Speaking About Structure

This is a follow up discussion to some of the things I was talking about with slarken over on the introduction thread. But it would be great if other people jumped in.

Has anyone read anything with an interesting structure recently? Tell us about it! Has anyone written anything with an interesting structure?

slarken revealed on the introduction thread that he is working on a series of novellas, written as stand alone stories but with a larger over-arching plot. (Correct me if I get anything wrong!)

I was wondering if the story was all one continuous thread with the same protagonist(s), or if there was any branching. I also wanted to know if it was planned for in advance, or grew more organicly.

As I have mentioned before, I envy the ability to write short. One of my writing mentors likes to talk about a writer's natural length (hers is 'novel'), and eventually concluded that my natural length was 'epic'. The break point between the first two books in my published trilogy is not any sort of ending, it's just the place I originally decided to switch pov characters. I wrote the trilogy as one story and only split it up after the fact. The story I'm on book 4 of, I knew in advance would be long, so I pre-planned some break points into the plot. But the more I write the actual books, the more extra detail I gather that I didn't know about when I was building the basic plot. So I don't know if everything else I've got to cover after my next break point will actually fit into only one book. (It can't be more than two, though, because if it is I will run out of titles.)

So, when I tried to write a Science Fiction series with stand-alone books, I ended up with something more like what Steffen says he is doing... there ended up being an over-arching plot. I just can't help it, maybe?

I'm really curious about how much a favored structure relates to a writer's brain as opposed to a writer's work process. Do some structures require a certain process?

I get the impression that most Korean dramas follow a set plot structure much like the one set out in Save the Cat for writing movies. I imagine all the Korean scriptwriters being given a list of set things that must happen at set times. The couple gets together in episode 8, the couple breaks apart in episode 10, etc. I can see how this can be very handy when (as is apparently most often the case) the drama is being written as it is being filmed.

But I don't think that plot/structural template like that necessarily leads to the best storytelling. :(

>1 LShelby:
Lots to say about this ;)

First, I should state that I always try to find interesting ways to structure my stories. A captivating plot is vital, but a fun structure can really enhance the reader's experience.

That said, there's nothing wrong either with a more basic, straight-forward structure. Sometimes that can even be the most effective way to tell a story. It really depends on the story itself and how it would best be delivered.

Now, to answer your questions...

The novellas I'm working on are (more or less) standalones with an over-arching plot.

Why more or less? Because the truth is, aside from the first installment, reading them out of sequence would likely be very confusing. There are self-contained stories (ie with a beginning, middle and end) in nearly every novella, but there will also be so many ongoing plots at the same time that it would make it difficult to pick up at random points.

The other thing is that there won't be just one over-arching plot, but multiple ones.

Not sure how much I want to share about the specifics at this stage, thouugh. I'll have to think about this a bit.

That said, there is one continuous thread, yes, revolving around one main protagonist (the story is told in first person, from his point of view) which involves his quest trying to find answers about his past. He is a non-human in a world filled with humans, so he has to deal with that, plus the world slowly starts to crumble and fall into chaos around him as he seeks for answers and he kinda gets dragged into stuff... a bit of an anti-hero ;)

There will also be many recurring characters.

As for whether it was planned... yes, to an extent. I'm mostly a plotter, though I tend to think that everyone is both a plotter and a pantser, though not always aware of it.

For this specific project, I spent two months (December & January) building the world, some of the main characters and figuring out some of the main plots--especially the over-arching ones. I have a pretty good idea when each plot will end and how the whole story will end, eventually.

However, I only really outline in detail each specific novella before I start writing it. Though even then, I only use it as a guide and allow myself to stray if cool ideas come to taunt me (as they are wont to do) so there's plenty of room to improvise. And as I write, I update my outline(s) accordingly.

Regarding short stories, I love writing those and am perhaps, to some extent, more comfortable with them. That's probably one reason why I decided to structure this project as novellas, rather than novels. They're also quicker to write ;) It usually takes me 4 to 7 days to finish one.

