Book: Structuring Your Novel

Though it seems a little late to be learning about novel structure, an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal convinced me that it was better late than never. Today I finished K.M. Weiland’s guide to writing called Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story. In summary, if you’re looking for helpful information about proper story structure, this is a good place start. Weiland explains well the need for purpose, conflict, and character-driven action, from the high-level story down to the sentence level. There’s a lot to learn here.

This is immediately applicable to my first novel. While I’ve somewhat naturally discovered the value in each scene needing to contribute to the overall story and in a particular way, understanding it formally is useful. I’m nearly certain that, when my current editing effort reaches act two in my novel, thinking in Weiland’s terms will propel me to revise two or three scenes significantly. Those are the places in the book where the sense of urgency falters, or the story doesn’t feel very tight. Maybe the conflict needs to be more explicit there? Maybe there needs to be MORE conflict? I should know soon enough.

But the discussion of formal structure also went slightly awry in Structuring Your Novel. As you move from high-level structure to low-level details, the expectations become less rigid and less universally true. Exceptions dominate the rules. I wish the author had done less to try to make the art seem like science, accepting that there are healthy practices when dealing with scene-sequel structure (particularly sequel), for example, but those practices are not appropriately presented as rules. As a result, I found myself skimming a fair amount in the last third of this book.

Don’t let that last paragraph dissuade you. If you’re like me and looking for some hints to make your first (or fifth) novel a little better, Structuring Your Novel is a good place to start.