Do you want to create amazing stories people will love?
Are you looking for objective ways to analyze your story to make sure it's working, or figure out why it's not?
Are you curious about different ways of outlining editing or outlining a story?
...
I just listened to the most recent episode of The Storygrid Podcast this evening (March 30th, 2019) and what they talked about was SUPER HELPFUL! So I am going to disseminate here for you all, as well as talk about how this influenced the last edits for my manuscript of The Dark Heir. I highly recommend you all go listen to the podcast, because I think it's fantastic. You can find it on the link below:
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https://storygrid.com/what-is-a-phere/
What is a Phere? The gist of the episode was the creator of The Storygrid - Shawn Coyne - felt like his five commandments of story were potentially too many for people to grasp on a basic level. While they're really important, his editors were confused as they went through the exercises and wanted clarification. This led him to try and boil down everything into one concept - after getting really angry and upset and not sleeping for a night, i.e. having a crisis (or experiencing a phere), he had an epiphany.
In the end he has figured out a new term which is the Phere (pronounced fear). This is derived from Karl Jung's idea about balls of chaos entering into our lives and inducing shifts. This can be something small - your normal route to work is heavily trafficked from construction - to life changing moments - your spouse is killed in a car crash and you find out they owed half a million in gambling depts.
The key to these Pheres/balls of chaos (which apparently JK Rowling used as inspiration for the Snitch) is that they induce fear, which results in an emotional reaction, which turns the scene/chapter/act/story.
These are the basic building block to every other building block. The atom to our molecules in a sense.
Here's a quick story example I made up on the fly:
Perhaps a small Phere - say construction clogging your normal route to work - seems annoying, but innocuous in the first chapter, especially after having just severed communication with your father for voting for a divisive political candidate that morning (bigger phere). However, later that day you find out the construction caused a gas leak, which caused a building to explode, killing people who were waiting in the adjacent traffic. (Bigger Phere) Had you stuck with that normal route, rather than changing direction and taking a different way, you likely would have been next to the building at the time of the explosion. The annoyance which made you late to your meeting and started your day off poorly, actually saved your life (bigger phere).
Perhaps the shock at seeing the wreckage of the car in front of you that morning on the news, which you noticed because of the mass of bumper stickers supporting that same political opponent (phere), awakens a greater fear within you. A fear that your life has been only half-lived until this moment, and this is your wake up call (bigger phere). You realize life is too short to be stuck in a job you hate, in a city full of political affiliations you despise, and if you don't take that world trip you have been putting off taking now, you might never get there (BIG PHERE). You stand up, tell your boss you're quitting, and walk out. (Act 1 climax/resolution - break into act 2)
