When people find out story structures exist, they usually go through three stages. First, relief: “There’s a method!” Then panic: “There are seven methods and they contradict each other.” And finally, the good part: “Oh. They’re basically saying the same thing.”
They are, but with different amounts of detail. That detail is what you’re really choosing, based on how you work. Here are the five that come with Sunday Plot, with Wanted: One Dragon, the sample novel, told through each one.
Five maps for the same book
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Wake the Dragon 14 beats
Good for: Writers who want to be told what happens, and where, with pieces you can remember and five you can leave empty.
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Three Acts 9 beats
Good for: Writers who want the basics and lots of open space.
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Hero’s Journey 12 beats
Good for: Stories about leaving home, changing and coming back.
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Seven-Point Structure 7 beats
Good for: Writers who know the ending and design backwards.
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Snowflake Method 5 beats
Good for: Writers who’d rather start from a single paragraph.
Wake the Dragon: fourteen pieces with names of their own
The Sunday Plot structure. Fourteen pieces, each with a rough position in the book and a name you can remember on the bus: “All Hell Breaks Loose” around 10%, “Upside Down” right in the middle, “Rock Bottom” around 75%. They all turn on the lie your protagonist believes, and five are flexible: if they’re not in your novel, you leave them empty.
In Wanted: One Dragon: the glass case is empty (All Hell Breaks Loose), Mara decides to investigate (No Turning Back), they find the shell in the oven (Upside Down), Bruno is arrested and the dragon is taken away (Rock Bottom), and the rescue at the festival with half the town in on it (Go Big or Go Home).
It suits you ifThis is your first novel, if the blank page freezes you, or if you like being told what comes next. It’s the one Sunday Plot recommends if you’re unsure, because it turns “write a novel” into fourteen specific questions.
Maybe not ifLong lists stress you out, or your story is heavy on character and light on plot.
Three Acts: the basics, with room to breathe
Setup, confrontation and resolution, with two plot points between them and a midpoint. Nine beats in Sunday Plot. It’s the oldest one, and it sits under almost all the others.
In Wanted: One Dragon: the egg is stolen and Mara gets the blame (inciting incident), she decides to investigate (first plot point), they find the shell in the oven (midpoint), Bruno is arrested and the dragon is taken away (second plot point), and the rescue during the festival (climax).
It suits you ifYou already have a pretty clear story and just want to check that it holds up, or if you prefer few rules and lots of space.
Maybe not ifYou tend to get lost in the second act, which here is one huge stretch with very few signposts.
Hero’s Journey: leave, change, come back
Twelve stages, in Christopher Vogler’s version built on Joseph Campbell. Someone leaves their familiar world, faces trials, hits bottom and comes back changed, bringing something that makes their world better.
It works even without an actual journey. Mara never leaves Valdrago, but her “ordinary world” is the empty library, her mentor is Bruno, and her “elixir” is finally having a place. Her own.
It suits you ifYour story is about a transformation, if there’s a new world to explore (even if it’s a town you thought you knew), or if you write fantasy or adventure.
Maybe not ifYou struggle to fit in figures like the mentor or the threshold without it sounding like a textbook.
Seven-Point Structure: start at the end
This one is Dan Wells’s. Seven moments, and the key idea is that the hook (how it starts) is the opposite of the resolution (how it ends). So you settle the ending first and design backward. It has two “pinches”, moments where the antagonist turns up the pressure.
In Wanted: One Dragon: Mara alone in the library on the night of the summer dance (hook), and Mara dancing with Alex in the square a year later (resolution). Everything else is the road from one picture to the other.
It suits you ifYou already know how your novel ends, if you write mysteries, or if you like everything to click together like clockwork.
Maybe not ifThe ending is exactly the part you haven’t figured out.
Snowflake Method: a paragraph that grows
Randy Ingermanson’s method in its shortest form: a setup, three disasters and an ending. Five beats. The original idea is to start with one sentence, expand it into a paragraph, then a page, and so on, like a growing snowflake.
It suits you ifYou like going from small to big, if long lists paralyze you, or if you want something light for a short novel.
Maybe not ifYou need someone to tell you what happens between one disaster and the next.
Pick one, don’t marry it
Here’s the most important part: it barely matters which one you pick. They all do the same job, which is making sure your novel has a beginning, a middle and an end, and that the middle doesn’t sag. Choose the one you’ll be happiest to open tomorrow.
And if you get it wrong, you switch. In Sunday Plot, go to Settings › Change template and move to another one whenever you like. Before you commit, “See how it would look” shows you where each beat will end up. Every scene moves to the new beat that falls at the same point in the book, and whatever you wrote in each beat is kept with its old name in front, like “[All Hell Breaks Loose] On Sunday the glass case is empty…”. Nothing gets lost.
You don’t have to follow any of them to the letter. On the Structure screen you can add your own beats, rename them or remove the ones that don’t help. And if your novel started out with no template, you can pick one later, right there.
For today
Look at the diagram above and choose the template that makes you think “okay, I get this one”. Not the best one. The one you get. Then fill in a single beat, whichever you’re clearest on.
In Sunday Plot, you choose a template when you create a novel. If you already created yours with a different one, go to Settings, click “See how it would look” with the new one, and decide with everything in front of you.