Action Story: The Primal Genre

Written by Shawn Coyne

Narrated by Dan Portnoy

Action Stories speak to ancient human desires. Readers want to experience heart-stopping fear and excitement and learn lessons of survival.

How can you write a story that satisfies those desires?

In Action Story: The Primal Genre, Story Grid founder Shawn Coyne takes you on a journey deep into the meaning of the genre. Coyne boils down insights gained through more than 25 years as an editor and writer to teach you Action Story’s fundamental constraints and patterns. He explores subgenres and setting, and proposes a new way of understanding the traditional cast of characters to reveal their power as agents of light and darkness.

In keeping with Story Grid Publishing’s goal of helping all writers level up their craft, Coyne provides a practical twenty-point game plan, showing how action stories move forward from beginning to end.

Action stories are part of our DNA, fundamental to our humanity. Let’s learn to write them together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Story Grid Universe LLC
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645010159

Shawn Coyne

SHAWN COYNE created, developed, and expanded the story analysis and problem- solving methodology The Story Grid throughout his quarter-century-plus book publishing career. A seasoned story editor, book publisher and ghostwriter, Coyne has also co-authored The Ones Who Hit the Hardest: The Steelers, The Cowboys, the '70s and the Fight For America's Soul with Chad Millman and Cognitive Dominance: A Brain Surgeon's Quest to Out-Think Fear with Mark McLaughlin, M.D. With his friend and editorial client Steven Pressfield, Coyne runs Black Irish Entertainment LLC, publisher of the cult classic book The War of Art. With his friend and editorial client Tim Grahl, Coyne oversees the Story Grid Universe, LLC, which includes Story Grid University and Story Grid Publishing.

Reviews for Action Story

[Justin Hart · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Good tips, but by the title I was hoping this would give more specifics on writing action scenes. Instead it gives an overall view of what an action story has in it.