1. Absolutely not. There are too many ways to write. What of character-driven narratives or emotion-driven ones? Sometimes the end result is that the character existed, they made it through the day. The journey almost didn't matter, the plot was unimportant, only the feeling (in italics).
2&3. Haven't been reading fiction, so I can't answer these at the moment.
4. BS. Haha. I am a flashlighter more than anything. I know just enough about the next scene to get it going. I have a few paragraphs of what's going to happen before I start with plenty of room for discovery. Choosing just one or the other is like saying you can only have one flavor of something. Oftentimes, a mix, a blend, a melding of them makes the best dish. And the Three Act Structure is just one way. There is also Just Writing The Story, seeing what happens next, fixing what needs to be fixed according to pace and story and character-development. As someone who doesn't write out Moment A, Moment B, Moment C, I only know if my story follows this after the fact. If it does, cool, if not, cool. Experimental fiction can follow no linear line at all, have no structure, have sentences upside down on a page with a narrative out of time, while being wonderful and compelling. Hard and fast rules are for the birds.
1. Absolutely not. There are too many ways to write. What of character-driven narratives or emotion-driven ones? Sometimes the end result is that the character existed, they made it through the day. The journey almost didn't matter, the plot was unimportant, only the feeling (in italics).
2&3. Haven't been reading fiction, so I can't answer these at the moment.
4. BS. Haha. I am a flashlighter more than anything. I know just enough about the next scene to get it going. I have a few paragraphs of what's going to happen before I start with plenty of room for discovery. Choosing just one or the other is like saying you can only have one flavor of something. Oftentimes, a mix, a blend, a melding of them makes the best dish. And the Three Act Structure is just one way. There is also Just Writing The Story, seeing what happens next, fixing what needs to be fixed according to pace and story and character-development. As someone who doesn't write out Moment A, Moment B, Moment C, I only know if my story follows this after the fact. If it does, cool, if not, cool. Experimental fiction can follow no linear line at all, have no structure, have sentences upside down on a page with a narrative out of time, while being wonderful and compelling. Hard and fast rules are for the birds.