00. Why we're watching TV shows

Story Grid Showrunners

Welcome to the Story Grid Showrunners Podcast, dedicated to helping writers master their genre.

If you’re writing a book and you want to make it stand out, we can help you.

How? We’ll be watching and analyzing hit TV series using the Story Grid and will help you apply what we’ve learned to your own writing.

Why the Story Grid? There are many templates and schools of thought that can help you self-edit your book. The Story Grid takes many of these concepts, for example, Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or Kim Hudson’s Virgin’s Promise or Save the cat! Writes a Novel, and allows you to understand why your novel isn’t working.

So what does the Story Grid have to do with TV series?

In the Story Grid Universe, we believe that you can learn from masterworks. At www.storygrid.com you can find resources showing how and why Silence of the Lambs is a classic thriller, and why Pride & Prejudice is still a celebrated love story even though it was published over 150 years ago.

If you want to see films analyzed, go to the Story Grid Editors Roundtable. We love those guys, and they do an awesome job showing how films work.

We are three Story Grid Editors - Parul, Mel, and Randall - and we met while studying under Editor Shawn Coyne. In an ugly business hotel in the wonderful city of Nashville, Tennessee we bonded as we studied together; we analyzed novels, films, songs together. We’re part of a select group of Story Grid geeks who help writers write better stories using the story grid methodology.

When we work with writers we often find ourselves asking them to look up kick-ass TV series. So, for example, if you’re writing a thriller, I might ask you to take a look at the subversive Villanelle in Killing Eve,

In this podcast, we’ll create shortcuts for you.

Each season we will select a TV series and help you understand why it works, episode by episode and overall. We’ll look at the characters and why they’re memorable or not.

If you're writing a novel, screenplay or TV series, our show will help you look at storytelling from an editor's perspective.

We’ll keep our analysis to around 20 to 30 minutes long, so you can pop the kettle on, and get yourself a cup of tea, and join us.

Are there any shows you would like to have analyzed? Drop us a line.

References:

www.sgshowrunners.com

www.storygrid.com

Editor Webpages:

Melanie:

Parul:

Randall: www.randysurles.com

Podcasts:

Story Grid Podcast

Story Grid Roundtable Podcast

Books:

The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need by Jessica Brody

The Virgin’s Promise: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual, and Sexual Awakening by Kim Hudson and Christopher Vogler

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) by Joseph Campbell

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin - the Story Grid Edition