There are thousands, maybe millions of ways an author can approach story structure. However, a good approach to story structure should possess certain features including:
1. It should simultaneously address all aspects of a story including the plot, the characters, and the theme.
2. It should have specific answers to problems that an author can use at any stage of the story.
3. It should support an author’s creativity and originality and allow him/her to explore virtually limitless story structures.
4. It should make the writing process simpler.
The traditional approach
When writing a story, every author needs a story that can keep readers engaged and have a satisfactory conclusion. An author should plan how and why his characters will develop, therefore creating the emotional roller-coaster that readers want to experience. An author should also decide on a theme for his novel and finally he should make sure that all the elements fit together. Authors need story structures that guide them through times that they might be feeling lost. Traditional story theories make it easy for authors to write stories, but unfortunately they have several limitations.
One of the limitations of traditional story theories is that they are too general. Traditionally, a story should have a beginning, middle, and end. The various elements of a plot should be linked by simple cause and effect. The stories should also be about a protagonist’s change of fortune.
In newer forms of this theory, there is an inciting incident that kicks off the plot. Then the tension is heightened by some additional events. Afterwards is the climax where the protagonist’s fortune changes. The next thing is the falling action which illustrates consequences of the climax. The last part is the resolution or catastrophe which marks the end of the novel.
The biggest downfall of this theory is that it assumes a novel to be a single, often linear series of events. However, novels are complex creations and they can have several stories progressing at the same time.
Formulaic plots
People who have studied great stories classify them based on their common elements. For instance, they categorize stories based on their genres. People write stories based on formulaic plots for varied reasons. For instance, a person may choose to write a fiction novel because books in that genre sell better. Although there is no problem about writing stories based on time-tested formulas, the books that are most memorable tend to break new ground. They don’t conform to any pattern hence given formulae have limited degrees of usefulness.
Archetypal stories
These stories have deeper meanings in their plots that cut across genres and other features used to categorize novels. These types of stories are frequently discussed in seminars and you might find people discussing several dozen archetypal plots at seminars.
Final words
Any author should compare his stories to a journey through a jungle. Readers want the stories to have a virtually infinite number of paths to a satisfactory conclusion. Taking readers’ perspective into consideration, wouldn’t it be better for an author to write the story that nobody else has ever had a whiff of before? If all the millions of stories ever told were limited to only a few story structures, people would frequently feel that they have read the same story elsewhere. It would also deal a great blow to the writing profession.
