I find nonlinear storytelling interesting, but have honestly always been a little intimidated by it. I tend to build my stories from start to finish without using an outline. I have no idea how I'd write something that didn't have a clear chain of cause and effect. Maybe write from start to finish and then mix it up afterwards?
That would be a valid way to do it! Even with the stuff I’m writing at the moment, which hops back and forth, I had to work it all out in advance in chronological order first, before then deciding how to actually explore that timeline.
I love the variety of storytelling exploration this represents, thanks Simon! I'm a huge fan of non-linear.
I'm trying to work with multi-timelines myself in The Glaciermen, where the main proportion of the story is set in the past, but each chapter begins with short-ish continuation of the present to keep the main arch moving forward. Revelations have to be carefully planned so the present doesn't spoil the past, (and so the past doesn't spoil the present, which is an interesting concept, imo).
If I pull it off, the whole thing will be one tightening coil of tension until the past collides with the present in a spectacularly epic finale! That's the hope at least.
I'm restructuring several somethings already written to try and mash them together (yes, game narratives). Of course the originals were effectively serialized (and, being game narratives, of course I had no idea what would happen in next week's chapter, as I wasn't entirely driving the plot), but, structurally evolved. Everything started as a somewhat sarcastic 1st person narrator, aping the style of the person who wrote the recaps before me. Things usually stayed 1st person, but sometimes it was in what I call "Just who is the narrator talking to, anyway?" (or regular old 1st person), while, in others, the narrator was somewhere telling their stories to others around, and interacting with the audience. The majority were in the forms of letters or reports. And, sometimes, I wrote third person. Obviously the viewpoint character changed depending on the PC I was running (or when PCs got killed on me).
Now I'm debating 1st person/3rd person. Is the viewpoint presented "as it happens," or is the tale being told from "the future?" Note that present tense/past tense prose isn't always a indicator of that. Do I keep the conceit of letters/journals/reports? Do I just say, "Fuck it," and allow the structure/viewpoint to be whatever works best for the chapter?
Leaning towards 3rd person, past tense, future viewpoint, but having one scene per chapter be a letter/report/journal - probably as an epigraph.
I've read first-person narratives which had multiple narrators. Tricky. I've read narratives which switched between first and third person. Tricky. Both are often jarring.
Also, Kay was a badass protagonist, even if you do say so yourself.
For non-linear narrative, I've always had a fondness for the "Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. The entire trilogy skips around, but sections dealing with drugs or madness REALLY skip around. Turns out the authors (this was written in the 1960's) wrote the entire thing linearly, then, for the non-linear sections (especially drugs/madness), they cut the manuscript into pieces, threw it up into the air, and re-typed things in the order in which they picked them up. They'd felt earlier efforts to construct the non-linear sections were too forced, so they let randomness take over. As one does when writing counterculture fiction in the 1960's and taking lots of drugs. Bear in mind the final product is brilliant, but, over the decades might have had negative influence on American culture. I've seen conspiracy theories floated as fact which were fictional elements constructed for these novels. Oh, well.
That’s amazing! Actually tearing up your manuscript in order to create a random chronology. Probably not a tactic that can work reliably outside of that specific example. :D
I highly recommend a read of the Illuminatus Trilogy. It's actually a highly influential book. Modern interest in the Illuminati is traced back to its publication. Bands have been influenced by it (like the KLF), video, board and card games have been based on it, and Ken Campbell did a stage adaptation with people who would go on to have major careers.
An insanely dense read, but easily one of the best books I've ever read re-read and re-re-re-re-re...read. I think you'd enjoy it immensely. Or, your head will explode. One those.
There is at least one copy of the Omnibus edition available on Amazon UK (the cover with a black pyramid and eye being leapt over by a dolphin). Looks like there may be complete sets of the original volumes as well, which I might need to grab. The individual books have "Previously" sections in volumes 2 and 3, but, as the authors were fucking with people a lot, there are actually plot points (and jokes) which only appear in the "Previously," and are cut from the Omnibus.
Plus, my copy is in warehouse storage, I'm past my normal re-read time, and talking about the damned thing makes me want to re-read it again-again.
