Repetition and Evolution: Structure in Robert Boswell’s Crooked Hearts
Amber Wheeler Bacon explores how narrative structure—specifically repetition with evolution—can powerfully shape a novel’s emotional arc, using Crooked Hearts by Robert Boswell as a case study. The author, a novelist wrestling with structure in their own book, discovers a breakthrough by applying the storytelling principle “repeat, repeat, evolve,” a concept popularized by writer Bret Anthony Johnston. Through Crooked Hearts, Wheeler Bacon illustrates how a powerful structure can be deceptively simple: repetition with intentional change. The parties in Boswell’s novel become both emotional punctuation marks and structural pillars,and by the end, both the story and the reader have evolved. For writers, this method offers a deeply human and adaptable framework: build a pattern, then break it in the most meaningful way possible.