Lovely Bones - Understanding Structure, Part 1

In the spirit of Halloween, (which is only 9 days away, yippee!) I thought we'd talk a little bit about skeletons today. Because I am a basic morbid bitch, bones are pretty much my favorite thing ever, and I hope to someday own an entire curiosity cabinet full of ethically-obtained human specimens. But alas, this blog is not supposed to be about me and my dreams, so we are not talking about those kinds of skeletons.

We're actually talking about the prose structure sort of skeletons, which are really not skeletons at all. They are actually just more work that I tried and failed to dress up as fun. You know, like that one house that gives out raisins in festive boxes instead of actual candy.

The good news, though, is that today's exercise is going to be somewhat easy and doesn't really involve any actual writing. 

1. Find an old piece of yours. It can be a short story, a poem, a play, an essay, a novel if you're ambitious. If you're just starting out on this whole act of self-torture and loathing and you haven't actually written anything yet, just grab something you've read recently and call recall well without needing to re-read extensively. 

2. Try to map out the structure of the piece. You can do this by jotting down events or points in order, or if you're more visual, you can actually draw out the rises and falls in plot. I'm sure we all remember that pyramid-shaped plot diagram from middle school. Don't try to retroactively make your piece "fit" into that structure when mapping, just try to honestly document the highs and lows that are already there. If you've got a big, fancy hunk of a story (I'm jealous), you may find it easier to create several different diagrams to account for subplots.

Only spend ten minutes on this, of course. After that, go forth and do whatever it is you usually do on rainy fall Wednesdays. We'll fight the beast that is part two of this exercise tomorrow, so get ready.