Hatrack River Writers Workshop: A question of confusion...

This is topic A question of confusion... in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by scm288 on :

I have an idea for a novel, where none of the really main events are shown, but are merely discussed later. Like a timeline, but the main fights and stuff like that are shown through the impact they have on their descendants. Would this confuse or disappoint the reader?

Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :

It may be that the novel is starting in the wrong place.

Brainstorm alert:
I hate to always refer to whatever novel I just read, but... in Parable of the Talents, Lauren's daughter has page or so discussing her mother's life and how she feels about it, and then the bulk of the chapter is an expert from Lauren's journal.

Maybe if you have a upfront, blurb, or paragraphs where characters discuss past events? Then the bulk of the chapters are the events in question.

[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited May 17, 2005).]

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

quote:
Would this confuse or disappoint the reader?

Maybe. To be fair, I doubt I'd be interesting in reading a summary of events after the fact. On a more personal note: I once wrote a story where I actually skipped the moments with any real conflict and summarized them afterward with dialogue between characters, etc. Every critique I received said doing this was extremely disappointing. I haven't done that since.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

It would disappoint me. I want to be there in the action, not there in the fireside discussion of the action.

Posted by scm288 on :

Here's an example of what I'm thinking of:

A man bets his entire wealth on a sword fight with a rival. The reader sees him prepare to fight, then the novel jumps to the next chapter.

In this next chapter, we see the effects of the sword fight. The man's daughter is in horrible poverty, and her son is aching to do something about it. He plans out his revenge...

Next chapter. You get the idea. I'm starting to think about this, and it IS a shaky idea. Is it too disappointing?

Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :

Extremely disappointing. You can't just duck the big scenes; it's not fair to the reader.

Posted by Three Minute Egg (Member # 2523) on :

You can start at the end of the swordfight and go from there, or use flashbacks. Either choice is hard to pull off to the reader's satisfaction though. I don't think skipping the action is a good idea.

Posted by Silver3 (Member # 2174) on :

I would tolerate it once if the main point of the story was to focus on the descendants, in which case the chapter would be sort of a prologue. But not every chapter, or I'd throw the book down.

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

> I have an idea for a novel, where none of
> the really main events are shown, but are
> merely discussed later. Like a timeline,
> but the main fights and stuff like that
> are shown through the impact they have on
> their descendants.

> I'm starting to think about this, and it
> IS a shaky idea. Is it too disappointing?

Actually, I think it's a brilliant idea. But you need to realize that what you're thinking of as the "main events" are not really the main events of the story. The main events of your story are how characters deal with the consequences of past events.

However, its generation-skipping structure may make it difficult to sell as a novel. You might try a shorter version (novella or novelette) first, and if that sells then you might be able to expand it and sell it as a novel.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

If the novel were from the POV of the son or daughter (or both), then it would make perfect sense, since they both see their father getting ready, then they see him come home on a stretcher (or not at all, as the case may be, but in the situation you describe there should be seconds attending). They don't get to see the swordfight itself.

Thus, you are talking about the story in terms of those two characters from the beginning. You're not switching tracks or jumping scenes. The reader already knows that the dramatic action is going to revolve around how events affect your POV characters.

Posted by RavenStarr (Member # 2327) on :

I think so whole idea sounds interesting (assuming I'm grasping what it is you're actually saying), if you write it well, it should be interesting to someone somewhere...

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

> Thus, you are talking about the story in
> terms of those two characters from the
> beginning.

As I understand scm288's idea, there aren't main characters who continue throughout the novel. It's a multigenerational saga where we repeatedly see the sins of the fathers visited upon the heads of the children (so to speak).

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited May 17, 2005).]

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

quote:
A man bets his entire wealth on a sword fight with a rival. The reader sees him prepare to fight, then the novel jumps to the next chapter.
In this next chapter, we see the effects of the sword fight. The man's daughter is in horrible poverty, and her son is aching to do something about it. He plans out his revenge...

I can see ways in which your initial suggestion would work, but when you give it an example I have to ask...Why do you skip the swordfight?

After the son plans his revenge, do you skip the actual revenge?

Skipping generations and showing long-term consequences is an interesting idea for a structure, but I can't help but wonder why you have to skip these pivotal moments as well.

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Asimov did some of this in his original Foundation trilogy. He had three types of conflicts: military, political, and personal. He chose to depict the political conflicts as debates and conversations. The military conflicts were, for the most part, depicted as discussion by these same politicians after the outcome had been determined. The personal conflicts were generally right on stage, keeping the reader's attention.

It worked for Asimov. It has probably worked for lots of others, too.

Of course Asimov was not relying on the offstage stuff to build suspense, he made sure the personal conflicts were onstage enough that they kept the reader in suspense. The big military conflicts merely kept the plot moving.

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

> I can't help but wonder why you have to
> skip these pivotal moments as well.

In some ways, they can overshadow the real story, and in other ways, they can be anticlimactic.

The betting father has made his fateful decision before the swordfight. The details of the fight don't matter to his posterity, what matters is that they lost. The grandson's decision to seek vengeance is the key point in his life -- we don't need to see his plot put into action and fail in order to understand the ramifications for future generations.

Including the "main events" gives their details too much prominence. The blow-by-blow of the swordfight highlights the event, as opposed to the aftermath.

I ran into a variation on this problem with the story I wrote at Boot Camp. The story was about a young man who broke one of his people's most important laws in order to save them from destruction. But I didn't want the story to be about that "main event"; I wanted to tell the story of the old man that young man became fifty years later. But every time I tried to follow the rules and write the story in chronological order, starting by showing the "main event," the rest of the story was overwhelmed by it. So I started fifty years after the "main event" and only referenced it as part of the protagonist's memories.

When you want to focus on aftermaths, showing "main events" (maths?) is a distraction.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

Another structure that works for this kind of story is to show the aftermath as the main story, and intersperse it with a different timeline story leading up to the event itself, so you have your chapters or scenes in the following kind of order:

5,1,6,2,7,3,8,4[,9] (where scenes are numbered in chronological order, not the order they are placed in the narrative)

Having started with scene 5, the story leading up to scene 4 answers the reader's "how did we get here?" questions. This might be the main question, in which case scene 4 should be the last one, or the question of what will happen after scene 5 might be the most important, in which case there should be a scene 9 on the end.

Does that make sense?

[This message has been edited by Jules (edited May 17, 2005).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Yeah...I think that the problem is that you shouldn't be thinking of these things as "main events" of the story. They're more like backstory. Every story has plenty of this. If you want these events to occur during and after the events that are actually the focus of your narrative, you could call them "context" (as in, "this tragic love takes place in the context of a bitter blood feud between two noble families"). That's the sense in which the various Empire shaking military and class conflicts are used in the Foundation books.

In every story, there is plenty of interesting stuff happening just offstage. But if it happens offstage, then it cannot be the main event of your story.