A major problem with most stories is that writers want to plot their story without having an understanding of narrative structure.
From origin stories to folktales to supernatural mythology, well-told narratives have been passed down across cultures and generations. In today’s world, we’re most familiar with storytelling in one of four forms: spoken stories, novels (or short stories), live theatre, and filmed entertainment. In all forms of media, the stories that stand the test of time are those with strong, compelling narrative structure.
Narrative structure—which is also known as story structure, storyline, or plotline—is the organizational framework of a story. Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. When all three of these story sections are individually compelling yet also work well in concert with each other, narratives can be smooth and compelling.
Over time, novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters have developed specific ways to frame a narrative. These narrative techniques vary in how they present a sequence of events, but each framework has proven to be a useful tool for writers who employ it.
A story without structure has no storyline; It wanders around, searching for itself, is dull. It does not work. It has no direction, no line of development.
An unstructured story is chaotic. The structure is discipline, it is the starting point in the process of writing; without structure, you have no story, and without a story, you have no screenplay/novel / stage play / TV series.
Structure is a context; it “holds” the bits and pieces that tell your story in place.
- Content is your story, the what, context holds the story together, the Plot, or line of dramatic action. It’s how what happens.
- Context is a space that holds things inside, it holds your story in place whether told in a linear or nonlinear way.
Structure is the foundation of storytelling, and although many have claimed to break it, it always exists in the background of every strong narrative.
Structure is the force that holds everything together: All the action, characters, plot, incidents, episodes, events, and the thematic purpose that make up your story. It is a tool that lets you shape and form your story with maximum dramatic value.
- It is where the right-brain subconscious and unconscious writing and thinking are whipped into order by the rigid, uncompromising left-brain consciousness and logic.
- This is where idealism and realism clash head-on
- Where the writer’s instinctive and rebellious creative nature / creative self / rational self, is tamed and ordered so that chaos becomes organised to unify the story and present the best of both possible worlds; one where imaginative and unique scenarios burst to life in a well-thought-out master plan, where the writer is master and slave to the story.
- Structure tames the creative spirit, but also allows it to reign free within its logical limitations; it is not a prison but a playground where stories run wild.
True story structure is organic, not arbitrary or manufactured; it is the natural form a story wants to take; the origin of that natural form evolves from a basic law of nature that says:
- THINGS CHANGE.
- The result of change is movement …
- The result of movement is progress …
- The result of progress is a new order …
- The result of a new order is new life …
Figuring out the structure of your story can be one of the trickiest and most time-consuming aspects of the writing process.
You have to:
- Think about the character arc before determining structure
- Select a narrative point of view
- Familiarize yourself with the three-act structure
- Map out what you want your readers and audience to know about your characters, and then write a Story Outline
