by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Ok. So structure. Novel structure specifically. The biggest problem I have at the moment with this first novel is, well, I’m really struggling to figure out on a structural basis what this fucking thing is about. I keep moving scenes around the beginning of the outline because there are so many moving parts that it’s difficult to figure out how to make it clear to myself without too much reflection what the biggest cog should be.
How do I both give the story an interesting beginning AND give the reader an immediate indication of the story they’re about to read. It’s proving to be far, far harder than I want or need it to be. I know what I want to do, which is start the story getting right into the action…but.
There is a problem.
Any story you tell, you need to establish tone and setting while fleshing out the characters a little bit before you dive into the meat of the story. Think of it as the “story before the story.” In movies, you usually have a good 10 minutes or so that does all that while also providing people an opportunity to acclimate themselves to being in the theatre, etc.
The danger of just skipping all that and jumping straight into the story is it’s kind of like what happened that one time when I went on a trip in the Philippines to Lake Taal — I was just dumped on the side of the road to wait for my next bus. There was no terminal. I was just in the middle of a busy highway. Just as that was extremely disconcerting, there is a risk that if you don’t have at least some build up to the inciting incident that people just won’t care when it happens.
As such, I keep coming up with an outline that is structurally pleasing but a real bitch to figure out how to make interesting enough to not only get people to the inciting incident but to serve as the cornerstone of the broader novel. But that’s what they pay me the big bucks for, I guess.
