How is writing research like story? Last post I wrote about Kurt Vonnegut’s man in hole structure and how that might help you think at a very macro level about how to organise your material. This post is also about structure – this time a four part structure I’ve called C3REC.

The C3REC structure is an academic writing version of the creative writing ERCR.

Well who doesn’t love an impossible acroynym… C3REC is no easier to say than ERCR. But let’s go back to the original ERCR. Put simply ERCR means Exposition, Rising action, Climax and Resolution.

ERCR goes like this: Exposition is all the stuff you, the reader, needs to know before you start the story proper. Next the Rising Action – that’s where the writer offers you a series of events – this then this then this. And all of the this then this then this builds up…