Storytelling structure

[kelly_swails]

Several weeks ago Joe Hill posted several tweets about making stories fun to read. Novels shouldn't be just words with an occasional chapter breaks. Presentation, setting, and mood are all integral to the story.

This got me thinking (as all good tweets do). Stories should you know, be stories with a beginning, middle, and an end. But they also need

Comments

[patesden]

Terry Pratchett. And you just made me realize that I need to take a break from all the YA I've been reading and allow myself a Pratchett fix. His stories always are a fun ride.

As a writer, I worry when the story I'm writing doesn't feel fun to me.

[kelly_swails]

Pratchett! Yes! Good call. I didn't mention satire at all.

[malamyn]

Brandon Sanderson had some really fantastic first lines in his opening chapters in Elantris, though that's not really a structural point. I can think of a lot of short stories that play around with structure/POV--things that perhaps wouldn't work as well in a novel. Along the lines of what you've mentioned, Phillip K Dick had a recurring character who was a novelist, whose novels were meta referenced within Dick's novels.

Mumbo Jumbo played around with actual historical events to an unsettling, but somehow satisfying effect.

Oh, and Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. There are two stories at play: the main story which is in first person, and the current timeline which is the frame for the first person story, which is in 3rd. So you get this really deep POV penetration for the past, and shallow POV for the present. It's a neat juxtaposition given how the present world is so changed due to the events in the story you're being told.

I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[kelly_swails]

I love Name of the Wind! I'm with you--the framed story device really works in that case. Plus, it's first-person epic fantasy, which is hard to find.