Structure and Story

I'm in the middle of writing my educational paper for my MFA. The pressure is on to write something intelligent that makes difference to another writer who might be struggling with the same issue of "How does a Writer put together a story to make it interesting enough for the reader to keep turning the page?"

Well, as I'm reading and studying this issue what I'm finding is that there is no magic bullet. Every writer does their own thing. But with that said, I am finding there are certain structures that every writer uses. Here's two ways a writer can construct a novel.

1. You can write a braided story, in other words, you have two or more stories that do not seem connected in the beginning of the book but ultimately come together near the end to make sense of all stories. A book written in this vein might be Paul Hardings Pulitzer prize winning book, Tinkers.

2. You can frame a book, in otherwords, start the book with an action scene, then flashback or forward for most of the story, then wrap back to the original scene to end it. That is the structure I have chosen for my novel.

3. You can write chronologically where everything happens in an orderly fashion. There is a starting point and everything in the story follows in an orderly fashion.

The reader ultimately decides what works for them. Do you have any other structural styles you'd like to share?

Maybe you