Your Favourite Structures in Stories

[TheRedChamber]

As a relatively new writer, who has been writing soley one-shot stories so far, one of the things I've been exploring is the various ways to structure a story. I tend to write in numbered subsections and like to have a very clear view of what I'm trying to achieve in that numbered section and ensure that the number of words in each section is appropriate (doesn't need to be the same, but needs to match the rough importance/complexity of each section). I'd be interested in what some of your favourite story structures are and why you think they work so well. I'll give some examples of what I mean.

Type 1. Two Lives Converge and Diverge

Used in my story Midnight in Italy

Section 1 and 2. (Male Perpective) Male character notices and lusts over and plans approach of female character. Section ends with him knocking on the door of her hotel room (they haven't interacted at all yet).
Section 3. (Female Perspective) What the female character is doing right before the knock. (She's not necessarily thinking about him, but has her own currently unsolvable problems which she needs taking her mind off)
Section 4. (Male Perspective) The seduction.
Section 5. (Female Perspective) The sex (and her view of the seduction which doesn't wholely match the male characters view).
Section 6. (Third character perspective). The two characters never meet again. The final section is from the view point of someone who does have contact with both and has 'the full story' of what happened.

Type 2. The good old ABAB

Used my story My Dom is Such a Nice Lad

Section 1. (Male/Dom perspecitve) An erotic but non-sexual encounter between the two main characters.
Section 2. (Male/Dom perspective) The characters discuss the section 1 encounter in friendly, relaxed way
Section 3 and 4. (Female/Sub perspective) A sexual encounter that mirrors the section 1 erotic encounter, but from the other perspetive. (Two sections due to length and a slight themic break halfway through)
Section 5. (Male/Dom perspective) The characters discuss the section 2 encounter in and their plans for the future in a friendly, relaxed way

(You could also do this one the other way round with meeting, sex/eroticness, meeting, sex.)

Type 3. I don't exist when you don't see me.

Used in my story Barbie Ferrari and (to some extent) in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Each section has a specific date and time that it takes place. The section detail everytime the two main characters met and nothing else. There may be a gap of a week or gaps of years. Each section begins shortly before the second character enters the first characters view and finished moments after they leave.

Type 4. The Escalation Story.

Used in my story How My Mother Met You

The story starts mildly and things get crazier and crazier until either the characters reach nirvana or nope the fuck out.

Section 1. After claiming it's difficult to get a girlfriend, the male MC's mother immediately gets one by chatting to the waitress on his behalf.
Section 2. Everything's great in the relationship, but the MC is slightly weirded out that his mother brought the female MC's new sexy lingerie.
Section 3. The MC's discovers to his horror that his mother has been making instructional videos for the female MC about how to deep throat. (The female MC is now pregnant and he's going to propose.)
Section 4. During the confrontation about the revelation in section 3, the MC discovers the female MC and his mother have had sex.
Section 5. Despite his misgivings the male and female characters have reconciled. Then he catches the female MC and his mother in the act.
Section 6. The female MC and his mother get married and start raising his child and invite him to 'rejoin them'.
Section 7. The male MC takes action to bring things to a close.

Type 5. Location, Location, Location

Used in my story Before She's Thirty

Each section takes place in a clearly defined different locations and hopefully each is significantly different in feeling. While obviously there are story threads running through the whole thing, each location is the setting for a clear story beat.

Section 1. Italian Restaurant - female MC wants to loose her virginity before her up-coming thirtieth birthday, but is having a disasterous date. Her date, instead of ditching her, proposes a radical solution.
Section 2. The Streets of London and Hair Salon - female MC has hair-cut to try and adopt a new persona to allow her to get over her sexual fears.
Section 3. His Apartment bathroom - having a panic attack she locks herself in the bathroom until her head is straight again.
Section 4. The Bedroom - you can guess this.
Section 5. The kitchen - the next morning they have the whole, 'what happens next' converstation.

Type 6 and 7. The Dream and Its Realization and No Context to this Footage.

For the story First Refusal I went a bit crazy and included two new structures in the same story - too ambitious? Well maybe given it wasn't well recieved.

