I’ve been working on my chess game lately, and realized that playing chess bears a lot of similarities to writing a novel.

Structure. Chess is very structured. Like a story, it is divided into three acts. There is a beginning (opening), middle game, and endgame. Strict rules govern movement of the pieces. Although are no rules as to how long a game can go (outside of the fifty move rule), it is rare to see a game of more than fifty moves, and most games last around thirty moves.

Planning. In...