I happen to love vintage mysteries—those battered little cheap paperbacks of the 1930s, forties, and fifties—and I just spent the past year scouring the West Coast for them in all the obscure bookshops I could find between San Francisco and Portland. So now I’ve got hundreds of pulp mysteries to work my way through, and I’ve even been chalking them up on Goodreads for the benefit of all you vintage mystery addicts out there. I mean, I’ve got to do something with them. It’s a pulp avalanche.
And as I fly through these—I’m reading almost one a night—I’ve devised a reading exercise for the study of their structure, which I’ve assigned to my local teenage creative writing students and I’m going to assign to you, too.
Whatever book you’re reading right this very minute, take a quick second to look in the back and see how many pages it has. Rounded, I mean. A lot of these early mysteries are in the 180-240 range, but nowadays novels are expected to be actually quite long by comparison, in the 280-400 range. (This has to do with the shift from general-purpose novels to strictly genre fiction in recent decades, mega-volume fantasy and series fiction pushing the envelope right to the limit and beyond into the infinite abyss, as well as a growing neglect of the editorial craft of cutting and trimming by many publishers. No wonder we suddenly need flash fiction.)
Find a scrap of paper or a used envelope and jot this down at the bottom: total number of pages.
Now divide that into: 1/8, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8. You can knock it right down into all the eighths and sixths if you like, but these are the main divisions. Scribble those numbers vertically above the total.
Now—as you work your way through your current read, every time you come to one of those pages, make a note of what big, important plot point is going on right there. At least within a few pages. That’s right. Write it down.
Depending upon the type of novel you’re reading (and in some cases how recently it was written), the Climax may be shoved all the way to within spitting distance of the last page. And that’s fine! That’s an excellent way to end a novel. So when you get to the Climax, go ahead and scribble that down, too. Give it its page number if you like or, if the Resolution really is negligible, just let it roll with the final page number.
Label it at the top with the title of the book. Then throw it on a box on your desk and start a new scrap for the next book.
Eventually, you’re going to have a whole raft of these little lists.
And. They. Are. Priceless.
Take them out every now and then to study. What do you see?
Act 1
Hook (the beginning to 1/8-1/6)
Conflict #1 (1/8-1/6 to 1/4-1/3)
Act 2
Conflict #2 (1/4-1/3 to 1/2-2/3)
Conflict #3 (1/2-2/3 to 2/3-3/4)
Act 3
Faux Resolution (2/3-3/4 to 5/6-7/8)
Climax (5/6-7/8 to the climax near the end)
Authors will joggle this a bit. Sometimes there are mini- and midi-Faux-Resolutions at the ends of Conflict #1 and Conflict #2, a little pacing to give each element punch, although they’re often truncated in mid-stride by the hook to the next Conflict. And sometimes the Hook is a bit shorter and Conflict #1 closer to the beginning to make room for a longer Conflict #2, or vice versa. (That’s only by some small number of pages, though, not huge chunks.)
Some writers use a pattern based on quarters (1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 7/8), while others prefer a pattern based on thirds (1/6, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 5/6). Occasionally I stumble across someone who skews the 1/2 point to 3/5 (rare).
Some writers also trim the Faux Resolution down to a single page before they kick their characters off the moving train into the hook for the Climax, while others drag the Faux Resolution out a bit to shove the Climax farther toward the last page.
That’s why this isn’t formula, it’s structure. A house with many rooms is just as livable as a house with one room, but a house with no supporting walls at all falls down. Once you’ve tracked the structure through several entire novels, you’ll develop a nose for it. Just keep an eye on those fractions.
So lick your pencil and scrabble for whatever’s handy. All those novels you’ve been reading all these years?
All structured properly.
You’re going to be amazed.