Story Structure | The Four Families of Story Structure Take a moment to consider all the different kinds of structural things you know ought to be in stories. For example: a protagonist, some sort of goal, a personal issue that needs to be resolved and perhaps even the type of story, such as a chase […]

Story Structure | How Did Structure End Up In Stories? In previous installments of this series, we’ve looked into where story structure came from and what it really represents.  In this segment we’ll explore how structure ended up in stories in the first place. To begin, consider an old Gary Larson cartoon that showed open […]

Story Structure – Does Story Structure Exist? | Part of an ongoing series Welcome to my new series that explores the elements of story structure and describes how they work together to form a framework for your story. Here in Part 1 we begin with a fundamental question: Does Story Structure Exist? It might seem […]

The Four Stages of Writing a Novel Writers often begin the story development process by thinking about what their story needs: a main character/protagonist/hero, a solid theme, a riveting plot and, of course, to meet all the touch points of their genre. Because this is just the beginning of the process, they usually don’t have […]

The Antagonist and the Influence Character do two different things, but both of those jobs can be given to the same person in your story. The Antagonist fights against the Protagonist over the goal; The Influence Character fights against the Main Character’s morals or philosophy. When the Antagonist and Influence Character jobs are done by […]

Every writer knows a story needs a protagonist and an antagonist who battle over the goal, but equally important are the main and influence characters who battle over the message. Typically, writers recognize that their plot would have no tension if they only had a protagonist trying achieve something.  Without an antagonist working against the […]