Structure Ideas for Fiction Writers

by Dave Haslett

  How about basing the structure of your story on an actual structure, such as a building? The building can be real or imagined. Let’s say that this building has a car park in the basement, where the story first begins. Perhaps our hero receives a message asking him to meet someone there who has vital information. When he arrives, he discovers something that leads him into the main building. And so begins a hunt or chase that leads him from room to room and from floor to floor. After leaving the basement, the next group of chapters cover the first floor, then another group of chapters cover the second floor, and so on – all the way to the big climax when he reaches the top floor, or the attic, or the roof. Along the way he might have had to contend with security guards and security equipment, traps set by the villain, locked doors, fires and all sorts of other hazards. Is our hero working alone, or is someone helping him? How about the villain? Is there more than one of them? Perhaps our hero starts off alone, but along the way he picks up a member of the building’s staff to help him. Do they have any weapons? Is there anything in the building they could use as weapons? Are there any short cuts? Is our hero chasing the villain or running away from him? What will happen when they catch up with each other? Is someone watching their progress using security cameras? What sort of story are you telling? It could be anything: a comedy, a romance, a tense thriller, or perhaps a mystery: what if our hero gets all the way to the top of the building, having searched every room and secured every exit … and the villain isn’t there? How about if you started your story at the top of the building and worked downwards? What if it was some other kind of structure? What would you choose?

  38. Planning.

  Planning means creating the structure and plot of your story before you start writing it. Many beginners come up with an idea for a story and dive straight in and start writing, with no real idea of where the story will go. That’s not the best way of writing a story that you know will work well and will earn you success and acclaim. You might get lucky and the story might find its own way naturally, and you’ll enjoy the whole process. But it’s far more likely that you’ll run out of ideas, or the story will go nowhere, or you’ll write yourself into a hole that you can’t get out of. So you’ll end up throwing most of your work away, or abandoning the project altogether. That’s what happens to most stories in fact.

  Now, I’m a busy person, and although I love to write, I want to ensure that my stories come out right every single time. I don’t want to spend time writing something and then throw huge chunks of it away.

  So my recommendation is that you learn how to properly structure a story (or use a book or software to guide you – see the Recommended Resources idea), then plan your story scene-by-scene and chapter-by-chapter so it matches that structure. When you’ve got the structure as perfect as it can be, and you’re satisfied that the story will work, then you can start writing it.

  If the basic structure of your story doesn’t work, it’s much easier to play around with it at this early stage than to have to move or delete entire scenes and chapters you’ve already written, or to add or remove major characters that would involve rewriting vast chunks of the text. If the structure and plot refuse to come together then you can simply ditch that story and start again with a different one. You won’t have wasted months or years writing something that was never going to work anyway.

  39. Postponing the disaster.

  We already know that every scene should end with some sort of disaster for our hero. That’s a good structure. But it can be interesting to try something else occasionally. One useful trick is to postpone the disaster until the next scene, and end the current scene by triggering the build-up to it. Readers will sense this and think, ‘Uh-oh, I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ – so they have to keep reading. If you’re concerned that your readers won’t ‘get it’ you could plant some additional clues earlier in the story, or earlier in that scene. For example, you could show the villain doing something to a parachute harness. Your readers might not know that he’s the villain yet, so they might think he’s carrying out a safety check. He might even say that he carried out the check. The scene ends with everyone jumping out of the plane wearing their parachutes, just as someone points out that the person who checked the harnesses wasn’t qualified to do so. There’s no actual disaster yet – but we can sense there will be plenty of parachute-related drama in the next scene. Readers will feel compelled to read on, just as much as they would if the disaster had already happened. What if you’d left out the part where the villain tampers with the parachute? Would your readers still feel tense about the jump? I think they would, because they know (even if it’s only subconsciously) that every scene ends in disaster. If things seem to be going well then it’s a safe bet that disaster is only moments away. (Personally, I think this scene works much better if the villain is seen meddling with the parachute.)

  40. Purpose 1.

  Each scene should have a purpose – it must move the story or character forward in some way towards the conclusion. And within each scene, every action and object should also have a purpose – again moving the plot forward or adding to your readers’ knowledge of the character or the place. An object, such as a gun, seen in an early scene, must be there for a reason, otherwise you shouldn’t have mentioned it. In the case of a gun, one of the characters will most likely fire it in a later scene. It’s a very good idea to keep a separate record of each item as you mention it in the text. Put a note against it to say where, when and how it will be used later in the story. That way nothing will be forgotten, and your readers won’t be left wondering why you bothered to mention something that had no impact on the story.

