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| Notre Dame Cathedral, Bayeux, France |
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| Documentation Center, Nuremberg, Germany |
Writing a story is like assembling a
building. The two structures pictured above are both made of stone, but they
look very different.* They also had different purposes. One was built to
worship God and the other was built to worship the Nazis. Similarly, writers can
use the same story elements to create vastly different tales.
But both buildings and stories must
have a structure if they are to succeed. Without it, buildings will crumble and
stories will lose their readers.
Here is Jon
Franklin’s explanation of structure. These quotes are from pages 92–93 and 99
of Writing for Story (Plume, 1994).
The most fundamental truth about the cosmos is that
big things are composed of little ones. Quarks combine to form intermediate
particles; intermediate particles fuse into protons, neutrons and electrons,
which become atoms, which snap together into molecules, which combine into
rocks and clouds and so on, and so on, and so on, until we have planets, stars,
nebulae, galaxies, galactic clusters, clusters of clusters, and ultimately the
universe.
This is not just a matter of physics. Stones and
bricks form buttresses and walls, which enclose rooms and chambers, and so on
unto Winchester Cathedral. Likewise atoms make molecules, which compose
organelles, which form cells, which become organs, which combine into men and
women, who organize themselves into societies. Everywhere you look big things
are constructed from littler ones, and those from littler ones yet.
The principle applies equally in what we call the
arts. Plays are composed of acts, which, in turn, are conglomerations of
scenes. Great symphonies are amalgams of movements, poems are composed of
stanzas, and stories are structures of . . . well, that’s what this chapter is
about.
That structure is pivotal to storycraft is obvious, or
at least it should be, but if you’ve been steeped in the mysteriousness of art
(as most of us have) it’s difficult to think about writing in those terms. They
seem too abstract and reductionistic to have any emotional relevance, too alien
to have any appeal. So there is a natural tendency to turn away.
Don’t. For it is here, in the coldly logical
prefrontal realm of the mind and not the heart, that the secrets of the masters
are kept. He who would comprehend stories, no less than he who would understand
universes or temples, must first grasp the nature of their component parts.
As we look closely at structures, whether they be
physical or artistic, natural or manmade, we soon notice something rather odd
and very important. The big things often don’t relate to one another the way
the littles ones do.
The forces that allow mortar to stick bricks together,
for instance, are different from those that keep arches and flying buttresses
stable; the laws of psychology that cement a family are not quite the same as
those that solidify nations.
* * *
A story is constructed in this fashion. Clusters of
simple images form focuses, which in turn are joined by simple transitions to
form larger focuses. Those larger focuses then combine to form still larger
focuses that are glued together with increasingly complex transitions that
guide the reader through changing times, moods, subjects, and characters.
Ultimately, the focuses combine to form several “major”
focuses that compose the principle structural subunits of stories . . .
Or, if you want a
shorter explanation, try this definition by James Scott Bell:
Simply
put, structure is what assembles the parts of a story in a way that makes them
accessible to readers. It is the orderly arrangement of story material for the
benefit of the audience. (Plot &
Structure, pg. 22, Writers Digest Books, 2004.)
You wouldn’t want
to live in a house without supports to hold it up. Readers don’t want stories
without structure, either.
So stay tune to
this month’s posts about structuring your story.
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* The pictures are © 2015 by
Kathryn Page Camp. Used by permission.
