In a story, how would one write that WITH another storyline that's happening? Like...what if Groundhog Day's story were to be told as Bill Murray's family struggle to find out what to do with him?
I guess, to put it simply...how does one write a story where one plot is looping with time and the other passes normally in time? Is there a precedence to this that I could look at?
Thanks!
How can they react to the changes in normal non-looping time, when he never truly emerges from looping time until the end of the movie? Or are we to assume that the family scenes all take place in separate planes of existence, where after each loop one copy goes off and lives his life, and another copy loops again?
I'm getting dizzy, and this sounds like a too complicated idea to pull off.
Jayson Merryfield
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume you have your reasons for wanting to write what you are trying to write.
I chose first person since the characters interacted for half the story; having two characters in first person POV gave the advantage of complete access to both characters while avoiding the omni "feel." This might not be a consideration for your story, since it seems your characters will not directly interact except, perhaps, at the end.
Well, yeah, it really doesn't have much to do with Groundhog Day. The main character of the looping story finds himself in an underground world that mimics famous events (ex: World War II, French Revolution), mythological events (ex: pulling out the Sword in the Stone, fighting Medusa) and biblical events (parting of the red sea) using clones of the population in the real world. He is given the task to keep every single person in this world from dying. Every time he fails, he must escape through this tear in time to return back to the beginning.
The looping part of the story is an adventure with a mystery as the main character tries to figure out what's going on. The other story that happens at the same time is what's happening to another character who is also investigating a number of odd happenings.
Sorry if this post didn't clarify what I was trying to do...its the best way I can think of to summarize it>.>
Not sure it's any help, but it's what I thought of. Good luck!
I love Groundhog Day, I've watched it many times.
I never would have thought of Slaughterhouse Five, nice one, Kayti! If that's not what you're looking for, what about the concept of Elvish time (I'm thinking Irish here, not Tolkien). Where a human being that wanders into their home experiences a few hours and comes back out and years have passed?
Seems to me there is no outside beyond the character who perceives (or multiple characters who also perceive) the time loop and its effects. Bill Murray et. al. live their lives in a linear fashion---everybody else is looped, and, to them, there is only the problem in relating to someone who knows what will happen in the period Bill Murray and company are stuck in.
("Groundhog Day" is an old favorite. I might've missed it altogether if it hadn't come free for buying a laserdisc player back in the early nineties before DVDs. I liked its philosophic---rather than scientific / techinical---exploration of what it might actually be like to live one day over and over again, going from frightening (as he realizes it's happening) to intriguing (as he realizes the possibilities) to boring (as he realizes the limitations) and even to tragic (as he grapples with both possibilities and limitations.))
Is the 2nd character who is investigating the odd occurences (detective?) doing this at the end of each loop, and unaware of the loops and changes, or is he just at the end of the last loop, when the MC has finally succeeded, and the detective is sorting through the odd things that occured in the final reality?
The latter would be best for me. At the end of each loop, have the detective puzzling over some effect of the FINAL loop, but when you write it, do it in such a way that the part he is examining was part of the most recent loop. In this way, the detective could give hints of what is to come.
(Hope I made sense...)
SG-1 also did this but with a quick reference. SG-1 and Earth was looping through the same 18 hour or so interval. The "outside" world was trying to reach them. There is a one line reference at the end of the episode to the Tokra trying to reach Earth for 3 months. So "real" time passed for those outside the loop.
It could work if you treat all time as the same. So a minute in the "loop" world is the same as one out of it. I suspect each "world" needs to be a seprate chapter and somehow you are going to have to convey the time pass.
something like - loop world - 48 hours or second iteration of the day.
Nonloop - 2 days later.
There was a novel a few years back, I remember reading the dust jacket, but I don't remember if I read it or not.
The premise was that there was a catastrophic cosmic event that basically reset time by some 10 years, maybe 20, and now EVERYONE was reliving that same period and at the same time they were aware of the previous timeline on some level.
I don't recall whether they were reliving the same events and unable to change them or whether they were reliving the period, able to make changes and then having to reconcile two radically different memories of events as the previous timeline and the current one diverged.
Anyone remember reading something like that?
I'll step up onto my soapbox long enough to say that in writing, as in life, there are (lots) of "can't do" people, and (very few) "can do" people. The can't do people never do; the can do people sometimes make it work. Solution-oriented thinking can solve just about any problem--and that's experience talking, not just rhetoric. The groundhog-day-from-a-different perspective sounds really entertaining--I'll volunteer in advance to crit you if you want or need it.
It's exciting to know that now, after over 2 years of planning and tinkering, I'm starting to get close to writing my series.