Story Grid Guild

The Story Grid Guild is a year-long membership built around the Story Grid methodology developed by Shawn Coyne — a veteran editor with over 25 years of experience working with major publishers, and author of the widely studied The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know. The methodology provides a rigorous analytical framework for understanding why some stories work and others fail, applicable to both literary and commercial fiction. The Guild replaces Story Grid's earlier 15-week "Level Up Your Craft" semester cohort, shifting to an evergreen, year-long systematic education.

Unlike most author courses that focus on publishing workflow or advertising, the Guild goes deep into the craft of narrative structure itself — making it a different kind of investment for authors who want to write better books, not just publish more efficiently.

What's included:

• Weekly scene analysis with Shawn Coyne (examining four masterworks) and weekly craft/writing instruction with Tim Grahl, alternating each week
• An in-depth textbook guide for each of the 20 Core Scenes that structure all narratives
• Monthly live workshopping sessions analyzing real student scenes
• Monthly Q&A calls with the instructors (recorded if you can't attend live)
• Monthly scene analysis from a Story Grid Certified Editor
• Story Grid AI — a 24/7 methodology assistant for questions while you write
• A private writing community for accountability and peer discussion
• Full-year access to all materials and recordings
• 20% off all other Story Grid products, events, seminars, and books

The Story Grid methodology covers:

• The 20 Core Scenes and how they assemble into a working story
• The five commandments of storytelling (inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax, resolution)
• Genre theory: understanding the obligatory scenes and conventions of your specific genre
• Global, act-level, and scene-level structure analysis
• How to diagnose what is wrong with a manuscript that "isn't working"
• The relationship between theme, genre, and reader expectation

Best for: Serious fiction writers — literary or commercial — who want to deeply understand the structural principles behind compelling storytelling rather than a quick-start publishing workflow. Writers who have completed manuscripts and received feedback like "something isn't working but I don't know what" will find the Story Grid's diagnostic tools particularly valuable.

Note on Story Grid AI: The Guild bundles a Story Grid AI methodology assistant for on-demand Q&A, but the program's instruction is delivered live by Coyne and Grahl — the AI is a supplementary reference tool, not the core teaching.

Pricing: $195/month with a 12-month minimum commitment, or $1,960/year paid annually (saving roughly $537 versus monthly). Your rate locks in for life at enrollment. (Some third-party sources cite $197/mo and $1,997/yr.) Visit g.storygrid.com for current enrollment.