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How to structure a story

Laer Carroll

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I don't think we've finished addressing the issue Sansophia brought up.

https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?346571-I-don-t-understand-how-to-structure-a-story

The good news is that most writers don't need to know ANYTHING about how to structure stories. We've consumed many thousands of stories, large and small. Our subconscious has absorbed and organized an enormous amount of information about, for instance, story structure. If we just write we will intuitively create our stories.

Where theories of story structure become useful is when we critique and re-write our stories. (IF we rewrite our stories. The more stories we write the more likely we are to become practiced at intuitively creating well-shaped stories.)

It seems to me that there are two major structural issues in stories. One is the shape of the events and how they fit together: the plot. One is the shape of our presentation of the events.

The events may be chronological as for instance, scenes A > B > C > D > E. But we may present them out of time order as for instance, B, A, D, C, E.

That's for a simple one-person viewpoint. We may have two plots, one for the main character, one for her antagonist. We'd often label the first as the main plot, the second a subplot.

Or three plots, one we could think of as the main plot, one the protagonist's subplot, one a secondary character's subplot. An example is a thriller romance made up of the main character's story sequence, that of her love interest, that of the antagonist. (That last does not have to be bad, just opposed. An example is the concerned parent(s) of two young people in love.)

Out-of-time-order stories take more work than chronological ones. We have to work to keep our readers from getting confused or (worse) annoyed. They are more often attempted by writers of literary fiction, whose readers are used to puzzling over the stories. Mystery writers also sometimes use non-chronological structures for much the same reason: mystery readers are used to puzzles.

If we stick with straight timeline stories, we often will use the three-act structure. Three acts are traditional for plays; those are fairly short, rarely going longer than two hours. They also rarely have many sets; it can take a lot of time and effort to change sets while shielded by curtains.

TV shows have an N-act structure broken by commercials. A typical one hour (actually 43 minute) show usually has a two minute Tease followed three seven-minute acts, the first of which is the Setup, the next two Development. After the half-hour break there are two Development acts and a final Resolution act. Finally there is a two-minute Tag act which segues into Credits. In short, TV shows have an 8-act structure.

Movies are typically one and a half to three hours long and have a similar structure to TV shows. The acts are different lengths and there are more of them.

Novels are structured more like movies and are even more varied in the number and length of the acts. Ditto longer novels like trilogies. I've written two. They can be beasts to write. I pray to the Muse that She will never force me to write a tetralogy! Or pentalogy!! Or hexalogy!!! Or - SHRIEK!!!!
 
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Laer Carroll

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I left my post without mentioning it how to handle even the most complicated megaplot: focus on the characters & their story through-line. Each wants something (or several possibly conflicting somethings). It could be positive like a treasure or negative like escape from poverty. Stories are about people and what they want. The plot is the effect of that, not the core of the story. And we are all fairly good experts about people.
 

DeleyanLee

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The good news is that most writers don't need to know ANYTHING about how to structure stories. We've consumed many thousands of stories, large and small. Our subconscious has absorbed and organized an enormous amount of information about, for instance, story structure. If we just write we will intuitively create our stories.


I'm not sure I agree with this. I've been working with a couple of new authors (both in their late 20's/early 30's)--both avid readers--who never picked up how to structure a scene or a story. They can put down 100K words, but it's so unstructured, it's impossible to give valid critique on it.

Being able to understand story structure from reading is a skill set that hasn't been taught universally. I wasn't taught it well but figured it out because there wasn't writing communities or how-to books when I started writing.

Yes, knowing story structure helps with critique, but I can't agree that it's an instant skill every writer possesses. I made that assumption when I started critting these new writers and it's caused a lot of rewrites that still don't work. Now we're working on them learning the very basics of story and scene structure so then we can focus on what other challenges they might have.

It's not a default assumption I'm making anymore. YMMV.
 

KatieT

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I'm not sure I agree with this. I've been working with a couple of new authors (both in their late 20's/early 30's)--both avid readers--who never picked up how to structure a scene or a story. They can put down 100K words, but it's so unstructured, it's impossible to give valid critique on it.

Being able to understand story structure from reading is a skill set that hasn't been taught universally. I wasn't taught it well but figured it out because there wasn't writing communities or how-to books when I started writing.

Yes, knowing story structure helps with critique, but I can't agree that it's an instant skill every writer possesses. I made that assumption when I started critting these new writers and it's caused a lot of rewrites that still don't work. Now we're working on them learning the very basics of story and scene structure so then we can focus on what other challenges they might have.

