About

Welcome to Story Grid, an editing method developed by me, Shawn Coyne. I’ve been in the publishing industry for thirty years now, twenty-five of which were spent working as an editor at the Big Five publishing houses, as an independent publisher, as a literary agent both at a major Hollywood talent agency and as the head of Genre Management Inc. 

During that time, I worked on hundreds of books that grossed more than $150 million in revenue—and that’s just in North America. I’ve worked with a lot of writers (I’ll include a list of the highlights below) but my longest collaboration has been with Steven Pressfield. It was Steve who convinced me to gather up what I know about stories, and editing them, and put them in a book.

In early 2015, I published The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know, and later that year I started the Story Grid Podcast with writer, and book marketing expert, Tim Grahl. The rest is history. We now have 45 Certified Story Grid Editors, 3 podcasts, a blog rich with story resources, a suite of courses and a community that continues to grow. 

In 2020 we’ll be launching the Story Grid Guild and the Story Grid Publishing House.

So take a look around the site, sign up to the mailing list and then, go do some writing.

For those of you who are interested, here’s a partial list of authors whose works I’ve either acquired, edited, published or represented.

James Bamford, John Brenkus, James Lee Burke, Barbara Bush, Dick Butkus, Harlan Coben, Nellie Connally, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Ben Crenshaw, Catherine Crier, Brett Favre, David Feherty, John Feinstein, Tyler Florence, Jim Gant, Col. David H. Hackworth, Jamie Harrison, Mo Hayder, William Hjortsberg, Stephen Graham Jones, Jon Krakauer, David Leadbetter, Alan Lomax, David Mamet, Troon McAllister, Robert McKee, Matthew Modine, Bill Murray, Joe Namath, John J. Nance, Jack Olsen, Scott Patterson, Steven Pressfield, Matthew Quirk, Anita Raghavan, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, Jerry Rice, Giora Romm, Tim Rosaforte, William Safire, Dava Sobel, Michael Thomas, Nick Tosches, Ann Scott Tyson, Minette Walters, Betty White, Randy Wayne White, Steven White and Don Winslow. 

I’m also a bestselling co-writer and ghostwriter (sorry, I can’t tell you which books I’ve ghostwritten).