I'm not sure I understand your question about whether "some structures require a certain process"?

I'd be tempted to answer: isn't structure, by definition, a process? But I'm not sure we're on the same wavelength on that one LOL.

Also, I don't really have a "favored structure" in the sense that I don't always structure things the same way. On the contrary, I try to spice things up with every project ;)

Though your mention of the Save the Cat method makes me realize that we are talking of two different types of structures.

Save the Cat has more to do with internal (and somewhat invisible to the reader) mechanics.

What I'm talking about is more superficial, the way you set up your chapters... like divide a book in 2 parts, each with 10 chapters, or go with 4 parts with 5 chapters each, etc. Something that is more obvious to the reader.

Both are important, I think, though they play on different levels.

Speaking of Save the Cat, I'd never heard of it until last year. I've since read it and experimented with it. Before that, I always wrote more instinctively. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it LOL.

>2 slarken:
It sounds like we arrived at a similar structure from two entirely different directions. I was trying to write stand-alone stories, but ended up instinctively including over-arching plot threads. You created the over-arching plot threads first, and then wrote the smaller stories within it. :)

In this case it seems that process and structure don't have much to do with each other.

I usually tell people I'm ambidextrous at the plotter/pantser thing. I mostly don't bother with outlines. I seem to do fine without them.

But recently I started coming up with ideas based on my Asian Dramas, and since I've been too sick to write much, I thought trying to create a structured plot might be an interesting challenge. Korean dramas mostly have 16 episodes. Although they don't try turn each episode into it's only mini-story like, say Babylon Five did, each episode does end with a little mini-climax. So I asked myself, could I create stories following that 16 equal parts pattern?

Creating something with that kind of rigidly defined structure looked like something that would be waaaayyy easier to do if I outlined in advance. So that's what I did. (I am now almost 140K words into the resulting screenplay. The thought of trying to fit it into the Save the Cat template makes me laugh, though. The author claims it works for long and short works, but I think when he says long, he's thinking 3 or 4 hours, not 16+.)

In one of the manga series I read, a particular story structure appears to be used on purpose in essentially every chapter. Each new chapter of the story starts *before* where the previous chapter ended, works its way up to the climatic moment shown at the end of the previous chapter, goes past it to introduce new material, and ends on a new climactic cliff-hanger.

This seems like a structural technique that would be much easier to write without an outline. Once again the chapters are a set length, and they "must" end on a climax, but because the series is open-ended, you can just repeat that structure over and over as many times as you need to. There's no need to fit your whole story into a certain amount of space, so as long as you know enough of what is coming next to be able to "see" your next cliff-hanger, it's okay to just go and see where you end up.

Previously I never played with structure much beyond viewpoint. My Epic fantasy is written from two points of view which alternate chapters for the first two books. But the third book is written entirely from one pov, and the fourth book from the other. I planned to go back to alternating for books five and six. My published trilogy does one pov for the first book, a second pov for the middle book, and switches back to the first pov for the third book, but with a final chapter in the second pov. When I am not swapping viewpoints back and forth or writing in journal entries, or something like that, I tend to not do chapter breaks in my first drafts. I go back and insert them later.

But now that I have started to play with it, I can't help wondering what other interesting and/or useful things could be done with it.

The one you have come up with for your project seems pretty useful. I've heard from a couple successful independently published romance authors, who swear that publishing lots and lots of short works is the road to success. Because each work is small, the "buy-in" is low, and because there are a lot of them, once you have a fan they will keep coming back for more.

Naturally I have come up with an idea for a series of shorter stories my own that would take advantage of this phenomenon. But so far my plan has been floundering due to poor health, and the sad fact that writing short does not come naturally to me.

I've been told the secret to a good short story is that it has a twist at the end. Is that how it works for you?

