Post History
I'm planning a novel where the protagonist is an author and regularly writes short stories and shares them with other characters. I see this as a great opportunity to break out of the narrative an...
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T04:03:51Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/16297 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Liath
·
2019-12-08T04:03:51Z (almost 5 years ago)
I'm planning a novel where the protagonist is an author and regularly writes short stories and shares them with other characters. I see this as a great opportunity to break out of the narrative and explore his character a little (the stories could be a metaphor different characters or could foreshadow events of the main plot). However I'm unsure about how to structure it... Typically my chapters are around 5-7 thousand words and I anticipate the "short stories" being around 2-4 thousand. So perhaps I could do a short introduction, the short story then continue with the main plot in the second half of the chapter or would a chapter per short story be better? What steps can I take to make this story within a story approach work? Is the idea of frequently introducing new fictional fictional characters too much to ask of a reader? What steps can I take to make sure the plot isn't too jarring?
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2015-02-23T10:12:53Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 3