Secrets of Writing: Structure Explained

Back by popular demand. I’m working on the print version of this series with an editor. But since the blog disaster wiped out the articles, I will be reposting them here.

WHAT IS STORY STRUCTURE?

We are, by nature, a creative animal. We’re driven to make our mark on the world in some fashion, beyond our need to survive. Some people satisfy their creativity in the business world, in cooking, in decorating their home.  Some satisfy it with music or dance. We’re going to focus on that most ancient of trades...storytelling.

Mankind, as we know it, has been on earth for at least 70,000 years. We can safely assume that somewhere in the midst of that time, people started telling stories. It probably originated around the campfire when we lived in caves and hunted with flint spears. Stories began as one hunter bragged about some sabretooth he killed, or a fish that got away. As people’s tastes became more sophisticated, the demands on a story grew. The teller of the tale would elaborate. The fish that got away got bigger. Then, maybe a monster attacked him while he was trying to catch the fish, which is why he lost it. But people learned when someone was making things up, so the storyteller had to get more clever in how they spun their yarn. And that was the birth of technique.

We don’t know when people first started formulating story technique, but we know from recorded history thay were doing it in Ancient Greece, about 2,500 years ago. The first known plays were performed there, in honor of the god Dionysius. Stories were acted out with pantomime and dialog before a live audience. Writers quickly saw the need for improving their craft when actors started speaking their lines. Before then, stories were told by one performer, who was usually the author of the piece. When writing was used to record these stories, you had a new medium where flaws in a story became more brutally apparent.

The philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to write a treatise on the subject of storytelling.  In “De Poetica” he laid the groundwork for the theory that we now know as Story Structure.

Story Structure is the foundation upon which all stories are built. It is the framework that holds a story together. You cannot write fiction without employing it. However, if you don’t understand the principles of story structure, you can easily make a mess. This is one reason why so many stories are bad. The authors of these narratives didn’t employ the principles of structure appropriately.

It’s kind of like that old biblical parable about the man who built his house upon the sand, while another built his house on stony ground. The house built on the beach got destroyed because the foundation was built on unstable earth. The same thing happens to a story built with a poor structure. It falls apart.

The last thing any good writer wants is to spend days, months, or years on something that’s ultimately weak. Aside from the blow to your self esteem and the rejection of the public, it doesn’t do your career a whole lot of good.

There is a big problem with structure however. It’s such a vast and complex subject, many people mistakenly think of it as a formula. Aristotle and some of the theorists who followed didn’t help matters by actually defining the formula, as they saw it, rather than revealing structure as a series of principles. Think of it as a form, rather than a formula. Structure is the form your story takes. It’s a shape that has mass.

A solid structure holds together like brick and mortar. A weak structure is like jello and tissue paper.

Formula is used by those who want to safeguard their structure, but they end up sapping it of life. Life is not a formula. And it is often surprising and full of unexpected turns.

Stories that feel like life are what we call organic stories. They seem to build in an natural and believable way. These stories might employ technique, but it is usually invisible. You don’t see the manipulation and the tricks. You don’t see the wires and the man behind the curtain. These kind of stories suck you in completely and make you believe they are real.  To get to that level of skill usually takes experience, but it also requires understanding how formula works.

Formula writers mistakenly believe that plot twists have to occur on a certain page, characters must be introduced a precise way, etc. By dogmatically following these formulas, they end up creating predictable, by-the-numbers plots that don’t do a whole lot to satisfy the audience. You can see this kind of writing in many Hollywood action films. There stories where you can guess what happens next or who the villain is before they’re revealed.

You don’t want to write that kind of tale. Which means, you have understand how to structure things so it does not seem prefabricated, but hand made.

REMEMBER: Story structure is a series of principles. It’s not a formula.

TYPES OF STORY STRUCTURE

There are three basic types. Classical, Minimalist, and Surreal. This series focuses on Classical Structure which is the most popular form with readers and audiences. But it’s important to understand the other two so you can decide if you want to play with them.

CLASSICAL: This is the one most widely used in fiction, especially in film. It has proven to be the structure that creates the greatest emotional response in an audience. We have thousands of years of fiction to prove it. Classical story structure means change for the characters. They don’t come away from the story without their lives being affected in some way. All the questions in the story are answered. All emotions raised are satisfied. In Classical structure the emphasis is mainly on external conflict and causality. The Hero is proactive. The time chronology in the story is usually linear. There is a consistent reality.

In other words, things move from a beginning all the way to the end. When things happen in the story, it’s for a reason. We understand who the characters are, what they want and why they want it. Any sub plots are resolved and everything makes sense in the end.

The reason these stories are more satisfying is that’s how people want life to be like. And these takes serve to show us something that enlightens or educates us in some way. We leave the experience feeling as if we had a good meal for the soul.

MINIMALIST: This form of deals with stories that do not affect change in the character’s lives. They come away the same as when the story began. These stories usually have open endings, unresolved climaxes. Some of the questions in the story get answered, but some are left for the audience to think about. The emphasis in Minimalist Structure is usually on internal conflict. The protagonists are often reactive, rather than proactive. And there can be more than one Hero.

SURREAL: Also known as Anti-Structure. This form deals with conflicting realities. It delves into absurdity. Reality has no meaning. There are no rules. Anything goes. And like Minimalist stories, nothing really changes. The characters are pretty much the same going in as they come out. Time is usually broken up and random. Coincidence occurs more often than causality. These kinds of stories are often annoying. And they often feel fake and manipulative.

It’s possible for a story to fall somewhere between two of these forms. No story has to be purely one form or another. It’s possible to use elements of one form or another, but you have to decide going in which form is the dominate one.

When choosing to do a story in one of the other two forms, it’s best to start out with a classical structure before you lead your story into the other form. This way, the audience won’t be too jarred by what you’re about to do.

Take a look at the fiction out there, the movies you have at home, and study their structures. It will tell you a lot about them. 

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