Structure. Is it an arc, with rising action and a climax? A river that meanders from its source to its ending? A spiral? An explosion? It can be any of those things, as you choose and as your skills allow.
In an essay for Lit Hub, Mesha Maren suggests another way to consider the structure of your novel: the venerable mix tape.
As she was editing her most recent novel, Maren knew that something was off about her chapter sequences, but couldn’t put her finger on what. A serendipitous conversation about mixtapes set her on a new path.
What’s so special about mixtapes? “Each side of a cassette gives you 45 minutes to work with: you pick the songs that fit, and they come together as something larger than their singular selves,” Maren explains. As she indulged in mixtape nostalgia, Maren realized the care and attention she paid to her song choices could also inform her chapter sequencing. “I should stop thinking about what came next in terms of the linear story of my novel or how to introduce all my characters as quickly as possible,” she says. “I should be thinking about moods and transitions.”
With this in mind, she returned to her novel. “If the second chapter opened with the public-facing hustle and bustle of a restaurant job, then maybe the third could turn to the private relief of saying goodbye and the fourth to the even deeper privacy of dreams,” Maren explains. “If the second chapter closed with a moment of closeness between Elana and Alex, then the next could open with a bittersweet temporary separation.”
Looking at her manuscript from this angle freed Maren from wrestling her chapters into a “logical” order. “It was fun. It was hard,” she says. ‘It was like making a mixtape for the crush I had on all of my characters at once.”
