The Shape of the Story
The Shape of the Story
A Simple, Effective Way to Structure Novels and Stories
Welcome to The Caffeinated Writer, where you will find articles on writing, publishing, and connecting with readers. This post is excerpted from my Flash Fiction Intensive.
I’ve been thinking a lot about structure lately, as I complete the revision on one novel and write the end of another. Although Frederick Barthelme wisely advised writers to “organize the story’s structure around the simplest available strategy,” it can take some time to figure out what that strategy is for any given work of fiction.
Before we get into a particularly simple structure that works (almost) every time, let’s differentiate between plot and structure.
Structure is the general shape that a story takes, and the way in which the narrative travels through these stages. There are many elements at work within structure—plot, character, setting, dialogue, description, point of view, and voice. You will interweave these elements throughout your story. Each will have an effect on the others.
Plot is, simply stated, what happens—the sequence of events. Think of structure as a guideline, a gift passed down to you by thousands of successful writers before you. Structure makes the process of writing easier, because it gives you a foundation on which to allow your own particular story to develop and unfold. The plot—the sequence of events of this particular story—is your own.
Structure is about giving your story or novel a meaningful shape.
Structure is also about presenting your characters and conflicts at the best time in the narrative, and laying out their struggles in a way that allows the reader to witness the ways in which they change or fail to change. In this post, we’ll look at a structure that works well with any short story or flash fiction.
ABCDE
A simple way to think about structure is ABCDE. I learned this more than twenty years ago when I was teaching for Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York City, and it has served me well ever since—both as a writer and as a teacher.
If you're trying to figure out how to put a story together, use this guideline:
Action (Inciting event)
Background (How did we get here?)
Conflict (Character + Desire)
Development (Rising Action)
End (Crisis, Climax, and Consequences)
ACTION
The short story "Dog Years" by Melissa Yancy (read an excerpt on Amazon) opens with the Berger family "in a big-box store, one they have drive several miles out of their West LA neighborhood to find..." They are putting things in their cart, including cereal boxes, arguing over the Cheerios. It's a simple action, not particularly dramatic on its face. A simple conflict. What matters is that something is happening, however mundane. An inciting action can simply be the stuff of everyday life, as long as something is happening.
But what of the trouble? It comes like a punch to the gut a few paragraphs in. Our eyes are on Jeanette, but Jeanette's eyes are on her nine-year old son Zach.
But at times like this, she reminds herself, Zach will have a short life, and you are going to deny him things like Peanut Butter Cheerios?
And there we have it: the trouble.
Your story may begin in a crowded diner in midtown Manhattan, a deserted parking lot in Texas during a thunderstorm, a blizzard in Montana, the Paris metro. Wherever your beginning is physically, there is only one place for it to be dramatically. It must be in trouble.
Begin with a situation of instability that is demonstrated through ACTION, an inciting incident that sets off the events of your story. This is really where storytelling begins.
If I were to tell the story of my life in chronological order, I would have to begin with the hospital room in Demopolis, Alabama, where I was born. But that hospital room lacks drama; a start-to-finish narrative of a life is rarely interesting. I would need to begin with a point of action, perhaps a harrowing night ride by bus through Southern China, or the theft of my passport in Slovenia's Julian Alps: trouble. On the other hand, I have a friend who was born in the back seat of a Volkswagen Bug on a rainy night in Peru. Her first moment of life contained all the drama and action necessary to begin a story. The story of her birth is a story worth telling, while the story of my birth is a bit on the dull side.
Action is a scene, containing a beginning, middle, and end.
It contains an initial action and the promise of more to come, as well as the hint of a past story that will later come to light.
The first action of your novel or story is the inciting action.
In Part 2, we’ll look at B,C,D, and E.
A writing suggestion: Make a list of five potential inciting actions for your story. Choose one, and see where it takes you.
Continue to The Shape of the Story, Part 2.
This lesson is adapted from my on-demand course, Flash Fiction Intensive, in which participants write 12 flash fictions in 4 weeks.
Scroll down for coffee, movie, and books of the week.
My favorite coffee this week: a nitro cold brew, with cold foam, from Cafe Luxxe in Malibu.
Two books I loved this week: Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now, by Eleanor Coppola (memoir), and My Murder, by Katie Williams (fiction)
What I watched this week: We caught a sneak preview of The Bikeriders at Screen Unseen in Santa Monica. I loved the indie spirit and gorgeous sound of this Jeff Nichols film, starring Tom Hardy as the head of midwestern motorcycle club The Vandals. Although we’re talking structure this week, the film—which is adapted from the 1967 photo book The Bikeriders by Danny Lyon—has a kind of loose formlessness that somehow works. Austin Butler is the face of the movie, but Hardy is its heart and soul. You can read an interview with Director Jeff Nichols over at NoFilmSchool—although Jeff Nichols actually did attend film school at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
And, just for fun…a snapshot of where I did my “writing thinking” this week:
What are you reading, writing, watching, and thinking about these days?
Thanks so much for your reply, particularly your suggestion of writing out a story in whatever way it presents itself. And sometimes that might be thinking of an A or inciting action or trying to. If you're stumped you can read the opening of a favorite author’s novel that has solid inciting action. Lee Child always has incredibly excellent A's or inciting action in his Jack Reacher novels. It can be some tiny irregularity that the protagonist notices while riding on a bus. Something you read that gives you more space to look for your A. There is also the beginning of "Dream of the Blue Room". There is an image, a dream that is like a madeleine dropped into a cup of tea that blossoms into the most amazing story. (If you could rebrand that book with a new cover thought up by a genius marketing guru friend it might experience a brand new publishing life as an Asian and sisterhood themed novel). Not only is Dream's opening great, it has a unique structure that toggles between American southern and Asian culture. So ABCDE is a great tool and reading how excellent successful writers use A and BCDE can also help.
Sometimes it can difficult writing a story from start to finish correctly using ABCDE. Some of the best writers are able to do that easily. But if it seems too difficult in the beginning, if you already have the vague idea of a complete story in your head, you can always write it out as best you can and then go back over it with ABCDE in mind. Some might say that's too much toil and trouble that might not lead to a desirable outcome. True. Each letter used one at a time is probably less difficult, more practical and easier on the mind. But it is great that any letter can be used at any time to sort out any part of your story either before or after it is written.