How Much Structure Does a Story Need?

Writing a story takes time and patience. It takes dedication, and the world building behind it can get very messy if it’s not managed. When I first started writing, all I had was scrivener, and some ideas I was messing around with. As I continued writing Dream Sparks it progressed and grew into a story that was way larger than I thought it would end up being. As I wrote I became more serious about it, and I eventually decided that this was the story that I would make into my first novel. I wanted a simple space adventure that would fit into one novel. At the time I really thought that Dream Sparks was small enough of a story for that. The world building developed alongside the story, and I came to the place where I had to acknowledge that I was writing a series. I realized that I needed to become more organized if I wanted things to go smoothly.

I’m not an organized person by default. It’s something that’s usually put on the back burner, or done in the moment. Writing has been one of the places where I’ve forced myself to work on that. During my writing I was faced with wondering how much organization was needed. Could it be overdone? How much structure did my writing really need? I pondered this over days as I worked, and I believe that it depends on how you write, and what your story is.

Some people like to outline the entire story, start to finish. Some like to write as they go, and can feel restricted by planning. I do some of both. I have the main plot outlined, with the sub plots unplanned. Dream Sparks did not have any type of outline until about halfway through the first draft. I stopped writing for a time to lay out everything that was happening so that I could have a bigger picture, along with some goals to work towards. I didn’t do a specific outline of each chapter, but instead wrote out timelines. Now I do sometimes think I got carried away with that, but it did make my story more solid, and I may share my timelines later on After Reads.

Dream Sparks ended up with four timelines… which was more than I thought I would do. The first one went over the history of Gunner’s people, and how they settled in the star system. The second one went over how things would go with Gunner and Ty if Franca wasn’t a part of the story. This gave me an idea of places where it would be important for her to be part of the story. The third one was Franca’s timeline before she met Gunner. This timeline was the one that was the most important to me because Franca’s story is very separate from everything else at first. The fourth timeline was the order of the dreams she had, which can now be seen as a post on After Reads, posted here: https://www.clairejhall.com/after-reads/dream-order-in-dream-sparks-and-an-extra-scene

The second novel in the story has all of the main plot outlined, along with a timeline that I’m currently working on. I already know that I might end up with more timelines… that will depend on how the adventure plays out!