When you sit down to write nonfiction, the temptation is to lay out the facts as they happened. A beginning, a middle, an end. Dates, names, places. You may even feel a duty to tell everything in the order it unfolded, as if honesty requires a kind of chronological bookkeeping. But the truth on its own can feel flat. A list of events is not a story.

One of the hardest things for writers to see in their own work is the shape of the story. Words pile up easily. Scenes sprawl. Paragraphs glow with description or dialogue. But the bones? The invisible scaffolding that makes a story rise and stand? That’s harder.

Writers often fear that structure will stifle creativity, that once you start talking about arcs and acts and pyramids, the magic vanishes. But structure isn’t a cage — it’s scaffolding.

Structure holds the story steady while you climb. Painters use canvas; architects use blueprints; musicians use scales. Storytellers, too, have always leaned on shapes.