Reading a novel is like going on a journey down a river. Sometimes the water is smooth and calm, sometimes rough; occasionally you may find yourself in whitewater rapids; and ultimately it flows into the sea. If your boat gets ambushed by a rogue current and becomes snarled up among tree roots and rushes in a muddy backwater, that spoils your journey. A page-turning exciting fast-plotted read is reasonably easy to attain, up to a certain point; but where many inexperienced writers get caught out is overall structure.
It has been said that plot is character and character is plot. In regard to structure, the key is the main protagonist who in this article I will assume is male. We need to know his conscious desire; and if his unconscious desire conflicts with it, that takes precedence. The spine of the novel is the energy of the main protagonist's desire. Everything is structured around that. When a novel is strangely unsatisfactory, I suggest that a failure to fully understand and apply these principles of structure is at the heart of the problem.
Recently I read a novel by a self-published author. It was an exciting, fast-paced, well-plotted story, with issues and characters I cared about. As I turned the pages, I found it gripping, and was planning to give it four stars. However when I reached the final third of the novel I realised I was going to have to downgrade it to 3 stars. I began to feel cheated, disappointed, short-changed. That is a sure sign the writer's problem lay in the structure. Here are three pointers, enabling you as a writer to explore this:
1) Who is the main protagonist?
There was some doubt about who the main protagonist was because the author moved from viewpoint to viewpoint so much. I began to feel I wanted more exploration of the MP's motivations and character. Some of his behaviour was the behaviour of a villain, not a hero. I wanted to understand and to be enabled to feel there were some redeeming factors.
2) Character Motivation
A major female character, compassionate, caring, intelligent, was behaving in a way I just did not find believable in the circumstances. Why was she set on a course which might have terrible repercussions for her? What was there in her background that led her to behave as she did? The author had not explored this at all, he simply presented her behaviour.
3) The main antagonist
This was a "secret enemy". Our hero had started to guess his existence but there was no build-up or gradual unravelling of information. Instead we simply had the secret enemy choosing to reveal himself in the last fifth of the novel. Why? This strand of the story lacked progression. The unmasking of the enemy, and his final comeuppance, needs to be through the efforts and the personal resources and the striving of the main protagonist.
These three pointers will show you how critical character and motivation is to structure. Understand structure and apply its principles if you want to create a novel which flows well, like a journey down a great river.
S.C.Skillman is the author of mystery romance novel "Mystical Circles" which "weaves romance and attraction with spiritual searching and emotional needs." Download it on your Kindle here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=mystical+circles
