posted
I write fantasy novels. I this device I use in my novels where a bard will tell a tale and this lets me insert a short story relevant in some way to the novel.
It breaks the pace, yeah, but I try to put it in a place where the pace can be broken.
My question is, How stand alone should the short story/bard tales be? I would like to work them so they would be publishable as a short story but I don't want the novel to be too redundant. The problem is that I cannot include random short stories so there is relevance and thus repitition with this device. I really only use this in one novel but it let me jump right into the action and go back later and do historical character development.
This leads to a second question, if the short stories were stand alone quality, should I even think about publishing them seperately in addition to the novel?
EDIT: fixed [bold] to [b]
[This message has been edited by pantros (edited October 25, 2005).]
If the stories are told as stand alone tales, then they should stand alone within the context that the audience will bring to those tales. In other words, you don't have to make them stand alone for a modern audience, explaining your entire milieu and all the major characters each time. You only have to make them stand alone for a hypothetical audience that belongs to a culture where all the subjects being discussed are bard's tales.
Some of the stories might, in addition to standing alone for a fictional audience familiar with your milieu, also stand alone for a modern audience. But you still need to clarify what you mean by "publishing them separately in addition to the novel". If you mean that you'll sell them to a publication after your novel is published...well, you can try, but I don't think you'll succeed. Most publications that accept short stories want first publication rights, they're unlikely to buy something that's already been published or even something that is going to be published by someone else in the near future.
If you mean selling some of the individual shorts for publication before you sell your novel, that's fine as long as you make sure the rights revert to you after the short story is published so that you can sell the novel version without having to cut those parts out. Many books are published this way.
posted
Well there's a device like that already in existence called a frame story. In a frame story you've got characters who are part of one story, telling a story of their own that's relevant to their situation.
Um, if your bard isn't part of the overall story arc and is just telling interesting, related short stories to amuse the reader without any purpose other than that, I'm not sure how that'd work. The stories would get in the way. Hamlet, for instance, has the players put on The Mousetrap for his Uncle/Father and Mother/Aunt to further his own purposes. Shakespeare doesn't do this to tickle his audience. He does it to give Hamlet a way to confront his father's murderer.
posted
The bard tale/short stories contribute either through foreshadowing/character development or introducing ideas that will be used in the main story.
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posted
I'm not sure if this is close to what you want to do, but...
Did you ever have to read "The Grapes of Wrath"? Remember the "inter-chapters", which were basically stand alone articles that had some relevance to the rest of the book? (It's been a while since I read any part of "The Grapes..." and I didn't particularly enjoy it when I did, but I remember the inter-chapters and I think I actually did read most of those ).
Now, whether your Bard Tales will work as stand-alones, critiques will tell. However, if you can get some of them published and build a following of sorts, it can make it easier to sell your completed novel to a publisher -- at least that is what I've heard. Whether you could get them published as a collection -- probably not. Short story collections seem not to be high on publishers lists of things to publish, so it could be more of a challenge than you might expect.
posted
"Watership Down" uses the story-within-a-story technique pretty well. If you haven't read it I highly recommend giving it a shot. Great book.
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