I'm a huge fan of nested stories and episodes that relate to each other through explicit principles of narrative and imagination. I tend to think of the Kitab alf Layla wa Layla as the paradigm of this sort of thing. What I mean is the story of the dream within the story of the journey told within the play performed in the novel.

Tanith Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth use this mechanism throughout without being confrontational about it.

Robert Irwin plays the Arabian Nights card explicitly in The Arabian Nightmare and offers a similar "traditional" variant on the side of the Cross rather than the Crescent in Wonders Will Never Cease.

In my one published fiction, I've been more plotter than pantser, despite the fact that it has hardly any "plot" in the conventional sense. What I did was to identify various set pieces and then work out a sequence in which they would be presented, with varying narrative registers (exploration, document, ceremony, dream) to frame them. I didn't start from an outline, and I did write pretty much from start to finish. But in my manuscript there were always a handful of draft chapter titles at the end for bits I was looking forward to. In a couple of instances, I was able to integrate component tales that I had written earlier for other purposes.

I'm contemplating a sequel Deuterohymnia Onorio, and so far it's coming together in the same manner.

As a reader I tend not to like authors being too clever with structure. It tends to get in the way of the plot. I certainly read in chunks, but I wouldn't say I remember the organisation of a whole book to look back and think how pretty/clever was the shape. If the thing I'm reading next doesn't connect to what I've just been reading I'm likely to put the book down. I will pick it up again, but the more this happens the less keen on it I am. Example - player of games apparently there's some clever structure mirror image reverse shape to it. I just found it annoying and not understandable. I do read fast, and I'm sure other readers are better able to grasp a whole book that they've appreciated over a week or more, but not me.

What I do like is the over-arching plot running over a series - not just a series of events that have happened to a character, but a planned reveal of a story that long in the making, cf Harry Dresden with Jack Reacher.

>5 reading_fox: "What I do like is the over-arching plot running over a series - not just a series of events that have happened to a character, but a planned reveal of a story that long in the making"

This is why we own 80 books in common. ;)

I also read fairly fast. I'm just coming back to reading after a break of months because my brain was offline, and I haven't tackled anything particularly heavy yet, but currently the average cozy mystery or YA takes me around 2 hours start to finish.

Is this one of the reasons I'm not into massively multiple viewpoints much? I always thought it had to do with me not being that good at getting "into" people, and so the fewer people I need to get into the better. But if you think about it, changing the pov might act as a sort of speed-bump. Books with a lot of viewpoints tend to change them frequently. Bumpity-bumpity-bumpity.

As for admiring structural games, I do seem to recall running into a book or two that did story in the past combined with story in the present that I thought handled the two lines very effectively. But trust me to not remember which books they are. ::rueful::

Sometimes complex time-travel stories look a bit like a structural game. :)

>4 paradoxosalpha: "the story of the dream within the story of the journey told within the play performed in the novel."

My goodness! The most extreme example I've ever seen of this sort of thing is the Arabian Nights, which I don't think ever got quite that nested, although it did a story within a story within a story quite often.

I like framing devices when they are well done. But in order to do multiply nested stories like this, the stories themselves have to be short. So this sort of thing can invoke the speed-bump principal I identified above in my reply to reading_fox.

I think, though, if the nesting is done while making the relationship clear, that a skilled writer might be able to avoid or at least lesson the speedbump sensation.

In fact, I think I have seen both done. The speed bump version I'm thinking of was a book that had travelers in an inn all telling each other stories, and in the end all the stories connected back together to form the backstory to the main plot. But I didn't know that at the time, so the book felt bumpy and disconnected as I was reading it. The smoother version I'm thinking was science fiction with a western feel where a one (or more?) of the characters would go, "this reminds me of the time when" or whatever, but the connection between what was happening in the here-and-now to what was happening in the story was a lot more obvious from the start, so the going into the stories and out of them felt less like a break and a change, and instead of getting annoyed I enjoyed it as a subtle and fun way of providing backstory.

