Slowly, ever so slowly, I’ve been working on a story structure guide for my personal use.
Thanks goes to novel editor Ellen Brock for the suggestion.
She recommends that Methodological Pantsers (a description that describes me to a “T”) put together their own structure guide taking a “mix and match” approach for the different naming conventions of structure.
This way, when we’re looking at what we’ve written to see how it stacks up to standard story structure (so that the pacing is good, we don’t have huge plot holes, or ramble off on a tangent, etc.) using terminology that we immediately understand.
Story structure can be very confusing for some of us, especially when people use different terminology for the same thing (inciting incident I’m looking at you…) so having a guide can be tremendously helpful…at least I think it will be for me once I get it done.
Here’s where Ellen gives some great advice to other writers like me. Below the video I’ve distilled the points down if you’d prefer to read. I highly recommend you check out all of her videos – she does a great job on story structure too that really has helped me a lot!
- Treat your process as fluid and flexible
- Refine your idea before writing the first draft
- Plot in advance only if it helps you
- Expect to run out of steam in the first draft
- Start editing as soon as you are ready
- Avoid using wordcount as a measure of success
- Don’t wait for inspiration
- Try rigid story structure systems
- 27 chapter method
- Save the cat/Save the cat writes a novel
- Larry Brooks Story Engineering
- Make your own structural guide, use your own terminology
- Outline as you write (or at least before you edit)
- Make edits in the outline first
- Don’t be afraid to throw things away
- Rate your scenes – scene structure, integration into the plot
- Leave beta readers to the very end
- Doing something (anything) is better than getting stuck
- Embrace the chaos
Number 16 isn’t as easy as you might think…because I also tend to be a perfectionist/procrastinator. One thing that helped me immensely was the idea of doing a quick “telling” version of the story.
This was a very basic, bare bones list of ideas/scenes that really helped me visualize where I think this story is going.
I visualize it as taking a stick of dynamite to the portion of the cave that was blocked. It gave me just enough to move ahead on the story. 🙂
