Blood, Breath, Bone & Biceps

A metaphor for constructing narrative.

Mar 18, 2025

Hi, I’m Stace, and this is Magic & Ink, where I write about fantasy writing, creative living , and magic. I’m a professional writer and editor who loves to make things. Learn more about my work at dumoski.com.

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“The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.”

— E. M. Forster

I took this at the grocery store a day after Valentine’s Day last month. I wasn’t thinking about it as a cover image for this post, but somehow it works?

If you've ever taken a basic creative writing class or read a book or blog post about plotting, you've probably heard the E.M. Forster quote above. It's an OK definition, in that it illustrates a couple key concepts that writers need to understand if they're going to craft compelling narratives:

There is a difference between "story" and "plot."
The series of events in any narrative should be causally related — something happens which leads to the next thing that happens, so on and so forth.

Forster had the right idea, but in the last 50 years, the vocabulary of storytelling has evolved quite a bit. I might even say that the terminology he used has flipped meanings. "The king died and then the queen died" is just a couple of events, or what we would call plot points today. A bunch of plot points together make up the plot. Story is what gives those plot points meaning, the connective tissue that's made up of emotion and theme and beautiful language. Plot is what happens, story is why — or more correctly, why we care.

It's tempting to say that you need both story and plot in a narrative, but the truth is different readers have different tastes. Some readers really just what to know what happens next (thriller and mystery readers, for example) while others just want to feel the big feels (romance) or to think deep thoughts (lit fic).1

The truth is that a narrative is constructed of multiple layers, which hold various levels of importance depending on what the author wants to accomplish.

Now, I apologize in advance for the ~~terrible~~ metaphor I am about to subject you to. It’s not a perfect metaphor (few metaphors are) but it does provide a framework to begin understanding the various parts of a story and how they all work together to make a cohesive, compelling whole.

The metaphor plays upon the idea that, like a body, a narrative is built from various, interconnected systems that are necessary for it to have “life.” Like a body, all four systems must be present, but a weakness or flaw in any one system doesn’t necessarily prevent the other systems from operating as usual.

Bone: Structure

The structure of your story is the scaffold on which everything else in your narrative is arranged, a framework that defines its underlying shape, the pace at which the narrative unfolds, and the expectations the readers have for the narrative once they start to read.

Structure is also the thing that most readers don't even think about when reading a book, any more than you would think about someone's skeleton when admiring their looks. But you sure would notice if it was incorrectly formed or altogether missing!

There are actually many kinds of structure, with three-act structure being the most familiar. But there are other structures (e.g., the hero's journey, the plot pyramid, Save the Cat) that various experts in the craft of writing have determined as an "ideal" form for constructing a narrative. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses, which I'm not going to get into here, but the main thing they have in common is that they dictate at what point certain categories of events should take place, relative to the length of the narrative.

For example, in the three-act structure, the inciting incident should take place at approximately 12% into the narrative, or at about page 35 in a 300 page novel. To go back to the metaphor, the ideal size of a leg bone is proportionate to the size of the rest of the body.

As I said in the intro, while you may or may not need much in the way of plot or story, you absolutely can't write anything[(that people will want to read)] without some kind of structure.

How do you know if your novel is lacking a solid structural framework?

It takes too long for the story to really get started.
Sagging middle — the plot just drifts around; characters do a lot of things but get nowhere; the story gets boring.
Stalled out — you've hit the middle and don't know what should happen next.
Your narrative ends with a fizzle instead of a bang.

Biceps: Plot

You know I only used "biceps" here for the alliteration, right? Of course I mean muscles in general, without which there would be no motion. You know I mean "narrative motion," right?

In order to work properly, biceps have to be attached to the right spots of the arm and shoulder bones.2 Similarly, plot works best when the plot points are attached to right points of your structure.

Just like some bodies don't have a lot of muscle, some stories don't have a lot of plot. The characters talk a lot. They think a lot. There might pages of beautiful description. But if you were to write a plot summary of the story, it wouldn't take much space, because the story is largely what's going on in the characters' heads and hearts and not driven by what they are doing or what is being done to them.

Other plots are very robust; they can't stop moving. It's that non-stop action thriller that leaves you breathless. When you to try to tell someone the story, it necessitates a stream of "... and then ... and then... and then..." The action is largely external, whether the characters are driving the action or being driven by the action.

Most plots (like most bodies) fall somewhere between, probably leaning one way or the other.

How to tell if your plot isn't strong enough:

Your plot synopsis is very, very short.
You have a hard time describing what happens in a concrete way.
Your story feels repetitive.
A lot of stuff happens that doesn’t really affect the story’s outcome.

How to tell if your plot is too strong:

Characters feel flat, because there’s never time for them to talk or reflect.
The story is hard to summarize or describe simply.
Events feel disconnected, random and rushed.
You require a lot of POV characters to show everything that happens.

Blood: Story

(This part might get a bit confusing because I’m forced to use the concept of “Story” as a component of a particular story; vocabulary is sometimes limiting like that.)

