: Re: Story Structure I gained a lot of momentum from the answers to my first question. I've read a couple of writing books and read a lot of articles online. Although I'm still quite 'green',

@Cugini967

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It's intuitive, but also logical. No story lies neatly on a scaffold, but if you follow logic, and intuition, you will find that the scaffold emerges beneath the story as you put it together.

Your story will typically be driven by character and plot. There are exceptions to this. Dan Brown's books are driven by the (unfulfilled) promise of secret knowledge for example, but character and plot will do it in most cases.

The structure of your story has to serve the purpose of building your character, and progressing your plot. Insufficient plot makes us disengage from the character because their circumstances are boring. Insufficient character and the plot will have no impact because we don't care about how the events impact on our people.

The story becomes rather like a complex tamagotchi. We have to balance the different variables and advance our characters and plot in a way that makes sense.

At each and point in the story, you need to be thinking things like:

Does the reader know the character enough to care that she just died - No? Build the character before the death to help the reader bond.
Is the reader invested enough in the plot to care about the character building you are trying to get over? No? Move the backstory further downstream. Perhaps take the story out of order.
Is the reader in flow? Yes? Don't mix the story up at this point with cuts to other scenes, keep the momentum. No? Cut to another scene. Make sure you flag the cut somehow.
Have we just sat through a lot of fast paced action? Yes? Moderate the pace a little with some emotional depth.

No story fits into a box, each one is unique, but if, at every point, you think critically about all the different 'pulls' on your plot at that moment, you will naturally find a structure emerges that creates emotional depth, reader engagement and modulated pace.

This is true whether you are plotting or pantsing.

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