Free Valuable Advice From Professionals to Skyrocket Your Book Sales

The majority of books that we read are constructed in a very similar fashion, namely the simple retelling of a story in chronological order using prose. This is clearly a tried and tested format that works well, but there are alternatives and when writing your book it's often interesting to take a step away from the norm and consider writing in a slightly different format or structure. It may be that once you've considered all the alternatives you can conclude that the traditional approach works best but for some manuscripts adding something slightly different in the way your story is told could be just what it needs to make your book stand out from the crowd.

So what are the alternatives?

1. Consider the timeline

An easy way to restructure your book is to consider telling the story by starting with an ending, or at least the build up to an ending. You can then go on to explain how your characters came to this point. Dreda Say Mitchell does this extremely well in her book, Geezer Girls. She starts with the penultimate scene, then explains how the characters came to be there before concluding with the final scene. In this way she is instigating suspense and intrigue right from the very beginning of the book.

2. Consider style

Your story doesn't have to be written in prose throughout. Some of the more interesting literary books use a combination of prose, poetry, imagery or even just lists. Writing in this way demands that the reader really embraces the story and uses their imagination to work out what it all means. It's a clever way of writing and can make an average book brilliant. Samantha Pearce's Thinking Pink, does just that.

3. Consider perspective

Most stories are told from the perspective of the main characters or with the use of narrative which allows the reader to observe the story in real time. Traditionally stories are told in the present tense so that the reader can watch the action unfold. However, again, there are alternatives to this approach. Your story could be told as a conversation between two people. Your story could be told as a series of flashbacks or dreams. It could even be told as a series of thoughts.

In order to apply any of these methods, or indeed any other alternatives, it may be worth sketching out your story on paper and visualising exactly which one, if any, will enhance your story and make it stand out from the crowd. Draw your timeline on pieces of paper, so that you can physically move them around to find new ways to tell your story. Think of the content of each chapter and consider whether you could actually write it using just a few words scattered across a page. And finally, consider who can see the story unfolding; consider who else would be in a good position to explain the story to your reader. The options are endless if you take time to think outside the box.