Adding Structure To A Story

Apparently I’m a grandmother now. But wait, some of you might be thinking, she only has two teenagers. That’s right, I do. The Girl is 17, The Boy is 15. And the cat is spayed, if you’re thinking that’s the problem. So the culprit? I should blame Hubby.

The Girl has been having panic attacks, and Jingles hasn’t been doing her part to calm her down and cheer her up. Among other things, a ‘comfort animal’ was discussed. In short, Hubby caved to The Girl wanting her own cat. Kitten. Even though she goes to college next fall. Maybe her own cat means she’ll stay closer to home. Or at home. Hmm.

As I mentioned, we have a cat. Jingles has reigned dominant in the house since she was tiny. With a couple of blips – when we tried introducing an adult Siamese that started a minor war, and a near constant irritation with the stray our cul-de-sac feeds – she hasn’t had to share anything. Now we bring home a kitten. We know better than to try to introduce an adult cat, Jingles has been clear she won’t share the throne. A kitten, however, isn’t a threat to her. She’s older, bigger, and can train up the new addition with the understanding she’s in charge. (Delicately reach out a paw, and whap!)

We introduced She-Who-Has-Not-Been-Named to Jingles. The kitten, safely snuggled in The Girl’s arms, failed to react. Jingles, after a vigorous petting and lovey session and still in my arms riding her “I’m a deity” high, didn’t initially respond either. I continued petting, waiting for Jingles to realize what she was seeing. She tentatively reached out to sniff the object in The Girl’s arms (no doubt hoping it’s a stuffed animal and this is all a joke). Sniff, ears back, hiss.

That hiss sounded like a King Cobra being shot with a squirt gun at short range.

Kitten still failed to register the situation.

We’re keeping them apart for now, only bringing them together for supervised meetings. Jingles tends to watch the intruder with wide eyes and tense muscles. Sort of like when she’s watching prey she know she can’t catch, like a hummingbird. Maybe The Girl should name the cat ‘Hummingbird.’

Anyway, that’s not what I promised for this week’s blog. Let’s talking about plot structure. I mean physical plot structure, not tropes/plot types.  

The idea behind the three act structure is to plan your novel like the classic play in three acts (Beginning, Middle, End). Makes sense, right? Actually it works well for a lot of books and I think it’s good because it sets basic length guidelines for how to proportion your novel.

Act 1 is pretty straightforward: you introduce the characters, setting, conflict, and stakes. This starts at the beginning of the book (obviously) and ends when your main character passes the point of no return. This can be an action or the point where your character accepts they have to win to be happy or have a normal life, whatever your stakes are. This is about the first 20% of the book or less. This is a hint you do not need to accomplish all of this in the first scene/chapter/page.

Act 2 is the battle, literal or figurative. It’s a fight to the death although death might not be physical. It can be psychological or death of an idea – it’s a vague sort of thing. The battle could be a journey toward a goal, it doesn’t have to be a physical thing, but in that journey you’re building suspense and interest. This act ends with another crisis, discovery, some sort of game changer/surprise. This may vary in length.

Act 3 is the confrontation/battle, and resolution. Movies frequently balance this to be about as long as Act 1, with the bulk of the story sandwiched in the middle. The climax isn’t the end, there’s loose ends to tie up. Usually. This isn’t the time to introduce a new complication, only expose and quickly resolve things that were hinted at before (if you must do that sort of thing). 

Now keep in mind this is one structure guideline, there are others. There are lists, like the seven or eight point structures where you have a sort of checklist (Write A then B then C sort of thing), or variants of the three act structure where act one and three comprise a quarter each of the novel and act two is half the book or the snowflake method that takes the simple three act concept and builds on it to create a sort of ‘how to write a novel’ example. There are suggested ‘formulas’ for some genres, and if you want to submit to a publisher for a specific line, you may need to follow their formula to be considered. The formula series that come to mind for me are the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries and some romance lines.

Formulas can be rigid and may or may not be easy for all writers to adhere to. Depending on your genre, there are probably a hundred tips out there on when in your book something should happen or how you should structure this or that.

The most important thing to remember is if you spend all your time planning and worrying about balance, you won’t get anything written. That’s a bigger fail that getting your proportions off or putting a key scene too far forward or back. These things can usually be fixed in revisions. Remember structure is all about balance, and is only a set of guidelines to make the book feel more satisfying for the reader. Writing for your own sake is sometimes enough. If you plan to publish your work, you need to consider structure because you want readers to have a satisfying experience.

Keeping that in mind, there is more to giving a satisfactory experience for your readers than the structure of your book. Your plot could be perfectly balanced, but still be too long, have underdeveloped characters, plot holes, and such.

How do you know what structure to use? I recommend writing and revising a book first. Then see what that work seems to follow so you’re choosing one that already fits your writing style. At least in part. If you want to choose a structure before writing, possibly to assist in plotting your book, I suggest considering your favorite books or something similar to what you want to write. Outline a basic plot of the book, where the plot points fall relative to the book’s length, and compare to some structures to find what may work for you.

