Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
A strong structure invites the reader into your book. Your table of contents is a big selling point–not only for readers, but even before you reach that stage, for agents and editors too.
How do you go about deciding on your manuscript’s structure?
Your manuscript’s structure should be unique.
One of the wonderful aspects about bone structure is that while we each have a basic face “shape,” we each also have a unique look. So don’t be afraid to break out of the standard with your book’s structure. Do something a little different. But not so clever that it calls too much attention to itself. That would be like having so much plastic surgery that you looked, well, plastic.
Your manuscript’s structure should be simple.
A simple structure often works best. 
For example, He’s Just Not That Into You starts most of its chapters reusing the title: “He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Asking You Out,” “He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Calling,” etc. It reiterates the book’s theme yet shows how that theme is explored in each chapter.
For those women involved with a man who isn’t that into them, the chapter titles will woo potential readers as each woman realizes, “Uh, I think too many of these chapter titles apply to my relationship.”
The memoir, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, has a simple but very different structure. Each chapter title is one word, but it has a subtitle. So you find chapter titles such as: “Beginnings: God on a Dirt Road Walking Toward Me,” “Problems: What I Learned on Television,” “Magic: The Problem with Romeo.”
While I don’t know exactly what each chapter will hold, these titles, as befits a memoir, are more opaque than a standard nonfiction book. But they reflect a thoughtful approach to the book’s structure and create curiosity. The structure fits our expectations of a memoir yet it also entices us into this memoir.
Your manuscript’s structure shouldn’t overdo a good thing.
A current trend in novel writing is to create a fractured structure, which could well prove to be a two-edged sword for the writer. The manuscript’s structure might cut back and forth between a contemporary story and a historical story. (Sarah’s Key is a popular example, as it moves back and form from WWII to a contemporary story.) Or a novelist may choose to cut back and forth in a character’s life from present to the past.
It may be literary, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Emma Donoghue (author of Room) does just that with her historical novel, Frog Music.
Critics waxed rhapsodic when the book released, pasted stars in front of their reviews. Here’s one example:
“[An] ebullient mystery….. Donoghue cross-cuts between Blanche’s desperate present-time search and scenes from her Technicolor past with showstopping aplomb…. It’s all great fun, and so richly atmospheric…. Astonishing details are scattered like party nuts…. Donoghue also provides riotous musical accompaniment for her narrative…. Call it a mind-bendingly original crime novel, or a dazzling historical mystery, but in the end, this is really a book about love–a mother’s love for a strange child, for an exotic friend and finally, for herself.”―Caroline Leavitt, San Francisco Chronicle
Critics see books differently sometimes.
Other reviewers proclaimed themselves in love with the main characters and assured us readers that we would want to return to the book time and again–and that it wouldn’t soon leave us.
I found that latter thought so true, for the book was jarringly amoral and explicit about prostitution, sexual partners, and the indifference of a dirty, raucous, smallpox-laden San Francisco in 1876.
Structural oh-oh.
Even worse, the structure was utterly incomprehensible to me, as the reader was asked to move from the present to the past with nary a clue to solve the mystery of which paragraphs were contemporaneous and which were the character’s past. The seemingly impulsive moves could happen multiple times in a chapter. And, considering that the story took place over a three-day span, the reader was left dizzy by the amount of time and space the novel actually covered.
Figuring out how the plot was moving forward was a challenge, to say the least. I found myself agreeing with an Amazon commenter who wrote: “The use of many, many flashbacks to build suspense in this story seemed contrived, as if Donoghue wrote a linear story and then cut it apart and rearranged the pieces.” Indeed, I can’t imagine how else she could have constructed such a labyrinth without writing it just as the commenter suggests.
Readers aren’t supposed to sweat over figuring out the structure.
I say all this so you’ll see what I mean about overusing a structural device. The book was not a pleasure to read; it made the reader work hard not only to understand whodunit, but also why the author chose a stream of consciousness approach rather than lay out any landmarks for the reader.
Structure can be elegant and make sense to the reader. Or it can overwhelm all other aspects of the manuscript, which results, in my opinion, in artifice.
What are you reading now? Did the table of contents or structure invite you in, or did you enter into the book’s world for another reason?
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Interesting post. I don’t really mind the juxtaposition of past and present, as long as it’s done in a smooth and logical way. Nevil SHute’s “In The Wet” is a superb example (though to be accurate he juxtaposes present and future…did I pique your interest?)
* At the moment I’m reading Kevin WIlson’s “Bomber Boys”, the first book in his triptych covering the Royal Air Force’s bombing campaign against Germany year-by-year through 1943, 1944, and 1945.
* He’s organized the book by seasons, going through the calendar year, because it rather neatly fits in with the story and with some of the strategic decisions that were taken (which were, to some degree, influenced by seasonal climate). So there are five parts…winter, spring, summer, autumn, winter.
* The chapter titles are alliterative…”Ruining the Ruhr” and “The Perils of Peenemunde”, for instance. I’m not sure that’s effective; it’s a bit precious for me.