Prologue. The section is written from a 'camera lense' perspective. We see what people say and do, but none of their inner thoughts. The female and male characters meet for the first time and are having sex within minutes - the camera cutting away once the sex begins. This feels weird as no context, explanation, or inner feelings are given.
Section 1. From here on the out the story reverts to the third-person close to our female MC and explains her daily life and currenty frustrations.
Section 2. The frustrations manifest as a dream. She discusses the dream with a friend and a solution is proposed.
Section 3. The prologue is repeated but from third-person close and we now understand what is going on.
Section 4. All the sex we missed after the prologue cut.
Section 5. The MC realizes her dream from section 2 - a lot of the language and events are similar but reality doesn't always quite match.
Epilogue. We return to the 'camera lense' perspective for the close of the story. We don't need the inner thoughts any more because we now understand what is going on with the characters.

Type 8. In Media Palpo and Same Time Next Week.

(Latin for in the middle of the stroke - maybe, I don't speak Latin)

As used in my story All Three Holes (IMP) and Well Situated with Hidden Potential (STNW)

For STNW, the story may have a set-up, but finishes with only a short coda with the protagonists agreeing they've had a good time and agreeing about when the meet next time (and what extra things to do then)
For IMP, the story starts with sex already underway, or just beginning and ends right after it finishes (or possibly allowing some clean-up) - no real discussion of the consequences next stage of the relationship are discussed lest it become STNW.

So, Lit authors - what are your favourite other structures? Which ones haven't worked for you? Do you use or avoid any of the above. Anyone you are completely sick of?

 

[BobbyBrandt]

It varies with me, as with most authors, depending upon several factors. I believe that the most critical of these is what perspective the narrative is based upon (first-person, third-person, letter to the editor, etc.). Some are more suitable to particular structures than other are.

My favorite structure is the one that fits the narrative for a particular story best. In every case, I focus on drawing the reader into the next section through the ending of the previous one. Not so much 'cliff-hanger' scenarios, but to leave them wanting more. This is especially important with stories that are part of a series. Each of mine ends with that story complete, but with an implication that there is more to come.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't understand any kind of structured approach like this. I can never do it. I'm a pure "pantser" writer - I get an idea, an image, something, in my head, and start writing. And keep writing until I get to a logical end of a story, and stop.

I find it fascinating when someone then deconstructs my stories and tells me, "You're doing this: xxx," and tells me I'm using some literary technique or other. It fascinates me, because I have no idea what "techniques" I'm using.

The only real "structure" I knowingly use is "slow burn" - I think anyone who knows my writing well would say, "Yep, EB = slow burn," with lots of intimacy, grace notes, and not many porn cliches.

Probably the only "structured" thing I do is join all of my worlds up. I'm forever cross-referencing stories with common characters, names, locations. I reckon if I did a map of all my stories, they'd all interconnect in one way or another.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think I take a somewhat structured approach to story-writing, but not to this degree.

More often than not, the basic structure in my erotic stories is:

1. Main character has an erotic need or wish.

2. At the beginning, it's unfulfilled.

3. There are obstacles to the fulfillment of the need or wish.

4. In the end, the obstacles are overcome and the erotic need or wish is fulfilled.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I don't understand any kind of structured approach like this. I can never do it. I'm a pure "pantser" writer - I get an idea, an image, something, in my head, and start writing. And keep writing until I get to a logical end of a story, and stop.

I find it fascinating when someone then deconstructs my stories and tells me, "You're doing this: xxx," and tells me I'm using some literary technique or other. It fascinates me, because I have no idea what "techniques" I'm using.

I think the important thing when I'm writing is that I start with a possible idea for a structure. The ideas perculate until I have a rough idea about where the story starts and ends and how the dots might join up. Once I start writing, either the characters take over, or I notice problems with the basic plan. I then consider how solving these problems alter the basic structure. If they make it more elegant then I tend to accept them, but the process of writing still ends up with me going back and chaning things all the time. So in First Refusal, my original conception for one stage was 'Main character is sexual frustrated so accepts (earlier refused) offer of casual sex'. Then when it came to write the section I had to decide how the sexual frustration manifested and one option was a sexual dream. I originally didn't like the dream idea because I think they can be kind of cheesy and potentially a waste of words on something not real (yes, I know none of fiction is real), but then it also occured to me that have the main character do the dream for real would actually help bolster the structure and show directly how the character's need was met. So in it went. I don't necessarily know a lot of techniques either (although I've been reading a lot about writing recently), but I guess I like symmetry and shapes in writing.

