The MOST important thing you can do to master story structure is to learn this bit of film history and how to apply it to your books.
This is it in a nutshell:
Most movies are written in a Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure.
Most of the films you’ve ever seen in your life are made up of eight discrete 12 to 16-minute SEQUENCES, each of which has a beginning, middle and cliffhanger end.
It’s the key to the story structuring technique I write about and that everyone's always asking me to teach. Those of you who have the workbooks or have taken my workshop have heard this before. But anyone who hasn’t - needs this more than anything else I could ever say. (Plus it’s always good to review!)
If you write fiction, I guarantee you’re already using a lot of the techniques I talk about here in your own writing, including this Eight-Sequence structure—even if you’ve never heard of it.
What I’m doing here is making it conscious for you, so you can use it more deliberately and effectively to write better—and better selling! - books and scripts.
Because you have to understand this. Your reader or audience has seen so many movies and TV shows over the course of their lifetime that they have internalized this structure. Just like you have.
Let me say that again.
Your reader or audience knows this structure, however unconsciously. They expect it.
And if you’re missing some key elements, or missing some sequence breaks, your reader or audience is going to get edgy and think that you’re doing something wrong, or the story’s not going anywhere—and they’ll bail on it.
We don’t want that!
So, today we’ll blaze through a very very brief history.
But first, some free books!
Goodreads is giving away ten hardcovers of The Grapevine - enter here and click Want to Read to win.
The Goodreads giveaway is US only, but both UK and US readers can enter a second giveaway by subscribing to the Abby Gomersall is MISSING page on my Writing Life Substack. All subscribers will automatically be eligible for upcoming drawings for audiobooks, books, and gift cards.
Huntress Moon, Book 1 of the Huntress/FBI Thrillers, is $2.49 until the end of May. All six books in the series are FREE on Kindle Unlimited.
Back to story structure!
For over a hundred years, movies have been structured by taking the Three-Act Structure of plays (developed over two thousand years ago in the Golden Age of Greek theater)—
—and adding an Eight-Sequence Structure within those Three Acts.
Here’s what that looks like:
The 40-60 scenes that you brainstormed on Index Cards last week are all going to fit into this Story Structure grid - about 5-10 cards per Sequence. Which is the next step. But first let’s understand what this structure is.