Doesn't Everybody Need Better Structure in Their Writing?
I'm still talking about the W structure tool as the greatest plot and story flow problem-solver. Three debut writers with new books share how it worked for them.
More news from my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released last October, was favorably reviewed in Blueline, the literary journal dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks. It was also chosen for Literary Aviatrix book club as the feature for this past August, and became a finalist for both the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards and the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.
I was talking with a writer the other day who is going to be interviewing me for her newsletter. I asked her what topics most interest her readers right now; most are fiction writers, many published.
She talked about how many writers need help with their writing rhythm, keeping going. But others cover that, she said. What she wanted to talk with me about was structure. Why is story structure so mystifying to so many writers? Yes, there are systems you can follow—many of them. But even writers with publication experience often get lost in the middle of a manuscript. And it often comes down to confusion about structure.
What’s the best structure for each story, each book? I know for sure that it is never one formula, one way. Each of my own books has “grown” a different structure that fit it exactly.
Maybe, I told my writer friend, structure is confusing because we believe “art,” or “creating,” is about flow. You get inspired, you express, and voila, you have something worth sharing.
Yes, there’s flow—we couldn’t create without it. But especially in long-form projects like novels or memoirs or nonfiction books, flow only ignites the spark. It’s not a given. It’s not something, in my experience, that sustains the long haul of writing.
Structure does. The shape and form of what you write, when created well, not only keeps you going. It’s the gateway for the reader to engage with what you’re saying.
Structure is a gateway
Writers want to write about the world they’re living in, in their story imagination. That’s all correct and good. But how do readers enter that world?
Imagine strong structure as the gateway to this world. It’s a kind of entry to the meaning of your work. I find most readers stand apart from the writer’s creation until good structure lets them understand the world as you, the writer, do.
But equally rare is the skill of structure. Maybe this is because of our natural fascination with flow or because structure feels unsexy, uncreative. I taught hundreds of writing workshops and retreats, where writers brought their manuscripts to get help with structure. But so many were reluctant, deep down, to set aside the fun of flow and enter more detached realm of structure.
Structure can feel limiting. But it’s also the way out of that mass of unorganized pages, where you can write and write, granted, but you may lose the thread of your own story. Much less open the gate for a reader to find it.
So many structure tools
I’ve taught writing for decades and published since the 80s. That’s a long time to study structure and examine as many structure-teaching tools as I could find. Many are really helpful at different stages. But my favorites allow a writer to step back, gain distance, and reshape their story’s structure, while still retaining the feeling of excitement, flow, or creativity.
Take outlines: a prime structure tool we’re taught in school. Outlines are useful later in the revision process as a kind of checklist, but to me they completely stop the creative imagination and the necessary surprises that should, ideally, happen as you write.
I found lots to love in structure approaches from Save the Cat, The Story Grid, and Story Genius, three very popular structure systems. I loved those methods and learned a lot from them, but they often made me feel like I also needed a coach over my shoulder to tell me whether my structure was working or not.
So I kept searching. Until I came across the W storyboard.
The W storyboard
I first heard about this method via Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey story structure. Campbell, as you know, created a template for the typical character arc in story. He constructed a diagram, a kind of W, to show the rise and fall of action as the character grows and changes.
Screenwriters use this rising and falling action throughout most screenplays. From the two ideas, I began working with a W storyboard, expanding from what I’d learned of Campbell’s work and incorporating what I knew from screenwriting.
I began teaching the W storyboard in the early 2000's and made a short series of YouTube tutorials in 2011 (my first video is below, which gives you the basic idea).
If you google “W storyboard” now, 24 years later, you’ll get a score of links of others who have flown with the idea and developed their own version. It’s been adapted into as many different approaches as there are writers and teachers. Which tells me it works. Not just for me and my students, but a larger community—and that’s great.
Here’s my basic tutorial on how the W storyboard works.
This week, I wanted to share the W storyboard experiences of three of my past students who publishing their debuts this year. From their examples, you’ll see different ways to use the W storyboard for fiction, memoir, and prescriptive (how to) nonfiction.
You may be familiar with the W storyboard concept, but if you’re not, feel free to watch the short video above, to better understand their comments.
I asked them specifically to talk about how they decided each of the five points of the W. These five points are the beginning of the story, the end of the story, and the three points where the W turns. You can see these on the diagram in the video above.
Fascinating to hear how three different writers in three different genres went about this structure task. And why the W storyboard ended up working so well for them.
Please feel free to click on the links for their books, to support fellow writers too!
Fiction: using the W to align plots and subplots
In her debut novel, Silenced Whispers, which came out earlier this year, Afarin Ordubadi Bellisario wanted to tell the story “of an Iranian woman’s battle for freedom—hers and her country’s—and love amid profound social change and imperial power grabs.” Silenced Whispers won an honorable mention at the 2024 New York Book Festival; Afarin writes Gohar Nameh here on Substack, if you’d like to learn more about her journey.
