What is the best way to figure out a final structure for your novel?
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To Answer This Request
The original request was how to figure out a final structure for a novel (which happened to be a fictionalized memoir--lots of content, no structure).
First of all, congratulate yourself that you were able to assemble the content! That's half the battle right there. More than half. Especially when it comes to memoir writing, it's nearly the whole shebang.
But you need a structure. Trianglicize it! (OK, i'm not sure if that's a word.)
A triangle is your basic plot structure. You start at the lower left corner for inciting action, and your action slowly rises in a sustainable, supported arc, until you reach the dramatic epiphany (the apex of the triangle) and your remaining action serves to tie up loose ends and essentially buffer the height of the climax.
Most novels have several different triangles, as different small issues and problems get resolved, but the main triangle is about one main conflict.
What is conflict? Conflict is the single, specific problem your character overcomes. This is essential to any book--fiction or non fiction.
How to find your conflict? Ask yourself what you're trying to express. Has the main issue of your (fictionalized) life been to accept your flawed body image? To get over lovers wounds of the past? To start a family? You need to find the struggle that makes the life of your character worth reading.
Finding that struggle is the most difficult part of writing a story, but once you find it, and can focus it down into one single sentence, ie, "The greatest challenge I've struggled to overcome was my addiction to alcohol", then you have your book--and it's quick to see how your experiences would fall in line to support that one, focused sentence. For example, you might start with the first time you tried alcohol, chronicle your addiction from there with the climax of finally being able to stop and the falling action of recovery.
Responding to and dealing with conflict is a basic, daily human need, and because of that, any story with compelling conflict will appeal to someone.
Write the Triangle, and you're write on track.
...as always, check out my blog.
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Comments
Thanks! Yeah, triangles and arcs are pretty much core philosophy for writers and readers (11th grade English, anyone?) but I'm always surprised by how much I need to remind myself of it!
As the falling action in modern novels becomes more and more brief, the triangle is becoming rather truncated and is starting to resemble an upside-down check mark. Have you read Andrew Vachss, The Getaway Man? The action is best described as a straight line, with the final sentence of the novel being the climactic moment, the solution to the mystery, and the emotional punch, all in one. It's awesome and one of the most solidly structured books I've ever read.
Or there's Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I swear, the book's brilliant. I think he wrote the book, then took the chapters, threw them all over the room, and ordered them in the manuscript in the sequence he picked them up. The book jumps back and forth in time with only a sentence or two to orient the reader, moves from character to character, and worst yet, the first sentence of the book tells you what's going to happen. But it's so brilliant and so compelling that you just don't care.
Happy words to you.
Interesting reads, I haven't heard of either of those, but the Vachss sounds particularly interesting--I love the idea of taking any and all rules of writing and breaking them!
It's an awesome read, ACG. It's deep characterization, well plotted, and with a punch line in that last sentence that can't be beat.
Shadesbreath says:
13 months ago
Good advice. I like the triangle thing. Reminds me of Dara Marks' arc system for writing screen plays.