As a developmental editor beginning a new manuscript, I am always on the lookout for the inciting incident. This is the story event that tips the protagonist out of the everyday world and into the specific arc of the story. Among other things, an inciting incident can: Establish genre (murder mysteries and romance stories, for example, kick off quite differently) Suggest what kind of story this will be (tragic, comic, inspirational, etc.) Apply dramatic imperative (the character better undertake the story, or else…) Create crucible of story (a time element that ratchets up tension) Define the protagonist’s goal (the desire that will compel the character to undertake the journey) Perhaps define the antagonist’s goal Raise a story question strong enough to keep the reader turning pages With all that potency, the inciting incident is the cornerstone of story structure. Experienced storytellers build from it; rookie authors trip over it and send their stories in any number of un...

Novelist and memoirist Roland Merullo confesses, in print and online interviews, to being a “pantser.” “I write by the seat of my pants, almost always without an outline,” he says. “I just start, and that seems like opening the floodgates, or drilling a well. All kinds of stuff comes out, and usually very quickly.” What’s that I hear? Ah yes, the collective sigh of all you pantsers out there, underscored by the shredding of those confounded outlines that were the result of last year’s resolutions. But Merullo does not surrender the structure of his books to whimsy. He builds from what he calls “a very clear sense of an opening moment.” And in more than one case, he has had the smarts to include an early metaphor that suggests the scope of the book’s conflicts. Meaning that he either a) wrote the metaphor, listened carefully for what his subconscious was saying, then wrote the book without ever deviating from that vision, or—and much more likely for a pantser—b) he went back and...