Story is that element of a narrative that keeps us reading. Beyond the simple curiosity about what happens next, story makes us care about what’s happening because, on some level, it has an impact on us. Through reading, we vicariously experience things that we wouldn’t normally, or we are reminded of experiences we have had previously, and those vicarious or remembered experiences make us think and feel in ways that can be transformative, if we let them.

That impact can’t be felt if the story is lacking.

We all know what happens if a body doesn't have enough blood: it just stops working.3 What happens when a narrative doesn’t have enough story? People stop reading.4

Very often, this crucial element is reduced to a character issue: convince readers to care about your characters and they’ll keep reading. There are many volumes of work about just how to do that, so I am not going to delve into it here. Leave it to say that having compelling characters is an important aspect of a good story.

But there can be much more to an engaging story than just good characters.

You can start with a compelling question, something that makes readers curious or excited or angry or some other emotion that makes them feel invested in the story. “Why?” is a good question, as is “What really happened?”, “How is that possible?” or “What the actual fuck?”

A theme or a moral or ethical issue can also be at the heart of a compelling story, as can the exploration of a milieu or setting or cultural or social construct. (Of course, characters are still required to experience the story through, even if they are not the primary focus.)

In other words, a story should be about something, and that something should be a metaphor — explicit or implied — that readers can relate to their lived experiences. In her book Story Genius, Lisa Crohn says, “We don’t turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.” Stories are how we make sense of our world, and those that are most memorable are those that give the reader something to walk away with — even if that’s just a good feeling from a happy ending.

Signs that your story suffers from a lack of strong story elements include:

You can’t identify what’s at stake.
You don’t know why characters make choices.
Your story doesn’t provoke an emotional response.
Your story doesn’t provoke an intellectual response.
It doesn’t make a lasting impression on readers.

Breath: Artistry

No matter how interesting a story may be, no matter how compelling the characters, how inventive the worldbuilding, or how surprising the twists, none of it matters if it’s not well told.

At the most basic level, this means writing craft. Yes, that includes the fundamental rules of writing that we were all supposed to learn in school, like proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, and sentence construction. It surprises me sometimes how many people seem to dismiss these basics as window dressing, when they are so essential to conveying the images and thoughts your are trying to express. While breaking rules is an artistic right, it’s not the same thing as simply being ignorant of them.

The lowest bar a writer can aim for is what is often called “invisible prose.” This is when the words don’t “get in the way” of the story. They efficiently convey everything the reader needs to know to enjoy the story, with no extra fuss or bother. Being technically correct in the application of grammar rules just makes it easier for the prose to fade to the background, instead of calling attention to itself through misuse and errors.

When we talk about true artistry, though, we’re really talking about more than the basics. Artistry is when your prose comes alive through metaphors, similes, poetic language and figures of speech. Artistry is the beautiful writing that makes you catch your breath (get it???) or a turn of phrase that makes you laugh out loud. It is style, tone, syntax, sentence length and word choice, and the decision to use the Oxford comma or not.

Artistry is knowing what to reveal and when, and what doesn’t need to be revealed at all. It is knowing how to weave in subtext, how to arrange a scene for a dramatic impact, and whether a chapter needs to end on a cliffhanger or a quiet moment that is just as compelling.

Artistry is knowing the difference between omniscient and third person limited points of view, and being able to shift the narrative distance between them for maximum effect. It is being able to navigate the knife’s edge between the voice of a first person narrator and the voice of the author.

Of course, there is a line where too much artistry can get in the way of the story being told. Purple prose or flowery language is the bane of many readers — what’s the point of crafting elegant sentences if people just skip over them or stop reading all together? So, really, the true artistry is knowing when enough is just right.

How can you tell if your story needs more artistry?

If feels more like a movie script than a novel.
It feels more like a blog post than a novel.
If you read your novel out loud, it feels disjointed and hard to follow.
It feels like it just might be written by AI.
You, as a writer, don’t care about the words you’ve written; you have no personal investment, no “darlings” it would kill you to cut.

How can you tell if you have “too much artistry?5

It feels more like poetry than prose.
It reads like a college writing assignment with a high word count.
The story content is short relative to how long it takes you to tell it.
Every sentence is a “darling” you refuse to cut.

Harness Your Strengths, Shore Up Your Weaknesses

So there you have it, a framework of the four essential systems of a vital, compelling story. As I stated at the beginning, different stories will lean heavier on one or the other of these parts, depending on the genre and the tastes of the writer, but the other parts must still be there to one degree or another.

As a thought experiment, take a look at your more recent work and give yourself a grade for each of the four systems described above. Are you really good at plots but lack a strong knowledge of structure? Do you excel at weaving metaphors into prose, but they never really contribute to the meaning of the story? Perhaps a friend who is familiar with your work can help you figure out where you are strongest and where you are weakest. Keep these in mind as you begin your next project or revision and see how this knowledge will help you to create stronger, more compelling narratives.

Thanks for reading to the end of this essay that I have been working on (off and on) for five years now. It’s an idea that just wouldn’t leave me even though I have been dubious of the metaphor driving it from the beginning. Because I couldn’t let it go, I figure it’s time to just put it out there and see what people think. Any ideas for how I can improve upon this framework? Or does it belong in a dumb-ster? Let me know in the comments!