Story Structure in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," by Ken Kesey

Every writer or aspiring writer should read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nestand dissect it. It’s very well-written, nicely paced, and perfectly structured. It’s a study in how to construct and write a novel. The structure is what concerns us here.

A writer can learn a lot about structure from this book. Every writer struggles with structure, particularly those trying to learn the craft. We’re told that a story has a beginning, middle, and end, which is not a particularly helpful description....