Last fall, I went down to Nashville and got to meet two of my favorite podcast people, Shawn Coyne and Tim Grahl, who between them are the Story Grid Podcast. I was there for Story Grid editor training, and at the end of a grueling week I was a certified Story Grid editor.
This is a lot less confusing than it seems. It's not like selling Avon or Pampered Chef. I'm still me, Maya Rushing Walker, novelist. But what I've added to the mix is a refined sense of story editing and the ability to diagnose a manuscript in the Shawn Coyne style. I think this is worth gold, people.
Back in the stone age, when I sent my manuscripts out for consideration, the rejection letters would come back with cryptic comments such as, “I just didn't love these characters,” or even, “You write well but this doesn't work for us–please send us whatever else you have!”
And stuff like that. Who could possibly decipher what was going on based on comments like that?
Shawn Coyne spent 25 years as a New York editor for major publishing houses, and he finally decided to write out the lexicon that he uses so that you will know why your story does or doesn't work, and how you can make it better. Enter the Story Grid Diagnostic.
I wrote a 3300-word blog post for the Story Grid website with all the gory details. If you're interested, have a look here.
