I'm starting work on my YA novel and found myself structuring itself in an interesting way, based on all the inventing I did of the story, characters, things that happen, objects, setting, etc.

First I listed out all of the plot elements, every promise that would have to be fulfilled. That is, I tried to identify all the major things that I had decided I wanted to build the story out of, in terms of milieu, idea, character, and event (MICE) structures.

For each of those, I wrote a few words as a summary, assigned a letter (A, B, C, and so on) and jotted down what kind of MICE structure it was. (I found I had 19 individual threads throughout the story. It sounds like a lot, but some of these are only spanning a chapter or two. What is this strange device? Oh, that's what it is. Can the mage fix things? Oh, no he can't. Rats. -- That kind of thing): 10 events, 5 idea, 2 character, 2 milieu.

Then I numbered a table, one line for each expected chapter (my rough estimate is about 22 chapters -- I don't feel I have to stick to that, but it gives me a general idea) and started to fill in when I though each piece would start and end. You know, in Chapter 1 I'll pose this mystery and by chapter three it will be solved. (At least one problem, of course, needed to span the whole book.)

When I was done, I had a working outline of my novel. Of course this is very likely to change as I write it, and in fact there are several chapters in the middle that don't seem to have anything started or ended in them and I'm wondering what they're going to be about, but if I don't find out by the time I get to them, I'll just skip to the next chapter that's about something.

Just thought I'd mention this. It's probably not too different from how many other people structure novels, but it was exciting for me to think of things in this way, and I found the MICE structures to be a useful way of thinking about the pieces.

Luc