I was about to comment that I wrote in a very linear fashion and hadn't really played about with structure in that way, which is largely true but completely overlooks the work my publisher and I did with Greyskin. That I've always described as a patchwork quilt of separate but very much interconnected stories, woven together to paint a larger picture. The story we order we decided on for the book was, to a certain degree, arbitrary, as much on feel as t he relationship between events. But there were certain stories that I definitely wanted at particular places in the book, including one set early on that I wanted kept until nearly the end, because of the reveals it contained.
We also had one epistolary story that we split up completely, dropping sections in between the other stories, acting as a sort of unifying thread binding the others together. In the end, a genius idea, and one I wish I could take credit for, but was entirely my publisher's genius.
That arbitrary element is really fascinating. So much of what we do as writers is based on a sort of vague 'feel'. There's an infinite number of ways to tell a story, and structure a story, and we can't test all of them - so the solutions we settle on are, in a way, a bit of a finger in the air guess. That these things ever settle into anything worth reading seems like a bit of a miracle to me. :P
It seems to me that might be another great advantage/joy of publishing your stories in serial form - it perhaps provides more scope for experimentation with different modes and timeframes..? From my experience in traditional publishing, I suspect there's more aversion to this kind of play. The early drafts of my first novel had lots of flashbacks, but the manuscript came back with notes saying this made the narrative confusing. To be fair, at that stage I was trying to steal too many tricks from film. I love the back-and-forth structure of Batman Begins and tried to replicate that on the page. I've since learned that there are an awful lot of things you can get away with on screen (using images as the anchor) that in a book leave a reader completely at sea. All round great article, Simon, cheers!
Absolutely. Much like a long-running TV show can happily experiment with its formula and break its own rules, because it has that space in which to do so.
A novel is more singular, I think, and there’s a certain flattening that goes on there to turn it into ‘a product’. A serial doesn’t have that discipline, which opens up interesting opportunities (and is also a risk, of course).
Firstly, may I remind you that HMRC's tax deadline for online submission is not until 31st January, which is when I and the rest of the UK will be doing their taxes - probably the night before. So shame on you for virtue signalling, you bad man!
When I started with fiction, I was influenced by two writers: William Gibson and David Mitchell. Most of Gibson's books have two or three interwoven narratives/PoVs, each of which is relatively short. David Mitchell seemed to love playing around with how you can interweave different narratives (the Russian Doll approach in Cloud Atlas, the circular(?) in Ghostwritten). So my first draft of my first novel took the worst of these traits and expanded them! I've since reined things in, but I still like interweaving PoVs, and my latest - Tidelands - does this. And it suits serialisation, because you can reach a cliffhanger with one narrative line, and then - for maximum reader suspense - jump to another narrative and repeat the feat! I think Dan Brown also does this (one of the few things he does well...).
As for radical approaches to non-linear structure in fiction then check out the works of B.S. Johnson, especially The Unfortunates and Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry.
"Do let me know your favourites." Just about any film made by Nic Roeg, but especially Insignificance (in which Marilyn Monroe explains Relativity to Einstein ), Eureka, Bad Timing, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth etc etc etc. In my opinion a far more accomplished and influential director than Tarantino.
My favorite non-linear story is The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. It always reminds me that there are more than just one story within a story, depending on how you look at it.
One of my favorite game to play when reading a book is “try to guess where the writer ACTUALLY started the novel”. As someone who has written a lot, the place that I start writing is almost never the best starting point. Is that something you’ve ever done, Simon?
Oh, interesting! Can’t say I have, and I imagine it’s quite a hard thing to spot. I tend to write from front-to-back, but a lot of writers hop around all over the place and piece it together as they go.
It's definitely a hard thing to spot, but it's very interesting to see how a story changes if you start from the eighth chapter or the fifth. I also tend to write from front-to-back, but usually (when I go back and look again) I realize that I should have included another chapter first or should have cut the first chapter and started from the second. Trying to determine the "right place" to start feels almost like a gut reaction.
When writing a non-linear story, how do you write from front-to-back? Do you write it all out and then re-edit it to make it non-linear later?
