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!!!!
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!!!!
Last edited: