Writing a book is hard. Really hard. You’re trying to get out hundreds — if not thousands — of words a day, and you’re trying to do that with one eye on plot structure and another on pacing.
For me, I use the four-act structure, but there’s so much overlap between the different structures that realistically I could use any. Others I’ve used in the past are the Hero’s Journey and the Save The Cat structures.
So, to make my life a little easier, I created myself a little spreadsheet. One that I can write all the key details of my project into (the chapter names, word counts, status and contents of each chapter, etc), and it’ll automatically tell me how I’m doing against my plot structure of choice.
But it doesn’t just do that. It also helps me tell if I’m pacing correctly — if my acts are the right lengths, how I’m doing against my word count target, and if my chapters are consistent enough in length.
It’s also a great snapshot of my book, that I can refer to at any one time to figure out what happens where.
Finally, I’ve included some information on the most popular plot structures (more still to come!) all in one place, for a handy reference.
Currently, there’s the Three/Four Act Structure, the Hero’s Journey, and the Save The Cat structure – but I’m always happy to add more. Let me know in the comments if there’s a plot structure you use that you’d like to see included!
So… I’m sharing it with you all. You might think, “Why? Why would I need this?”, in which case… give it a go! You might find it’s not useful for you, but based on the feedback I’ve received so far, it’s a very useful tool.
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