Story time about Week 1 in StoryGrid's scene writing workshop

Settle in for story time...

Last Tuesday, I started StoryGrid’s Mastering Line by Line in Fiction live scene writing workshop. Before I tell you about the first week, here’s a little about me. I write fiction in addition to having a full-time job, and feeding the kids, and getting them to Taekwondo multiple times a week, and doing most of the chores, and I don’t know- occasionally sleeping. So, I can’t make time for just any writing class. But I’ve been following Tim Grahl’s (CEO, StoryGrid) work for years, and I got the email when he released his new book, The Shithead. Then I read it. This book is essentially an exploration of a man’s existential crisis. That sounds boring, right? Maybe even painful. But I can honestly say a book hasn’t pulled me in that tight in a long time. I cried, I laughed, I cried some more. All of this was most unexpected. So, when I saw StoryGrid was doing a live scene writing workshop, I took no convincing. I’ve already seen the outcome.

So last week the course starts. I can’t take part in the live sessions because of work but I’m ok with that. I watched the first almost hour and a half session and I thought, okay; I know about this idea that each scene must contain an inciting incident, turning point with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution, but good to hear again. And then we talked about the opposing objects of desire for the protagonist and the antagonist. Ok, sure makes sense. We do daily exercises reinforcing the concepts. Each night I’d come home tired, ready for a glass of wine, but first I had to do my homework, so I’d knock out the exercise. The final weekly homework was to write an 800 word scene with two characters, due on Friday by midnight local time.

I neglected to mention earlier that the chief reason I am taking this course is because I want to write better, faster. I’ve written plenty of meandering first drafts where I’m finding the story and learning the characters, plot, world all at the same time and the second draft is a total rewrite and it takes two years to get a book out. That’s where I live. But… I have so many ideas for stories and new series and wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t take two years to write a damn book! Yes, the answer is yes, it would be great.

Which leads to me writing out the first draft of my homework on Thursday night, tired, after work. Before I tell you about that. I should let you know that on Wednesday night I had an idea for a scene, and I sketched out some notes. By Thursday, I realized I didn’t know what opposing objects of desire those characters had, so instead of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, I ditched that scene idea. Poof! Gone. New idea time.

On Thursday, I spent about 5 minutes thinking up conflicting objects of desire for a new protagonist and antagonist. Then I sat down to write. About 35 minutes later, I had a 1,300 word scene with clear opposing objects of desire that hit all the structural elements. On Friday, I trimmed it down to 919 words but made no structural changes to the original scene. None. My coach wants to use the scene as an example of structure in class on Tuesday. Bam. That was week one. I am hoping for good things.

PS. Something has definitely been unleashed in my brain because I edited 17 chapters this weekend and I hope to finish the editing (my part) by end of next week.

Let’s get to work!