how to structure your book like a crazy quilt

As an intuitive writer, I structure my books like a crazy quilt.

What is a crazy quilt? you might ask. Let me tell you!

In her most recent book Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, Martha Beck describes a crazy quilt.

Unlike quilts that are sewed from patterns (many of which were established centuries ago), crazy quilts have

...no layouts… no traditional patterns, no predetermined models. These quilters just sew together whatever pleases their eyes and hands, creating a design no one has ever imagined before. It’s a very right-hemisphere way to sew.

Martha describes the process of making a crazy quilt:

Quilters choose a piece of fabric they particularly love, one they want near the center of their finished product. Then they find another piece that seems to go with the first and sew them together. Then they add another piece, and another, working around the center, building outward in a rough circle… There’s a lot of experimentation, eyeballing, and rearranging.

When I read that, I thought, ding ding ding! That’s how I write books.

I start with something that interests me. A character, a circumstance, a question, sometimes even a phrase.

A family of grown siblings who can’t stand each other, whose mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. That was the starting point of Catchlight.

Once in a coaching session, I was describing a metaphor related to a book I love. My coach said, “You have this apothecary of stories inside you that you can draw on at any moment.” That phrase became my three-quarters-finished book Apothecary of Stories.

The idea for the romance novel I’m currently working on came to me the morning after watching Super Bowl 2024. (It’s a fictionalized, Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce-adjacent romance.)

I start with the thing that interests me and just start writing.

Exploring.

Playing.

I usually have no idea where it’s going. I don’t use story beats, or structure. I don’t think about character arc or even what the character wants.

I just start with the interest point and begin. And then I add something that goes with that first point. And I keep building outward.

Luckily, at this point I’ve studied writing so deeply, and have read so much, that I have an innate sense of what makes an interesting story.

That doesn’t mean I write something perfect the first time, but it does mean that I know how to hone and revise once the meat of a first draft is down. (Stay tuned for my forthcoming mini course, the Art of Revision.)

You don’t need to know where your book is going to jump in and start exploring.

You don’t need to know how it’ll end before you begin.

Happy writing.

Celebration Corner

During the 2024 Writing Brave Summit, I had the pleasure of interviewing the brilliant Henry Lien about kishotenketsu, or East Asian four-act story structure. (Snag forever access to his interview and more than 30 others here.)

Henry recently published a book on the topic, with the thesis that diversity in the arts requires diverse forms (not just diverse faces). Spring Summer Asteroid Bird explores alternatives to three-act structure, the hero’s journey, and the Western core story ingredients of conflict and change. Get your copy here.