Structure

Without a structure you just might build yourself a Corvette without an engine or a rhinoceros without any legs: impressive to look at maybe, but neither one of those things is going anywhere. Faulkner made money in Hollywood because he understood these things. The structures he chose for many of his own novels might have been inimical to film structure, but he obviously knew the difference. And in The Reivers, he used his Hollywood know-how to build a different kind of novel.

An Interview with Les Standiford by Steve Glassman. Standiford is the founding director of the MFA program in writing at Florida International University.