ABO – The Novel’s Structure

A Billionaire’s Odyssey was not written in a straightforward way, with a predetermined plot and well-defined characters. Instead, it evolved as the story in effect told itself to me as I wrote, and revised. Once I understood that Roland was unhappy because of his divorce from Lillian and the realization that he had harmed many people, I knew the ending I wanted for the novel – reconciliation and personal redemption.

But how to get there?  One idea followed another: a road-trip in an RV for Roland; enlightening events along the way; help from his best friend Bill; etc. I soon realized that it couldn’t be all about Roland; Lillian had to be a more-or-less equal character. She had to be as fully developed as Roland, and there had to be something that would drive her back into Roland’s arms, namely a series of suitors who compared poorly with Roland. Hmm, that sounds familiar!

Intermixing text segments about Roland and Lillian proved difficult. Initially, most of the text was devoted to Roland. This may sound a bit crazy, but what I wanted was something closer to the sonata form of classical music, with Roland and Lillian as the two themes that are developed, compared, and contrasted leading to a final resolution. They didn’t have to be identical in length, or of the same frequency but they had to be closer; so, I took out a long section about Bill’s Preparations for Roland’s RV Trip. My editor convinced me that this stopped the flow of the story, making it more a story about Bill than about Roland. So, I replaced it with a single section of narrative text.

Trying to title chapters with sonata terminology proved frustrating, as did trying to force chapters into a strict date sequence; so, I fell back on simple numbered chapters. Sometimes, the simplest structure is best.