it's not like I said that your writing shouldn't have *any* structure

A regular reader takes umbrage with my recent post about structure. The worry was that I was setting a bad example for the young 'uns, encouraging those who are new to the word business to forsake the idea of structure.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Seems that, despite my intentions, my basic point didn't come across as strongly as I meant. And that is: You shouldn't impose structure. You should discover it.

So, let me be more clear about what I meant by discovering structure.

It means you've got to edit the hell out of your work.

You start by reading and rereading what you've done, ideally with some time to think about it. Then, with some clearer understanding of what's actually on the page in front of you, you go back to work. You cut what's pretty but useless. You move things around. You keep working the words to make them flow naturally.

I find that the basic challenge is to spot the differences between what you thought you were typing and what you actually typed. Intentions don't count for much in copywriting. And anyway, the words on the page will usually be more interesting than the ones in your head; they also have the virtue of being on the page, ready to work with. They put you way farther ahead than the imaginary ones.

They'll start telling you what they need, if you listen. And as you respond to them, you begin to see the architecture that the words demand. Their patterns begin to form a structure.

That to me is the ideal way of working. You start with a purpose, but not a rigid idea of how you're going to achieve that goal. You leave yourself open to happy accidents, interesting collisions and, if you're lucky, inspiration.

I know it's a little like starting to build a house without a blueprint, and relying on how the bricks feel to tell you how many bedrooms the place should have. Utterly ridiculous, and yet somehow true.

it only took me several years to figure this out

In my old life as an aspiring playwright, a brilliant director I was working with once said that I had a strong, innate sense of structure.

He didn't mean it as a compliment.

Because he was trying to get me to rethink an okay but fairly expected story in a completely different way, and my sense of "proper" storytelling was standing in the way of that. It was shocking, actually, to understand that my natural inclinations could be "correct" even as they blinded me to exploring new possibilities, and stopped me from listening to how the story wanted to be told.

I had to teach myself how to escape from structure. I wrote a lot of crap, admittedly, and forced myself to stop worrying so soon about how it all fit together. I constantly had to fight my reflex to judge, and simply keep writing anything that worked on any level, anything that felt like it had a spark.

And then I realized that this was a skill I had already learning in my advertising work. That's what brainstorming is all about. That's what sitting with a piece of paper and a magic marker is all about. I never sit down to write without daydreaming and doodling first.

It was strange, applying a money-making skill to my private writing where I had all the power and the ultimate decision. But that realization was helpful and led to some interesting things.

Structure shouldn't be imposed on the words, even by one's self, or made apparent before the words are said. Just think how many movies, shows and plays you can predict after seeing their first five minutes. There's nothing more boring than knowing what's coming an hour and a half later.

As our old friend the drama critic Heraclitus reminds us, latent structure is the master of obvious structure.

If you want your writing to be great, if you want to not just hold people but keep them coming back, then your structure should come out of the words themselves. It should be suggested, found, uncovered after the words are understood.

To the audience or the reader, and even to the author, structure should be discovered.