Do You Know Exactly What Kind of Story You’re Telling?

If you’re writing a novel or piece of narrative nonfiction and you can’t seem to get anywhere with it, I’ll bet you dollars to dark chocolate you can’t satisfactorily answer the following question:

What type of story are you telling?

If the question itself confuses you, if your answer takes twenty minutes, or if you said “It’s a fantasy,” or “It’s young adult,” I have good news. By the end of this article, you’ll have a much clearer idea of why you’ve wandered off the path, and how to get back on.

Some writers sit down to write a novel and only have a tiny, exciting fragment of an idea. We try to write our way into the story to see if we can strike story gold. This is known as “pantsing.” It can work for some writers who’ve read a million books and have exceptional story instincts. But most writers who try this method hit a wall sooner or later.

Other writers sit down to plan a story, deciding everything that happens before they begin chapter one. This is known as “plotting.” But even if we think we know everything we want to happen in the story, we can still go astray and end up with a terrible book.

It really doesn’t matter which of these methods you use (so we can all stop fighting about it). You will still have to get clear — sooner or later — on what type of story you’re telling.

I am a case in point. When I sat down to write my first middle-grade novel, The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List, I had no freaking clue what I was doing, but, you know, I thought it would be fun. My six-year-old daughter and I had fallen in love with the book The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, and I was all revved-up to write something with a similar feel.

I did a total newbie analysis, dissecting all the elements I thought made the story work: a captivating summer setting, some witty children, a dog, an escaped rabbit, some puking.

Then, I set to work assembling some anecdotes I thought kids would like and began to plan which bit would go in which chapter, with only some cursory planning of a thread to hold it all together.

I can tell you, while my six-year-old loved the first draft, she would have been alone in the universe.

I was not telling a cohesive story. I had simply strung together a set of amusing things that happened to some cousins during a long summer visit.

I did not understand the Story Type of my masterwork, The Penderwicks. And certainly did not understand how the Story Type determined the structure of the book.

Thankfully, my six-year-old had enough enthusiasm for the story to goad me into keeping going and learning how to fix the mess I’d made.

Eventually, with the help of developmental editor Anne Hawley, I learned that if I wanted to create a certain kind of story; if I wanted kids to feel a certain way at the end of it, I had to understand Story Type.

As we see it at Pages & Platforms, there are seven essential Story Types. (Other writers and editors have diced it up differently, saying there are dozens of story types, but our editor Rachelle Ramirez has spent the last five years studying story types and has distilled it down to seven for the sake of simplicity.) They are seven distinctive plot forms, each with its own character arc, theme, and audience expectations.

Story Types help you: 

• Meet the expectations of your target audience.

• Write a consistent story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

• Finish. Your. Damn. Book.

Now, at the time that I was writing The Cat, the Cash, the Leap, and the List, I was not a fan of what I would have called “action stories” and would have never knowingly set out to write one. But Anne helped me see that the exciting outer layer of what I’d written was trying to be an action story, but missing some key elements that were making it fall flat. She knew it was an action story because what little plot I had developed hinged on saving some newly born kittens and their feral mother. In action stories, the protagonist is motivated by concerns of life, death, and danger.

Once I knew I was telling an action story, I was able to study the components of an action story and use them to clean up my manuscript mess. I got clear on my character’s gift and made sure she used it to save the poor little kitty cats, and I was able to elicit those feelings of excitement I’d wanted to create in my readers.

But there was another layer to my novel that I needed to address. While I did understand that characters need to change from the beginning of the book to the end of the book (I’d been able to glean that much after being an avid reader for 30 years), I didn’t understand precisely why and how my characters needed to change. I just knew my main character was bossy and that caused problems for her. Anne helped me discover that I had a Worldview Story Type under my Action Story Type. Worldview stories feature characters struggling with their own ignorance and wisdom.

My protagonist, a type-A ten-year-old, definitely had this going on. And once I knew that consciously, I was able to play on her naïveté and make sure that the climax of the action story coincided with her ability to gain a deeper understanding of the world and learn she wasn’t in control of it.

Best of all, once both Story Types were identified, the path was clear to finishing the book. I was able to cut out useless anecdotes and flaccid subplots that had nothing to do with action stories or worldview stories. And, because all Story Types have essential elements and moments that have to be there for the reader to feel satisfied, I knew exactly what I had to add to the book. (This was particularly helpful for me, as my drafts tend to be light; I’m a putter-inner more than a taker-outer.). 

For example, action stories have to have a scene where someone is singing the villain’s praises. In my case, the villain was time and nature, so I had to have someone explain to my protagonist that mother nature and that mama cat didn’t actually need her and she shouldn’t seek to control them—a message she very much didn’t want to hear, but was part of her gaining a new worldview.

Really, if it wasn’t for Story Type, I wouldn’t still be writing fiction. I would have given up, able to recognize my work wasn’t measuring up, but with no concrete tools to fix it. I would have considered fiction writing a failed experiment. (If I were to write a story about that it would be a Validation Story Type, by the way.)

Knowing what kind of story I’m telling saved me from giving up on a life-long dream.

And it can save you too.

If you want to know more, download our free guide that goes over all seven Story Types and how they can get your unstuck and on the path to a finished book.