She told me that with historical fiction, “where the writer would like to weave the story around actual historical events and capture how these events affect the characters without losing sight of their overall transformation,” the task of merging front and backstory successfully can be difficult. Afarin took several courses in creative writing, including one at UCLA Extension, but what helped her weave a strong frontstory and backstory was the W storyboard she learned at one of my classes at Grub Street writing school in Boston.
Afarin made a list of the events she felt were most important. “I used the [W} method to align the plots and subplots,” she said.
Although on the diagram above, the legs of the W look equal, often the story sections are not. Afarin says the legs of her story’s W weren’t perfectly symmetrical: “the main character, Gohar, reaches the bottom of despair early [point 2 of the W], only about 12 percent of the way through the novel, while the first—false—peak [point 3 of the W] occurs at about 47 percent of it,” she says, because her book has two sections, two years apart, and the first section is shorter. Still, her W showed a very strong story structure—one of the bonuses of this method is that it can be adapted to however your book flows.
“The second valley [point 4 of the W] happens around 75 percent into the book,” she says. “The last peak, the final climax, occurs close to the end. An overall arc allows the writer to keep track of and manage the ebbs and flow of the story along with the emotional ups and downs of characters.”
“In life, as in fiction,” she added, “there are no straight lines—up, down, or sideways. People often reach a high point only to realize that it is not the peak they had imagined, and they have more to go, or they fall into a crevice just as they are about to reach the summit, break their ankle, and have to be carried back to safety.”
To me, that kind of tension is what makes a good story. And Afarin certainly succeeds in this.
Check out her book, Silenced Whispers, here.
Memoir: using the W to avoid repetition
Mary Beth Spray’s debut, Imprint, comes out later this year. She’s set up her new website and is exploring ways to share her book with potential readers. She calls it an “autobiographical novel about a naïve young mother who falls in love with her husband’s female student.” A story, she says, about the journey towards freedom and new identity.
Mary Beth says she knew nothing about story structure in the beginning. “I just wrote my life. Eventually I narrowed the focus to ten years with backstory.”
She spent months writing about those first ten years of her “violent marriage,” she told me, “trying to show the reader how controlling and abusive my ex was. I accumulated about 100,000 words! (The finished book is closer to 75,000.) I learned I didn’t have to tell everything—especially, I didn’t have to repeat the same scenes, even though that was how it was in real life.”
Using the W structure encouraged her to find a stronger start. She wanted one that set up questions for the reader to wonder about, rather than just starting at the beginning. “I chose our move to the East Coast for the third point of the W—I had my dream home, we hoped our failing marriage would flourish on a college campus,” she says. To me as a reader, this worked so much better than starting at the beginning of the relationship. It put us immediately into the tension of her story.
“I chose the first turning point,” she says, “the low point [point 2 on the W storyboard], as the beating at a campsite after my ex tried to put me in a treatment center. The second turning point [point 4 on the W] was when my female love interest had an affair and I considered suicide. The last leg of the W showed my growing strength in myself as I joined lesbian groups, dated women, came out, dealt with the feelings of my teenage children, and eventually bought a house, my final victory of that time. “
Structure matters, she told me. “Without it, my book would be boring, even though I know it’s a good story and for years people told me I should write it. But it needed the surprises of plot to be well placed. The W structure made the story move. It has victories, the happy sections. It has the crashes to the bottom of life, the points when I get back up and feel hopeful about the future, an ending of serenity.”
Be sure to look for Mary Beth’s book when it comes out, and check out her story on her website, here.
Nonfiction: using the W to shape an uplifting narrative
Emma Laurence is a coach and author of the Beyond Burnout Playbook. She used the W structure to design and strengthen her book’s flow and create a narrative that engaged the reader while presenting her five keys to move beyond burnout in work and life.
One of the great benefits of the W storyboard is going deeper into a topic, especially for nonfiction authors. Here’s how Emma used this structure.
Emma told me she needed to “create an easy-to-read, illustrated piece—offering five keys to move beyond crispy fried. As I simplified my message, though, I began to lose the overall story arc.”
We talked about the five points and what she explored as she worked on the W storyboard. “I highlighted burnout’s upside near the opening of the book (that first upward leg in the W),” she said. “Yet, I sensed my readers would get lost after key #3 if I didn’t address their deeper doubts. I paused in presenting the keys to speak to their concern that the outside world is a real mess, to share a way to build a beyond-burnout universe no matter the circumstances. Then I could return to the last two keys (the second upward W leg).”
“The W’s undulating structure unveiled the true message of my book,” she says, “shaping it into an uplifting narrative rather than a how-to-fix-it manual.”
Read more about Beyond Burnout Playbook (and its great illustrations) here. And check out Emma’s collaboration in the just-released (and #1 bestselling) book, Leading with Self-Awareness, here.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Check out these three authors’ work—and review or view my video on using the W structure to consider ways to strengthen the flow of your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book.
Like each of the stories shared, what might you consider for the five points on your W storyboard?
Shout Out!
A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.
(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)
Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August release
Darrell J. Pedersen, Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake (River Place Press), August release
Jan Skogstrom, The Light Shines in the Darkness—A Spiritual Journey (Itasca Books), August release
Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release
Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release
I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.
I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.