SEEKING STRUCTURE

 

Structure is the first aspect of building a story. It’s also how we frame coherent thoughts.

This post speaks of how crucial it is for writers, specifically of memoirs.

Books like SAVE THE CAT in all its variations give not only rough, but very detailed story beats.

If you’ve read the original, written specifically for screenwriters, you will never see most movies the same way. You’ll recognize these story beats, or turns, clicking in like clockwork.

At least for me, all genre stories begin to read the same.

The mini surprises lie in the specifics, but never in the rising or receding action/tension. The cat gets saved with numbing predictability.

Good story structure is a safety net. But please don’t be a slave to it.

Who am I saying this to?

The storyteller, of course. The storyteller in me.

CLOTTING THE PLOT--

 

For a Whale of a tale

August is beginning to look at its end. For me, this is the time to wind up the initial charting/plotting of the bones to my next middle grade novel.

All over this land, some dive in during November National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo. By November, I will be looking back on a rough first draft I hope to have finished, and take my between drafts break as the multitude are sweating it out. Early December, I will be on draft number two.

This has worked for me for the last ten (gulp) years. The point is to know yourself and do what works for you.

It began with gearing up to the quiet writing-time my kids’ school year afforded. It stayed even after their schooling continues away from home. I thought about the parents who were robbed of this time during the pandemic school closures, and was appreciative I no longer had little ones. It would certainly have broken a cycle that worked so well.

Here’s to hoping I can do it again. Here’s wishing us all a writing year without interruptions, where the surprises are on the page, not on the streets.