Why subscribe?

A Substack subscription newsletter from Shawn Coyne

The Story Grid’s founder and head of research and development has spent more than 60,000 hours (conservatively) investigating the nature and function of Storytelling. As a book editor, publisher, credited writer, ghostwriter, and literary agent with more than four hundred published titles to his credit, Coyne has an unparalleled track record of transforming flawed first drafts into bestselling published works that have stood the test of time.  

Inside every minute of those 60,000 hours, though, he’s been constructing a methodology called The Story Grid that teaches others hard narrative lessons he’s learned along the way.  

Coyne’s career has now reached an apotheosis.  

His thirty-plus years contemplating the explanatory science, descriptive practice, and declarative purpose of Storytelling is now ready to be widely shared. Rather than romantically holding up in a coldwater flat for the next several years generating a meticulously planned series of books that delineate the entire swathe of his theory in isolation, Coyne has decided to ship his work on deadline. 

No time like the present to roll out the big ideas. Seize the day and all of that. Who knows what tomorrow brings?

Each weekly dispatch will stand independently as an integrated high-resolution examination of a differential part of The Story Grid methodology. At the same time, each missive will serve as a placeholder for a distinct part/chapter of a future compendium focusing on a particular concept, category, or code of Coyne’s formalization of the narrative process.

Every Wednesday, Coyne will share findings from his thirty-year career editing Stories across all fiction and nonfiction genres. He will also organically build out The Story Grid methodology from first principles.