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Rona Maynard's avatar

This'll keep writers busy for a while. It's a whole workshop in a post. I didn't make any progress with structure until I started using Scrivener, which made it easy to see the manuscript at a glance and weed out every chapter that added nothing new to the story.

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Kim Pittaway's avatar

I haven't made the shift to Scrivener, though I know many who swear by it. I'm inching my way toward it, Rona!

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Ann Douglas's avatar

I haven't used Scrivener for a manuscript, but I've found it to be really useful for drafting a marketing plan for a book. It's so much easier to stay organized and on track when you have that birds' eye view of everything you'd like to do.

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Beth Kaplan's avatar

Kim, you make clear something that seems extremely complicated and frustrating when floundering in the weeds of the early drafts. I've wrestled with structure for every one of my books without knowing exactly what was wrong or what was needed to fix it. This is very helpful. Time to start a new one.

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Kim Pittaway's avatar

Thanks Beth--glad it was helpful. When I realized this on one of my own projects, it was so helpful!

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Margaret Lynch's avatar

A generous post, Kim, thank you! You've given me lots of ideas to think about when considering alternate structures for my memoir.

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Kim Pittaway's avatar

Thanks Margaret--glad it is helpful!

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Ken McGoogan's avatar

Nice one, Kim!

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Ann Douglas's avatar

Highly recommended for anyone who is writing a novel or a book-length work of narrative non-fiction or who is otherwise obsessed with narrative structure.

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Veronica Gaylie's avatar

Great post! Very helpful. I've been looking for this and glad I found it again.

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