Probably the only "structured" thing I do is join all of my worlds up. I'm forever cross-referencing stories with common characters, names, locations. I reckon if I did a map of all my stories, they'd all interconnect in one way or another.

This is actually something I'm actively trying to avoid at the moment - I want every story I write to be complete and stand-alone. I don't particularly know why except I think it's neater somehow.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I think I take a somewhat structured approach to story-writing, but not to this degree.

More often than not, the basic structure in my erotic stories is:

1. Main character has an erotic need or wish.

2. At the beginning, it's unfulfilled.

3. There are obstacles to the fulfillment of the need or wish.

4. In the end, the obstacles are overcome and the erotic need or wish is fulfilled.

This is a fairly common structure I think with erotic writing - call in The Need Fulfilled. I've certainly used it in some of my stories - interestingly I think I tend to use it with female protagonists more than male ones and the obstacles are more often than not internal mental ones. For men, I tend to write stories that are more 'This particular set of fortuitous circumstances have led me to be in a position to have amazing sex with this amazing woman - who could have predicted this." in nature. I don't know why the double standard (well maybe I do, but it would take ages to disect), but a pure male fantasy often seems indulgent (which I guess is perfectly fine in erotica, but something I personally have tended to avoid). I also find that my men need to exhibit some kind of 'moral masculinity' (as opposed to toxic masculinity) for the story to feel complete - it's not enough for them just to get everything they wanted.

 

[8letters]

I write mostly brother-sister stories, and most of them follow this structure:
1. The brother and sister are isolated for a long-period of time. Typically, they are home mostly alone for the summer
2. Something happens that proves to the sister that the brother is worthy of her affection
3. Things slowly but steadily escalate from there
4. The brother and sister declare their love for each other and then fuck like bunnies

I really liked the structure of "My Mom Competes with my Stepmom". The MMC alternated weeks at his dad's house and his mom's house. Each week at his dad's house, he got closer to his stepmom. Then the next week at his mom's house, his mom would escalate things between them to keep up with the stepmom.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I write mostly brother-sister stories, and most of them follow this structure:
1. The brother and sister are isolated for a long-period of time. Typically, they are home mostly alone for the summer
2. Something happens that proves to the sister that the brother is worthy of her affection
3. Things slowly but steadily escalate from there
4. The brother and sister declare their love for each other and then fuck like bunnies

I really liked the structure of "My Mom Competes with my Stepmom". The MMC alternated weeks at his dad's house and his mom's house. Each week at his dad's house, he got closer to his stepmom. Then the next week at his mom's house, his mom would escalate things between them to keep up with the stepmom.

Yes, any alternation in a story (whether it's locations, perspectives or something else) can be a good structure - especially if there is competition going on. The 'status quo -> critical event -> hesitation -> consumation' type structure is pretty common in incest stories from what I can see - siblings don't need to be introduced to each other at the start of the story but also aren't fucking so there needs to be the critical event to get things rolling.

 

[Haulover]

Per a course I took long ago, the most common story line in fiction is:

Boy meets girl
Boy loses girl
Boy does something really cool to get girl back.

You can slice and dice that many ways, switch the boy/girl roles, etc. And it might just be a sub-plot embedded in a larger story. But the theme is very common in modern fiction.

 

[KeithD]

The great thing about fiction is that there are so many ways to peel the grape.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Per a course I took long ago, the most common story line in fiction is:

Boy meets girl
Boy loses girl
Boy does something really cool to get girl back.

You can slice and dice that many ways, switch the boy/girl roles, etc. And it might just be a sub-plot embedded in a larger story. But the theme is very common in modern fiction.

This is the classic Rom-Com structure - I wonder how common it is in erotica - I guess it still puts in lots of appearences. From a sex point of view though, you then have to decide if the structure is

Boy meets girl and they fuck
Boy loses girl
Bot gets girl back and they fuck some more

Or

Boy meets girl in an eroticall charged but non-consumatable situation
Boy loses girl.
Boy gets girl back and they finally fuck.

Incidently, while this structure is common in the West, it's interesting how many classic Chinese romances follow the pattern of.

Girl meets Boy.
Girl's father says no.
Girl dies of sadness.