But I could be remembering wrong. :)

There's a structure that Ian McDonald uses often that I find admirable, though I'd never try to write it. He builds a big long novel where there are a set of parallel, apparently unrelated plots with their own characters in the same sfnal setting. It's only in the final chapters that the reader finds out how they relate to each other and come together in each other's resolutions. Each is so interesting on its own that the early rotation among them isn't at all off-putting.

Similar to >4 paradoxosalpha: , I have a fondness for nested or recursive stories. I've read a few types of these of varying complexity.

There are things like, If On a Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino where the central conceit is that you go into a bookstore to buy a book to read, and it only has the first chapter, so, figuring it's a faulty printing, you go replace it with another copy that has a different first chapter. Repeat. Repeat. So the story is a story of reading stories. (If I recall correctly (it's been a long while), that book was also written in the 2nd person, which was also fun.)

But the best one that I've read is Catherynne Valente's Orphan's Tales (In the Night Garden and In the City of Coin and Spice) which is two volumes of a fairy-tale style story told as stories-within-stories-within-stories-within-stories. Imagine, for example, you're reading a book about Characters A & B who are on an adventure, and they sit down at a tavern where they encounter an old sailor (Character C) who tells them a story, "Let me tell you of Character D." In that story of Character D, you learn he was a mischievous child who was always getting into trouble. So his grandmother (Character E) sits him down after he makes a mess of the kitchen to tell him a fable about the potion-brewing wizard (Character F)... and in that story you'll hear the story of character G... But now back up, and someone else in the tavern with the sailor (Character C) says he also heard a story of a girl and starts telling that story which has its own stories-within-stories.

Imagine enough of that to fill 2 novels, and imagine that somehow all those stories of different people and different creatures across time and space were all part of the same story, the one you're being told, but the only way to understand that is to have the full context. It sounds completely complicated and impossible to follow, but part of the point is that our brains are so wired for stories that it's not hard to follow at all when you're actually reading it. Our own lives, the story of ourselves, is also made up of the stories of everyone we have ever met: our family, our friends, that person sitting next to us on the train.

I highly recommend both, if that's something that sounds like a fun reading experience to you. Calvino's is shorter and more post-modern. Valente's is surreal and fantastical and includes a chapter told by a manticore in dactylic hexameter.

>3 LShelby:

You know, I considered applying a Save the Cat beat sheet to my series as a whole... quickly gave up. It would have been too complicated. Not impossible, but... I suspected it would hinder me more than help, at that stage. OTOH, it worked great on a novel I wrote last year.

I think with all those methods you have to weigh the pros and cons and use what works best for that given project.

BTW, I usually prefer to write in first person (that's what I'm doing with that series of novellas) but in the case of that novel, I actually have 5 main revolving POV's (plus 2-3 minor ones). It was an interesting experiment.

"I've been told the secret to a good short story is that it has a twist at the end. Is that how it works for you?"

Yes and no. It depends on the story. Or, rather, the length. The shorter it is, the more you'll need a twist. With the novellas I'm doing now, it's a non-issue since there are continuing plots, so you can get away without a twist more easily. Though I do try to have something catchy at the end, if not a cliffhanger per se, at least something that will leave the reader wondering/thinking.

Writing short stories is a bit of a balancing act.

>4 paradoxosalpha:

Nested stories are awesome ;) Everytime this topic comes up I can't help but think of "Inception"... yes, I know, it's a film, not a book, LOL, but what a story!

>5 reading_fox: "but I wouldn't say I remember the organisation of a whole book to look back and think how pretty/clever was the shape"

Oh I agree with this. It can be fun to play around with structure, but if it gets to the point where you're trying to give the book a *shape* then you've likely gone too far with it LOL. At that stage you kind of fall into the "experimental" department, I think.

I think, in most cases, the structure should be "invisible" to the reader. The only exception to this is likely the case mentioned below.