It's not a default assumption I'm making anymore. YMMV.[/COLOR]

I'm curious if there are any books you might recommend that help writers with how to structure their writing/stories?
 

ChaseJxyz

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I know it's incredibly ironic, but I don't have the patience/attention span to read a book about how to write a book. Luckily there are plenty of things like YouTube that discuss media in general. You do have to be careful, though, and think about what you're hearing people critique. Reviews that point out tropes or cliches like they're inherently bad things that should be avoided like the plague gets you artists who think you need to be 100% unique and different to be worth making, or that everything needs to be 100% logical and explained. It really is an art to blend these things together. I'd recommend YourMovieSucks, Ralphthemoviemaker and RedLetterMedia, along with Lindsay Ellis, Jenny Nicholson and Hellofutureme if you want people who are more literary than movies/tv, though the most basic things about constructing a story is universal cross media.

Of course, some things that are "bad" and break lots of rules can be enjoyable, too. The Room, Birdemic and Troll 2 screw up a lot of things, like having nonsensical character motivation, things happening without reason or explanation, or characters acting in ways no real person would act, but the blend of failures makes it enjoyable. James Cameron's Avatar has a incredibly simple plot and some racist tropes but I love it because of the world building, especially the speculative xenobiology (Wayne Barlowe is a master of it). Most people liked that movie because it looked nice, which is why it made so much money. So a book that has no structure can still be enjoyable, but other parts have to be good, like the characters, dialogue and setting.

I think why we get young/new authors who create stories without structure is because they're focusing on the things that they like in the media they consume and aren't putting conscious thought into the rest. They can build an entire universe or magic system or characters with deep backstories but they have nothing to do. This might be okay for a sitcom or even a slice-of-life comic strip but not for a longer written work. I distinctly remember my friends in high school whose stories were essentially anime, with cool weapons, magic and fight scenes, but there was no overarching reason for them to do these things. The characters had no goals or motivations, they just did whatever. We're taught how to read fiction in schools (sorta), but we're only taught how to write 5 paragraph essays and research papers. My high school creative writing class was a joke, it was similar to the very basic senior English class (which was "let's watch the lion king and see what parts align with the hero's journey"), but there were definitely people in there who needed to learn those things. It should be no surprise that people don't intuitively know what exactly a 3 act structure is or other "basic" writing concepts. It's not always obvious and it's not a thing many are explicitly taught.
 

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I think that it is appropriate to bring up movie-making when talking about "structure."

If you think of it, your book also exists in a "time frame." But it is actually a "page frame." The half-way point in a 300 page novel is about 150 pages. By the time the half-way mark occurs, what "should happen" in the book also is related to what genre it is. Even people who flop between timelines, character arcs, and various other time transactions need to pay attention to their time frames.

So if there are 50,000 words or 100 pages single spaced in your novel, and you know you need to be somewhere at your mid point, then what needs to happen before the midpoint. In film, the inciting incident might happen immediately, may happen 15 minutes in. It depends on the story. The same goes with your book unless you are required to get into it by some publisher or genre.

Actually, I have never heard of a 3 act novel. It is
part 1 -- introduce MC and instigating action
part 2-- the main body of the novel which is the rising and falling action and usually 3/5/7 complications/obstacles
part 3--Final act in which the protagonist overcomes the "problem" often in a highly dramatic way. Also a little tag to tell us that "he/she lived happily ever after is called the denouement.

That's about it. If you are going to write a 400 page book, then the middle is 200 pages, the 3 sections can be more or less than an exact 1/3rd of the length-- in fact the intro should be rather short these days and move right into the part 2 or center action.

I always plot backwards. When I was teaching I learned how to do lesson plans by finding out what the kids were supposed to learn first and then I would tailor everything to that set of learning outcomes. The same kind of works for fiction. If I know that everything must be in conflict, and I know that the end has someone being saved from a sinking ship, that will immediately suggest what the events leading to it, and even the characters are like.

I do not remember what book I read, but a technique described for writing a plot went something like this:

Imagine reading a newspaper story of some event.

Example: A marijuana growing operation went up in smoke when the warehouse burned to the ground. There were victims found in the debris.

So-- story that led to it. Watch "The Pineapple Express."

You would have to make a lot of decisions about what led the fire to start. Whatever decisions you make need to be unusual, extraordinary, and unique.
 

