1. Introduction
2. Unconventional Story Structures
   1. Modular/Episodic Structure
   2. Multiple Storyline Structure
   3. Frame Narrative Structure
3. Blending Story Structures
   1. Combining Classic and Unconventional Structures
      1. Guidelines for Successfully Blending Structures
   2. Subverting or Deconstructing Traditional Structures
4. Choosing the Right Structure
   1. Genre Conventions and Expectations
   2. Aligning Structure with Your Writing Process
   3. Allowing Your Story to Guide the Structure
5. Writing Exercise: The Multiverse Mosaic
6. Conclusion

Introduction

Hi Author of Tomorrow, I hope you’ve been enjoying the posts so far this year. As we tip into the latter half of 2024, you’ll finish up the Narrative Complexity and Creativity section before diving into Genre Fusion and the Unique Elements section.

Today, though, we’re going to expand on a topic from the beginning of 2024 story structure. While Speculative Fiction Story Structures: Planning Your Novel introduced the basics of story structure, this post will emphasize experimenting with creative structures to keep stories fresh.

It’s important to always remember structure at some part of your process, whether you’re a discovery writer or a plotter on that first draft. Unconventional story structures allow you to experiment with the book as much as with the world you’ve created. You may recognize some examples today without having realized they were unconventional stories. Some stories use a mix of traditional and unique structures to create a memorable experience. By the end of this article, you’ll decide if an unconventional story structure is for your story or not.

Unconventional Story Structures

Modular/Episodic Structure

Modular, or episodic, structures comprise a self-contained episodes which can stand on their own, but are also connected by common themes, characters, or an overarching story. This story structure is ideal for stories involving characters exploring different worlds, time travel, magic, magical creatures, or stories centered on new technology and its effects on the world. Each of these are just ideas to get you thinking if you have a story concept that would benefit from the modular or episodic structure.

The Black Mirror TV series is a great example of the episodic structure. While the series bounces around from world to world, and story to story, it always follows the theme of technology and its impact on society. Each story can be self-contained in its episode, though there are some Easter eggs throughout episodes. The Black Mirror version of episodic fiction allows the viewer to watch them in any order. You can compare this in literature to a short story collection. All the stories may carry the same theme, but come from multiple perspectives, worlds, or genres.

There are many benefits and challenges to using a modular/episodic story structure. On one hand, the episodic nature can allow for a more diverse representation of your world. Sharing what you love about your world can captivate both you and your readers, allowing you to explore the interesting connections between story and world. However, one challenge you’ll face is maintaining cohesion. You’ll have to know why each story is a part of the modular/episodic structure. Readers may not always see the unified role of the individual story. This will require your focus on the binding attributes of your modular/episodic fiction, and if those elements are strong enough to hold everything together.

If you’re finding that your modular/episodic fiction won’t function how you expected at first, then you can try to turn it into a multiple storyline structure.

Multiple Storyline Structure

Multiple storyline structure is pretty straightforward in concept. Your story comprises multiple independent storylines interwoven, creating a singular storyline. Readers will experience each of the individual storylines as they progress through your overall story. This story structure works best for large frame stories, series, or epics. You can justify using these in shorter stories, but it will bring up a different slew of challenges than what you’d experience in long form.

Creating the multiple storyline structured story can use many elements that are already naturally in a story, but may not always get shown to the reader. In stories with interplanetary or inter-realm conflicts, readers can follow different groups or species as tension builds towards the climax. The multiple points of view offer a chance for readers to choose who they agree with more, further investing themselves in that part of the story. You can also show parallel universes to reveal how events unfold across multiple realities. Epic fantasy quests can follow different groups on separate but interconnected quests. Your reader may not see how they tie together at first, but they all will play an integral role in your overall narrative.

Find examples of multiple storyline structure in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. With each chapter titled as the POV character’s name, readers are guided through Westeros and experience the world based on the POV character. Although the book series isn’t finished, readers can already see how the separate storylines of Danaerys and John Snow were initially unrelated, but eventually joined and became important plot points.

Using multiple storylines can be challenging because it involves managing timelines, ensuring readers have the right information, and avoiding reader fatigue from switching between different character storylines. So, here are some tips for managing multiple storylines.