(Obviously a massive oversimplification but examples include the Peony Pavillion, the Butterfly Lovers (gender-swapped), and the Dream of the Red Chamber). Western audiences tend to sit though them going "Look, you're going to die anyway, at least don't die a virgin"

 

[KeithD]

Over 18 man is randy and goes to bar for casual hookup.
Hookup with other over 18 man happens.
First man decides hookup was not so casual.
Over 18 man #1 can't find over 18 man #2 and laments.
Over 18 man #2 finds over 18 man #1.
They happily fuck again.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Over 18 man is randy and goes to bar for casual hookup.
Hookup with other over 18 man happens.
First man decides hookup was not so casual.
Over 18 man #1 can't find over 18 man #2 and laments.
Over 18 man #2 finds over 18 man #1.
They happily fuck again.

So basically this

Boy meets girl and they fuck
Boy loses girl
Boy gets girl back and they fuck some more

Except replacing 'I fucked up and am making it right' with 'I feel the same way too'?

 

[KeithD]

So basically this

Except replacing 'I fucked up and am making it right' with 'I feel the same way too'?

Yeah, but expanding the world.

 

[SamScribble]

I tend to use the Hokey-Cokey System.

1. You put your right foot in
2. You take your right foot out
3. You put your right foot in
4. … and you shake it all about

And, while all of this is happening under my desk, my brain and fingers write a story. I have no idea what system they use. Nor do I have any desire to know. I just leave them to get on with it. It has paid the grocer and my wine merchant for the past 60 years, so why change now?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I tend to use the Hokey-Cokey System.

1. You put your right foot in
2. You take your right foot out
3. You put your right foot in
4. … and you shake it all about

And, while all of this is happening under my desk, my brain and fingers write a story. I have no idea what system they use. Nor do I have any desire to know. I just leave them to get on with it. It has paid the grocer and my wine merchant for the past 60 years, so why change now?

Sounds a bit like my system, Sam: FIIK - Fucked If I Know. Difference is, your FIIK makes money, mine just about buys coffee. Or a pizza, if I forego the coffee.

I do like your priorities, though - wine merchant being second on the list. Very wise.

 

[Rustyoznail]

"Favourite structures in stories"...

Bridges. Particularly railway bridges.

Oh. Not that sort of structure. I'll ummmm... See myself out.

 

[yowser]

Maybe a typo for 'strictures?'

Now we got a whole new thread.

 

[SamScribble]

Sounds a bit like my system, Sam: FIIK - Fucked If I Know. Difference is, your FIIK makes money, mine just about buys coffee. Or a pizza, if I forego the coffee.

I do like your priorities, though - wine merchant being second on the list. Very wise.

Sad thing is, EB, these days I can only drink non-alcoholic wine. The good news - for your neighbours, anyway - is that most of the decent tasting non-alcoholic wine seems to come from Australia. Tell them to keep up the good work.

 

[Bramblethorn]

"Favourite structures in stories"...

Bridges. Particularly railway bridges.

Oh. Not that sort of structure. I'll ummmm... See myself out.

They did warn us that gay marriage was going to lead to people marrying bridges...

As a relatively new writer, who has been writing soley one-shot stories so far, one of the things I've been exploring is the various ways to structure a story. I tend to write in numbered subsections and like to have a very clear view of what I'm trying to achieve in that numbered section and ensure that the number of words in each section is appropriate (doesn't need to be the same, but needs to match the rough importance/complexity of each section). I'd be interested in what some of your favourite story structures are and why you think they work so well. I'll give some examples of what I mean.

Most of my stories boil down to "two+ characters interact, in a hopefully interesting way". The nature of that interaction drives the structure.

In general, I put a fair bit of thought into planning out the dynamics of that interaction. At the point where I start writing, my plans might look something like:

• S first meets A - big power differential - A is a shy teenager under the thumb of her parents, S is an adult with an impressive career ahead of her
• Next few years - S mentors A - A becomes more independent, starts to make her own choices
• Relationship between S and A begins - S is still focussed on how the power gap used to be, worries a lot about whether she's exploiting A - A is less concerned because she's grown up more than S realises
• Eventually A 'overtakes' S to the point where it's S who gets hurt when A decides she needs to move on from their relationship.
• S is sad but then gets over it and they figure out how to stay friends.

