Storygridding 4,000 words of Big Idea Nonfiction
For fun, over at www.storygrid.com a while back, I storygridded Malcolm Gladwell’s seminal article from the June 3, 1996 edition of The New Yorker. I tracked the narrative altitude in the work that I described in my post from February 2, 2018.
The vertical axis moves from the “street” level perspective at the lowest elevation through the “city” vantage point up to the “national” level and then all the way to the highest “universal” level. Four specific lenses that he uses to progressively build dramatic tension.
The horizontal axis takes us through the piece word by word, beat by beat, and subject by subject.
To see how Gladwell tackled so many academic disciplines (including personal history) as he moved his narrative camera shows just how much craft goes into a single article.
I recommend reading the piece with this graph in front of you to observe the professional writer performing the literary equivalent of Red Gerard’s final run at the Olympics.
THE WAR OF ART
Read this one first.
It identifies the enemy—what I call Resistance with a capital “R,” i.e. fear, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, all the forms of self-sabotage—that stop us from doing our work and realizing our dreams.
Start here.
Everything else proceeds from this.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
Extremely useful graph.
Brilliant work.
Thank you.
I keep learning every day, thanks to your posts.
If anyone is interested, read Narrative Maps by Michael White, narrative therapy co-creator. This graph is very like his own (2007) and shows how to help a person integrate hidden narratives. I’m pretty excited about this. Contact me if you want to discuss.
Thank you, Shawn.