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Today’s question comes from this tweet:
Structure as offense and characterization as defense, or the other way around. Is this something you think about? Do you have other metaphors when you think about your stories and how they work?
Being a person who is largely indifferent to teams sports (I prefer individual sports so maybe there is an equivalent analogy works there?)
I’m thinking about the relationship between dialogue and structure as presented in the prompt (or characterization and structure according to the tweet). Reflecting on the analogy above, I’m not sure that this is the way I would convey the relationship between all the different parts of a story. I see structure as the skeleton of a story made manifest through its plot. The different essential elements are like organs necessary to make the story work. So story elements like characterization, dialogue, conflict, theme – these are essentially attached to the skeleton to elevate a story from mere abstraction to something that lives and breathes, conveying emotions and themes.
Story structure is what has come down to us after thousands of years of oral and written storytelling. The hero’s journey and, according to Gail Carriger, also the heroine’s journey, are examples of Western story structures that people instinctively recognize. That doesn’t mean it is the only one, but the hero’s journey specifically comes down to us from a long Western tradition of storytelling.
That’s why people who read a lot are able to intuit the structures and make successful predictions about the stories they read. As writers, being mindful of those structures will help us better internalize them to such a degree, they come naturally to us. With that fundamental, almost primitive knowledge in place, we can proceed to write stories that are at once recognizable and surprising for our readers.
Structure is the scaffold of storytelling.
About the 100 Days of Writing Challenge
For more about the #100daysofwriting challenge, check out https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/100daysofwriting to see all the posts for each day. Thanks to https://the-wip-project.tumblr.com for organizing this fascinating challenge!
If you get stumped on what to write, check the https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/100daysofquestions for prompts to help you write, the way I did today.