I find nonlinear storytelling interesting, but have honestly always been a little intimidated by it. I tend to build my stories from start to finish without using an outline. I have no idea how I'd write something that didn't have a clear chain of cause and effect. Maybe write from start to finish and then mix it up afterwards?
That would be a valid way to do it! Even with the stuff I’m writing at the moment, which hops back and forth, I had to work it all out in advance in chronological order first, before then deciding how to actually explore that timeline.
I love the variety of storytelling exploration this represents, thanks Simon! I'm a huge fan of non-linear.
I'm trying to work with multi-timelines myself in The Glaciermen, where the main proportion of the story is set in the past, but each chapter begins with short-ish continuation of the present to keep the main arch moving forward. Revelations have to be carefully planned so the present doesn't spoil the past, (and so the past doesn't spoil the present, which is an interesting concept, imo).
If I pull it off, the whole thing will be one tightening coil of tension until the past collides with the present in a spectacularly epic finale! That's the hope at least.
Sounds really interesting! Having multiple threads converge is always exciting (and challenging to pull off!).
Funny you should ask.
I'm restructuring several somethings already written to try and mash them together (yes, game narratives). Of course the originals were effectively serialized (and, being game narratives, of course I had no idea what would happen in next week's chapter, as I wasn't entirely driving the plot), but, structurally evolved. Everything started as a somewhat sarcastic 1st person narrator, aping the style of the person who wrote the recaps before me. Things usually stayed 1st person, but sometimes it was in what I call "Just who is the narrator talking to, anyway?" (or regular old 1st person), while, in others, the narrator was somewhere telling their stories to others around, and interacting with the audience. The majority were in the forms of letters or reports. And, sometimes, I wrote third person. Obviously the viewpoint character changed depending on the PC I was running (or when PCs got killed on me).
Now I'm debating 1st person/3rd person. Is the viewpoint presented "as it happens," or is the tale being told from "the future?" Note that present tense/past tense prose isn't always a indicator of that. Do I keep the conceit of letters/journals/reports? Do I just say, "Fuck it," and allow the structure/viewpoint to be whatever works best for the chapter?
Leaning towards 3rd person, past tense, future viewpoint, but having one scene per chapter be a letter/report/journal - probably as an epigraph.
I've read first-person narratives which had multiple narrators. Tricky. I've read narratives which switched between first and third person. Tricky. Both are often jarring.
Also, Kay was a badass protagonist, even if you do say so yourself.
For non-linear narrative, I've always had a fondness for the "Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. The entire trilogy skips around, but sections dealing with drugs or madness REALLY skip around. Turns out the authors (this was written in the 1960's) wrote the entire thing linearly, then, for the non-linear sections (especially drugs/madness), they cut the manuscript into pieces, threw it up into the air, and re-typed things in the order in which they picked them up. They'd felt earlier efforts to construct the non-linear sections were too forced, so they let randomness take over. As one does when writing counterculture fiction in the 1960's and taking lots of drugs. Bear in mind the final product is brilliant, but, over the decades might have had negative influence on American culture. I've seen conspiracy theories floated as fact which were fictional elements constructed for these novels. Oh, well.
That’s amazing! Actually tearing up your manuscript in order to create a random chronology. Probably not a tactic that can work reliably outside of that specific example. :D
Probably not.
I highly recommend a read of the Illuminatus Trilogy. It's actually a highly influential book. Modern interest in the Illuminati is traced back to its publication. Bands have been influenced by it (like the KLF), video, board and card games have been based on it, and Ken Campbell did a stage adaptation with people who would go on to have major careers.
An insanely dense read, but easily one of the best books I've ever read re-read and re-re-re-re-re...read. I think you'd enjoy it immensely. Or, your head will explode. One those.
There is at least one copy of the Omnibus edition available on Amazon UK (the cover with a black pyramid and eye being leapt over by a dolphin). Looks like there may be complete sets of the original volumes as well, which I might need to grab. The individual books have "Previously" sections in volumes 2 and 3, but, as the authors were fucking with people a lot, there are actually plot points (and jokes) which only appear in the "Previously," and are cut from the Omnibus.
Plus, my copy is in warehouse storage, I'm past my normal re-read time, and talking about the damned thing makes me want to re-read it again-again.