• Establish Clear Distinctions
  • Like using the names of the character at the start of every chapter, using the unique POV’s perspective to shape the voice of the chapter can guide your readers.
  • Give each storyline a unique sense of setting.
• Balance Complexity and Clarity
  • Ensure each storyline is understandable on its own. While the readers get to enjoy the complete story on their own, they must feel that each storyline has a structure of its own.
  • Chapter headings can also help readers track the threads they’re following.
• Maintain Pacing Across Storylines
  • Alternate between storylines at dramatic moments to build tension.
  • Control the story rhythm through chapter/scene lengths.

Maybe you want to use multiple storylines, but they’re all from the same character, or have taken place across a time that would make the book/series as a multiple storyline structure. You’ll want to look at Frame narratives to offer that story within a story feel.

Frame Narrative Structure

A Frame Narrative Structure is a literary technique where an overarching story serves as a framework for one or more embedded narratives. The frame story provides context, commentary, or a linking device for the inner stories. You’ll often use these stories to share a large part of the past to show how the characters got to where they are when your readers meet them. This allows your characters to have the perspective to reflect on their choices, and offer some insights they learned after the “heat of the moment.”

A great example of the frame narrative is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. The frame of the story begins with Kvothe, the protagonist, as an innkeeper. Readers don’t know his past or why they’re interested in the innkeeper until a chronicler recognizes him and asks to record his life story. The bulk of the main narrative then comes from Kvothe recounting his life, from childhood to young adulthood. Periodically, the story returns to the “present” in the inn, until the end where Rothfuss bookends the story with one last frame at the inn.

How can frame narratives add depth and layers to your story?

• Create Narrative Distance
  • The frame can provide historical or cultural context to the dominant story.
  • This distance can allow for commentary or critique of the embedded narrative.
• Build Mystery or Suspense
  • Using the frame to hint at outcomes or raise questions about the story.
  • You can also have “present” issues cut off the story at climactic moments to build suspense.
• Explore Themes of Storytelling and Memory
  • The frame can highlight how stories are told, remembered, and changed.
  • This is important in fantasy settings, with spoken stories or sci-fi scenarios of historical records.

In sci-fi and fantasy, using a Frame Narrative Structure allows for stories within stories, giving readers more depth and different ways to interpret the story. With this structure, you can experiment with time, perspective, and storytelling. It’s especially effective in genres that challenge reality and imagination.

Blending Story Structures

Combining Classic and Unconventional Structures

Combining classic and unconventional story structures can create unique and engaging narratives. As a quick reminder, classic story structures include the three-act structure, the Fichtean Curve, or the Save the Cat model. These are just a few examples, but you can try combining those structures into one of the unique structures mentioned earlier. What kind of story would that create? How would it impact your readers differently?

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale uses classic and unconventional story structures to explore themes of power, control, and oppression. By blending a linear narrative with flashbacks and historical notes, Atwood explores the characters’ pasts, giving us a better grasp of their motives and the world they live in. Also, Atwood’s use of multiple narrative layers adds complexity to the storytelling, allowing readers to see the dystopian world from different angles.

Guidelines for Successfully Blending Structures

• Establish a clear primary structure to anchor the story.
• Introduce unconventional elements gradually to avoid overwhelming readers.
• Ensure that each structural element serves a purpose in advancing the overall narrative.
• Maintain consistent themes or motifs to tie different structural elements together.
• Use transitional devices to help readers navigate between different structural components.

Subverting or Deconstructing Traditional Structures

As we’ve discussed, unconventional structures can keep stories fresh. That’s not your only option, though. Taking it a step further, subverting or deconstructing traditional structures challenges reader expectations and provides new storytelling perspectives. Reflect on how stories depict time, for example. By playing with the sequence of events, authors can create a sense of disorientation or heightened tension. Authors create new ways to tell stories that captivate readers and push the limits of traditional storytelling when they challenge story structure norms.

One thing that many readers are aware of in the classic structures is what to expect when, but what happens when you change those moments and when they occur? You get stories like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut subverts the standard linear storytelling with a non-chronological fragmented narrative. This form challenges the readers’ skills and understanding of the story by forcing them to piece together the events in a disjointed manner. The scattered timeline reflects the confusing and traumatic experiences of the main character, giving us a different view of the impact of war. When the story structure reflects the character’s thoughts, it becomes more engaging and thought-provoking.

