Post History

It is worth observing that some objects have literal structural elements. Buildings, for instance, have a network of load bearing members that allow the building to stand up, as well as countless partitions and decorations that make up the spaces that you largely experience. The shape of those spaces is conditioned in some ways by the structural members, even if you can't see them. But it is also conditioned by all the non-structural elements as well. 

When we say that a story has structure, we are speaking only by analogy. There are no hidden structural elements in a story. There are only words describing thoughts and incidents. Sometimes the sequence of words holds the interest of the reader over the course of several hours reading, and sometimes it does not. 

If we ask why some books hold attention and some to not, one answer it to point to certain common patterns found in books that do hold attention (and, presumably, missing in those that do not). These we call, by analogy, structure. But any such structure is a theoretical explanation of why the story works. There is nothing you can point to and say, that is a structural member and that is not. 

So, given a book that is capable of holding the reader's attention, and given one or more theories of story structure, it is quite possible, and even likely, that the book can be shown to fit each of the theorized structures.

The interesting cases, actually, are the ones where this is not the case, the ones were the book is undoubtedly able to hold the attention of many readers, and yet does not fit some, or even any, of the theorized structures. 

I think there is a lot of wisdom in the "hero's journey" structure, but there are many critics who point out that there are undoubtedly successful works that it does not seem to fit. (Does it fit Remains of the Day, for instance?)

What are we to make of the fact that is is hard to get everyone to agree on a definition of story structure? Is the whole notion bogus? Are there many different structures that can work (meaning that failure to follow any one of them is no proof against a particular work being successful? We really don't know for certain. 

But if you have a story that holds the reader's attention, it really does not matter a scrap if it fits one theory of structure, or several, or none.