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I always dread trying to talk about structuring pieces of writing because it’s just so damn hard to talk about. And yet its importance is enormous, so we need to talk about it! In fact, structure might be the difference between good writing and great writing. There are lots of people who can research and report well. There are quite a few people who can stitch together lovely sentences. The big leap from there, though, is taking those lovely sentences and arranging them in the right order, with the right flow and ebb; the right amount of detail paced properly throughout; just enough intrigue to keep the reader engaged but not so much as to be confusing; the sense of momentum and reward when the story peaks and then gently winds down. That structure is what makes a piece of writing exceptional.

What makes structure hard to talk about is this: First of all, it’s so different for every piece that there is no rule book that can be universally applied. Second, in large part, structure has to be intuitive, so no one else (not even a great editor) can figure it out for you. But there are ways to help you improve how you structure your pieces, so don’t despair. Not to state the obvious, BUT—recognizing the idea of structure is a step in the right direction. Appreciating that you need to “build” a story and not just lay down one sentence after the other is key. If you’re still puzzled by what “structure” means, go back and look at a story you really admire. Even if it seems like a tedious exercise, try to annotate the story so that you can identify how it’s built. For instance, note where the lead ends; note how the timeline emerges; note where new characters are introduced and how they’re brought into the story; try to identify where the theme of the piece is hinted at and how it is played out through the piece. The best stories aren’t just chronological and linear. They return to ideas and circle back to characters and places. That’s what makes them feel multi-dimensional rather than flat.

Once you’d examined a successful piece, think of what you’re working on and how you can deploy some of what you’ve learned. One step is to free yourself from feeling that chronology controls the narrative. I’m not saying you should jumble a timeline just for the sake of doing so—no, no, no! I’m saying that you can feed out information and characters as you need to, rather than feeling constrained to a timeline. Perhaps the best way to think of this is to consider how you tell a story out loud. If you’re recounting a wonderful trip to Paris, you wouldn’t begin by describing your drive to the airport, nor would you necessarily start with Day One and then dutifully go on to Day Two (that is, not unless you are a very boring storyteller). You would probably dive right in to an anecdote that’s funny or strange or compelling; then, before you finish the anecdote, you might pause and give a bit of background (“We had been planning this trip for two years, and wanted to try every four-star restaurant in the city”). After laying down that background, you might return to the anecdote and finish it off, or perhaps just give another segment of it before you pause again to fill in another bit of relevant side-ground or background. (“At the time, our marriage was wobbly and we really believed a trip to Paris would set things right. I had ended my affair with my office supervisor months earlier.”)

The important, empowering thing to realize, as you structure a piece, is that you are the director. You control the narrative—not the other way around. You can introduce characters or settings at will, when you need them. I know this sounds almost silly, or at least obvious, but it’s something you really have to embrace and believe. It’s a state of mind. You have to relish the power of being the storyteller who calls in material as you need to make your point. I’m always preaching the importance of confidence in writing, and this is another example of where it’s the essential ingredient. If you abandon the idea of how your story should unfold and tell it how it organically arises in your mind, you will begin finding the structure that’s authenticate and natural.

This might sound counter-intuitive. On one hand, I’m saying you need to carefully construct your stories; on the other hand, I’m preaching the gospel of naturalism and spontaneity. In fact, these aren’t contradictory. If you think of yourself as a writer, you should have an innate, intuitive sense of how to tell an engaging story. What your goal should be is to reconnect with that intuitive sense of flow, which is often crowded out by the idea of how a story is “supposed” to be structured (timeline being one of the obvious “rules”). Structure that works is logical, without being schematic. It’s natural to a good storyteller to unfold an anecdote with just the right teasing, with enough information early on to keep the reader informed but not swamped with detail, with a natural crescendo towards the end and a sense of loose ends connecting. This instinct gets lost when we freeze up in front of the empty screen and when we feel bound by the usual idea of how a story is built.

How to you reclaim that instinct? Tell your story out loud to someone. Tell it to lots of people, and listen to how you tell it. And in doing so, you are giving yourself the road map you should follow. Notice what details you include and what you leave out. Notice how much or how little explaining you do. Take note of the shape of the story as you tell it to someone. Obviously, we all stumble a bit when we’re speaking extemporaneously, so I’m not suggesting you tape-record yourself and simply publish the transcript. But the way you naturally tell a story will give you the superstructure, and you can refine from there.

John McPhee once said that his stories all had shapes (in the case of the story he was referring to, it had a nautilus shape). That might sound a little overly managed, but I do think the best stories are shapely. They don’t just unspool in an unwavering path: There are callbacks and echoes and moments of revisiting scenes and characters, and very importantly, there is a movement towards a sense of completeness and then a gentle settling at the end. There is, in other words, structure. Once you begin thinking of that architecture as essential to your work, you’ll begin making choices that will help support and build on it. It will change your work for the better. I guarantee it.