Kindle Notes & Highlights
And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. William Shakespeare
Structure is one of the most important concepts for a writer to understand—and ironically, one of the least frequently taught.
Please. Why would you believe anything a fiction writer says anyway? These are people who make stuff up for a living. (At
Most professional writers engage in some form of preplanning. They may or may not call it outlining, but for all intents and purposes, that’s what it is. It may not involve the use of Roman numerals or indented subheadings, but that’s still what it is.
I always tell my students to discard the first thing that pops into their heads. There’s a reason why it came to you so quickly—it’s not original. You’ve read it before, heard it before, or God forbid seen it on television. It’s old hat. Cliché. Throw it out and come up with something better.
Story is complex. Characters can be elusive. Plot and presentation can be daunting. Style can be frustrating. So you should welcome any tools that aid you in this challenging but eminently worthwhile quest. And structure, once you understand it, is a tool that will make your work
make a writing schedule. Treat that commitment as you would any other job. Show up on time and do what you promised to do.
When you write every day, you’ll find that your subconscious works on the book even when you aren’t, which means ideas will spring up when you least expect them,
Plot concerns the specific events you concoct to keep your characters moving on their journey. Structure is about design. When you create your plot, you are the construction worker building the building. When you think about structure, you are the architect.
Structure is the selection of events from characters’ lives strategically arranged to serve the writer’s purpose.
even though life seems to pass by in the blink of an eye, it is composed of millions of moments. Your job as a writer is to select the ones that best tell your story.
your tale may be better told with some events than others. Much of my revision usually revolves around deciding what to leave in and what to take out. My first drafts are typically all-inclusive, everything I can think of that might possibly be good. In later drafts, I try to be more judicious.
reader interest can be intensified by not answering all the questions right from the start. Let them wonder. Delay explanations. Mystery is good (though confusion is not).
the placement of the key events in your story can have a huge impact. That’s why you plan. What does the reader need to know when? What character clues need to be planted so the reader will grasp the inner conflict without being told? How do I surprise without resorting to coincidence?
A book that tells a great story can be immensely enjoyable—and immediately forgotten. But a story that triggers new ideas, thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, or understandings is much more likely to linger.
Books that move readers emotionally are also those most likely to change human hearts and minds, to transform society, and to withstand the test of time. Do an exercise with me, right now. Make a list of
Books you remembered long after you turned the final page. Books that made you laugh or cry or feel good to be alive. Books you keep on your desk beside the word processor because they inspire you so. Books that are tattered because you’ve reread them so many times.
you need to choose the right events and you need to put those events in the right place to achieve your goal.
Most messages are best delivered with just enough to allow the reader to get there themselves, rather than cramming it down their throats. When you announce the moral in big capital letters, it rarely makes much impact and often turns readers off.
As soon as readers detect that you’re proselytizing, the entertainment quotient tends to diminish.
if you’re too subtle, you take the risk that some readers will not get it. Believe
John Gardner suggested that theme was not so much about telling people what to think as announcing a topic for discussion and debate.
Do we abandon the civil rights that are fundamental to America’s identity in the name of increased security, or do we accept that freedom has risks and remain true to our original purpose?
The best fiction will educate readers on a subject of interest that the writer has thoroughly researched.
What do readers get from your book? How are they rewarded for spending their time in your fictional world?
Few decisions have more impact on how a story is told than point of view. You also need to establish the antagonist(s),
This doesn’t mean there will be no surprises in the reader’s future. It means they should understand, generally speaking, what this story is and where it is going.
I’ve always disliked the expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Bit of a slam at writers, isn’t it? I can think of many situations in which a word was worth a thousand pictures.
there is simply no reason to stick with a book that is not providing intellectual or emotional pleasure. The television is only a click away, the theater is just down the street, and the Internet is always with us. For that matter, you can download a different book to your e-reader in mere seconds.
“start in the middle.” That’s a good technique for drawing readers into a story. Start at an exciting point and save the exposition for later (or never).
I’ve written first chapters I later realized were preliminary. They were relevant, but they didn’t start the story. Which means they had to be cut, or perhaps relocated.
I’m all for subtlety where appropriate, but it’s no excuse for a boring story.
the inciting incident does not occur on the first page (though I’m not saying it can’t), because the reader
The inciting incident should take a world that seems stable and throw it into chaos.
The inciting incident cannot be a minor speed bump. If you’re not willing to raise the stakes, not willing to think large, why do you expect people to be interested in your book? Sometimes beginning writers think this means the inciting incident must involve some gruesome event, or
Series characters have become popular in books, particularly though not exclusively in the world of mystery/thrillers, because publishers think of them as plot insurance.
whatever. If the story is not fundamentally about your protagonist, it’s not a novel anymore. It’s an episode of a television series I don’t want to watch.
To maintain reader interest, your protagonist’s situation must get worse and worse. They can have the occasional small victory, so long as what’s left unresolved is far more dire and important.
It may be an emotional epiphany, redemption, or the reconciliation of ancient wounds. But it must be big. In fact, it must be bigger than anything that has gone before in your story. You don’t want your climax to suffer by comparison to previous scenes, or to seem, literally, anticlimactic.
You’ve been building toward it for three or four hundred pages (or a thousand, if you’re Russian). Don’t let the reader down. Give them a climax they will enjoy and remember.
The characters were on a long road strewn with many obstacles, but they overcame them and thus have earned their happiness. Most romances end with a union of the leads that seems permanent and lasting. We all know that, in real life, they may break up next week,
for purposes of this book, the union is permanent and the two characters’ quest for romantic happiness has been fulfilled.
this book, brilliant though it is, is far from perfect. And its biggest flaw rests with the climax. This book, written during the great era of the triple-decker (books issued in three parts), is easily divided into three acts. The first act covers Jane’s childhood,
“There’s a big problem with The Abyss. The climax comes in the middle of the second act.”
Don’t climax too early.
Most books benefit from some denouement, even if it’s only a page or two to give the book a feeling of closure, to reinforce the main themes, to resolve character business, or to wrap up subplots. This is where you show that the protagonist and his world have changed. This is where you show the protagonist embarking on a new and better life as a result of the experiences of the book. What kind of denouement you write will depend upon what kind of ending you seek, what kind of feeling you wish the reader to have as they turn the final page. If you’re after a happy ending, you show that, now
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novels described as being composed of hills and valleys, or to be less metaphoric, scenes and sequels. The scene (or hill) is when something happens that moves the story forward. The sequel (or valley) is when nothing in particular happens, at least nothing that advances the story. It simply stitches the two scenes on either side of it together.
The modern style is to eliminate the sequels and focus on the parts that move the story forward.
the best approach to a good scene is to leave out the beginning and the end (the parts readers can readily guess or that matter least) and jump from middle to middle. This makes a lot of sense to me. Too many starting writers give their books a leaden pace by writing a three-page setup for each scene before anything actually happens.
Get on with it already. Start the scene when something interesting occurs. Leave out the rest, or describe in it one sentence, or just let the reader guess
