Uses of structure

I’ve talked a bit about the difference between plot and structure, and some of the ways structure is currently being misused (in my opinion). But structure is still a massively useful concept, and that usefulness is the reason behind the huge focus so many how-to-write books and plotting “templates” in writing apps are primarily about structure, rather than plot.

Structure is about organization and support, which is why it is usually referred to as a “plot skeleton.” It doesn’t tell you what you are organizing – the events of the story, the theme, the meaning, the ideas – and just saying “plot skeleton” doesn’t tell you what kind of skeleton you’re looking at – whether it’s a bird, a fish, or a mammal, or something with an exoskeleton, much less whether it’s a cat or an elephant, a goldfish or a shark. There are therefore several ways of using the concept of structure in order to improve a novel, without defaulting to a particular formula. (“Defaulting to” is not the same as “choosing to use.”)

First, the writer can consciously choose a structural pattern – a common one or not – and then work out a plot that complements it. Matching a common structure with a familiar plot, or an uncommon structure with an unusual plot, can reinforce what the writer is trying to do. On the other hand, using a common or well-known plot in an unusual structure can breathe new life into tropes that are as old as dirt; experimenting with plot, characters, or setting in an extremely familiar structure can allow the writer to do something different and still end up with a book that lots of people will read.

Or, the writer can come up with a coherent plot/story, then look at it to determine what structure it resembles the most, and what, if anything, needs tweaking to make it a better fit for that structure. Using the skeleton analogy, most people can tell right away whether they’re looking at a fish, bird, starfish, or person, and whether the creature they’re looking at is missing a major supporting element (like a leg bone) somewhere. To make this work, though, the writer has to be willing to let their plot be what it is, and not take a fish-like plot and try to force it to have a cat skeleton (or vice versa).

Similarly, the writer can start farther back, with a bunch of events that aren’t a plot yet, and look for possible connections among them, rather like an archeologist fitting random dinosaur bones together. The trick here is to choose the organization of events – the structure – that feels right for the story and best pleases the writer.

The writer can also start with a few events and the most basic structure possible, and develop both in parallel. Basic structure starts with Aristotle’s “beginning, middle, end.” How-to-write articles mostly ignore this except as a way into a three- or four-act structure, possibly because it looks too simple and straightforward. But basic structure is exceedingly flexible – all stories have a beginning (the part the reader, viewer, or listener sees or hears first, regardless of whether it is the first event chronologically), a middle (the part that gets seen or heard next), and an end (the last bit the reader, viewer, or listener sees or hears). What happens in each bit isn’t specified. The first thing the reader sees may be a character running down an alley, or the event that got the character into that situation, or a scene from ten years later that introduces someone reminiscing about the story events that take place in the middle.

Basic structure is also fractal. Each part of it – beginning, middle, end – also has a beginning, middle, and end. So you can break it down into “beginning of beginning, middle of beginning, end of beginning; beginning of middle… etc.” and go on to “beginning of the beginning of the beginning, middle of the beginning of the beginning…” until you get all the way down to “beginning of first sentence; middle of first sentence; end of first sentence,” which is really too far for most writers to be worrying about on a story-planning level.

Combining a plot-pattern with a rigid structure gets you a formula … but if the writer starts with an unusual plot-pattern and an uncommon structure, they’re likely to get a “formula” that hardly anyone else is following. This can be good or bad – good, if the writer is trying for something completely different and doesn’t care about high readership; bad, if the writer wants to sell millions of copies, but nobody wants to read their completely different thing.

In addition to looking at structure early in the development of a story – which is what all those options above do – the writer can dig into it after they have a first draft, in order to tighten up whatever structure they’ve written. Many pantsers instinctively default to the most common (and therefore most familiar) structures, but some of them end up with a large pile of events in what appears to be no particular structural order. Sometimes, if these writers look at the pile carefully, they realize that they don’t have to rearrange everything chronologically in a three-act structure; instead, they can swap two scenes and insert an explanatory reaction, and have a perfectly good uncommon story. (This is rather like the “bunch of events” development above, only with whole scenes and a lot more words.)

Since structure is about organizing when readers see/hear events, it is also about organizing when readers find out information. Controlling when the reader finds out important information allows the writer to control its likely emotional impact, as well as affecting the emotional impact of everything else in the story.

If a story opens with “I became a detective twenty years ago, after my wife and son were murdered,” the reader is likely to have an immediate reaction when the narrator is assigned to investigate the murder of a woman and her son, and is also likely to feel increased tension whenever the investigation runs into difficulties.

If the information about the detective’s family isn’t dragged out of him until the end of the story, it may have a greater emotional impact, both because it solves the mystery of why the narrator has been so tense and twitchy about the progress of the investigation, but also because the reader has had 290+ pages to get to know, like, and sympathize with him.