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:

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)

Maybe this is a love story, and somewhere during the second act on your trip around the world, you meet someone who is also taking a similar trip (Phere).  Only they're grieving because they were supposed to be taking this trip as their honeymoon.  It was their fiancé's dearest wish to go on a trip around the world, but their fiancé died in a freak accident when a building exploded while they were waiting in traffic (bigger Phere).  You realize the car in front of you was that person's fiancé (phere).  You wonder how someone as wonderful as this person you just met could marry someone who votes for the person on their bumper stickers, even though they had a very similar bucket list to yours, but you keep that to yourself (smaller phere). 

You become friends as you travel (phere), then lovers (bigger phere), then when all seems perfect you bring up the political affiliation of the now deceased fiancé (super big phere - bad idea).  You all end up having a big fight and break up (BIG PHERE).

But you can't stop thinking about this person.  So you realize that maybe you and your political party are not the saints you think you are (phere), and maybe politics and other differences aren't so important that they should end relationships, and you begin to change (Character arc - Phere).  But the other person is already gone, taken a different flight and changed their itinerary (phere) and has no interest in seeing you since they won't return your calls (phere).

Finally you're back home and you see the person you're still in love with and heartbroken over on a poster for some political town hall in your city (phere).  You dislike these people, but it turns out the person running is your love's deceased fiancé's  father (phere), and he's running for Vice President of the country.  If you're going to win their heart back then you better get your butt over there and put yourself in a sea of people you disagree with and make some sort of grand gesture of love (bigger phere). Worse, it's going to be nationally televised (even bigger phere). You go over, you bribe someone to let you go up to the mic and in front of the whole nation tell your story about how you fell in love with this person yada yada yada and how you've changed and ask them to marry you (CLIMACTIC PHERE).

I'm not going to resolve the story, but this is just showing how pheres can get bigger and smaller over the story, and are pretty much all different types of progressive complications.  They happen to be the important ones which illicit an emotional reaction, but nevertheless are complications, which cause conflict, which cause a character to arc. 

How does this relate to editing?

There are a few different columns of the editing spreadsheet I have been using for The Dark Heir which could represent these Pheres.  There is the Story Event column, and also the Turning Point column. 

If I spreadsheeted the above story I made up on the fly it would probably have something like this for the Story Event column:
MC breaks communication with father over politics.
MC gets stuck in horrible traffic because of construction.
MC gets angry at the person in the next car because of their bumper stickers and is going to miss a meeting because of these damn political supporters.
MC decides to take a very out of the way route just so they won't have to look at bumper any longer.
Building blows up, killing those waiting in traffic.
MC recognizes earlier car in wreckage and fear of mortality causes mindset shift.
MC quits job to go live life.
MC books trip around the world.
MC meets grieving person on trip.
MC and grieving person (love interest) become friends.
MC starts to have feelings for this person.
MC realizes grieving person's dead fiancé was person in car in front of him.
MC has doubts about possible new love interest given ability to love someone who supports hated political figure.
MC and love interest become more than friends.
MC confides about why MC broke communication with father.
MC and love interest fight about politics of dead fiancé and break up.
MC tries to get love interest back to no avail.
MC's political party has scandals pop up, perhaps they bring MC home.
MC gives up, finishes trip which is not nearly as fun as before, and goes home.
MC tries to pick up old life but fails. Depression worsens, what use is living at all? (Intentionally ironic given MC set off to live life to the fullest in the beginning)
MC sees love interest will be at hated politician's town hall.
MC makes grand gesture of love in publicly televised setting to win back love interest.
Love interest accepts
MC is able to mend relationship with father and invite him to wedding.

(By the way, I just made this up, but I think it's not a bad outline for a romance novel, so if anyone decides they're in love with this idea and wants to write it, please feel free to make this outline into a novel.)

The Pheres which make up the progressive complications and story events wax and wain (or ebb and flow depending on your preferred metaphor) with the story acts, and of course relate to the intended thematic character arc of the story. There are certain thematic pheres and scenes which are required depending on your story's genre.  In a love story there is always the inciting incident phere, the lovers meet phere, the lovers break up phere, the dark night of the soul phere, and the grand gesture of love phere.

The "dark night of the soul" is typical in almost every story.  It really needs to be present and not only present, but dialed up to an 11.  Where the reader really feels like there is no way the MC is going to achieve their goal.  In editing The Dark Heir, I realized that even though I had a climax, I didn't really have the "dark night of the soul."  I needed a "phere" to developmentally complete, and turn the volume up on the story for the reader.

So what to do?  Well, I needed to make Rose afraid of herself.  I needed to make her doubt.  Now, this is a novella (for now), and a satire, so I wasn't going to really develop this quite as much as if it were a non-satirical novel, but I did choose a point where rather than make Rose eager, I made her afraid of herself.  Then I added a momentary loss of control, where Onyx took over.  This foreshadowed the "dark night of the soul" moment for the story where in the face of her father, Onyx takes complete control of Rose and it looks like there is no way the good guys can win.  This ends up being brief of course, but it's meant to instill fear and doubt in the reader and make them ask, "what is going to happen now?"

I hope I was able to achieve that.  I think the end result of the editing was much better than the original draft, though my readers will be the judge of that. 

Btw, if you need a kick in the butt to finish edits, I recommend you enter a Twitter contest.  I stayed up until 5am finishing mine because I got a full MS request from an editor and wasn't done...

As always, let me know if this is confusing - it probably is since I'm still trying to process this myself.  Also, let me know if you have suggestions for things you'd like me to talk about or add into these chapters which would be helpful to you as we figure this writing craft thing out together.