>7 paradoxosalpha:

That McDonald trick? I love it! I've seen other authors do it as well, and I've played with it myself. In fact, I have a novel in the works that does a bit of that, though a little bit differently (a middle section that is completely different from the rest, even the setting as it takes place in another world)... I use it to build up things that will later explain the bad guy's actions. I love these kinds of structures because it almost makes you feel like you're reading two books in one ;)

The reason why this works, despite being pretty obvious to the reader, is because it's not just a structural device. It directly affects the plot, and thus becomes a part of the plot in the process. Structures don't usually do that.

>8 macsbrains:

Valente's books sound awesome. I'll have to look those up! Thanks for the recommendation.

>8 macsbrains:

If on a winter's night a traveler is in a class of its own. :)

I haven't read Valente's Orphan's Tales, but I read her Girl Who books with my daughter and we loved them. I've got her Radiance on my TBR pile (not near the top, I confess), and yours is not the first encouraging reference I've read to In the Night Garden.

>5 reading_fox: (As a reader I tend not to like authors being too clever with structure. It tends to get in the way of the plot.)
I agree completely. An author should strive to be invisible and let the story present itself. Anything that stands out about the author detracts from the story. I would not want a reader to say, "Oh, this author is so clever." This draws attention away from the story and breaks the flow. Another pet peeve I have: writers using overly large words just to be clever when a simple word will do it.

>11 paradoxosalpha: I think Radiance is one of her better ones. It shows how the manner of telling the story affects the story, which is rather relevant to this thread. It approaches this theme using the language of theater, film, and performing arts. Good stuff, though very much a case of Your-Mileage-May-Vary. Once, at a signing, I mentioned to her that I was thoroughly tickled by the chapter that consisted entirely of a cargo manifest and she was so happy to hear it because she argued with her editor about keeping it in.

>12 GaryBabb: I agree that sometimes you read an author and think, "I'm glad you are enjoying your new thesaurus, but please stop." However, I really enjoy when the words are like poetry and work because they are the right words, whether they are fancy or simple.

>13 macsbrains: the chapter that consisted entirely of a cargo manifest

Rather Rabelaisian, and the sort of thing that tickles me.

>13 macsbrains: "I agree that sometimes you read an author and think, "I'm glad you are enjoying your new thesaurus, but please stop."

Eye of Argon?

I tend to choose vocabulary based on the voice of the pov character. (Although I never use a thesaurus while writing. I do use one, occasionally, when I'm trying to come up with titles.) So, for example, when I was writing Batiya's pov in Across a Jade Sea, she's a blue-collar working-class girl, and so I tried to keep her vocabulary non-fancy, but her colloquialisms are very colorful. Chunru has a very upper-class education, so he would often use more latinate terms than the ones Batiya was using. But he was also using a second language (okay, actually his fourth language) so although the words he used were "fancier" his actual working vocabulary was much smaller, and his sentence structures tended to be simpler. In Cantata and Pavane the narrators are highly educated courtiers so I pulled out all the stops when it came to vocabulary and sentence structure.

I think that the structure should be supporting the story in some way. For example, Inception, where the reasons for doing the story within the story within the story were all built into the plot, and you really couldn't tell that story in any other way. I do think it was cleverly done, but when I was watching it I wasn't sitting there thinking "gosh the writer is trying to show off how clever he is, isn't he?" I was fully involved in the action.

Likewise, if you are telling a story that is about telling stories, obviously you need to do a certain amount of story nesting (Although Orphan's Tales (love these new series touchstones!) seems like an extreme case and to me more than slightly intimidating... I will need to get my hands on a copy just to see if I can actually read something like that)!

With the flashbacking I was admiring and the parallel plotting a la Ian McDonald this could be done to be clever, but in cases where it works really well, I think its because both plotlines really are central to the story that is being told. When you have a story that can't be told in a straightforward manner, then you have to be clever.

