on Fiction University:

If you’re ignoring story structure, you could be making a huge mistake.

Every novel has structure, whether you outline it or pants it. Stories have followed a basic “beginning-middle-ending” structure since people started telling them. It’s familiar and comfortable for readers, and helps them lose themselves in the tale.

Story structure is a valuable tool that helps us write, keeps our stories tight, and provides a framework for us to express ourselves. It’s how people tell stories, and we see it everywhere—including jokes.

I’ve heard writers dismiss structure as being “too confining” or “a template that stifles creativity,” but I disagree. It’s not going to force your story into a predictable template unless you use a structure with very specific turning points that don’t allow for variety, or be too literal in how you use the turning points of any given structure. A “dark moment” just means “the protagonist’s lowest emotional point in the story,” and that can be anything.