! – and he also left written comments in the scene itself. I’ve shared the written feedback I got in the video clip below. Just pause to read.
Week Three
All the learning followed the same pattern in the following weeks. Daily exercises, pre-reading, live analysis of that scene on a zoom call, and a look at another students scene. So I won’t keep parroting on about it, you get the idea!
My feedback this week wasn’t what I’d hoped for this week. I’d messed up my scene rather than fix it.Â
I had tried to amp up the pain if he stays, and the pain if he goes, like Dave had suggested, and I made the protagonist make a decision, rather than fall asleep, but instead, my scene wasn’t even working anymore. I needed to make more changes for next week, as you’ll see in the video below.
Week Four
In the words of Britters – oops, I did it again!
The scene still wasn’t working. I felt like was spinning around in circles, chasing my tail. In theory I knew what I was meant to be doing, but I wasn’t pulling it off, and I was getting frustrated.
I had spent extra time on this one, discussing everything with the editor in Slack, but all the red lines in the video below speak for themselves.
I think I’d picked a difficult scene to start with. Having a confused dementia patient as the protagonist was tricky, so I would advise you to stick to something simple that gives you room and flexibility to iterate, if you do the workshop.
I was delighted when my editor said we could switch to an entirely different scene for the remainder of the six weeks, because I was royally fed up with this one!
I’ll be honest with you. I was doubting my life choices by this point. I felt like I was getting worse as the weeks went on, and I was overthinking every word.Â
I did reach out to another student who I knew had the same editor as me. She was also struggling to write a successful scene. Knowing I wasn’t alone in that helped, because all the scenes we looked at from other stidents over the weeks had been amazing, and I was starting to think I was the only writer struggling.
Week Five
This week felt like a breath of fresh air after the frustration of the dementia scenes. I wanted to do something fun for the chase scene, something less serious, and with less constraints. I decided to make my chase scene fantasy inspired. I felt like that would give me unlimited possibilities.
Let’s not get into the fact that I’ve never written anything fantasy in my puff, and I only had 800 words to write a functioning scene with a chase involved, and squeeze some kind of world building in too. I am nothing if not delusional.
It went about as well as anyone more in touch with reallity than me would have expected, as you can see from the rainbow of comments I recieved. The goal was to collect all the colors of feedback, right?
Week Six
Week six didn’t come with any weekly homework assigment, as it was the last time we’d do a live workshop call. There was one final call a few days later with Tim himself, which covered how to form writing groups with our cohort, if we wish, and one last go at upselling us into the mentorship program.
I did get the very last batch of feedback from my revision of the fantasy scene. Now, I’ll let you decide for yourself – and please leave me a comment below to tell me your genuine thoughts – but my editor seemed to be running out of colors in his word processor this week.Â
Was the scene that much better than before? Has my writing really improved? Or was he being nice since it was the last batch of feedback and he wanted to leave me on a positive note? Who knows.
Final Thoughts
Do I think I’m a better writer now? It’s hard to say!
I’ll let you read through the scenes and decide for yourself if you can see improvement. Leave me a little comment to let me know if you do! I’d love to hear from you!
I would 100% do the StoryGrid scene writing workshop again. I for sure have a better understanding of my own writing weaknesses that I should be mindful for, and I now have a better idea of how to structure scenes, even if I may not get it right all the time!
I’ll leave you with the StoryGrid Scene Writing Checklist, if you want to check that out!
I hope you found this helpful!
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