But... I don't go out looking for stories like that. Even if it's clever and I can admire it, I'm actually all other things being equal going to like a story that is told in a more straightforward manner better. And even when I run into examples where the two stories in parallel have been done well enough at least, to get published, and other people seem to like the book fine in total, I tend to just skim one of the two.

On the other paw, is being more invested in one plot thread of a parallel plot thread story necessarily a bad thing?

David Mitchell is an interesting case for structure in novels. I've only read two of his (The Bone Clocks and Slade House), and they share a rigorous structure in which each chapter has its own distinct protagonist, and involves a chronological advance of a set number of years beyond the previous chapter, although there is a linking plot that joins them all. I understand that Cloud Atlas is built the same way. I really enjoyed this structure, and I plan to read more Mitchell.

Another author who produced a book with a similar structure is Charles Stross, whose Accelerando is really a linked series of distinct stories in a single continuity. I've seen it criticized for lacking dramatic unity or having a clumsy pace, but I liked it a lot, and I thought it held together well. From my review:

"The novel has a triple-triadic structure, with the nine chapters having seen individual publication as short stories prior to their assembly here. As a consequence, there is something of an expositional 'reset' at the start of each part, with a little redundancy and narrative hand-holding. But in light of the huge changes in context imposed by each transition from one part to the next, the effect is barely noticeable, and actually somewhat comforting. Another effect of this compositional process is that each chapter seems to have roughly the same dramatic weight as the others. The last of them could be read equally as climax or denouement, depending on the reader's inclination. Each of the three larger sections is focused on a successive generation of a single family moving deeper into the trans-human condition."

>12 GaryBabb: vocabulary is a tricky one - if the reader is having to look up words because the meaning isn't clear to them, then they're unlikely to be deeply engaged in the story. However english is a very diverse language with subtle shades of meaning changes between words for nearly the same thing, some of which are more obscure than others. You could specify than nm frequency of all the colours, or else just call them red. But scarlet carmine cerise falu amaranth are all very different and this could be important - it's all about what information needs to be conveyed and as >15 LShelby: what the characters would reasonably know.

Structure: battle ground has book 1 from POV A, and book 2 from POV B (the antagonist of book 1). Book 3-5 alternates the POV through the chapters. It works very well, but I'm curious whether readers always see A as the 'heroine' and whether book 1 and 2 were randomly re-numbered whether this would change with some readers reading B first and preferring her to be the 'heroine'. As a beta reader for the series I did suggest this to the author, but they didn't want to do so.

>17 reading_fox: "I'm curious whether readers always see A as the 'heroine' and whether book 1 and 2 were randomly re-numbered whether this would change with some readers reading B first and preferring her to be the 'heroine'."

I think you have a good point in that who the reader is introduced to first really matters. Also in who is a pov and who is not.

My epic fantasy does something a bit unusual in that the protagonist is not the viewpoint character. This was done rather famously in the Sherlock Holmes books, but in epic fantasy I think it is rare, and it confused my beta-readers quite a bit until I put a notice on the title page telling them who the protagonist "Being the story of character x..." Suddenly I had no more confused complaints from readers about how non-pov character x seemed to be more important than either of the two pov characters.

Even though that particular story clearly had a single driving character, my unexpected use of pov was throwing the readers off. All they needed was that little hint to get their expectations back in line with the reality of the story, but it seemed that they did need (or at least could use) that much of a hint.
...

I really have no experience handling stories with a lot of viewpoint characters, so I have been worrying about what I should do, if I ever tried to turn my current wip (another 1K+ words today!) into an actual book (or four). It is currently a screenplay, and so pov hasn't been an issue. But I have two male main leads, each of them has a romantic interest who doesn't just sit around and wait for her hero to appear (I was just writing a scene with neither of the male leads in it today, as it happens) and then there are a host of supporting characters, some of which have scenes with each other, rather than with one of the central four characters.

If I make the story just follow along the script, I will need at least six, maybe seven pov characters. And since simply rotating between pov characters will not work, I will have huge chunks of the book where there are multiple potential pov characters in the same scene.

