Writers who use three-act structure love it, because it has all the right twists and turns–in the right place–for building a story that satisfies readers.

The Hero’s Journey is the same way. It’s fantastic for certain types of stories…

…but if you’re not writing one of those story types, you’ll struggle to make your story work.

There is another structure…

…a simpler, more flexible storytelling structure…

…made up of 10 simple phases that take your character through a complete emotional journey.

It does have a few plot points, but they’re more open than the plot points you find in three-act structure or in the Hero’s Journey.

This story structure allows you to draw a simple map of your story…that doubles as a map of your character’s emotional journey.

(That’s my favorite thing about it.)

It doesn’t get as much attention as three-act structure or the Hero’s Journey…in fact, it’s often overlooked by writers.

Why?

I’m not sure, but I have a theory.

Because when I first tried this story structure, I made a mistake.

A mistake that ruined my story.

There are a couple different ways to interpret this structure…and the most common ones encourage you to fall into bad storytelling habits.

Like easing off on your story’s conflicts.

Or forgetting to raise the stakes.

It took a lot of experimenting for me to see why this structure wasn’t working for me…

…but once I discovered the right way to use it, I fell in love with it.

It’s so powerful in the way that it sets up each phase of your character’s struggle.

But it’s so flexible, it makes brainstorming a joy.

I’m going to show you how it works in…

Story Structure Series, Episode One

The W Plot