Writing to Structure
S ometimes in our stories we reach a point where we’ve discovered something that appears to allow us to move into the next act, but should we move into the next act now? Should we have already moved into the act? Should we wait? This is why it is so important to know the structure of the story and how many pages deep into the story each should occur. I won’t go into how to know which pages each structure element occurs on because the answer isn’t must be determined by the study of various successful stories and I don’t wish to bore you with details. However, there is one structural element that has both a known and an obvious location. It will serve well as our example. The midpoint of a story is a structural element that occurs in the middle of the book and in the middle of the second act of a three act story. It is either a false success or a false failure. In my WIP, the midpoint is a false success because it is at this point that Sara finds a person she is looking for. We will find...