Novel structure: from WORD to SENTENCE to BEAT to SCENE to ACT

Illustration by Crystal Zapata

What I'm about to tell you will sound insane. I ask you to put your sanity aside and join me on a wild ride. Of math. Yes, math. I know. I hate it too. But I love a certain type of math that helps me not think about math when I'm writing a novel. And hell, who knows, maybe I'm a closet mathematician who decided to become a novelist just to spite the mathematician. I better stop.This is starting to turn into a story.

What I'm about to tell you is very simple. I...