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I’m sure you’ve all heard someone bemoaning the importance of story structure, probably a die-hard outliner like me who obsessively plans out their story before they start writing a word of their first draft. If you’re new to the novel-writing scene or a seat-of-your-pants writer (often called a “pantser”), you may be wondering what story structure is, exactly, and why you should bother with it. After all, first drafts are about discovering you story for the first time, so why do you need to worry about planning it out ahead of time?
Well, here’s the thing: story structure is the skeleton of a story. If you don’t build the structure first, you may very well end up with a blubberous blob of goo, a deformed mutant creature, or a story that falls down the moment a reader steps inside. Not really the outcome you’re hoping for. Not to mention the danger of falling into the quicksand of writer’s block halfway into your story because you reach a certain point and have no idea what to write next. The horror!
But most of this can be avoided with a basic understanding of story structure. So let’s get down to business …
There are a lot of ways to think about and visualize story structure. We’ve all heard the classic example: stories should have a beginning, middle, and end. This can also be called the three act structure.
While thinking about story structure in terms of three acts can certainly be useful, it’s a bit simplistic. What exactly should happen in the beginning, middle, and end of your story? What are the distinguishing elements, and when does one end and the next begin? In reality, a novel-length (or move-length) story looks something more like this:
But does every story look exactly like this? Of course not. Every story has its own graph of plot points, but they all share some comment elements. Tons of people have mapped out and categorized these elements, most notably a man named Joseph Campbell who discovered the comment elements of heroic tales and dubbed this idea of a monomyth The Hero’s Journey.
There are tons of other great theories about what story structure should look like, some of which are incredibly useful to forming the bones of a fantastic story, and some of which border on formulaic or nearly useless. Some you should be aware of and consider studying are:
- The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell
- The Hero's Emotional Journey by Allen Palmer (my personal favorite)
- The Five Key Turning Points by Michael Hauge
- Black Snyder’s Beat Sheet
- The Harmon Circle by Dan Harmon
- Francesca Lia Block's 12 Questions
The main purpose behind all of these tools is not to lock you into a formula but rather to help you set up a story that works, a story that captivates your audience and deliveries a satisfying conclusion. That’s the very definition of entertainment, and isn’t that at least one of the main goals of storytelling? Additionally, these tools will help you determine where and when important plot points should take place in your story and what specifically should happen at the beginning, middle, and end.
This can be a useful and even indispensable tool to developing your story. But the truth is, different stories are structured differently, and there’s no “one size fits all.” Trying to create one system that encompasses all types of stories can delude something that should be intricately designed for each story into a bunch of cookie-cutter stories. That's why most Hollywood blockbusters these days have nearly identical plots.
The One Important Thing About Plot
But that’s missing one very important point: plot is just a series of events that facilitate the overarching arc of a story. The events don’t have to look the same to accomplish the same goal. And what is that goal? Here’s where we’ve arrived at the crucial element of all good stories: change.
Great stories are all fundamentally about the same thing: the human capacity for (or the denial of) change.
Countless stories have been told all across time and place, but they revolve around this same thing. That’s what Joseph Campbell was getting at. But here’s the thing: everyone changes in their own way. Everyone has their own story. There are an infinite number of events that can lead to change. Yes, there are some specific patterns that stand out, and that’s why a lot of heroic stories seem to follow the same pattern, but they don’t have to. Storytelling has gotten lazy and stopped taking risks. It’s easy to use a tried and true method that ensures your audience will walk away with a sense of satisfaction, but eventually they will begin to realize they’re being told the same story in the same way over and over.
But we’ve always been telling the same story over and over. Humans are programed to respond to stories about change because they resonate with all of us. Every single person on the plant has changed in some way over the course of their lives. It’s the one constant in the world, the one thing we can all recognize and understand. But that doesn’t mean there’s only one way to tell a story about change. There are as many ways to tell a story as there are numbers in pi: infinite.
Stories Are About Moments, Not Plot
If that makes it seem like forming a story structure would be impossible, don’t let it intimidate you. This should feel freeing because there are no limiting factors to plot. After all, the most basic building blocks of story are moments, not plot events. Plot is just a series of events that make these moments possible. But a story is much, much more than a series of events. Often, the series of events that makes the moments in the story possible is the first thing to be forgotten, but we remember the moments long after we’ve forgotten the title, the names of the characters, and even the author.
So how do you use story structure to create these moments that live on in the minds of your readers? First you have to identify them. Think of your favorite story. What moments do you remember best? Were they the moments that were action-packed? The moments that were perfectly set-up and explained? Or rather, where they the moments when the characters revealed their true colors, were confronted and challenged in a bold way, and performed heroic actions that proved their right to be considered the hero?
These are the moments we remember, the moments plotted along the arc of change in a story. This is called a character arc. Or, in the instance when the character changes the world of the story rather than discovering his own need to change, it can simply be called a story arc. Here are some tools to help you identify all the important moments that make up this arc:
The most successful way to form story structure is to identify the key moments along this arc and determine what plot events will be necessary to achieve a transformation in your story. That’s it. Sound simple, right?
Simple, but not necessarily easy.
Simple, but not necessarily easy.
Your Imagination's the Limit
It takes a lot of brainpower to discover all the events that could make the change in your story possible. So how do you know which series of events will be the most effective? The truth is, there are no right nor wrong answers here. There are simply solutions that don’t work, ones that do work, and others that work even better. It’s all a judgement call. Some writers go with the first solution that comes to mind or the solution that has worked for others or even for themselves in the past. But the truly creative don’t stop at the first solution.
List out all the possibilities. Play with them in your head. Write them down on paper and follow them through to their logical conclusions. If a particular even happened, how would your character react? Would it push them in the right direction—toward the next point along their character arc? If not, it’s probably not the droid solution you’re looking for. If it does, great!
But what other solutions would work? Which one would create the most dramatic moment? The funniest moment? The most memorable moment? Don’t stop with a plot that works. Get creative and search for a series of events that hasn’t been put together exactly in that order before, a plot that delivers a transformation in a way that’s unique to your imagination.
But what other solutions would work? Which one would create the most dramatic moment? The funniest moment? The most memorable moment? Don’t stop with a plot that works. Get creative and search for a series of events that hasn’t been put together exactly in that order before, a plot that delivers a transformation in a way that’s unique to your imagination.
That’s what creating story structure is all about. It’s not about tying yourself down or using a formula—it’s about exploring all the possibilities that will make your story uniquely yours and uniquely creative. Sure, every story revolves around the same fundamental element of change, but that doesn’t mean every story that could be told has been told. Obviously not. There are new people born every day, new lives lived, new perspective through which the world is seen, and new imaginations. No one else has your imagination, so use it to the greatest extent of your ability and tell a story in a way only you can tell it.
They sky isn’t the limit. The only limiting factor in the world of stories is your imagination. Everyone comes to a story with the desire to see something in a new and interesting way, to get a different perspective, to connect with the characters and feel something because if their struggles and triumphs, to explore new ideas, and to be reminded of a universal truth they’ve forgotten if only for a while.
The only limits in storytelling are the ones you set for yourself, so break free of limitations and tell the most imaginative story you can tell. Don’t be afraid to reach a little higher, a little farther, a little deeper than the imaginations that have come before.
I've been published!
I've been published!
Check out my short story "The Case of a Portal on Mars" in this awesome anthology Pioneers & Pathfinders (Kindle edition) and you can get the paperback version here.
:excited:
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i agree, i need to do my entire story line before i do anything else