Structure Ideas for Fiction Writers

by Dave Haslett

  25. Looping spiral structure.

  Think of a looping spiral, like a spring stretched out along the ground.

  What does the top of the loop represent? It could be success and achievement. The bottom of the loop could represent failure or despair – or total disaster. We’ll start at the far left and work towards the right, with each loop representing a scene or a chapter. We don’t have to travel very far into the story before we hit the first loop and head up the slope. Even though we haven’t yet reached the peak, we soon find ourselves travelling backwards towards the starting point. Strangely, when we reach the peak, we’re still heading backwards – not really the direction we want to go in if we’re to make progress. We head back down the slope now, still going backwards at first, but when we eventually start moving forwards again we soon hit rock bottom. That’s strange! It’s the exact opposite of what we would normally expect in a story. As we head towards the next peak, we soon find ourselves heading back towards the starting point once again.

  So progress is very slow and extremely difficult; the only way to make any headway on this journey is to spend almost half the time going backwards. Success and failure seem to be reversed, occurring when we’re heading in the opposite direction to what we would expect. How could that happen? It’s up to you to come up with a plot that would fit this structure. Somehow, we eventually reach the end. We’ve only covered a short distance, but we’ve travelled miles to get there, encountered setback after setback, and had as many failures as successes.

  You could draw your looping spiral in other ways: rest it on a slope so the right end is higher than the left and progress gets harder and harder. Or use stairs or uneven ground instead of a slope. Or drape the spiral over a mountain range and see how the loops are affected – some stretched, some compressed. Or use a different kind of spring, perhaps one with tighter coils or more loops. You could half bury it in the ground. Or float it on water. Or bend it into a circle so that the end touches the beginning. What fun you can have with a simple spring and a handful of ideas!

  26. Magazine articles using fiction structure.

  Have you considered using the structure of fiction to write more exciting magazine articles? Your articles are already informative and interesting, but how about making them exciting and ‘unputdownable’?

  Let’s use a basic novel structure. This works particular well for chronological articles – those that talk about an event, something from history, the discovery of something, a dramatic rescue, recovery from injury or disease, finding something that was missing, rising panic before a wedding day, and so on.

  First we need an opening incident that sparks the whole thing off. This could be anything that grabs your readers’ attention and makes them want to know what happened next. State what the problem is and what needs to be done about it, and start working towards the solution.

  Next we need to add three dilemmas, each one worse than the last. These should be easy enough to come up with – though you might need to change their order around to make them seem progressively worse. Keep working towards finding a solution to one dilemma and building things up towards the next one.

  Then comes the climax – the big finish. Just as it looks as if the problem won’t ever be solved, things somehow work out and everything comes together successfully. Perhaps there were a few compromises or secrets – such as the unfinished wedding dress that was held together by tape and safety pins (and a great deal of luck) for the ceremony.

  And finally there’s the resolution – an explanation of how things were done, who was guilty, whose heroic action saved the day, a summary of what happened afterwards, the next step people should take, or whatever is appropriate for your article. Keep this as short as possible.

  And there you have it: an exciting and informative article that will keep your readers enthralled. It should be easy to get this article published, so start planning some more immediately!

  27. Maze.

  Find a maze puzzle in a puzzle book – ideally one that’s aimed at adults rather than children. The start of your story is the start of the maze. Set off and try to complete the maze – use a pen or pencil rather than tracing the route with your finger, because you want a record of where you went wrong, as well as the correct path. Sometimes you’ll hit a dead end and have to backtrack. You might even get hopelessly lost and have to start all over again – use a different colour to record your second attempt. Keep going until you finally solve the whole maze.

  Hopefully you ended up taking a tortuous route full of mistakes and backtracking before you finally reached the end. That’s perfect! Now follow the line you drew and use this as the plan for your story. Add clues, red herrings, people, events, hazards and problems at particular points along the route, depending on whether you found that section easy or difficult. Some of these things will give your characters advice as to the correct route, while others will misdirect or delay them, or cause them major problems. If you solved the maze too easily, find a harder one, or give the puzzle to someone who isn’t so good at them, and follow their line instead of yours.

  28. Multiple viewpoints 1.

  In longer stories you’ll sometimes have several viewpoint characters who each take a turn at telling the story for a while. They might continue telling the same story as the hero is telling, or repeat the previous scene from a different angle, giving a second opinion, or an outsider’s view, which can add interest. But if you alter the structure of the story you can make much better use of this.