Techniques for Subverting Structures:

• Establish clear rules for your unconventional structure early in the story.
• Use consistent visual or textual cues to guide readers through the subverted structure.
• Maintain strong character development and plot progression to anchor the narrative.
• Provide occasional “touchstones” of familiar structural elements to orient readers.
• Ensure that the subversion serves the story’s themes or enhances the reading experience.

By blending structures or subverting traditional ones, authors can create unique reading experiences that challenge and engage readers while still delivering compelling narratives. The key is to balance innovation with clarity, ensuring that the chosen structure enhances rather than obscures the story.

Choosing the Right Structure

Now that you have all that information crammed into your mind, choose the story structure that’s not only right for your story, but for you. You can make the choice at any time of the writing process and revisit it multiple times. Not everyone will agree with the structural choice you’ve made, but that’s why you’re the author. Readers will debate about meaning and structure when there was no intent beyond sharing a good story. The structure will frame your readers’ response and what is emphasized. So don’t dismiss choosing the right structure for your story. How will you know what story structure is right for you?

Genre Conventions and Expectations

Different speculative fiction subgenres may influence structure choices. Even though readers want new and unique stories, there are certain expectations of each genre or sub-genre. These key story elements are much like the Essentials of Science Fiction and Fantasy you’ve been reading about in the monthly newsletters. They are cores and sometimes structure falls into that core. You can always expand, flip, or reverse that core into a unique or combined story structure, but you’ll have to make sure it’s well executed. When choosing your story structure, keep in mind the other genre conventions and how those will impact the overall structure of your story.

Aligning Structure with Your Writing Process

Everyone has a different writing process, and one story structure won’t fit all writing styles. That’s why it’s important to experiment with story structures of all forms and decide what structures work best for your writing process. Your go to structure may be a linear story structure. That’s totally fine. Other authors have a mind that works best for frame narratives. If you study your favorite books, you’ll most likely find your preferred structure. My bookshelves are full of multiple storyline narratives or Hero’s Journey stories. Those are also what I like to write. I may write outside of those areas at first, but my stories always end up tailoring themselves back toward my favorite structures.

Choose the structure that complements your outlined or discovery writing style. In the end, structure is supposed to help your writing process as much as it helps the reader’s journey.

Allowing Your Story to Guide the Structure

Stories grow and change as you write, edit, and revise them. Don’t feel you have to stick to one structure if it doesn’t end up hitting those key notes you wanted. Allow the story to guide your structure and make the adjustments, even if it is more work. Practice this through writing short stories so you don’t have to pound out multiple versions of a novel before you’re happy. The more you practice on short form, the more natural it will come in the early drafts of long form writing.

Writing Exercise: The Multiverse Mosaic

Choose three distinct science fiction or fantasy settings (e.g., a cyberpunk metropolis, a medieval fantasy realm, and a post-apocalyptic wasteland). Write a short story that incorporates all three settings using a blend of unconventional structures:

1. Use a frame narrative to introduce a character who can travel between these worlds.
2. For each setting, write a self-contained episodic chapter that explores a unique aspect of that world.
3. Weave a multiple storyline structure by introducing characters in each world whose actions inadvertently affect the others.
4. Subvert traditional structures by presenting events out of chronological order, using different tenses for each world.

Your goal is to create a cohesive narrative that ties these disparate elements together, practicing the techniques of blending structures, maintaining consistency across episodic content, and subverting reader expectations. Aim for a total length of 2,000-3,000 words total.

Conclusion

Exploring unconventional story structures unlocks limitless creativity for sci-fi and fantasy authors. Authors can create exciting and original stories by using different storytelling techniques like modular/episodic structures, multiple storylines, frame narratives, and combining them in new ways. This challenges readers and brings fresh energy to familiar genres.

Although they have their challenges, unconventional storytelling can lead to unforgettable stories that stand out. Keep pushing the limits of traditional storytelling as you develop your skills. Your next experiment with structure could unlock an extraordinary tale.

As always, keep writing, keep learning, and forge yourself into an author of tomorrow.

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