There's lots of advice out there for the budding writer, there's plenty on character and characterization, on world building and story arcs, plotting and the like but, it seems to me, hardly anyone talks about the importance of the structure of a story.
What does structure mean? It can mean the classic beginning-middle-end rule but, to me, it’s a lot more than that. To me structure is how you tell the story. It’s so important to me that it is one of the fundamental things I decide on well before I start writing.
Is it that important? I think so, some stories simply will not work unless you choose the right structure. To those of you who know Agatha Christie think of ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ – that only works and became famous because she chose one particular structure.
This is going to be the first in a series of blogs on the subject. It’s something that I’m passionate about.
So what to me is structure? Apologies to the experienced writers out there, I’m not going to say anything groundbreaking here.
A novel has characters, the basic story, subplots, themes, a world and a timeline. To me, structure is how you put these together to best present the novel - the coherent whole - to the reader.
Structural decisions include areas such as what POV to use (in order of popularity, third, close third, first person, second person etc.), how many POVs to use, identifying who is the main character or characters, whether the book will be a whole entity or split into parts, whether it will have a linear or non-linear timeline, and how chapters will be defined – or even if you use them at all.
Note that this list is not exhaustive.
Some may say that decisions on these issues will automatically become clear as you write. Maybe, but I believe that not deciding on these issues creates more chance of something that many writers find: the risk of failure to finish.
Structure can be – in fact, to me, invariably is – vital. It’s something that needs to be sorted out before starting to write.
Take my novel The Last Mountain. It’s written in first person, it stays with one character all the way through and has no chapters. I know that because of this it can be a difficult read. Believe me, it was a more difficult write! I had to stay in an initially unlikable character’s head for months with no respite.
But I knew I had to because I knew that the story I planned would only work with that structure.
If I had realised this say a third of the way in I’m sure I’d have given up.
I won’t give the twist of The Last Mountain away other than to say the scenes alternate between a Peak District pub where the central character, Mel, sits with an old man who encourages him to stay and tell the tale of his last mountaineering adventure, and Mel’s eyewitness account of what happened.
I realised at the planning stage that, with the story having two stages on which it’s told – the pub and the Himalayas – both of which are equally important, a conventional chapter structure just wouldn’t work, indeed it would have been intrusive and artificial.
Hence, the book contains no chapters.
I also realised that to have the ending that I envisaged I would have to set it up from the very start and restrict the reader’s view to just Mel’s viewpoint.
Hence it had to be first person.
This may be an extreme case but I believe it’s instructive. Yes, there may be many structures that work for your novel but, ask yourself this: is the structure you’ve chosen definitely the most effective one to tell your story? Is the structure you've chosen going to stop you from the great reveal or from an exquisite plot twist?
I’m going to continue this blog next with reference to my recent novel, LMF because, again, it has a distinct structure that I knew before I started was going to be necessary - but also a huge risk because it was going to be potentially challenging for readers. I’m going to explain my thought process and decision making.
In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear from other writers. I’d like to know whether you have the same views about the neglected importance of structure as I do.
(image c. Malcolm Havard 2018)
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