  The villain makes an obvious viewpoint character, as you can do so much more with him than you can with a lesser character. You can show him gloating over his successful tricks and traps, laughing at the hero’s failures and shortcomings, and planning his next attack or obstacle. As well as making your readers hate the villain even more, they also get to know about the next trap long before the hero does. So they’ve now got something extra to worry about, and you’ve dramatically increased the tension and anticipation. They also now understand more about the villain and why he’s behaving this way. And they know what he really wants – which might not be what the hero thinks he wants.

  So the villain works well as a viewpoint character. But (and this is the important bit) he follows his own path through the story, acting independently of the main action, and has his own goals and motivation. When we switch to his viewpoint he doesn’t simply continue telling the story where the hero left off. He’s living his own life and getting on with his own agenda. As well as the issues he has with the hero of this story, he might have many other things to deal with in his life. He might be setting traps for plenty of other people too. Or he might be trying to obtain several other things as well as the one that the hero is trying to prevent his from getting.

  What about other viewpoint characters? You could do the same thing for them too. Give each one an independent storyline – their own subplot, goals and motivations. Each person will help or hinder the hero (or the villain) in the main storyline, deliberately or inadvertently, while simultaneously pursuing their own interests. This makes them much more rounded and interesting characters, rather than the casual observers or hangers-on that they might have been before.

  29. Multiple viewpoints 2.

  Something worth bearing in mind when using multiple viewpoints is that the characters shouldn’t all get the same number of scenes. There needs to be one main character – the person who the story is mostly about – who should have the viewpoint about seventy percent of the time. How many scenes the other characters get depends on how important they are to the story.

  Spend a few minutes thinking about this and construct a hierarchy list: most important viewpoint character at the top, least important at the bottom. In a story with 100 scenes and four viewpoint characters, the hero should get approximately 70 scenes. You might decide that the villain is the next most important and make him the viewpoint character for 16 scenes. That leaves 14 scenes to divide as you see fit between the o
ther two characters.

  You probably won’t want to put each viewpoint character’s scenes all together in a single lump. It’s usually best to scatter them throughout the story, so we see what they’re up to only at the most relevant times. However, you could group three or four such scenes together or give one character a whole chapter if that seems to be the most appropriate. The best way of deciding whose viewpoint to use for each scene is simply to pick the person with the most at stake.

  30. Non-fiction.

  Here’s an idea that will help you structure your non-fiction books and articles. It can also be used for speeches and presentations. The idea is to cover each topic in approximately 300 words – about a page of text in a typical book. If you know your subject well enough then you shouldn’t have any trouble finding 300 words to say about each topic. It’s more likely that you’ll have too much to say than not enough. That forces you to cut out the waffle and only write what’s absolutely essential. If a topic really is too big to cover in 300 words then you’ll need to break it down into a number of sub-topics and cover each of those in 300 words.

  With all your topics and sub-topics completed, all you need to do is find the best order to put them in. About 200 topics gives you a book (although it could be shorter or longer than that). Or you could group them into threes, fours or fives to create magazine articles – just add a short introduction and a conclusion and you’re done. That makes it very easy to reuse the material. You could easily come up with several different articles just by combining a few topics together – and you can use those articles to help promote your book, as well as earn money.

  If you’re giving a speech or presentation, work out how fast you speak and decide (or find out) how long you’ll be speaking for, then calculate how many topics to include. If you’re planning to speak for 45 minutes for example, and you speak an average of 140 words per minute, then you could cover 21 topics. But let’s make it 18, so you’ll have time to introduce yourself and add a conclusion – and plug your book! If you wanted to allow time for people to ask questions then you might cut it down further, perhaps to 12 or 15 topics.

  31. Non-fiction: organising your facts 1.

  The way you organise your facts can make all the difference between a successful book and a useless one (or a published one and an unpublished one). Play around with the facts and try different structures. Do they flow logically from one point to the next? Or have you grouped them together under similar topics? Or are they fairly random with no discernible structure, making it almost impossible for the reader to dip in and look something up quickly? The most obvious structure might not be the best. Just because all the other books on this subject use a particular structure doesn’t mean yours has to as well, especially if you want yours to be different – and, more importantly, better. Equally, the best structure might not be the most obvious one – everyone else might simply have copied the structure of the first book on the subject and it has become the standard by default. If the structure they’ve all used really is the best one then of course you should use it too. But it’s a good idea to try out a few alternatives too, in case you can do better. Getting the structure absolutely right takes a lot of time and planning. Don’t rush it or you could ruin your book.

