One of my oldest characters kept me up late last night. He told me about vocal chords and the things that can happen to them. I already understand a lot about vocal chords; I even have my very own set. But the worry in this man's voice had me rethinking the idea entirely.
At least he can use his vocal chords. I have a couple of characters who can't. Writing about them can be a real challenge. Today I'm giving another presentation and story as structure. A difficult topic for me to teach; I started out as a discovery writer and can only hope I'm doing justice to the value of structures in writing during my presentation.
If you want to know more about story structure, Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schmidt, Ph.D., is my favorite book on the topic. It can be overwhelming to writers who are knee-deep in a story, but it takes both a masculine and feminine approach to structures and archetypes which we writers have only thought belonged to one characteristic or the other. So if you want to write about a man with an eating disorder, or a woman trying to reinvent politics, this book can be educational for you. It also provides a comprehensive list of just about every story structure there is.