How to Structure Your Book
The best way I've found is to map out my book on artists sketch pad paper. You want to aim at plot points. Your book is formatted in three acts. Act one is when you introduce your main characters, give them a setting and give them a problem or goal. Plot point one is around page seventy or seventy five when your main character sets out to accomplish his goal. Act two is about 150 pages long and plot point two is around page 140-150. That's where you add a new wrinkle or twist to throw off those inveterate readers, like me, who think they know who did it (if it's a mystery) or what's going to happen otherwise. Plot point three or Act Three happens around page 210 when you set up your climax. How long your climax lasts is up to you, but when it's over wrap it up pretty quickly, unless you think you need an epilogue to tell the reader what happened to the characters later. I love those. Now, you're going to write down the scenes you think you need on the sketch paper under each Act.
I tend to write twenty-page scenes, but that's just me. I include a lot of verisimilitude (research and active description) that makes the characters and the situation more real for me. While writing SOLDIER'S GAP, I read LIVING LIFE'S CIRCLE: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision, by Claire R. Farrer, which helped me with one of my main characters, Mingo Jones, the night deputy in Soldier, Minnesota. Mescaleros believe in ghosts, and SOLDIER'S GAP is kind of a ghost story. I did a lot of suspension of disbelief, so don't let that scare you. There's also a definite theme: it's about kids falling through the cracks and a kind of spiritual journey Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins goes through while chasing a killer.
Anyway, if you use this plot structure, you should have little problem with the first draft. I can write a first draft in a couple of months, if that long. This may explain James Patterson's publishing frenzy (not really). Rewriting takes me a lot longer. As I said I like to add verisimilitude, and I do that while I rewrite. I also read HELTER SKELTER while I was writing the first draft and rewriting. Olive Randall, one of the major characters, is a lot like the Manson girls, and I wanted to get her right.
It's hard to let go of your book, so you want to find some reliable readers who aren't too close to you or who aren't sycophants. You can find some pretty good ones on the internet, believe it or not.
I tend to write twenty-page scenes, but that's just me. I include a lot of verisimilitude (research and active description) that makes the characters and the situation more real for me. While writing SOLDIER'S GAP, I read LIVING LIFE'S CIRCLE: Mescalero Apache Cosmovision, by Claire R. Farrer, which helped me with one of my main characters, Mingo Jones, the night deputy in Soldier, Minnesota. Mescaleros believe in ghosts, and SOLDIER'S GAP is kind of a ghost story. I did a lot of suspension of disbelief, so don't let that scare you. There's also a definite theme: it's about kids falling through the cracks and a kind of spiritual journey Deputy Sheriff Dave Jenkins goes through while chasing a killer.
Anyway, if you use this plot structure, you should have little problem with the first draft. I can write a first draft in a couple of months, if that long. This may explain James Patterson's publishing frenzy (not really). Rewriting takes me a lot longer. As I said I like to add verisimilitude, and I do that while I rewrite. I also read HELTER SKELTER while I was writing the first draft and rewriting. Olive Randall, one of the major characters, is a lot like the Manson girls, and I wanted to get her right.
It's hard to let go of your book, so you want to find some reliable readers who aren't too close to you or who aren't sycophants. You can find some pretty good ones on the internet, believe it or not.
No comments have been added yet.
