First Sunday Q&A: Complex and Woven Structures for Books
Q: I’m frustrated with my writing right now, because I love reading really complex literature with incredibly complex structures. But when I try to duplicate this complexity in my own memoir writing, it fails miserably. Can you give an overview of types of book structure and how a writer with complex tastes and simpler skills can approach structure sensibly but without boring herself to death?
A: This winter, we took a field trip to a crafts fair where one of my relatives shows her work. She’s a weaver. Not just that—she also raises sheep, shears them, cards the wool, and dyes it with homemade dyes. She loves it, too—she loves the complexity of woven patterns. I couldn’t resist buying a shank of wool in a beautiful gray-puce color, a combination of wool and angora (she raises rabbits too).
I like complexity in visuals—walking into our living space, you’d face a riot of color and texture and design. My spouse is also a painter so our paintings line the walls. Furniture is eclectic, mostly inherited antiques or vintage second-hand. Some shield their eyes when they enter. Too much complexity in color, shape, design. But to me, it’s inspiring and exciting.
Such a trend exists in books as well. Books are getting more complex--not just in their storylines but also in their structures. I love reading books that make me work, just a bit, to figure out the woven layers.
Could all of this be a reflection of how our brains are changing (remember the landmark study (2010) of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr). Or maybe it’s our continued desire to reinvent literature that matches our cultural needs.
How have book structures changed in the last twenty years?
Scroll back to 1998. Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible awes readers with a story told by five (!) different narrators. Five members of the Price family contribute their own version of the voyage from Georgia to be missionaries in the Belgian Congo. Nathan, the father, is the only one whose voice isn’t primary. Instead, the circle around him, his family, is the chorus in this book. Back then, this kind of story structure was a shock to readers, at least to me.
Kingsolver was a finalist for the Pulitzer that year, deservedly, because she knew how to keep our attention during each transition between narrators—the first challenge of complex structures.
In 2008, we read Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, a whole new type of book, which some called "episodic" because it straddled the line between a group of short stories and a novel. To me, it paved the way for further experimentation. Think of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries. Each offered another step, a new kind of complicated story structure.
Now we’re reading a woven plot that moves not just between multiple narrators but through different eras. (The Stone Diaries even toggles from first- to second- to third-person voice.)
These are classics; you may have read them if you’re into literary fiction, you may not. I did. I was fascinated by how they worked out structural problems on the page. Because this stuff is exciting but it’s not easy.
Fast forward again to another wave of experimental book structure. 2005’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal is set up like an encyclopedia, moving through alphabetical listings of topics. There are notes, bullet-point lists, ruminations. Some listings are one paragraph, some as long as chapters. It is entertaining and extremely random, as if you're visiting a fictional character's journal and peering in on her mind, heart, and daily life. 2008’s The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham is a bit more serious and the chapters look like real chapters, but the organization is fascinating. It explores the author's experience after her dad's suicide. Each chapter is a different way it affected her--but it is set up as an index. Chapters fall under main and subordinate headings, like an index would. An example: "Suicide: act of: attempt to imagine."
Tommy Orange’s amazing There, There, published in 2018 organizes a dozen stories by different narrators, circling around an event that greatly affects a Native American community. I was riveted by how he pulled the threads together and kept the tension while so many balls were in the air. 2019’s Evidence of V by Sheila O’Connor is of a similar complexity, a mix of memoir and fiction, prose and poetry surrounding the author’s present-day search for traces of her missing grandmother.
All these books--and many others out on the market today--are showing us where we can all go, as writers, into a new kind of literary architecture. If structure is the frame of a story, these authors are playing, often gleefully, with how this frame influences their narrative. They are making the structure a strong part of their stories.
If you’ve read this far, you may be a writer who’s intrigued by trying this. But let’s look carefully at the different kinds of structure—simple to complex—and what each requires.
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Although there are many exceptions, most book structures fall into one of three categories:
Simple structure (chronological, single narrator)
Woven structure (multiple narrators, locations, eras; high amount of backstory)
Thematic structure (circling a primary image or theme)
Your taste versus your skills
If you’re pulled towards things complex, complicated, or conflictual, you also need to consider the cost in time, effort, and skills needed. Kingsolver, above, tackled the most basic story structure with five narrators. The cost was expertise in transitions. This comes only after years of practice and study, in my view.
But what if our taste reaches farther than our current ability, to quote Ira Glass? My first novel, still in a drawer, was a complex structure of epistolary (letters and dairy entries) and scene. I loved the idea, I had no clue how to make it work.
