Here we go again. Structure. Some writers know it instinctively. Stephen King is a great example. Boy, can he ever tell a story! For many (dare I say most?) of the rest of us, it’s a struggle. Here’s an example from a picture book I’ve been tinkering with forever. It’s titled, Henrietta’s Lucky Day.

Henrietta is a little girl who decides to walk to the park by herself. Along the way she encounters neighbors who one by one suggest she should not be doing this. Their suggestions make her nervous. She bravely replies that it’s okay because she has her lucky whatever — hat, sunglasses, etc.— but her nervousness builds. When a big dog yawns at her it’s the final straw. She takes off running, climbing, and scrambling willy nilly until she finally plops down on the far side of a fence, only to discover that she’s lost all her lucky things and that she too is lost. She begins to cry. At that moment her mother appears. She scoops Henrietta up to carry her back to their house and Henrietta sees that she plopped at the far end of her own back yard! Relieved, she happily tells her mother, “this is my lucky day.”

Now, my book is nicely written, line by line, and Henrietta is cute as a button, but THERE’S NO PLOT. Henrietta simply sets out, gets increasingly scared, and then is saved by the deus ex machina event of her mother suddenly appearing. Henrietta herself has done nothing to make things turn out all right. As a matter of fact, in general Henrietta’s done nothing. Yes, she took the action of setting out for the park at the beginning of the story, but that’s where it stops. Everything else is reaction. Henrietta is passive, and passive characters don’t make for very good stories.

I remind myself, character = action = plot.