Don’t Paint by the Numbers.
The best stories are infinite; fractal-folded meme demons conveying truths and experiences inaccessible to the whirring gears and thumping pistons of logic, no matter how thoroughly greased.
The story is already there. A frequency in the ether.
Your job is to tune into it.
Not “architect” it.
The kind of structure a writer needs is a better antenna—more satellite dishes in their array.
Not a “blueprint.”
Not “scaffolding.”
And in spite of what John Grisham says, definitely not an outline.
Structure isn’t for creating the story, it helps you hear it. It helps you recognize the station you’re tuning into—to distinguish its melodies from the competing static.
“My kind of structure is a strange attractor.”
Start with anything—a piece of dialogue cribbed from your split-personality / an odd shadow in an alley that looks like a twelve-legged spider / your protagonist getting punched in the face by a former Disney child star—then derive the rest.
The blank page can drown you with possibility.
Let it.
Resist the urge to put on the life jacket of an outline, or to buoy another derivative draft with more hero’s journey. Flotation devices keep you at the surface. The good stuff is deep.
Be an artist. Inhale the salty death of dark unknowable.
Die into something truly alive.