Usually I don't consciously plan out the storytelling structure to the same degree; it tends to instinctively fall out as a function of the bits I did plan. But in hindsight I can look at the structure I ended up with and see why I went with it for that story.

One of Roger Ebert's more savage reviews remarks: "The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why." There's wisdom in that for authors: don't use a technique (structural or otherwise) for the sake of using a technique, but rather understand what each technique is good for and use it when it helps the story.

So for me it's not so much a matter of favourite/unfavourite structures, as "structures I use often because they fit with the kind of stories I tell."

In particular, I feel a lot of authors are too eager to head-hop, telling a story from multiple perspectives. There are good reasons to do that sometimes: a big complex story where no one character can observe more than a small part of what's going on, or a Rashomon-type story about how different people experience the same events differently. But often, I think, authors do it just because they've seen somebody else do it and it looked cool, or because they don't have enough faith in their readers' ability to fill in an occasional gap. It's not always a bad device but I'd encourage authors to ask "am I over-complicating this?"

My first story here is a pretty straightforward "girl meets girl, relationship develops, drama happens, they get over it and live happily ever after" romance. I wrote the first chapter as a stand-alone before realising I was going to develop it into a novel-length piece, and that constrained my choices. But if I was doing it over, I'd stick with the simple linear structure that I used first time around; it's just not a story that requires fancy structure.

Several of mine explore tragedy and death. For these I often use some kind of flashback/in media res technique as a way of managing reader expectations, as mentioned in another recent thread - IME, if one wants readers to appreciate "beauty in tragedy" it's often best to front-load the tragedy. For "Loss Function", it also gave me the opportunity to bait readers with the hook of "woman gets back from her wife's funeral and chats with her wife about how it went".

One is an Arabian Nights style piece, where a woman who's finding it difficult to talk about her feelings for her housemate directly does it instead by telling her a fantasy story; intercutting between those two storylines is the obvious structure for that.

 

[JakBird]

As a relatively new writer, who has been writing soley one-shot stories so far, one of the things I've been exploring is the various ways to structure a story. I tend to write in numbered subsections and like to have a very clear view of what I'm trying to achieve in that numbered section and ensure that the number of words in each section is appropriate (doesn't need to be the same, but needs to match the rough importance/complexity of each section). I'd be interested in what some of your favourite story structures are and why you think they work so well. I'll give some examples of what I mean.

Type 1. Two Lives Converge and Diverge

Type 2. The good old ABAB

Type 3. I don't exist when you don't see me.

Type 4. The Escalation Story.

Type 5. Location, Location, Location

Type 6 and 7. The Dream and Its Realization and No Context to this Footage.

Type 8. In Media Palpo and Same Time Next Week.

I use some of the same patterns up to novelette length, but for novel length (defined as 100K+ word) stories I prefer the "ensemble" format, where the lives of multiple characters develop in relative isolation but come together at a climax to the story.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Most of my stories boil down to "two+ characters interact, in a hopefully interesting way". The nature of that interaction drives the structure.

In general, I put a fair bit of thought into planning out the dynamics of that interaction. At the point where I start writing, my plans might look something like:

• S first meets A - big power differential - A is a shy teenager under the thumb of her parents, S is an adult with an impressive career ahead of her
• Next few years - S mentors A - A becomes more independent, starts to make her own choices
• Relationship between S and A begins - S is still focussed on how the power gap used to be, worries a lot about whether she's exploiting A - A is less concerned because she's grown up more than S realises
• Eventually A 'overtakes' S to the point where it's S who gets hurt when A decides she needs to move on from their relationship.
• S is sad but then gets over it and they figure out how to stay friends.

Usually I don't consciously plan out the storytelling structure to the same degree; it tends to instinctively fall out as a function of the bits I did plan. But in hindsight I can look at the structure I ended up with and see why I went with it for that story.

This is a good structure for a lot of erotic writing - it rounds the story out in a satisfying way without being 'and they continued to fuck happily ever after', and hopefully adds some emotional depth to a story. Power differentials or at least experience differentials add for drama in a story and are a nice way of showing how the relationship develops as they become more equal (or the lesser overtakes the greater).

