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Last year I did a post for the Writers Digest website, explaining why (my opinion) “just write” is among the most dangerous soundbytes of writing advice ever uttered. It’s like telling someone about to on trial without a lawyer (an apropos analogy to trying to write a story without knowing how to write a novel) to skip law school and “just talk.” One reader commented in response that, because after years of practice some writers can indeed “just write” and be successful… I thank her for helping make my point.
There is a huge, hard-won backlog of knowledge and principle that makes anything that can otherwise be “made up as you go along” functional, if not downright fatal.
“Just do it” can get you killed, and it can kill your story, as well.
In that context, I’ve yet to encounter a writer who can disprove the existence or need for a largely given structure – the order and context for how a story should flow – for the rendering of long form storytelling....
Larry Brooks talks about the importance of structure in storytelling.