Structure of Story

Side Note:  I got distracted and forgot to post yesterday.  So let’s just pretend that it’s Friday today, hm?

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I talked about structure a while ago.  Structure should never be used to develop a story, but it can be used for a good purpose.  Particularly if you are stuck with a scene or a sequence, structure can be a huge help to figure out what’s wrong.  I learned this from David Baboulene’s book, the Story Book, so if you want to know about structure, story or subtext, visit his blog or buy his book.

Baboulene says somewhere that every story is basically the classic three act structure – a small beginning, act one, the long middle, act two and the short end, act three.  No matter what structure you used, the three act structure will probably apply.  Structure goes even deeper.  Every act in your story will also have a three act structure.  Each of those acts has a three act structure.  Every scene has a three act structure.  You can literally break every piece of your story into three pieces, the build-up to the problem, the conflict and complication of the problem, and the resolution, win or lose.

When you take this into account, each scene (and story, and sequence etc.) should have a protagonist (for that specific part; thus the person who has the most to lose in that particular part), and he should want something, and something should stand in his way.  Then he attempts to overcome this and he either wins or loses.

I find this breakdown of things into buildable blocks very useful because it allows you to take a scene (or story or sequence) apart and figure out which part isn’t working.  When you work with a small part, finding the problem is much easier.

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Story and Structure

A while back, I read David Baboulene’s book, The Story Book. What I found fascinating about it was that it wasn’t about how to write a novel or how to write a screenplay. It was about how to make up a story. The book deals with a whole lot of things that are interesting and easy to understand. However, I want to talk about another thing that I started realising.

I’ve always gone about the process of writing by thinking of a novel, then writing it. This, as I see it now, was the wrong way. Instead, I should have been starting with a story, and only after I’ve completed that step, should I have moved on to the process of turning that story into a novel/short story.

While the two ways do seem to be much the same, it can make quite a difference. See, maybe this is just for me, but I tend to think of structure before I think of the rest. Baboulene says in the book that structure should never come first. When you think about it, he’s absolutely right.

I’m a very structure-seeking person. I tend to want things to line up and have them provide feedback as they go along. I need facts instead of feeling. Say, I’m cooking something, I would want to know things like, simmer for exactly 5 minutes and then add exactly this amount of some or other ingredient. That way, each step can be confirmed and evaluated. Therefore, if something goes wrong in step 1, I don’t needlessly do steps 2 to 10.

By doing this, also in writing, I am limiting my creation. I put a structure out there and then stick my story inside it, instead of putting my story out there and finding a structure that fits around it. Say I hear that a beginning should introduce the main characters and establish place and time, but my story does not work with such a beginning (e.g. the story gets moving with an event that does not involve the main characters at the time). If I were to bend my story around so that I can insert such a beginning, my story would suffer for the sake of structure. Rather find another structure or bend the structure.

I’m not saying structure is a bad thing. Structure gives you guidance and support when you don’t know where you’re going or when something goes wrong. But if you start off with structure, you can never reach your story, because you’re too busy relying on the crutch to carry you through it.

Use structure when you need it. The rest of the time, the story should dominate.

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