Describe the four structures that dominate novels.
Answers
STRUCTURE 1: THE MILIEU STORY
The milieu is the world—the planet, the society, the weather, the family, all the elements that come up during your world-creation phase. Every story has a milieu, but when a story is structured around one, the milieu is the thing the storyteller cares about most. For instance, in Gulliver’s Travels, it mattered little to Jonathan Swift whether we came to care about Gulliver as a character. The whole point of the story was for the audience to see all the strange lands where Gulliver traveled and then compare the societies he found there with the society of England in Swift’s own day—and the societies of all the tale’s readers, in all times and places. So it would’ve been absurd to begin by writing much about Gulliver’s childhood and upbringing. The real story began the moment Gulliver got to the first of the book’s strange lands, and it ended when he came home.
Likewise, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz doesn’t end when Dorothy kills the Wicked Witch of the West. It ends when Dorothy leaves Oz and goes home to Kansas.
As you conceive and write your own story, if you realize that what you care about most is having a character explore and discover the world you’ve created, chances are this structure is your best choice.
When writing a milieu story, your beginning point is obvious—when the character arrives—and the ending is just as plain: when she leaves (or, in a variant, when she decides not to leave, ending the question of going home).
Such stories are typically most effective when seen through the viewpoint of the arriving character, as she’ll be surprised by and interested in the same strange and marvelous (and terrible) things that engage the readers.
STRUCTURE 2: THE IDEA STORY
Idea stories are about the process of seeking and discovering new information through the eyes of characters who are driven to make the discoveries. The structure is very simple: The idea story begins by raising a question; it ends when the question is answered.
Most mysteries follow this structure. The story begins when a crime takes place. The question we ask is, “who did it and why?” The story ends when the identity and motive of the criminal are revealed.
STRUCTURE 3: THE CHARACTER STORY
Character stories focus on the transformation of a character’s role in the communities that matter most to him. Sure, in one sense, stories are almost always “about” one or more characters. In most stories, though, the tale is not about the character’s character; that is, the story is not about who the character is.
Take, for example, the Indiana Jones movies. These are not character stories. The story is always about what Indiana Jones does, but never who he is. Jones faces many problems and adventures, but in the end, his role in society is exactly what it was before: part-time archaeology professor and full-time knight-errant.
STRUCTURE 4: THE EVENT STORY
In the event story, something is wrong in the fabric of the universe; the world is out of order. In classic literature, this can include the appearance of a monster (Beowulf), the “unnatural” murder of a king by his brother (Hamlet) or of a guest by his host (Macbeth), the breaking of an oath (Havelock the Dane), the conquest of a Christian land by the infidel (King Horn), the birth of a child portent who some believe ought not to have been born (Dune), or the reappearance of a powerful ancient adversary who was thought to be dead (The Lord of the Rings). In all cases, a previous order—a “golden age”—has been disrupted and the world is in flux, a dangerous place.
The event story ends at the point when a new order is established or, more rarely, when the old order is restored or, rarest of all, when the world descends into chaos as the forces of order are destroyed. The story begins not at the point when the world becomes disordered, but rather at the point when the character whose actions are most crucial to establishing the new order becomes involved in the struggle. Hamlet doesn’t begin with the murder of Hamlet’s father; it begins much later, when the ghost appears to Hamlet and involves him in the struggle to remove the usurper and reestablish the proper order of the kingdom.
4 STRUCTURES ARE:
STRUCTURE 1: THE MILIEU STORY
STRUCTURE 2: THE IDEA STORY
STRUCTURE 3: THE CHARACTER STORY
STRUCTURE 4: THE EVENT STORY
Hope it helps you