* I wasn’t drawn to the book (or series) by its structure; I wanted to learn more about the lives and hopes of the young men who entered a service in which, out of 125,000 who flew against the Nazi Reich, 55,000 died.
Andrew, I don’t mind a book with split time periods. As a matter of fact, Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life unfurls a complex structure in which the main character has the chance to live out different versions of what happens in her life, starting out with her decision to kill Hitler before he rises to power. It was a fascinating construct.
Frog Music, on the other hand, struck me as artifice rather than art.
I like the structure of the season in Bomber Boys, but I would agree with you that alliteration for each chapter title can end up with forced word choices. Nor does it seem apropos to the subject.
I must be one of the most boring writers because I always think of moving chronologically through a story. Part of that might be because I write mostly for young children.
Just finished The Ghostwriters by Mickey J. Corrigan. Definitely not my usual read based upon my dislike for toxic relationships, self-destructive people, and cuss words. One thing I felt the author did well, though, is use a dream to create a different reality for the main character.
I’ve actually considered taking a Christian historical I’ve been working on and turning it into something that travels between past and present. Maybe a young girl finds the diary of an ancestor that helps the girl uncover a family secret.
See, Cheryl, if you give it some thought, at times a different structure might occur to you. 🙂
The first few drafts I wrote for “Emerald Isle” told the story of the protagonist’s past doomed romance in parallel with his meeting and getting to know a woman who resembles his dead fiance, in a series of flashbacks. The beta readers liked it, but it was pointed out to me by an industry professional that telling the story in a series of interleaving vignettes was constraining to the character arcs…and that was true, though it took several more rewrites to see it.
* The flashback was coalesced into one ‘story’, told by the protagonist, later in the book, and I’m happy with the result.
Andrew, thankfully the industry professional guided you away from your initial idea. Different time periods in your character’s life are hard to portray by slicing and dicing. Let alone constructing the character’s arc.
I so appreciate your post, Janet. I tend to be a linear writer. My stories tend to be all in the present, but the idea of a dual time frame story intrigues me. 🙂
*Right now, I’m reading way outside my normal “box.” My son is doing a report on an aspect of the Vietnam War, and one of the books he borrowed from the library intrigued me. It’s Last Stand at Khe Sanh, by Gregg Jones. I’m only about a quarter into it, but it’s drawn me in. The chapters have titles that make me wonder how it will be explained through the chapter, if that makes sense.
*Because it details this key battle in the war, it’s fast-paced, and the scenes are short. I sometimes have trouble keeping up with all the people in the scenes, but the overall structure makes sense, given the topic and the goal of the author to share what happened through the eyes of those who were there.
*As a writer, I couldn’t write a story in this way. As a reader, this nonfiction book keeps me riveted. So the structure seems to work. 🙂
Jeanne, is the Vietnam book told from an omniscient POV? Or from different individual’s POV?
It’s told from an omniscient POV, but each scene focuses on a specific group or/and person involved in the battles for Khe Sanh.
I’m not reading it now, but John Grisham’s “Calico Joe” switched between three time frames, two in the past and one present. Actually I guess you could say four time frames, as there were sort of two “present” time frames, though barely separated in time. I found it very confusing, especially the going back in time ones.
That does sound like a lot of machinations, David. I feel confused just reading about it.
A novel I enjoyed which aptly switched past and present is Ted Dekker’s “Three”. The thread of a past time frame was inserted, and there were those one-line sentences that warned the reader before slipping into the past. Besides, I don’t think the novel could have been written in another structure.
One of my favorite duo novels is “Martha’s Legacy” by Francine Rivers. The two novels span a combined hundred years, and four generations of women. I read the books all-night and into the morning. Most of what my early knowledge about the World Wars came from the books, as well as Leota’s Garden.
In my opinion, the writer’s personality would determine the book’s structure. I enjoy nonfiction and novels with verses or quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Not sure I can do something like that.
For my first manuscript, it was linear all through.
My NaNoWriMo story uses both flashbacks of a particular character as well as brief notes from those who had related with another character after each five chapters. Strange, but then…
Michael, I think some books are birthed with an obvious structure; the writer couldn’t imagine it being built any other way. Just as you said, the writer’s personality sometimes dictates the structure. So, too, does the book’s idea.
Janet, what you’ve said about a book birthed with obvious structure is exactly what happened with my first novel. It is fractured structure (dual timeline). It’s not an easy structure to write though, especially for a beginner, so I’ve been through a few major edits to strengthen the two interweaving story lines until they easily flow into each other as chapters in the past and present alternate and I’ve made sure the two story lines cannot be separated into separate books. I absolutely love this structure for books! Some of my favorite authors of dual timeline novels are Kate Morton, Susanna Kearsley, Kristy Cambron, Susan Meissner and Lisa Wingate. Thanks for a great post!
Morgan, fractured structure is so complex. What a puzzle-solving mindset that kind of story-telling requires!
This is great advice, although I plan to develop the style of tunko and other anime comics. I think something else needs to be done here.