Today, I’m guest posting on Moody Writing, with a post about “How to Learn Story Structure Without Even Trying.” Here’s an excerpt:
Structuring Your Novel (affiliate link)
What to know how to learn story structure? Here’s a secret about story structure that you may not have realized: You already know it.
Many authors are intimidated by the mere thought of structure. As if writing isn’t already enough of a juggling act, now we’re expected to also make certain our plot fits into some nebulous framework. It can be daunting, to say the least.
But here’s the great thing about structure: it’s neither nebulous nor difficult to learn.
How Perfect Does Your Story’s Structural Timing Have to Be?
How to Structure Stories With Multiple Main Characters?
7 Tips for Opening Your Story In Medias Res
Clearing Up Some Misconceptions About In Medias Res
About K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland
I never think about structure when I’m writing. I just tell the story. The first book I ever wrote was Acting is Storytelling, back in ’86 for my actors in an ongoing class I was teaching. One of the platitudes I wrote was (this was originally for actors, but I find many similarities between acting and writing): Every conscious step you take toward analyzing or interpreting the story, takes you one step away from the story. Another is: Most writers analyze too much and create too little…it’s better to eat your soup than to speculate on it. Oh, I’m a true pantser. I just tell the damn story and it seems to work out fine.