Analyze the patterns in your text. Start with basic shapes like chapter and section length. Most common, perhaps, is the text that has chapters of regular lengths, but any pattern will work. What rarely works is a text whose shape is erratic — say, with a few short bits here and there, one long one, and several of intermediate scale. A series of texts within texts could be hugely connecting, but if not curated and made to interlock, multiple texts could simply be confusing and disorienting. For example, you could punctuate a novel effectively with recurring scenes of film or stage play-like dialogue. But a text that has a play within a play, two newspaper clippings and a crucial telegram — that might seem random. One rule of thumb is that if there’s one letter that’s important to the plot, there should probably be at least two letters in the book.

To figure out exactly what you have, you could make a table of contents for yourself, or just try zooming out to a 10% page view and looking at as many pages as you can on your computer screen, all at once. Where’s the white space? Once you’ve identified patterns in your text, ask yourself what form they take. Is there any sort of alternating or braided structure, where you switch between or among times, places or characters? If so, it should be satisfyingly regular without feeling machinelike or robotic. Do you have a beginning middle and end, a twelve month structure, 24 hours? A triptych with three point of view characters? A saga in which years and points of view fly past? How do you mark and delineate the changes?

Look to your text and find the patterns — they are surely there — and then perfect, enhance, vary and generally tend to them. The work will pay off by creating a very real sense of satisfaction in your reader. We’re genetically predisposed to love patterns.