Q&A - Part 2

Tim continues throwing your story questions at Shawn. Submit your questions for future episodes at twitter.com/storygrid. Can you talk more about the Society genre, please? Does this lend itself better to a mini-plot story (with multiple protagonists) than an arch-plot story? How do you go to "the end of the line" in a story like The Accidental Tourist? Clearly, the stakes are not life or death, so how do you show a fate worse than death? How do we track sub-plot on the one-page Foolscap Global Story Grid? Or, do we track them at all? In the Action genre, Clock subgenre, the book gives four sub-subgenres with different villain types driving the plot: Ransom, Holdout, Countdown, and Fate. In Fate, Time itself is the villain, and the example is Back to the Future. Does that last one apply only to time-travel stories? How do “Time” and “Circumstances” differ as clock devices/villains? Is deus ex machina ever a good thing? What are the values at stake for a non-fiction? What do recommend writers do about writer’s block? What has Shawn learned through this process? Has he changed his mind about anything since working with Tim? Is there an ideal time to engage an editor and/or beta readers?