I once led a group full of ambitious writers, each striving to realise their own vision. Because these writers were serious, we looked at structure early on. The aim was that each would grasp a working understanding of different story structures. As a result of growing in technical confidence with the basics, I hoped that they would begin to enjoy playing with structure in their own ways.
I hadn’t anticipated the reaction of one young man. “I don’t need structure,” he declared. “It stifles my creativity.” Because he very idea of structure roused the rebel him, he absolutely refused to engage with it.
Resistance is natural
I can relate to the way he felt. It’s like that moment in a National Trust house when you meet the red rope with the sign that says “do not cross“. Suddenly the only ambition you have for your entire life is to cross that line. Something in our spirit instinctively rises up and cries, Don’t you tell me what I an and can’t do!
But structure is not a rope put down by someone else that you cannot cross. in practice, structure should be the rope that you yourself lay out, guiding visitors with a timing and spacing that is all your own. The unexpected reality of structure is that, once understood, it liberates rather than stifles. As a result, you are free to race and jump and loop the loop, knowing that you are keeping your audience with you.
The effects of denying structure
Do you enjoy listening to a rambling story that goes nowhere, or a joke without a punchline? Well, neither do your readers.
Nobody throws themselves into a hammock that only has one end tied to a tree. In the same way, structure forms the contract between you and your reader. In other words, it lets them know they are in safe hands, and this story will hold them well.
Of course, structure is a part of life, and so it is only natural that it exists in writing. We absorb it from the moment we’re born until the day we die – we live out our own beginnings, middles and endings. For instance, each day starts by waking, is filled with activity and ends with returning to bed. Likewise, we structure our plans around meals.
Unfortunately, structure doesn’t care how you feel about it. It just gets on with its life oblivious to your pain.
However, there is a crucial distinction that must be made: structure is form, and not formula.
Form over Formula
Formula suggests the pumping out of identical plots, characters and ideas. There is no denying that this happens. We are all familiar with formulaic stories. As writers, this feels like a dot-to-dot exercise. As an audience, it can be dull if executed mechanically.
Form is the understanding of our craft that enables us to purposefully place the dots where we choose, recognising that this choice will maximise the effect of the story we have to tell.
This is the magic of an internalised, working understanding of structure. Jurassic Park follows the same structure as The King’s Speech but no one would accuse those films of resembling one another. Similarly, Star Wars and Beauty and the Beast could be laid over one another structurally, but their stories are worlds apart.
At its most basic, stories need a beginning, a middle and an end. But, once you have grasped that concept, you are free to question the order that those events appear in. Pulp Fiction begins just before the end, and circles round to explain how things began. Tarantino is a master at playing with structure, just as Queen played with song structure in Bohemian Rhapsody, and Radiohead did in Paranoid Android. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights gives us a story within a story, a double beginning; her sister Anne did the same thing in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
It’s fine to feel rebellious in the face of structure. If it makes you angry, feel free to kick it around, push it about, pull it, bend it, twist it and give it a good slapping: structure can take it.
The invitation of structure
Structure is not the threat of you must fit into this shape. It is the invitation to devise the best form in which to engage the emotions of your reader in order to tell your story to maximum effect. It is the key to making someone laugh one moment – and weep the next.
On a walk this week, I became a bit fixated by leaves, because they got me thinking about structure. Next time you are out and about, keep an eye out for the leaves around you. You’ll see that each is different in size, shape and colour, yet they all share a structure that enables us to recognise them as foliage. They all have edges; they all have a central stem feeding the veins; they all have… well, leafy bits. We know that they all perform the same task of catching light and water for the plant. But each of them is completely different, and, accordingly, you will like some more than others, and you and I may disagree on which we like best.
Your structural approach is unique
When you write, you are like a plant producing leaves. Your leaves will be different to every other writer’s leaves, ever. That is the amazing thing: nobody in the entire world can write the stories you write. You really are a one-off.
That young man in my group was a one-off, too. He had bags of natural talent and potential. When I last saw him, he was still fighting his own battle with structure and what he viewed as conforming. But in refusing to learn the basics and how to play with them, he had poured vast amounts of time, energy and emotion into an empty hole and he was losing heart. It was painful to see the harm he was doing himself by refusing to grapple with structure in an open-minded way.
Stop thinking, start feeling
We must not allow fear or pride to get in the way of writing journeys. Many others have gone before us, and we have much to learn from them. Once we have paid our respects to these master storytellers, we are free to play with our own stories and ideas as enlightened crafts-people.
And remember, good writing never comes easy. If you feel frustrated by your efforts, be encouraged by this blog on the awful first drafts.
Ironically an understanding of structure ultimately enables a writer to forget all about it, to stop thinking it and to feel it instead. Then, you are free to focus on dropping your own particular trail of breadcrumbs, confident that your readers are following you wherever you take them.
Photo Credits: Hand-up saying No Photo by Zan on Unsplash
Man pulling rope Photo by Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash
Bridge Photo by Cody Hiscox on Unsplash
Storm Trooper and dinosaur photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash
Leaf Photo by Maros Misove on Unsplash
Follow the trail Photo by Sikes Photos on Unsplash