Rebecca Mascull: Exploring Narrative Structure

Whether you’re at the beginning, middle or end of writing your novel, structure is a key ingredient in making stories work. In this workshop, we’ll look at a range of narrative structures, then apply them onto examples of stories we all know. Going on to a detailed version of the 3-act structure, we’ll map your novel plot on to this and work out where and why there might be issues that are either getting you stumbling to start, or stuck in the middle, or staggering by the end. We’ll finish with plenty of practical advice on how to solve plotting problems, so that you’re never lost in the woods without an escape route.

Rebecca Mascull is a historical novelist, who also writes saga fiction as Mollie Walton and contemporary romcoms as Harper Ford. She has worked with a range of publishers, including HarperCollins, Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Books, Bonnier Zaffre and SpellBound Books. Rebecca has been listed in a variety of awards, such as nominated for the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award, to twice being a finalist in the Romantic Novelists’ Association Saga of the Year Award. She was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant by Arts Council England in 2025 to work on graphic novels and was the winner of the University of Lincoln Students’ Union Awards: Support Service of the Year 2024 as Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund academic writing support. She has appeared at a range of author events, including the Keynote Speaker at 2025 Writing East Midlands: The Writers’ Conference. She writes short fiction for magazines including My Weekly and the Sunday Express magazine, as well as blog posts for The History Quill, Writers & Artists, The Royal Literary Fund and many other websites. She mentors emerging writers as an editor for Curtis Brown Creative, The History Quill, and Writing East Midlands, as well as via Reedsy. Rebecca has a Masters in Writing, a PGCE in English and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, as well as having decades of experience as an author, teacher and examiner. She provides reader and writer services on her website beccanovelista.com and runs a newsletter on storytelling from Substack. She lives by the sea in the east of England with her family.