Story Structure for Intuitive Drafters

It's a toolbox, not a lockbox.

View from the Amtrak Northeast Regional, taken by my then five-year-old daughter

Are you allergic to the idea of planning when writing a first draft? Does it feel like it will ruin the mystery, the magic, the flow?

I get that. If I know too much ahead of time, it can kill the whole thing. I have more than once meticulously mapped out a story that I will probably never write because I overdid it on the planning and now the actual writing doesn’t seem fun. But I’ve also written two unplanned drafts that, while viable, required end-to-end rewrites to make the story work. Not a process I want to go through with every book.

So here are a few things I’ve learned that can help keep story structure present as you draft, without letting it turn into a control freak and squash the magic of discovery. But first, some things to clarify:

Structure is not Outline.

Structure refers to the broad, functional parts of any story, while Outline is a means to map out the linear progression of a specific story. This is important to remember. We are talking about the former here.

Story is not synonymous with Plot

Plot comprises the linear, external, action beats of a story—the cause-and-effect thread. Story is a holistic term that comprises plot as well as internal character arc, theme development, and all the other parts of the whole.

There is no one right way to do it.

I’m going to refer to several resources here, but there is no one ‘authority’ on story structure. What’s important is that you find tools that work for you, for the way you think of your story and your characters. Sometimes multiple takes on story structure and character development will overlay one another. And while one tool may work well at one point in the process, you might find you need to turn to another later.

This is all good. Structure is creative and adaptable.

The point is not to map out a structure and then follow it. The point is to keep structure present in your process as you draft.

Now, a few of my favorite resources for thinking about story structure, and how to use them intuitively.

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Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel

The go-to how-to on story structure. This book was adapted by Jessica Brody from the classic screenwriting book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. (Some novelists actually prefer the Snyder version. I like Brody’s.) This book is deceptively deep. It’s written with a breezy, make-it-easy, you can do it! vibe. But if you really read the whole thing, it’s a remarkably good tutorial on interweaving character arc and plot arc.

It breaks story down into beats which, while some may think of them as formulaic, are quite flexible. They are also baked into many a classic story. I once got out Pride and Prejudice to compare, and I was floored to see just how closely the major pivots in Austen’s masterpiece hew to the Save the Cat beats. This wasn’t something Snyder or Hollywood made up out of thin air.

There’s an excel sheet that I like that calculates where the beats should fall (I know…spreadsheet…stay with me), which is available here. It’s partway down the page. Scroll down until you see this graphic….

I like to use this in an evolving way as I move through a draft. I may fill in all the blanks and then realize that the story is going somewhere different than I first thought, but I still like the ending, so I’ll delete the beats that don’t fit and adjust as I go.

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John Truby’s Anatomy of Story

I always know what’s resonating in a craft book by how much I’m underlining. In my copy of Anatomy of Story the first four chapters are heavily underlined. The rest? Only here and there. Not to say the rest of the book isn’t good, but the subtitle of this book is “22 steps to becoming a master storyteller.” This subtitle alone kept me from reading the book for a long time. Twenty-two steps are just way too many for my intuitive brain. But the first five chapters of this book do an incredible job of breaking down the elements of premise, character, and Truby’s seven key steps to story structure.

I come back to his chapter on premise long after I’ve started a draft because of the way he addresses identifying the central conflict and what he calls the “designing principle” of the story. These keep me aware of the through-lines I’m building, not in a prescriptive way but in a way that allows me to be more intentional about them.

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Michael Hague’s Six Stage Plot Structure

What I love about Hague’s plot structure is the way it addresses inner character change—how the false self (which Hague calls identity) transforms into to the true self (which he calls essence). There are a number of sources on the internet that describe the structure (here), but I always come back to this graphic

You’ll notice that the major pillars are at about the same points as in Save the Cat Writes a Novel, but as I move through a draft, this particular tool keeps me aware of the movement of the inner arc and how the character is moving through their transformation.

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Write Your Novel From the Middle by James Scott Bell

I kind of wish the idea of the three-act structure of a novel would go away, because it’s always three-act structure, but oh yeah! this huge important pivot happens in the MIDDLE. Which really makes the classic story structure four acts. This slim volume by James Scott Bell (who has written tons of good craft books) is basically about a single idea. But it’s such a good idea I recommend reading it. He talks about the single-moment scene right in the middle of the novel where the character reflects on what is behind them and what’s ahead.

“At this point in the story, the character looks at himself. He takes stock of where he is in the conflict and…looks at himself and wonders what kind of person he is. What is he becoming? If he continues the fight of Act II, how will he be different? What will he have to do to overcome his inner challenges? How will he have to change in order to battle successfully?”

James Scott Bell. Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between

Whether or not this exact “mirror” scene belongs in your novel, I think it’s useful to think about what this would look like for your character. As you approach the middle of your draft, this one exercise can really sharpen your view of what Bell calls the “pre-story psychology” of the character and their “transformation” at the end.

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Seeing the Forest

Writing a novel is hard. The scope is huge—from the micro level of a single word choice or a beautiful sentence or scene, to the macro level of arc, pace, plot, and theme. In the drafting stage, one is literally choosing what word to put on the page next. But I’ve found that when I stay at the word/sentence/scene level for too long, I lose the thread of the whole, and while I might have great voice, character, and setting, I come out with a draft that needs a fuck-ton of reworking if not a total rewrite in order to really hold up. Using structural tools from the beginning in a flexible, non-prescriptive way allows you to zoom in and out as you go, getting lost in the flow of words, but also seeing and shaping the whole.

I could go down this rabbit hole all day. I’d love to hear how you think about story structure and what resources and tools have been useful to you!

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