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The final category in my series on designing principles is the storyteller.

Who is your novel’s storyteller?

At the outset, it might not seem like the point-of-view or the narrator you chose to tell your story would have a large impact on its structure, but it does. Imagine if how differently the The Usual Suspects would be if it wasn’t told from the POV of Kevin Spacey’s character sitting in a New York City police station. Or imagine how the design of The Book Thief would be different if it wasn’t narrated by death. Or how the structure of The Hunger Games changes when you move out of the first person narration of Katniss’ mind in the book, to the omniscient eye taken in the movie? The choices of what is put where, and why, changes.

Additionally, consider the design effect of having multiple POV narrators as done in the book Will Grayson, Will Grayson which has two narrators, or Jumped which has three, or Tangled  which has four, or Keesha’s House  which has eight. How does one move from POV to POV? By alternating chapters? By telling the whole story of one and then the whole story of another? Or maybe weighing the POV of one over another?

The storyteller of your book is going to affects it pacing, its linearity, its patterns of repetition, and the breadth of knowledge and experience the storyteller has access to. It has ramifications in all your other design choices and shouldn’t be chosen lightly.

Hopefully, these six categories have helped you to think about how to structure and plot your own novel in a way that is organic, instead of plugging your characters in to a pre-designed template. Have fun exploring all the alternate plots and structures at your fingertips, and remember that using them should come organically from your premise and characters!

I know this has been a long series (thanks for hanging in there with me). I’ve only got a few final notes before wrapping it all up.

Up Next: Structural Layering (because yes, you probably won’t pick one structure and be done!)

Want to know more about designing principles? Try these links:

• What is a designing principle?
• Designing principle #1: A character’s mental state
• Designing principle #2: Setting and environment
• Designing principle #3: Time
• Designing Principle #4: Community
• Designing Principle #5: Parallel stories and myth

How to Write a Picture Book. Ebook, immediate download. $10.

The problem of writing from real life events

I’m still looking for a new story, so I’ve been mining events in my life, just writing. For example, my son had to take a Parenting class in 9th grade and there were at least three hysterical stories from that class, including one egg-baby named Adolf. When I stopped to evaluate what I wrote, though, they were very flat. Fortunately, Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall explain why in Chapter 23 of Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A guide to creative fiction. This is what I learned.

Problems with turning life into fiction

1. Too faithful a telling. Often writers cling to events because “they really happened.” So what? That doesn’t mean the event will successfully become a fully developed story. To turn life into fiction, you must be willing to turn loose of the “reality” to find the “truth” in the fiction.
   Suggestion: Try to deliberately change one major thing in a story. For example, change the setting. Look for the larger story embedded in the event that keeps you coming back to the event.
2. Too few details. Sketchy. Because life stories are often told to friends who already know you, your life, your situation, life stories are often told in a shorthand. Fiction, though, must assume an audience who knows nothing beyond what is on the page.
   Suggestion: To change life into fiction, work hard to describe everything in detail. You can edit out some later, but start by giving way too much, so the story is grounded.
3. Point of view problems. The narrator (you) is also a character in the story. But when you write the anecdote and try to remove yourself, the story is boring; at best, it’s flat. You must find a way to endow the story with fully-developed characters separate from yourself, including the first-person narrator. Developing that first-person character on the page is important and often neglected when telling something that “really happened.”
   Suggestion: Removing the first-person narrator and write it in third person is also an option. Evaluate how well the incident might work as fiction. Or write it from first person, but change something significant about the narrator: age, sex, culture, etc.
4. Too slight an event, not yet a plot. Sometimes, it’s just a running gag in your family; or perhaps a “cute” moment in your child’s or grandchild’s life. But remove the sentiment and it has no lasting entertainment value and no enduring themes or ideas.
   Suggestion: Look
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