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Hi everyone. I've been pretty inactive lately but my three-mont-old has finally decided it's ok for me to put him down from time to time so I think it's time to start doing some writing again.
I've got a novel in mind that I'd like a little insight on. It's a far future sci-fi mystery. A PI is searching for someone, a man who hasn't been seen or heard from for hundreds of years (she's not entirely sure he's alive). I have it in my mind that all she has to go on at first is a diary (or I may introduce it later). If I introduce it early on, then what I want to do is, for lack of a better word, parallel storylines. Each chapter would begin with a short passage from the diary (about a page) and then go into the current events of the story. The diary entries will lay down clues, but nothing so earth-shattering that it would be a cheat not to have mentioned it right up front (as in writing out the whole diary the moment the main character sees it).
I've seen various attempts at parallel storylines...some, as with mine, are the future and past in time. Others bring two characters together at the very end. What do you think makes this type of thing work, if it ever does, and what (from what I could think to tell you) do you think of the way I'm considering implementing this tactic?
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I've seen it done, and I've seen it work very well indeed.
I think it all boils down to the length of the diary passages you want to insert. Basically, if they are too short, they won't be enough for me to get attached to the character narrating the diary, but enough to get unhooked from the main narration. If they're too long, you might as well transform them into chapters in their own right, and you risk overshadowing the main narration with the diary (which, if I understand, is only second to the present-day narration).
My two cents. You probably have thought of all the risks long before me. It's not unfeasible, but it requires striking a proper balance.
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Christine, I recommend reading "A Pale View of Hills" by Kazuo Ishiguro. He does something similar to what you are talking about, and he does it will. Might give you some insight into it. Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I agree with what is said. The overall effect is really what needs to be sorted in your mind e.g are the diary entries directly linked to the following chapter, or are they as you moot clues that point toward a main scene? Maybe you could make it so that your MC has only a few fragments of the diary from which to glean clues, not the whole? It seems like a good idea anyway, I hope the baby lets you finish it Best Wishes John Mc...
Posts: 140 | Registered: Jan 2006
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That sounds workable to me, Christine. I'd try it anyway, and see how it goes. There are a lot of books with excerpts in front or passages from other sources. For example, Ender's Game has all those conversations between Graff and Anderson, important to the story but yet set apart from it. Go for it!
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Reminds me Holes (not sure who the author is, but its a popular book that was made into a movie). Kind of an elementary example, but if you haven't read it, it does a good job with this type of thing.
I also did something similar in one of my stories in which one character related his past in segments to the main character, with some action in between. I think it worked fine, but then i was able to show how one story affected the other. So I think that perhaps if you connect the two story lines affectively it shouldn't be too bad.
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Thanks, everyone. I think I'll go for it. At least I can write a few chapters and get some feedback on how well it works. Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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Holes is by Sachar, and sounds like a decent example.
Pacing is crucial; determining how much of each of the two stories to reveal in each portion has got to be a killer. I just finished reading the Historian by Kostova, and she does almost exactly what you are talking about, and even takes it another layer deeper by having the "diary" (it's not really a diary, but close enough) give an embedded third account from someone another generation earlier. It made the book a little confusing to follow at times (I didn't think the voices of her characters were quite adequately different), especially if you were only reading in five or ten minute increments. But I marvelled for the entire book about how elegantly she interwove the narratives to bring them smoothly to the right places at the right times in the book. This is a case where you will almost certainly need to outline the whole book in some detail so that the diary gets you where you need to be for each point of the main narrative. At least, I can't see any other way to accomplish it without an awful lot of backtracking and fixing.
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I think it's workable, but I have one warning for you. Decide now whether the MC is readig the diary at the same rate as you are presenting it (i.e. one short passage per chapter), or if she read it all at the beginning. If the former, you'll need to come up with a good explanation why and make it believable. If the latter, then all of her actions from the start have to be consistant with her knowing everything there is to know in the diary, even if the readers won't know most of it until much later. You can probably see why this is important (and understand why messing it up usually results in a really inconsistent story).
Posts: 49 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Kostova chose the second option, and executed it extremely well -- but it was still a little annoying to have nagging at the back of my mind that the MC knew info that I didn't have yet. However, she was careful throughout (I think -- it was a long book) to make sure that whatever information the MC was actually acting on had already been revealed. I wouldn't be surprised if that book becomes the standard by which attempts to use this mechanism are judged.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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AaronAndy--you make an excellent point and I have thought about this although I haven't made my decision yet. I think I may have to write all the diary entries first and then decide how much she knows and when.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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