Must We Talk About ‘Structure’?

The hardest thing to pin down in art is also the most crucial

I participated in a brief online conversation recently that still haunts me. It was about structure, especially in fiction, and the extent to which a writer needs to focus on it (or not).

If the very word—structure—bores you to tears, let me explain why I think this topic is both important and interesting. (This is not a lesson in craft.)

Structure matter…