Is there anything (besides which order the pov character are introduced in) that I need to watch out for when doing this kind of juggling act?

Can anyone think of any examples of excellent handling of large casts of characters for me to read as research?

...
>16 paradoxosalpha:
Fix-up novels made out of a series of short stories are fairly common, but usually they feature the same lead character. Having each story feature a different lead and a stand-alone plot, while still having the entire work have anything even resembling a cohesive whole really does seem like quite an accomplishment.

I'm a little bit familiar with Stross. (We used to hang out in the same discussion group, actually.) But I don't seem to have ever read anything by David Mitchell. What kind of a story is he telling that it needs/wants a structure like that?

>18 LShelby: examples of excellent handling of large casts of characters

I recently read Pynchon's Against the Day, which I think qualifies, although it's quite a monster to tackle for "research" purposes.

>18 LShelby: by David Mitchell. What kind of a story is he telling that it needs/wants a structure like that?

To put it crudely, he's got a cadre of immortals ("Horologists") and their foes who supply a covert continuity. But it also allows him to explore his themes in iterative ways through long periods, thus elevating them to transcendent, super-historical status. Approached in this sort of analysis, it all sounds much more ham-handed than it is in the books, because he's so skilled at character and voice.

>15 LShelby: AHAHA The Eye of Argon was great! I read it for the first time not too long ago and was not disappointed :-)

Generally, I love creative vocabulary, but it is a fine line between the pretentious thesaurus-hugger and the writer to whom the words are innate. I expect to discover new words when reading Gene Wolfe, and for Cat Valente to title a children's book with circumnavigate, and Lovecraft to hilariously use every lugubrious and tentacular adjective he can find, all to my great delight. It's just a matter of using them appropriately and in the right places. I don't get hung up on a word if I don't recognize it since context usually helps (for all I know it's a made-up term anyway) so I wait for the scene or chapter to be over before looking into it.)

>17 reading_fox: I would hypothesize that people would imprint pretty heavily on the first protagonist they're introduced to. There was a show on Netflix that tried something like that -- an animated sf anthology that presented the episodes to people in different orders. Don't remember the name of it (I didn't like, so I don't recommend), but I am curious about what kind of viewing preference data that produced.

One type of structure that has never worked for me as a reader is the epistolary novel. If it's like a diary, or you only get one side it can be ok, but I have yet to read a good example of a novel of letters exchanged between two characters both-ways, especially if they have in-person interactions between. Either the voices are not distinct enough, or they discuss their interactions with the other person as if they hadn't both been there. Maybe there's a successful example of this kind of novel out there somewhere.

A novel that used diaries for structural purposes in a truly wonderful way was The Prestige.

(The touchstone defaulted to the movie, and I had to actively select the Christopher Priest novel. Like The Club Dumas, I thought the resulting movie was good, but really only delivered half the punch of the book.)

>18 LShelby:

"I will have huge chunks of the book where there are multiple potential pov characters in the same scene."

No reason this should be a problem. It's pretty common.

Usually, the recommended way to deal with those scenes is to give the POV to the character who has the most to lose in that particular scene.

"Can anyone think of any examples of excellent handling of large casts of characters for me to read as research?"

Weeeellll... my first instinct would be to suggest the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels by George R.R. Martin, but I'm guessing those would be too dark for you ;)

But his writing is stellar and GRRM excels at handling multiple POV's.

It'd be a lot of reading for research though, I'll grant you that, haha.

>19 paradoxosalpha: "But it also allows him to explore his themes in iterative ways through long periods, thus elevating them to transcendent, super-historical status."

Wanting to use previous chapters as historical and mythological reference? That makes a lot of sense. Not an approach I can imagine myself taking, but you never know, sometimes the muse comes and thwacks you with something you never expected.

I will put the Pynchon on my to read list. If it proves to be too much for me, I can always abandon ship.