  41. Random sequence.

  Make a list of all the key events in your story. Then chop the list into separate pieces of paper, with one event on each. Then shuffle them, or throw them on the floor and pick them up in random order. There are two ways of proceeding from here. First, you could stick to the original story line. Since the structure is now more random, you’ll need to tell some of the events as flashbacks (or flash forwards) and perhaps use two or more parallel story lines, rather than telling the whole thing chronologically. That’ll make things more difficult for you, but should make the story much more interesting for your readers. The second approach is to tell the story chronologically using your new list of random events – which means you’ll now have a completely different story from the one you started with. Repeat the process a few times, keeping a record of the sequence of the events, then see which version you like the best. You might discover an interesting new version that’s much more exciting than your original idea. You might have to change some of the scenes a little, or add new ones to make it all fit together. You could also mix and match sections from different versions to create a single ‘perfect’ version.

  42. Repeated first paragraph.

  An amusing structure that’s particular good for comedies is to repeat the exact same paragraph at the beginning of several scenes or chapters throughout the story. You can use this technique – borrowed from cartoons – if your hapless hero’s repeated attempts to solve a problem keep ending in failure. The next scene, with the repeated first paragraph, sees him setting off for yet another attempt at solving it – which will also end in failure of course.

  [ALTERNATIVE] If you want more variety, or variability, you could just repeat the first sentence rather than the entire paragraph.

  43. Rising difficulty.

  Many stories fail because the characters have things too easy. Here’s an easy way to turn a mediocre story into a great one. First, list all of the events that take place in your story. For a novel that could be 200 or more. Now you have to decide what the outcome of each event will be. This is easy: they should all go horribly wrong. That inevitably makes the story more dramatic. The only exception is the very last event in the story where everything (usually) turns out well. Now sort the problems into order, so they gradually escalate, starting with the most basic things
going wrong and getting worse and worse until the climax is a total catastrophe. The last thing to check is that each event leads neatly from one to another, logically and plausibly. You might need to juggle the events around into a slightly different order to achieve this, and add some linking scenes to connect them neatly and seamlessly.

  44. Scene-sequel structure 1.

  Many people consider a long story to be just a collection of scenes strung together. They’re right, up to a point, but there needs to be something else to link the scenes together. The most basic link is a transition. For example: ‘The next day … ’ That’s fine, but if the previous scene ended dramatically then your long-suffering hero needs time to recover before moving on. Some people treat this recovering and regrouping phase as a scene in itself, while others refer to it as a ‘sequel’, which has a different structure. (Sequel in this sense is not the same thing as a sequel to a novel or a movie).

  Here’s how a sequel is structured. First, the character reacts to what has just happened – this is the emotional phase. Then he thinks about what happened – the thought phase. All that thinking leads him to come up with a new plan or goal – the decision phase. And then he sets off to carry out the plan – the action phase. This carries him seamlessly into the next scene, which will have a more conventional scene structure: someone or something opposes his new plan, causes conflict, and he fails again. Then it’s time for another sequel while he recovers and comes up with a different approach. And so it continues throughout the story: scene-sequel-scene-sequel, with the odd transition thrown in when no recovery or regrouping is necessary. Try using this more advanced structure to write better novels, plays and screenplays.

  45. Scene-sequel structure 2: controlling pace.

  Another advantage of the scene-sequel structure is that it allows you to control the pace of your stories. All the action (the fast-moving stuff) will be in the scenes, and all the introspection and planning (the slow stuff) will be in the sequels. So to speed the story up, just make the scenes longer and reduce the length of the sequels. Or delete a sequel entirely and run one scene straight into the next: your poor hero doesn’t have time to stop and think about what just happened because the next problem kicks off immediately. Or you could swap a sequel for a transition – ‘Meanwhile, back on the mountain…’ – a handful of words and you’re straight into the next scene. If part of the story seems too fast, slow it down by making the scenes shorter and the sequels longer. Add more sequels, or replace some of the transitions with sequels. You can of course use other pacing techniques, such as short sentences and active verbs to speed things up, and longer sentences and more description to slow things down.

  46. Scene-sequel structure 3.

  If you’re feeling adventurous you might like to go a stage further by making a few interesting modifications. It’s important that the basic scene-sequel structure is firmly in place before you attempt any of this.

  One variation is to put a sequel in the middle of a scene rather than at the end. Perhaps your hero is thinking things over as he runs. Maybe there’s a brief lull in the action. Maybe something else triggers his thoughts. The decision he makes here could affect what he does in the second half of the scene, or it might not take effect until the following scene. You now have the option of putting another sequel at the end of the scene, using a brief transition, or going straight into the next scene where he immediately puts his revised plan into action. Consider the pace of the story to help you decide which one to use.

  Another variation is to put a scene in the middle of another scene – something intrudes on the action and has to be dealt with immediately, before our hero can return to his main problem. Can you think of any other variations? How about putting scenes and sequels into flashbacks?