I was about to comment that I wrote in a very linear fashion and hadn't really played about with structure in that way, which is largely true but completely overlooks the work my publisher and I did with Greyskin. That I've always described as a patchwork quilt of separate but very much interconnected stories, woven together to paint a larger picture. The story we order we decided on for the book was, to a certain degree, arbitrary, as much on feel as t he relationship between events. But there were certain stories that I definitely wanted at particular places in the book, including one set early on that I wanted kept until nearly the end, because of the reveals it contained.
We also had one epistolary story that we split up completely, dropping sections in between the other stories, acting as a sort of unifying thread binding the others together. In the end, a genius idea, and one I wish I could take credit for, but was entirely my publisher's genius.
That arbitrary element is really fascinating. So much of what we do as writers is based on a sort of vague 'feel'. There's an infinite number of ways to tell a story, and structure a story, and we can't test all of them - so the solutions we settle on are, in a way, a bit of a finger in the air guess. That these things ever settle into anything worth reading seems like a bit of a miracle to me. :P
It seems to me that might be another great advantage/joy of publishing your stories in serial form - it perhaps provides more scope for experimentation with different modes and timeframes..? From my experience in traditional publishing, I suspect there's more aversion to this kind of play. The early drafts of my first novel had lots of flashbacks, but the manuscript came back with notes saying this made the narrative confusing. To be fair, at that stage I was trying to steal too many tricks from film. I love the back-and-forth structure of Batman Begins and tried to replicate that on the page. I've since learned that there are an awful lot of things you can get away with on screen (using images as the anchor) that in a book leave a reader completely at sea. All round great article, Simon, cheers!
Absolutely. Much like a long-running TV show can happily experiment with its formula and break its own rules, because it has that space in which to do so.
A novel is more singular, I think, and there’s a certain flattening that goes on there to turn it into ‘a product’. A serial doesn’t have that discipline, which opens up interesting opportunities (and is also a risk, of course).
Firstly, may I remind you that HMRC's tax deadline for online submission is not until 31st January, which is when I and the rest of the UK will be doing their taxes - probably the night before. So shame on you for virtue signalling, you bad man!
When I started with fiction, I was influenced by two writers: William Gibson and David Mitchell. Most of Gibson's books have two or three interwoven narratives/PoVs, each of which is relatively short. David Mitchell seemed to love playing around with how you can interweave different narratives (the Russian Doll approach in Cloud Atlas, the circular(?) in Ghostwritten). So my first draft of my first novel took the worst of these traits and expanded them! I've since reined things in, but I still like interweaving PoVs, and my latest - Tidelands - does this. And it suits serialisation, because you can reach a cliffhanger with one narrative line, and then - for maximum reader suspense - jump to another narrative and repeat the feat! I think Dan Brown also does this (one of the few things he does well...).
Ha, sorry about that.
Don’t leave your homework until the last moment, though. ;)
Get off my case, Dad! ;)
As for radical approaches to non-linear structure in fiction then check out the works of B.S. Johnson, especially The Unfortunates and Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry.
"Do let me know your favourites." Just about any film made by Nic Roeg, but especially Insignificance (in which Marilyn Monroe explains Relativity to Einstein ), Eureka, Bad Timing, Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth etc etc etc. In my opinion a far more accomplished and influential director than Tarantino.
My favorite non-linear story is The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. It always reminds me that there are more than just one story within a story, depending on how you look at it.
One of my favorite game to play when reading a book is “try to guess where the writer ACTUALLY started the novel”. As someone who has written a lot, the place that I start writing is almost never the best starting point. Is that something you’ve ever done, Simon?
Oh, interesting! Can’t say I have, and I imagine it’s quite a hard thing to spot. I tend to write from front-to-back, but a lot of writers hop around all over the place and piece it together as they go.
It's definitely a hard thing to spot, but it's very interesting to see how a story changes if you start from the eighth chapter or the fifth. I also tend to write from front-to-back, but usually (when I go back and look again) I realize that I should have included another chapter first or should have cut the first chapter and started from the second. Trying to determine the "right place" to start feels almost like a gut reaction.
When writing a non-linear story, how do you write from front-to-back? Do you write it all out and then re-edit it to make it non-linear later?