Is Story Structure Strangling Your Writing?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Recently, two things happened that made me think about structure and storytelling. Jami Gold talked about writing rules and the pros and cons of following them, and a fellow writer expressed frustration over structure killing their story. I’ve spoken to enough writers in my career to know that for every rule, structure, or process out there, there are people for whom it just doesn’t work—or worse, has negative effects on their writing.

I think a lot of the frustration stems from the idea that writing has a formula, and if we just do it “right” we’ll be successful. It’s not story structure that’s the problem, it’s the template idea. Follow X rules and you get Y. Fill in the blanks and you can write a great book. Every story contains the same basic parts.

The kicker…is that this is all true, and it’s all false.

Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com