Dramatic Structure: What Do We DO with It?

By Allison K Williams

I’ve taught dramatic structure many times. Traditional five-act and three-act structures for memoir and novels; a four-act structure for thrillers and mysteries; letter-e structure for memoir, spiral structure for essay collections; circular structure for blog posts and travel writing. In their simplest application, the writer draws the structure and maps their scenes along the graphic path, for a visual representation of building tension, turning points, major narrat...