  32. Non-fiction: organising your facts 2.

  When you were planning your book you undoubtedly had all of your facts and research material laid out in a particular way that made things easiest for you. It might not have followed the structure of other books on that subject, but it worked best for you. Make a careful note of that structure because you might well find that it’s the perfect structure for your book.

  But once you’ve done that, put it aside and start again from scratch. Forget about the structures you’ve used before, and those that other people have used when writing about this subject. See if you can come up with three or four entirely different structures or organisational plans where all the facts still fit together logically. Sometimes you might find that you have gaps, or the facts don’t quite fit. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Have a closer look. Do you need to do more research, or write a bit more, or include a broader range of topics to make this a better book? Perhaps some of the topics don’t belong in this book after all, but would make a great starting point for your next one. Perhaps there’s a whole series here.

  Dare to be different. Try structures that aren’t immediately obvious. Even if you end up using the most obvious structure in the end, it’ll have been worth all that extra effort because of all the new ideas and possibilities you’ll have come up with. And you can be absolutely certain that your book is so much better than anything your competitors have written.

  33. Novels: chapters.

  The main aim of a chapter is to move your hero from one major story point to another. You therefore need to know two things before you start writing: what position or state your hero is in at the beginning of the chapter and what position or state he will be in at the end. You should also make a list of all the other key points he’ll encounter while getting from the start point to the end point, and divide these into scenes. Each scene will need its own beginning, middle and end, and most of them will be followed by a sequel section where our hero pauses to think about what’s just happened and plans his next move. You should also know that the hero will start the chapter in trouble and, unless it’s the final chapter, he’ll end it in even more trouble.

  [EXAMPLE] You might start a chapter with your hero somehow escaping from a flooded cellar (having become trapped there in a cliff-hanger at the end of the previous chapter). You could end the chapter with him being held at gunpoint in the attic. At key points during the chapter he might have spotted the missing girl, made sure she was safe, and made the difficult decision to leave her there and rescue her later – despite her vigorous protests. He might also have overheard a phone call between two villains, thus proving their guilt; fallen over something and hurt himself; set off an alarm and had to hide for a while (a useful chance to think things over); stolen a cake and stopped to eat it (and have another think); dropped a message out of a window to signal for help; and finally have broken into the attic through a locked door, having been lured there by a third villain – possibly a harmless-looking woman or child – who told him that the hidden treasure was in there. That’s not bad for one chapter! Follow a similar structure for the others and you’ll find this a pretty easy way to write a novel.

  34. Novels without chapters.

  Some novelists don’t use chapters, and there’s no reason why you have to either. You have the flexibility to plan and write your novel any way you want to. Some writers structure their books as a series of chapters, while others think in terms of scenes, and then group those scenes into chapters. But if your scenes don’t group together very well, or if you want the whole story to flow without breaks, why use chapters at all? Just do what author Terry Pratchett does. He generally doesn’t have any chapters and he doesn’t number his scenes. Scene breaks are indicated by blank lines or * symbols, and the book appears as a continuous piece of text.

  You’ve probably come across a few novels that apparently have well over 100 chapters. However, these are more like numbered scenes or small clusters of scenes than chapters. Would your novel work better that way?

  You might be wondering why some scene breaks use blank lines and some use * or ***. This might vary from one publisher to another, but this is the way we do it: blanks lines indicate the passage of time – so the next scene features the same characters in the same place, but some time later. * or *** indicates that the next scene features different characters in some other location. Whether you use * or *** depends on the publisher’s house style (we use ***) but they both mean the same thing.

  35. Opening dialogue.

  How about starting every scene or chapter with a line of dialogue? Make it as intriguing and provocative as possible, to immediately hook your readers and make them want to read on. It can be especially i
ntriguing if the line bears no relation whatsoever to what went on before. Though, of course, you’ll need to go on to explain what has been said and put it into context.

  Beginning a chapter with a line like “‘Octopus,’ declared Stan.” – and then not explaining why he said it, will not intrigue the readers at all, it will irritate them. If Stan habitually declares words like this for no reason, then he’s clearly mad – but that might be what you’re trying to show!

  36. Outlining.

  One of the best ways of planning the structure of your story – or any piece of writing for that matter – is to use outliner software. This will allow you to set up headings, sub-headings, section headings, topic headings, body text, and so on – most software offers at least 9 levels. You can expand and collapse each level to get an overview of the whole text, or zoom in on a single aspect of it. You can move things around and reorganise everything very easily, and promote or demote topics to higher or lower levels. There’s an excellent outline function built into Microsoft Word (just switch to Outline View) or there are several free outline programs available, such as Treepad Lite which I use myself.

  37. Physical structure.