Story Charts About

Novel Structure

The basics of story structure are taught from the opinions of many. Aristotle gave us the, widely accepted, three act play form and structure that most of us use in plays and screenplays today, Vogler broke down the structure and flow of the major hero stories from history to give us his interpretation of perfect character growth and heroic timeline, and there have been many writers since to throw in their opinions. The basic story line graph ( shown in the first black reference line above) is tried and true and used most often. Beginning, conflict 1, conflict 2, climax (conflict 3), resolution and end. What I've done here is place Vogler's two, Aristotle's and the widely accepted storyline structure and put them all on the same page, as to show visual correlations in the three. As you can see, all of the main points of interest in the story intersect at recogniseable points on the chart. I've gone further by adding my preferred word count and page notes in the second black reference line. If you apply the page count to the timeline, you can get a good idea of where to put major scenes and points of interest in your story by chapter and page number by doing the math. This is, of course, only a basic starting point for reference when writing a novel. After a writer "plugs in" the major aspects of his/her rough skeleton of a story in the appropriate intersecting points, he or she can then begin to fill in the spaces between these points with more creative writings, until the first draft is complete. Go back at this point and move things around as you feel fit and give your story a "good feeling of flow." Look for flaws and holes in your story and give it a good polish before sending it for it's first edit. I hope this will help anyone who may be feeling like they don't know where to start or how to structure their first novel. Have fun and good luck. ~ B Garrett.