This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers

Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode,

Making Story Structure Your Own.

Over the past decade,

the term Story Structure has largely come to refer to plot points and beat sheets.

When writers start talking about structure, many of us assume they're talking about the specific and even archetypal shape of story.

The rise and fall of plot, the causal balance of action and reaction, the transformational journey of the character.

And certainly this is how I think of story structure.

Indeed, as regular listeners know, much of what I discuss on this podcast is focused on

examining, breaking down, and positing the working parts and patterns found

within stories. By this definition, story structure and its related studies such as character arc can be wildly exciting since it seems to reveal hidden codes and secrets from out of the body of human storytelling.

As writers, this exploration gives us the opportunity to translate what makes a good story into specific and relatable theories.

It allows us to look beneath the trappings of story to the deeper stories underneath.

And more practically, it allows writers to problem solve our own stories more logically and rationally.

What I talk about on this podcast and in my books is just my interpretation of story structure.

It's based both on my own experience

as a reader and writer, and also on the resonance

I've felt in response to the insights

of many writers and teachers who have come before and who walk beside me.

But again, their insights are also just their interpretations of story structure.

Structure, in fact, need not and didn't always explicitly apply

...