  47. Scene-sequel structure 4: interruptions.

  In an earlier idea we looked at interrupting a scene. But you can also interrupt a sequel. The big question is which of the four parts of the sequel to interrupt. You could certainly interrupt the emotional reaction phase. This would force your hero out of his depression and make him get on with things – whether he wanted to or not. Or you could interrupt the thinking phase, and perhaps have him arrive at the wrong conclusion by not having time to think things through properly. The decision phase could be fun to interrupt – our hero has just decided to take a particular course of action when something else suddenly intrudes and forces his hand. Perhaps he’s forced to implement his new plan sooner than expected, without enough time to prepare. Or maybe he has to come up with a completely different idea on the spur of the moment. The action phase of the sequel sees him setting off to carry out his new plan. There doesn’t seem much point in interrupting this phase, since it’s the transition into a new scene anyway. So if you really want an interruption, do it in one of the first three phases. Which one do you think is the best to interrupt? Note that there’s no correct answer except ‘whatever makes your story better’.

  48. Set pieces.

  An interesting way of creating a story is to base it around huge set pieces. In a short story there might be just one of these, and maybe three to five in a novel. The other events in the story will either be the part of the build up to the next set piece, or something that happened as a result of the previous one.

  If you look at Basic Novel Structure idea there are twenty chapters, an opening incident, a climax, a resolution, and three dilemmas to be overcome along the way. In this variation, the opening incident, three dilemmas and climax are your set-pieces. It makes sense to plan those first and then start filling in the details of the intermediate chapters – the build-up and after-effects of each set piece.

  49. Skip the boring bits.

  You can skip some of the less dramatic scenes – and in fact it’s a good idea to do so. If your gang of crooks is plotting a robbery, for example, and there’s a long, drawn-out discussion that seems quite dull, cut it out, or shorten it. When the robbery actually takes place you can show how the things that were said and the decisions that were made affected the outcome. You can also fill in some of the details that you cut out, if the story wouldn’t make sense otherwise. For example: ‘Why is Paul holding the rope, not John?’ ‘Because I thought that’s what we agreed at the meeting.’

  50. Symmetry.

  An interesting way of structuring a story is to make it symmetrical by working on both ends at once. This would work particularly well in a movie, which we’ll use as an example here, but it could also be used in novels, stage plays and short stories.

  There are two versions: imperfect symmetry and perfect symmetry.

  Imperfect symmetry: If the movie begins with a man and a woman, for example, then, regardless of their differences and the fact that they hate each other, they’ll end up together at the end – it’s what the audience demands. So once you have your beginning, you also have your ending.

  Another example that you’ll have seen in other ideas is where something from one of the opening scenes is used to solve the problem at the end. Perhaps our hero remembers the gun he saw in the drawer right back at the beginning of the movie, and grabs it at the very last second to save the day. It doesn’t have to be a gun of course.

  Or you could have your hero begin the movie riding in a car, perhaps racing towards a crime scene, when he receives a call about the problem that will occupy him throughout the rest of the movie. So let’s have him end the movie in a car too. Perhaps he makes a phone call from his car (echoing the one he received earlier), and what he says becomes the last line of the movie.

  Perfect symmetry: By working forwards and backwards, switching between the beginning and the ending, focusing on a few seconds or a minute at a time, you can create a beautifully balanced and perfectly symmetrical movie, where the second half is the mirror image of the first. Something that happens ten minutes into the story will be balanced by something that happens ten minutes from the end, and so on.

  It doesn’t have to be an exact mirror image –
although it could be if you wanted it to. Perhaps only the locations will match exactly. So the movie starts and ends on a bridge. In the second scene (and therefore also the second-to-last scene) the action moves to a beach. And so on. Perhaps it’s the characters who match, with the same people being present in each of the mirrored scenes, although they might behave differently. Perhaps it’s only their emotions that are mirrored. Or their actions. Or whatever combination of these you like.

  51. The human body.

  Imagine your novel as a human body (a specific person if you like), with each chapter representing one of the main limbs, short scenes representing fingers and toes and so on. Think about the purpose that each part of the body lends to the overall structure. Toes and feet and legs will give the story its main support and movement. Fingers, hands and arms will reach out and extend the hero’s grasp, or rescue the heroine. The head is obviously for thinking and the heart for loving (and pumping blood), so the main romantic scene in the story will be based there. But that still leaves plenty of other scenes and body parts to play around with. Using this structure makes creating stories enormous fun. And how about having a black and white drawing of a human body pinned to your wall? You could colour it in as you complete each section – it’ll make a unique and inspiring way of tracking your progress!

  52. Three-act structure 1.

  Most stories follow the traditional three-act structure. This applies to novels, screenplays and stage plays. Think about the objects and actions in your first act. They must be there for a reason. In act two, refer to them again in a stronger, more prominent way. In act three use them to their fullest dramatic effect. Think about that well-known adage that says if a gun is seen in the first act then it will be fired by the third. We can extend this idea to help structure our story. For example, what happens to the gun in the second act? How about if it goes missing and needs to be found? Now it has a prominent role in all three acts. A similar adage says that if someone sniffs or sneezes in the first act, they’ll catch a cold in the second act and die of pneumonia in the third. Of course, that sneeze might just be because of dust – in which case it’s telling us something about the setting. Or it might be because of pepper, or an allergy, or a nervous reaction. Or it might indicate that someone has a cold and can’t smell things – such as a gas leak.