Wondering about Format

[JackLuis]

I am contemplating a story (The Interrupted Tale) that uses several main characters and thought I would intersperse the three stories doing a scene of one, then the other, and then other not completing the scenes, so as to allow the reader to interpolate the stories and save some words and time.

I had done this in my "Slippery Dickory Doc" chapter of my Horner Springs Retirees series, which has pretty good scores.

When I started writing The Interrupted Tale I interspersed the stories by chapters which worked in the beginning, but thought maybe as the tale developed and the characters got closer in proximity that doing a scene shift might work better?

I tend to write very detailed sex scenes and it does get sort of tiresome in a long story. Since I expect The Interrupted Tale to be about 300K words, and many sexual encounters, I wondered about using this device to save my readers enthusiasm?

 

[DreamCloud]

If I understand what you're attempting, it sounds like it would be fun to write.

I'm not sure a casual reader would appreciate it if the transitions were abrupt. Your fans would give you the benefit of the doubt and work through it. It would be sweet if all the tales collided into a single story line at the end.

 

[JackLuis]

If I understand what you're attempting, it sounds like it would be fun to write.

I'm not sure a casual reader would appreciate it if the transitions were abrupt. Your fans would give you the benefit of the doubt and work through it. It would be sweet if all the tales collided into a single story line at the end.

Well all the stories are related as the characters will all be trying to achieve a mutual objective, each in their separate ways. Although he males and females will have slightly differing objectives.

 

[DreamCloud]

If it's in your head, you have to get it out. You definitely have the skill to make it work.

 

[JackLuis]

If it's in your head, you have to get it out. You definitely have the skill to make it work.

Thanks for the complement.

Did you read Slippery Dickory Doc?

 

[DreamCloud]

I did. It moved well and I had no trouble keeping the characters straight.
It's not the kind of story I usually read, but I can see its appeal.

 

[JackLuis]

I did. It moved well and I had no trouble keeping the characters straight.
It's not the kind of story I usually read, but I can see its appeal.

Well it's not the kind of story I normally write either. It was a character exposition chapter to lay the seeds for them to be used in later chapters. Unfortunately I haven't written the whole story that was in my head at the time.

Horny Springs was an experimental story series that was supposed to have six or seven authors write stories about the same town, sharing walk on characters to tie the stories together. Only two others wrote three stories. I kind of lost interest in completing the series when so few joined the experiment.

However the concept of shifting scenes between characters and not writing "everything" but allowing the reader to fill in then gaps seems to be a worthwile technique, don't you think?

 

[blin18]

When I started writing The Interrupted Tale I interspersed the stories by chapters which worked in the beginning, but thought maybe as the tale developed and the characters got closer in proximity that doing a scene shift might work better?

As a reader, I find perspective shifts inside chapters to be very jarring, however it would be fair to say that each time I see it, it is accidental and clumsy, so a deliberate effort with an eye for a particular effect could be interesting.

Sounds like you're going into it with eyes open, and good or bad, you'll learn something.

300k words is pretty enormous to be experimenting. Have you considered trying out the technique on one or two 10k shorts?

 

[DreamCloud]

However the concept of shifting scenes between characters and not writing "everything" but allowing the reader to fill in then gaps seems to be a worthwhile technique, don't you think?

I think you can make it work. I would do more than a couple of paragraphs per scene change. Some of the ones I read came too fast, just when my interest was re-piqued.

When I first read your OP, I thought you were going to build a puzzle. Pieces of disparate stories that all weave into one at the end. That, I would find very intriguing. I imagined something like three couples, each set not quite right for each other, eventually merging to find their true counterpart in one of the other couples. Then again, I usually write romance nowadays.

 

[DreamCloud]

300k words is pretty enormous to be experimenting. Have you considered trying out the technique on one or two 10k shorts?

I have to agree. See if the water is too cold before you jump in.

 

[JackLuis]

As a reader, I find perspective shifts inside chapters to be very jarring, however it would be fair to say that each time I see it, it is accidental and clumsy, so a deliberate effort with an eye for a particular effect could be interesting.

Sounds like you're going into it with eyes open, and good or bad, you'll learn something.

300k words is pretty enormous to be experimenting. Have you considered trying out the technique on one or two 10k shorts?

Well I did do that with Slippery Dickory Doc,(H, 4.57) posted on Lit, and I wrote ~50K words of The Interrupted Tale in a Nano sort of using the chapter splits idea. In my Spreading Seeds each chapter was about a different woman or two or three.

I found though that not having the chapters together didn't hit the sweet spots, so i re-edited it to fix my noob mistakes and grouped the chapters into Sagas of 4-6 chapters of ~40K words each and it is scoring much better. I'm tracking the Sagas for 30 days, collecting scores, views and vote#s to see what that will tell me. Hard to get many readers or comments in Novels and Novellas.

 

[Etaski]

When I first read your OP, I thought you were going to build a puzzle. Pieces of disparate stories that all weave into one at the end. That, I would find very intriguing. I imagined something like three couples, each set not quite right for each other, eventually merging to find their true counterpart in one of the other couples. Then again, I usually write romance nowadays.

A Halloween-themed movie that missed its audience in a theater release but gained a cult following did exactly what you describe. "Trick 'R Treat" (2006) Highly recommended if 1) You love Halloween, 2) you'd like to see how this kind of story could work.

It's 4 main stories with an intro (so 5 groups), all interwoven together, told as mostly complete stories except where you see the other four storylines briefly affecting the current story so that you understand where you are in the timeline of this particular Halloween Night. Then it brings them all together at the end and the viewer sees where they all ended (the same damn street where we started).

Great movie, excellent storytelling, intriguing style.

 

[PervOtaku]

You may not actually be suggesting this, but one thing that almost always turns me off from a story is running though scenes a second time for the sake of using a different character's perspective. Third person omniscient is perfectly valid and accomplishes the same thing.

Of course when characters are off doing something on their own you would expect the story to switch perspectives between them.

If you need to keep to first person or third person limited for multiple characters, if they are sharing a scene I think it's important to keep the flow of the scene going. You can switch back and forth between perspectives, but do it artfully so that you don't have to repeat a line of dialogue or an action that the reader has already seen. If necessary you can have perspective #2 refer back to something that was said during perspective #1, just don't repeat the quote.

I once did a flashback sequence in a mostly third person limited story by trading back and forth between first person perspectives of the two characters who had been there, as they retold the story (separately) to the main character. Basically I decided that certain bits were best explained by one or the other, and transitioned between them as needed, with a minimal overlap to establish context, since in-story they were both relating the whole thing individually. I think it turned out very effective and it's still one of my favorite bits that I've done.

 

[JackLuis]

My idea was to switch between characters/scenes that were in the same approximate time frame but in separate places. Setting up Char #1 with a situation that has an obvious play, then shifting to set up Char #2 with a slightly different situation, switching back to Char #1 as he completes his scene, so as not to bore the reader repetitive stroke and poke. Interspersing with Char #3/4 discussing the 'rituals' in euphemistic ways so as to add humor to the tale.

I have a tenancy to get detailed in a sex scene and in this particular story I'm afraid it would be overly redundant.