Structuring Your Novel (affiliate link)
This month, I’m giving away two copies of Structuring Your Novel! To enter, all you have to do is tag me on Facebook or Twitter in a post that uses the hashtag #StructuringYourNovel. Winners will be announced in next month’s e-letter.
Is Structure the Hidden Foundation of All Successful Stories?
Why do some stories work and others don’t? The answer is structure. In this new guide from the author of the bestselling Outlining Your Novel, you will discover the universal underpinnings that guarantee powerful plot and character arcs. An understanding of proper story and scene structure will help you to not only perfectly time your story’s major events, but will also provide you with an unerring standard to use in evaluating your novel’s pacing and progression.
Structuring Your Novel will show you:
- How to determine the best methods for unleashing your unique and personal vision for your story.
- How to identify common structural weaknesses and flip them around into stunning strengths.
- How to eliminate saggy middles by discovering your “centerpiece.”
- Why you should NEVER include conflict on every page.
- How to discover the questions you don’t want readers asking about your plot—and then how to get them to ask the right questions.
Story structure has empowered countless bestselling and classic authors. Now it’s your turn!
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About K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland
Just as Sunrise washes the sky with color and emotional promise; finding your book on outlining grants me a new dawn. (Outlining Your Novel) My passion to write can so easily burn out of control. Thank you, my new “Smokey The Bear”, thank you for banking my fire. Soon my pastures will have green grass indeed.
I’m so glad you’ve found Outlining Your Novel useful! 😀
Some authors don’t need to study structure because their gut instinct tells them how to structure their novels. Many authors who are well known wrote great novels without studying structure. They had it in them. And that’s how I write. I was born a storyteller. My story from the second grade had structure. It had a character who was going after his goal. But there was conflict imposed by his parent. During his black moment the character realized his selfishness and was transformed by the end. 🙂 Yes, that was the story I wrote by my gut instinct. Nobody told me how to write stories. What I have seen is that people impose structure on their characters. But it should be all about characters who change over time due to conflict. Not every writer needs to study structure.
In truth, most authors instinctively understand story structure. The whole notion of structure is deeply ingrained in the human psyche – which is why structure makes such a difference in whether or not a story works. Learning structure isn’t so much about changing the way we write stories as it is consciously grasping and strengthening what many of us already understand unconsciously.
I can’t agree with the second half of your reply. Every writer is different. I read too many books about the craft of writing, and books about the story structure in depth messed up with my own gut feeling since I can’t shut down imposed advice. And that’s why so many books sound formulatic. But maybe that’s me.
If there’s one thing I’m adamant about, it’s that every author’s process is unique. The only “right” way for any of us to write a book is whatever way works for us. Keep on keeping on!