
I started reading a book today called The Girl Upstairs by Georgina Lees, which I think is a kind of thriller.
On the page preceding the story was a poem. At least, I think it’s a poem. I’m not really the world’s expert on poems.
I don’t know who wrote this poem, one would presume the author of the book, and I don’t know what it’s there for in terms of the story, but I read it anyway.
Something struck me about the way the poem is arranged. I was led into a deep (for me) realisation about the structure of poems, the structure of stories and perhaps even the structure of life itself!
Here’s what I realised:

There are four parts to a perfect (poem/story/life) structure:
- This is how things are
- This is what I tried to do about it
- This is the obstacle I faced
- This is how I overcame it.
Yeah, I know: it’s trite and something that’s been repeated ad nauseam in books about books but it struck me afresh this morning.
Hope you’re having a great day but if you’re not and you want to do something to make it better then know that it might initially feel difficult to do that, but you’ll get through in the end.