For writers working in narrative, there’s nothing quite as anxiety-provoking as the question of whether or not we have the structure right.

We work for months on our messy first draft, some of us for YEARS even, hoping with our fingers crossed that when we get to the end, we’ll have a story that basically works and won’t have to be completely rewritten from scratch because we didn’t get the fundamentals right.

The trick is in how to do that exactly…

There are many options for structuring a story – and likely some that have yet to be invented – but in this blog post, I’m going to clarify the classic 3 act structure and hopefully demonstrate how you can use it as a tool to help you shape your messy first draft so that you end up with a book that works at its most basic level.

This structure is classic like a Chanel suit because it’s that well-constructed and can take you anywhere, and it’s also classic as in Seen on TV,...