One of Roger Ebert's more savage reviews remarks: "The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why." There's wisdom in that for authors: don't use a technique (structural or otherwise) for the sake of using a technique, but rather understand what each technique is good for and use it when it helps the story.

So for me it's not so much a matter of favourite/unfavourite structures, as "structures I use often because they fit with the kind of stories I tell."

Yes, perhaps I phrased it in a strange way in the title - obviously a structure has to fit the story you are telling. Still, when ideas are going round in my head, I don't necessary have all the bits and matching up the plot fragments and half-imagined scenes and trying to match them up with a few different common structures helps the story develop. So in my most recent story I had the main character (19yo male) rescue a 50yo fem sub from a BDSM session gone wrong - she then adopts him as her new dom even though he has no experience. A good basis for a story (IMHO) but then you have to work out the details. How many sessions did they have together and how many sessions am I going to write about? Do they have sex (or BDSM play in the first encounter)? Does the relationship need to end and if so how or are is it something that can be episodic with me revisiting the characters whenever I have a new scenario. Whose head am I writing from and when? Some of these are story questions and some of them are structure questions.

In particular, I feel a lot of authors are too eager to head-hop, telling a story from multiple perspectives. There are good reasons to do that sometimes: a big complex story where no one character can observe more than a small part of what's going on, or a Rashomon-type story about how different people experience the same events differently. But often, I think, authors do it just because they've seen somebody else do it and it looked cool, or because they don't have enough faith in their readers' ability to fill in an occasional gap. It's not always a bad device but I'd encourage authors to ask "am I over-complicating this?"

Maybe, and maybe George R.R. Martin is responsible for a lot of this (at least amongst a certain subset of readers/writers). To head-hop or not is one of the fundamental 'structural' questions you need to answer. As you note, it has it's uses, but also issues - in the above story I had the issue that I felt like I needed to write the final parting scene from the perspective of both characters and that would have been impossibly messy, so I had to pick one. I got feedback that said that the reader felt like I'd missed out on some of the emotional response of one of the main characters (and I agreed). Because I tend to write 3-5 page one-shots, it keeps things relatively simple, but I've asked myself whether I'm over-complicating things (and decided what the hell). If a structure feels right and is inherently logical it can be reasonably complex.

As a beginner writer, Lit offers the opportunity to try out a variety of styles and an opportunity to 'tilt the camera' sometimes. Obviously it's a good idea if we know why we/other writers do it. It's probably a good idea for writers to try out a multi-perspective story, a flashback story, a play within a play in their earlier experimental stories - even if it's just so they can decide it's not for them. (Obviously a lot of people just want to write what they want to write as well).

Several of mine explore tragedy and death. For thse I often use some kind of flashback/in media res technique as a way of managing reader expectations, as mentioned in another recent thread - IME, if one wants readers to appreciate "beauty in tragedy" it's often best to front-load the tragedy. For "Loss Function", it also gave me the opportunity to bait readers with the hook of "woman gets back from her wife's funeral and chats with her wife about how it went".

Yes, I read that thread. A lot of people seemed against the idea, but for me it seemed like the most natural way to tell that story.

One is an Arabian Nights style piece, where a woman who's finding it difficult to talk about her feelings for her housemate directly does it instead by telling her a fantasy story; intercutting between those two storylines is the obvious structure for that.

An interesting idea for a structure that I haven't tried yet. I'll have to give this some thought.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As a beginner writer, Lit offers the opportunity to try out a variety of styles and an opportunity to 'tilt the camera' sometimes. Obviously it's a good idea if we know why we/other writers do it. It's probably a good idea for writers to try out a multi-perspective story, a flashback story, a play within a play in their earlier experimental stories - even if it's just so they can decide it's not for them. (Obviously a lot of people just want to write what they want to write as well).

Absolutely. Literotica is a fantastic place to take chances and try things out.

 

[Duleigh]

My primary structure at the moment is two broken people come together and heal each other. I've been told it's two dimensional and trite, I say "screw that, it's what I want to write right now."

 

[Voboy]

The story tells me how it wants to be structured.

VERY occasionally, I'll break stories into parts or chapters. This tends to happen in supernatural or historical stories, which I also often feel more comfortable writing in third person.

But generally? No. I just write.

If it works for you, OP, go with it. But I'd find your approach stifling and WAY too formalized, like a five-paragraph essay in high school.