Action Story: The Primal Genre

By: Shawn Coyne

Action Story is one of the Story Grid Beats. I’d recommend reading all of them.

Get all the Story Grid Beats. Read all the Story Grid Beats.

If you want to level up your craft as a writer, this is the way to go.

Also, these then become a great source of reference when you are stuck with your writing (or doing your weekly Story Grid Guild worksheet).

I’d recommend bookmarking the pages that have concepts, or tools that you’d likely revisit to make it easier to consult these books.

Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 5/5
Mindset: 5/5

Some of My Highlights:

“The action genre is one of the nine external genres.”

“We might come away from the trauma with the realization that we’re not living up to our potential.”

“On the other hand, we might come face-to-face with death and conclude that we are not fully living, enjoying the everyday wonders of the world.”

“Narrative was the critical psychotechnology – a tool that came from our conscious minds – that allowed knowledge to spread between individuals and to carry forward from generation to generation.”

“Stories – in the form of cave paintings, songs, sculptures, and eventually formal language – made humans more formidable together than alone.”

“Stories are collective knowledge storage tanks, and what’s more, there is no limit to their size.”

“A quick glance at any cave painting will reveal that the first shared stories were about how to hunt or gather food.”

“As writers, we all wish to cause effects, and the science of story can help us.”

“An action story is a tool to help us survive unexpected external changes in our environment.”