12 Questions to Structure Your Novel -

Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly. Francesca teaches creative writing at Antioch, UCLA Extension, Pocket MFA and privately.

Francesca in this session shares 12 questions you can use to structure your novel, using examples from the books below for each question. 

12 Questions (with a few interconnections Francesca shares with us):

What’s your characters gift? 

What is their flaw? 

The flaw is the negative extreme of the gift.

What is their want? 

What is their need? 

The need is the opposite of the flaw.

What is their arc?

The arc is moving from flaw to need. Arc is driven by the antagonists.

Who are their antagonists? 

Every secondary character can be an antagonist. 

What is the setting? 

What is the style? 

What is the crisis? 

What is the climax? 

Character has used gift to overcome their flaw and achieve resolution of arc (or not if it’s a tragedy). All of this expresses the theme. 

What is the resolution? 

What is the theme? 

Want the bonus question? It's not too late to register for the conference. Replays are available to watch through 9/13/26. Register at scbwi.org. 

Creative Lab: Emily XR Pan - Storytelling Structure: Lining Up the Bones of a YA Novel

 

Sunday brings more excellent deep dives in the Creative Labs. 

Emily XR Pan explores storytelling structure with an engaged group of attendees who dive into a new structure for the classic Cinderella fairytale. 

A fantastic takeaway from this lab is the question: 

What am I reading for? 

We want our readers to always have an answer to that question. I'm reading to find out if they kiss. I'm reading to keep laughing. I'm reading to find out who did it. Etc. 

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Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, which won the APALA Honor Award and Walter Honor Award. It was also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Best YA Books of All Time. Her latest novel, AN ARROW TO THE MOON, was an instant national bestseller, a Locus Award finalist, a CALA Award nominee, and featured on NPR’s Best Books of 2022. Emily is currently on faculty in the creative writing MFA programs at The New School and Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can find her on social media: @exrpan.