>20 macsbrains: "I love creative vocabulary"

I agree. :) Words are fun.

The Eye of Argon actually does almost everything rather well, and only really fails badly at the one thing, which is what makes it such an entertaining read. If it did everything wrong, it would just be blah.

I haven't read that many epistolary novels, and the only ones that jump immediately to mind are Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermere(sp?)'s Sorcery and Cecilia trilogy. In those the two characters mostly aren't together The books, or at least the first one, were written as a game, with two authors actually exchanging letters written in the persona of their character, each creating their own story, but also doing their best to make the story they are telling relevant to and interlocking with the other author's story.

This would be a case of the structure driving the story, rather than the story driving the structure, I guess.

>22 slarken: "Usually, the recommended way to deal with those scenes is to give the POV to the character who has the most to lose in that particular scene."

It may sound normal to you, but I have written fourteen novels*, and have never had to worry about it. And, unless I am purposely reading as research, as a reader I am never thinking "Why did the author choose this viewpoint character?"

Not only that, I have never sat there and thought "who has the most to lose here?" either. I think I can see where the advice comes from now that I've heard it, but I find it alien. I'm not sure I can figure out how to use it. I'm just really not used to thinking about characters or scenes in those terms.

Does a scene only happen when a character has something to lose?

When Seahawk is talking to his sister about how he needs to visit his fiancee who he has never seen, what does "the person who has the most to lose" even mean in that situation? It is a scene that provides background and shows character, and helps set up the next major plot point. But nobody is in danger of losing anything yet.

If Seahawk wants revenge for the death of his family, and Lord Bear has been ordered to protect the heroine, and therefore they are discussing the possibility of them having a mutual enemy, which one of them has the most to lose?

When Seahawk is trying to kill the heroine, and Lord Bear is trying to prevent it, is it the heroine who has the most to lose, or is it Lord Bear, who is risking his life to protect hers? And would either of their povs really be more compelling than that of Seahawk who is the one that ultimately ends up having to choose to either kill, or to be merciful?

"my first instinct would be to suggest the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels by George R.R. Martin, but I'm guessing those would be too dark for you ;) "

You know how to call it. :)
I read A Game of Thrones and although I was aware that it was well written, I disliked it intensely. You would have to pay me a significant sum to get me to read it again.

*Of those fourteen novels, seven were in first person, four had two 3rd person viewpoints in alternating chapters, two had a single third person viewpoint, and one was written in limited omniscient. (That last one hasn't been beta-read yet, I'm not sure how well it turned out.)

I guess I actually wrote a fifteenth novel, but its been so long since I looked at it that I have no idea what the pov was like. "Sloppy third" most likely.

>23 LShelby:

I hear ya LOL. Honestly, I've never thought in those terms myself either. And when I wrote my multiple POV novel last year, I built the scenes around whose POV each would be from, rather than the other way around, so it never bothered me.

It's just something I've seen multiple authors say in various forums, so I thought I'd share it here. You do raise valid arguments, though ;)

>24 slarken: "I built the scenes around whose POV each would be from"

Yes, that's how I wrote the ones where I swapped pov by the chapter. I knew whose chapter it was, so the scene was developed with that already in mind.

But if I'm going to be able to write in a more free form multi, or even in omnipotent, I'm going to need to expand my skillset. :)

"so I thought I'd share it here"

I'm glad you did. It is a fascinating way to look at things, and I readily believe that it works for many authors, just not all of them.

It feels to me like it might be similar to the Jack M. Bickham approach as laid out in his Scene and Structure, but here I am totally forced to guess, because I have never actually read that particular book, I've only heard other people talking about it. (And again, what I heard sounded very alien.)

Maybe I should go looking for it now, and see if I can wrap my brain about it?

Anyway, even if "Which character has the most to lose" doesn't fit my way of processing story very well straight out of the gate, I might be able to adapt it. Maybe have a series of similar questions I can ask myself every time the best pov character does not feel obvious.