Whichever method you choose, having a guide will help make you a stronger writer in the end and hopefully eliminate a messy story filled with plot holes or bunnies.

The Cat Is A B****

I’m going to put my rant about our family vacation on hold to once again declare our cat is a brat. More than that really, but it’s technically inaccurate to say a cat is a bitch, although the common usage definition of the term would certainly apply to her. Why am I upset with dear sweetums? You know I’m going to tell you.

Let me remind you of her traditional sleeping habits: Jingles comes in every third day or so and sleeps with The Girl or me now. It’s summer and The Boy is up all night playing video games and that disturbs her. She passes through his room to let him know he’s on her mind, but otherwise leaves him to it. Our winter comforter is folded up on my feet – a nice fluffy pile of down for her, a giant kitty-bed. She likes to sleep on feet anyway, so this arrangement suits her nicely. Jingles even likes this better than the basket in my window. The Girl is slightly jealous Jingles has been choosing her new kitty-bed on my feet instead of her lately, but she’s using her down comforter so it’s hard to argue the cat’s logic in choosing my feet over hers.

Then things changed for no reason. One morning Jingles walked up me like usual, except instead of standing on my shoulder to wake me and hint she was ready for me to trudge bleary-eyed downstairs to let her out at 6 am (which never happens, I don’t know why she keeps trying) she climbed onto my body pillow and curled up in my arms. She snuggled with me. I had this little warm pile of black fur purring by my chest, her nose tucked into the crook of my arm, and she fell back asleep like that. It was adorable. I went back to sleep and when she woke me again an hour and a half later asking to go out, I crawled out of bed, followed her furry butt down the stairs, and let her out simply to reward her.

A few days later, she came back in for a night at home and settled on my feet as usual. Then about 2 am, she got up and decided to come snuggle in my arms again. Wild. We slept like that the rest of the night, me holding my sweet little cat and her using my arm as a pillow. I was stiff and sore in the morning from not moving so I wouldn’t disturb her. (I remember that from when the kids were tiny and crawled into bed with us.)

Oddly, Jingles didn’t pester me to go outside. She let me sleep in, got herself up and went to The Girl’s room. The cat conked out with Simon Octavius, her stuffed octopus. (Until she noticed one of his tentacles was on her stomach, then she freaked out, batting it away. After that unpleasant startle was handled, she snuggled in closer between the tentacles and went back to sleep, go figure.)

Jingles stayed in all day. Willingly. She was lovey and snuggly with everyone. Except The Boy, he was out cold after being online all night but The Girl was thrilled with the attention Jingles was dishing out. I was seriously starting to worry what was up. The first thing that crossed my mind was that Jingles was sick. She didn’t act sick and was eating fine. Light rain doesn’t keep her inside, and it was nice out – not even as hot as it had been the week before, so it wasn’t the weather. Then I thought maybe we had an earthquake coming. They say animals sense those things and maybe she wanted to be with her family when the big one hit. That made me mildly paranoid the rest of the day, but nothing happened.

Last night, she lay in her spot by my feet like usual as I climbed into bed. I fell asleep. She walked up me, waking me, then stopped – sitting on my hip. I made a little room for her next to me so she could come snuggle. The little brat turned and walked back to her bed on my feet. Fine. She sat there for a moment. I moved my feet apart, knowing she prefers to be between my feet to just snuggling up to one. Why choose if you can have both? She took her place, assumed the kitty-loaf position, then got up and left the room. WTF? I seriously got snubbed by the cat?

Hubby dutifully went to retrieve the reprobate and she wasn’t getting a drink or eating or using the litter box. She wasn’t curled up on The Girl’s toes or on her spot downstairs (where it is admittedly cooler). She was sitting outside The Boy’s closed bedroom door. As if she really wanted to be in his stuffy room (it’s hot in there, he has a computer, extra monitor, and TV on almost all the time and never leaves his door open for circulation. Plus he only takes his garbage out once a week so it smells like stale popcorn.) All he’s going to do is ignore her in favor of insulting and making witty comments to his friends in the form of crude, incomplete sentences. I’m serious, I do not speak 15-year-old boy and I don’t understand why any of his friends put up with this kid, but I’ve met them and they all love him. That’s a rant for another time.

Hubby returned Jingles to me. I want her, The Boy doesn’t. She left again in favor of sitting outside his bedroom door. Whatever, the cat misses The Boy, but The Boy doesn’t miss her. Maybe. The alternative idea is that she knows he sneaks out of his room in the middle of the night, leaves all the lights off, and quietly slips downstairs to obtain more soda and chips to fuel is gaming marathon. Now, a teenage boy trying to be sneaky, a black cat sitting in a dark hall that previously mentioned teenage boy is having to navigate by memory … perhaps she’s trying to kill him. Jingles is tired of being ignored by her boy and had the devious idea to trip him and make him break his neck. His room is too far from the stairs for it to be a serious risk, so Hubby and I left her to it. Nothing happened last night, and Jingles went out this morning. We’ll have to see if she’s still in a snit in a few days when she comes home.