Many of us are drawn to complexity beyond our skill level, and that’s actually a good thing. We can grow. But we also need to not push our tastes on a story that requires something simple. Make sure your idea for a more complicated structure serves the story you’re writing. Consider the benefits of a simple structure first. It might allow your story to shine, while a complex one will only confuse it unnecessarily.
You may have an even more basic question: What if a writer doesn’t yet know the structures they want to play around with? That’s not uncommon. And no worries—take your time to explore. First, get a good draft done. At revision, you can explore different structures and see what might best fit what your story is trying to say.
Simple structure
A great example of simple structure is the classic myth or fairytale. Our roots lie here, as readers and listeners, with stories often shared out loud, stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
In simple structures, there are usually five main turning points that carry us along a certain chronology. I think of "Beauty and the Beast" from The Blue Fairy Book edited by Andrew Lang. (If you need a refresher or just want a lovely break, dive into the world of simple story structures at Sur La Lune Fairytales.)
1. First external triggering event: The family's house burns down and they lose everything
2. First internal turning point: The father must give up his daughter to the Beast
3. Second external triggering event: Beauty refuses to marry the Beast but is given permission to return home if she promises to return
4. Second internal turning point: Beauty realizes the Beast is dying because she did not return as promised
5. Final crisis or epiphany moment: The Beast turns into a handsome prince
Not a lot of work for the average reader to follow this trajectory, not much in hidden themes or messages, only one narrator to get to know (or classically, we head hop via the omniscient point of view). This deeply satisfying structure mimics life as we long for it, perhaps, with that obvious beginning, middle, and end. As Aristotle said, these three element provides emotional catharsis.
Maybe one reason the myth and fairytale structures are re-emerging in many forms in our literature today. We crave simplicity.
Ready for a More Complex Structure?
But you may be writing a story that spans several generations, using multiple narrators and places. Your topic may be cutting edge. You may want to bring in a compelling backstory that is a book in itself (childhood trauma, for instance).
If so, you may benefit from a structure that echoes your edgy narrative.
In fairytales, the chronology of events guides the structure, providing a beginning, middle, and end in chronological time. Events are logically placed along this timeline, and the story evolves in a clear way. We easily track chronological structures because they are like a calendar: one thing happens, then another thing happens as a result.
If you want to explore more complexity than this, a next step is creating a structure around the narrator or main character's growth arc instead (how they change as a result of the events). This would bring in backstory, moving away from chronological time. There might be a scene from the past inserted in the middle of a present-time scene. Now we are being guided by something other than just the events--there's an emotional undercurrent that is directing the story.
Or gain complexity by choosing a flow, a trajectory, that mimics your topic. I think of Ann Patchett's classic novel, Bel Canto: the language and structure itself is very like an opera, which is one of the main subjects of the book. Another example is Let the Great World Spins, which starts with the image of a tightrope walker between skyscrapers. The chapters that follow further illustrate the message of that image (see below for more on this).
A third option is to follow thematic questions. These structures will often have one main question addressed from lots of different perspectives, narrators or time periods or places all look at this main question. We move back and forth in time very easily, so this structure also employs backstory. The Stone Diaries is a good example of thematic structure: many different stories tied together by the question of identity and what "stone" means.
I find the fourth option to be the most complex and challenging structure. This one is threaded by primary image. One big image, like a camera shot often placed at the start of the story, carries us through the structure. Going back to the classic, Let the Great World Spin, another structural take on that opening chapter image of the tightrope walker is the opposite of his view: people on the ground staring up at the sky where "real" life is happening.
You might say that each section in the book explores an aspect of this dual view. Does the theme challenge us with the question of where life is really taking place? Is that the point of McCann’s choice of structure?
Choices
It all comes down to choices—and I would encourage you to choose based on what your story most needs, not because you, as the writer, want to impress readers with something complex and hard to follow. Sadly, some writers feel this highlights their intelligence. They complicate for the sake of complication, but that rarely serves the story.
When do I know that I need to up my complexity? When I’m bored. When the writing or trajectory becomes predictable. When I am no longer surprised (and delighted) by what I’m learning as a writer with this particular tale.
Study the examples above if you're curious about moving into more complex structures for your work. Find a published book in your genre that fascinates you. Read it again as a writer, not a reader, taking notes about its structure. What skills did the author have to have in their pocket, to pull this off?
Then look at your own book’s message or meaning. What structure might show it off best?
For our discussion thread this week, feel free to share the title of a book that appeals to you because of its unusual structure. Why did you love it?