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The problem is, a lot of people are completely unaware of structure. There are a lot of different ways to tell a story, but they all share a lot of elements in common. Writers need to be conversant in how stories are built. They need to natively understand what makes up a good story, whether they are using a three-act, four-act, Hero's Journey or Dan Harmon's Story Circle or any of the others. All of them have common elements because that's how humans understand story. There may be some differences based on a particular genre, but if you deviate too much, especially if you lack the skill to back it up, then your story isn't going to work. Identifying where you are in a story and where you need to be in a story, it's essential to being a good storyteller. And writers are, by their very nature, storytellers.
 

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I highly recommend Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham. He outlines the general structure that every scene/chapter should have, and tells you why the elements are important to the overall structure of the book. It helped me focus my writing better, and I come back to it now and then for a refresher.
 

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I highly recommend Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham. He outlines the general structure that every scene/chapter should have, and tells you why the elements are important to the overall structure of the book. It helped me focus my writing better, and I come back to it now and then for a refresher.

I would add to your suggestion 'Techniques Of The Selling Writer' by Dwight V. Swain. This book helped me more than any other of all the books I've read.
 

Laer Carroll

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I plan nothing. I get the seed of a story somehow, often when I'm drifting up from nothingness each morning. I sit down and write. I am immersed in the fictional alternate reality, having fun. A month or three later the book is finished. I publish it on Amazon as an ebook with a modest price, usually $3.99. The money immediately starts rolling in to the tune of (the last two years) several thousand dollars each month.

Imagine my shock when I started earning good money (after ten years not) & discovered those cheeky bastards at the IRS wanted a good chunk of it. Now I use a tax lawyer to fend off the worst of their efforts.

How did I manage this? I did what Steven King suggests: READ MUCH / WRITE MUCH. I also read the comments on AW about writerly technique. From those three activities my subconscious picked up LOTS of tips, hundreds, thousands even. So when I write I intuitively, not consciously, apply all those tips. Rarely am I even aware that I'm doing so.

Though occasionally when blocked (which happens ever few days) I mull over the problem, forget about it, and the next morning I wake up & my subconscious has delivered a solution overnight.

In other words, it took some dozen years to perfect this approach to writing. Works for me.
 

TrapperViper

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Great post, as well as the original one referenced at the start of this thread.
I think the elements of story structure might come more naturally to some than others. I had to do a lot of studying and podcast listening and reading of the critiques on my work here before I started grasping how the general outline of my WIP should work, how my scenes should flow, etc. Part of it was a little bit intuitive for me, but a lot of it was learning about the science behind story telling and then seeing how it all fit together. Save the Cat Writes a novel, Jung's hero journey, Coyne's Story Grid, etc., all have their own distinctions, but share more in common with each other.

For me, personally, my biggest hurdle was overcoming my desire for it to be real and genuine. Dialogue, for instance, in real life has a whole lot of details that seem unnecessary. But I'd say that whatever you put in a novel ought to be necessary. I'm digressing...

Congrats to LaerCarroll on your self publishing success. Your individual process is clearly working for you.
 

CJSimone

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I plan nothing. I get the seed of a story somehow, often when I'm drifting up from nothingness each morning. I sit down and write. I am immersed in the fictional alternate reality, having fun. A month or three later the book is finished. I publish it on Amazon as an ebook with a modest price, usually $3.99. The money immediately starts rolling in to the tune of (the last two years) several thousand dollars each month.

Imagine my shock when I started earning good money (after ten years not) & discovered those cheeky bastards at the IRS wanted a good chunk of it. Now I use a tax lawyer to fend off the worst of their efforts.

How did I manage this? I did what Steven King suggests: READ MUCH / WRITE MUCH. I also read the comments on AW about writerly technique. From those three activities my subconscious picked up LOTS of tips, hundreds, thousands even. So when I write I intuitively, not consciously, apply all those tips. Rarely am I even aware that I'm doing so.

Though occasionally when blocked (which happens ever few days) I mull over the problem, forget about it, and the next morning I wake up & my subconscious has delivered a solution overnight.

In other words, it took some dozen years to perfect this approach to writing. Works for me.

This is inspiring, Laer Carroll. Hoping for your continued success.

CJ
 
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Z0Marley

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I'm curious if there are any books you might recommend that help writers with how to structure their writing/stories?

I personally enjoy several writing-how-to's and have found my most effective guides to be Save the Cat! and Story Engineering. Jami Gold also has free excel beat sheets you can download, which I found a pretty amazing tool.