Story structure helps you fulfill your writer’s goal. Without an action plan, you risk losing your way and abandoning your writing project.
By: Grant P. Ferguson
Last Updated: August 20, 2025
Mastering the Best
To set and fulfill a writer’s goal, I leveraged this axiom from the late Charlie Munger.
“I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.”
I find and share the best of what the top authors have already figured out.
Writing Principle: Story structure helps you fulfill your writer’s goal.
Using Story Structure to Fulfill the Writer’s Goal
I could write about the many exciting and intricate facets of creating novels, but I keep coming back to the need to master story structure — your action plan to write a book readers will love.
Without a firm foundation of story structure, your tasks wander. For example:
What’s Needed to Fulfill a Writer’s Goal?
No doubt you can complete a novel without story structure. In fact, there are well-known authors who insist on using nothing more than their wits and instincts.
Writing Principle: A goal without an action plan is merely a wish.
However, today’s readers are picky and cast aside novels that don’t deliver stories according to their pre-established expectations.
When you master story structure, you have internalized a checklist of what it takes to please readers.
The Danger of No Story Structure
Perhaps the greatest danger of no story structure is getting lost in the area between your left and right ears.
The longer it takes to create a working draft that will satisfy and then exceed readers’ expectations, the greater the possibility you’ll abandon the entire writing project.
Master Story Structure and Please Readers
Consider how story structure can help you achieve your goal to write a book readers will love.
- A story that exceeds the expectations of the reader’s favorite genre.
- A quality premise that strategically guides the story’s development.
- Characters’ thoughts, choices, speech, and actions that engage readers.
- Plots that advance the story and force characters to react with emotions.
- Themes that resonate with readers long after they finish the last page.
- Story beats that guide the narrative with the familiar patterns readers expect.
- Scenes that encourage the audience to keep turning pages until the climax.
Story structure is the firm foundation you can use to achieve your writer’s goal.
Life and the Writer’s Goal
I’ll close with another time-tested axiom.
Writing Principle: The writer’s goal serves the author, never the opposite.
Life has many distractions, the kind that take writers away from completing their novels.
When life’s distractions throw you a curve, take care of priorities, then use story structure to pick up where you left off and write without losing your momentum.
Leave a Reply
How do you make sure you’ll complete your novel?
13 responses to “A Writer’s Goal and Story Structure”
Not that joining Alice is a bad thing. It would just mean I would not finish my novel ever.
Without Grant’s work and his input I would be joining Alice in Wonderland. Thank you Grant.
You’re welcome, Peter, and thank you for the kind words!
Life has kept me busy this past year of living out of a suitcase, but the structure is finally coming along—and I’m anxious to get at the longer work.
I look forward to your updates, David. Here’s to progress in the days ahead.
I cobble together pieces until I have a story
The kluge of many parts makes the differences. Thanks for sharing your efforts, Jacqui! It’s wonderful how you’ve turned those parts into many books and a popular series.
Sometimes I think I do a lot of ‘wishing’ writing! Thanks for the encouragement to have a plan, Grant!
Nothing wrong with wishing, Dana, and when coupled with a plan, you’re empowered us to turn the wish into reality.
I have fun writing into the dark for short stories, but that would be difficult for a whole novel. I think story beats are the way to go for long fiction. You need story points to aim for in order to keep writing.
Me too, Priscilla!
In studying the life and writing of Raymond Chandler, I marveled at how we often oversimplify writing. Chandler didn’t achieve those crisp, memorable lines on the first pass — that was your noted fun part. Those memorable lines typically came later, after thought, scrubbing, and re-editing.
In reading a book of his many letters, Chandler qualified what he thought was decent writing, and then held himself to a higher standard.
However, you hit upon the key: get the words and storyline working before editing. That way, we have fun and deliver what readers want.
If I could wave a magic wand to help writers, I’d wish they would focus on enjoying the journey instead of the destination. For example, look at the writing journey of Raymond Chandler as shown in his decades-long bibliography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler_bibliography
Structure has definitely kept my writing efforts on the rails to craft a decent story, the first in a closed series. As a newbie to fiction writing who just completed his first solid draft, I feel good about the output, knowing I didn’t try to re-invent the wheel, which is always a creative person’s tendency. Looking forward to re-writes and polish. I love learning from some of the best—thanks, Grant!
I love the way structure allows us to pick up where we left off. Else, I’d be toast with all the distractions. Thanks for your spot-on comment, John!