How do you plot your novel? Is the 3-Act story structure the way to go, or are there other options out there? How do you decide which type of narrative organization is best for your book?

When authors ask me these questions, or if I see that their manuscript could use better organization, pacing, or transitions, there are 4 resources that I recommend most often and which inform my editing decisions. I always make sure to explain the reasoning behind my suggestions, but sometimes authors benefit from additional exercises and readings before they take on re-writes.

If you’ve been struggling with outlining your novel, feel like the middle of your story is dragging, or don’t know how to bring your plot and character arcs together in your finale, then I highly recommend you check out the articles, websites, and books below.

1. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
2. Character-Based Novel Outline
3. Nonwestern Story Structure
4. Nonlinear Narrative Structure

1. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

This book is based off of Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder, a work famous in the film industry for breaking down the organizational commonalities between the most successful movies. I studied both film and creative writing in college, and this book was foundational to me.

Snyder and Brody utilize a three act structure, broken down into 15 specific beats. Some of them will look familiar – the Catalyst is your Inciting Incident, the Midpoint is your Climax. I’ve found their method useful for outlining full novels and to serve as a “gut check” to make sure I’m including the elements of conflict and resolution that make for a compelling story.

Here’s their method at a glance:

The percentages listed above aren’t meant as hard and fast rules, but suggestions to help guide the pacing of your novel. For instance, you definitely don’t want a first act that stretches into 40% of your novel – readers will be bored. Similarly, if you don’t have a clear midpoint, the middle portion of your story may feel lackluster or you may have trouble even writing (what are you building toward?).

Every writer has their strengths and struggles – some people hate openings, middles, or endings. No matter which is the case for you, I’ve found the 15 beats a helpful diagnostic tool for determining what’s missing in a section – usually that’s what causes writer’s block.

I highly recommend purchasing the book, or downloading the free outline resources from Jessica Brody’s website for a quick breakdown of each plot point.

This is an affiliate link. I may earn on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

2. Character-Based Novel Outline

I remember becoming frustrated when the above method didn’t work for one of my fantasy novels. It made so much sense to me, so I thought there must be a problem with my story. It took me a while to realize that while the basic framework could still work, I needed beats that focused on internal character conflict, not external plot points.

Fortunately, I’m not the first person who had this problem. The Novel Factory wrote up an excellent version of the 15 beat, 3-Act structure, based around character development.

In my experience, this outline is most effective as a brainstorming tool. Every character journey is different, so trying to fit yours into a template just won’t work. But it can still help you identify your themes, major and minor conflicts, and realize if you have too many or too few side characters to act as foils.

3. Nonwestern Story Structure

The 3-Act, conflict-driven story is a Western convention, based largely off of Aristotle’s Poetics and Joseph Campbell’s model of heroic journeys (Hero With a Thousand Faces).

But it’s hardly the only approach. In fact, in other parts of the world, stories are arranged in completely different ways. So if this method just does not appeal to you, or you’re interested in experimenting with your style, then I recommend these 2 blog posts which analyze other forms of story structure:

• Lewis Jorstad of The Novel Smithy wrote an excellent article titled “5 Ways to Tell a Story: Story Structure from Around the World.”
• Steve Seager shared intriguing insights in “Beyond the Hero’s Journey: Four innovative narrative models for digital story design” on Medium.

Here are some of the alternate models they explore:

• Kishōtenketsu – 4-Act East Asian story structure not oriented around conflict
• Middle Eastern – frame stories surrounding shorter, loosely connected tales
• Scandinavian – 5-Act, multi-character narrative with 3 ritual-based truth endings
• Indian – non-linear dendritic form which encompasses many differing perspectives
• Central African – thematic narratives with spiritual truth emphasized over the individual
• Indigenous – narratives where the actual interpretation of the ‘story’ is left entirely up to the reader

The writers of each post describe each form in detail, with helpful visual models as well, so check them out!

Here’s another one not mentioned in either of those posts – a Hebrew chiastic structure which sandwiches a core idea between 2 sets of mirror image concepts. The idea is to draw attention to the middle by repeating the themes on both sides.

I appreciated how in his article “Chiasm, Oral Peoples, and the Grand Biblical Story,” Brad Vaughn even compares this structure to Freytag’s Pyramid (rising action, climax, falling action). Except a chiasm focuses more on concepts than events.

The point is that there are so many ways to tell a story, depending on what you most want to convey to readers!

4. Nonlinear Narrative Structure

Even if you stick with with familiar storytelling methods (hero wants something, problem occurs, they try and fail to achieve their goal, they change for the better, and succeed) you don’t have to narrate events linearly (A>B>C>D>E).

Harvard completed a fascinating visual study of nonlinear narratives in iconic films. As a visual person, I found the examples helped me quickly grasp how each filmmaker was moving around their story pieces.

Here are some common narrative frameworks used to tell a story in a more complex way than chronological order:

Dual or multiple timelines – The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin or Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Interspersed flashbacks (The Way of Kings) or flashforwards (the movie Arrival)

In media res – D>A>B>C>E – This is common in thrillers. The opening scene shows someone rushing through a queue of bad guys to save their tied up loved ones, then it cuts to “24 hours earlier” or “2 weeks earlier.”

Circular timelines that start and end at the same point – Pulp Fiction is a good example of this, especially since on a first watch-through, we don’t realize that events are out of order and that the ending of the film is in fact the lead-up to the incidents from the beginning. Not to be confused with a time loop. The story happens linearly, but our experience of it through narration happens circularly.

Overwhelmed by the number of options? Still feeling stuck with a particular section of your story? I invite you to schedule a free 20-min consultation call through my Calendly, or reach out over email. I offer coaching at a rate of $40/hour and have helped numerous authors stop paining over their plot and get down a solid draft they actually like!

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