quote:Originally posted by MerlionEmrys: I am bowing out of the thread [in another place], unless it be to discuss the original fragment.
You are leaving the discuss-everything thread?
Okay, what about this for a basic principle: If everything else is equal, a story is easier to understand when the events are told in chronological order.
Will there really be any exceptions?
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
quote: Mandy was gone. She went quietly, her body still, and Dane was at her bedside to see her go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat.
So, you could be all intuitive and subjective, but I can see that I was confused by it being out of chonological order. And I could try rewriting it in chronological order.
quote: The ICU physician said her death was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. Mandy was gone.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
If told in chronological order, much of the meaning of the story is lost, and it risks becoming banal, if not outright boring.
Posted by MerlionEmrys (Member # 11024) on :
quote: If everything else is equal, a story is easier to understand when the events are told in chronological order.
Will there really be any exceptions?
There are always exceptions, my dear Emma.
Preface: I enjoy these discussions and what I am about to say is in no way a disparagement of them, I am speaking openly and without subtext (I'm a Sagittarius, doing otherwise runs against my grain.)
I'm not sure what your goal(s) with this/these questions is/are, nor am I entirely sure from what perspective you are approaching the discussion of them.
To me, it feels as if you are trying to build parameters of what a story(and other concepts) is, presumably to then use as a guide for your writing. That is 900% fine and can be quite useful. In my brain, I see that as an outside in approach. For the most part, my approach is, in my own internal visualization, more inside out. I have my ideas, and I proceed to cast around for whatever tools, structures, jutsus, ideas, methods, techniques, words or approaches I need to make them into fully realized versions of what I want them to be (and sometimes just to figure out what I want the basic idea to be, then do that.) In many cases, that may entail the sort of thing you're talking about-if I decide I want to write a story of a certain mode or type, I need to learn the generally accepted parameters for that.
But, getting back to what your saying about chronological order, to me there're two reasons why one might be concerned with the issue of non-chronological writing. One, because one has a story in ones head that seems to need/want to be written out of order, or because one just wants to do it to see what it's like/if one can.
Chances are good that whatever one then comes up with could, quite probably, be told in a generally speaking easier to understand manner in chronological order...but maybe not. Also, remember that the point is not always to convey the sequence of events to the reader in the fastest, easiest way possible. There are, sometimes, other considerations.
Take the Kill Bill films (and Tarrantino's other out of order films) for example. I don't recall any of them "needing" to be told that way-but it sure creates a neat effect. Similarly, part of the film "Memento" is told out of standard chronological order to simulate the feel of the character's anterograde amnesia.
As I've said before and will no doubt say again, it all depends on what you're trying to do. While obviously we always want to be understood, and while oftentimes conveying a plot to the reader in the fastest and easiest manner is the main goal, it isn't always.
Although, of course, even if you do have a story idea that, for example, needs to be told out of chronological order, you still want to do it in the clearest way possible, but I would personally advise against attempting to shoehorn that story into standard order because it might make it require a little more thought to process.
quote: You are leaving the discuss-everything thread?
I emailed you about it.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
If what you're striving for is a coherent concept of what makes a story a story, then I recommend this website.
That way, you'll get just one perspective and can perhaps frame questions that will get closer to the answers you're looking for.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Time management is a convoluted creative writing topic. Linear chronology is easiest for readers to comprehend; linear chronology struggles challenge inexperienced writers, let alone other, more difficult temporal organizations.
Though not obvious, regardless of temporal organization type, dramatic emotional force linearity is a basic principle for prose organization, from least force start to most middle force to a force trail-off end. Again, rhetoric is a guide.
Here, the figures are extended catacosmesis and auxesis, respectively, chronological order or greatest to least importance or dignity; combined catacosmesis and auxesis, chronological emotional affect and effect force progression (increase from start to middle to post-middle trail-off end, most common overall prose progression); chronology-independent order of force from least to greatest amplification progression through to an end.
A linear chronological organization may also attend an emotional force increase structure, and is the more common dramatic structure. The force shape, if graphed, more resembles a parabola of progressive emotional force over time than a sloped line, or a pyramid, per Gustav Freytag's Pyramid, x axis causation and narrative time, y axis tension's emotional force.
I envision dramatic structure's shape more like a stair-stepped tetrahedron that teeters on one edge, three-dimensional, that is. The axes are x equals causation, y equals tension, z equals antagonism (motivation, want-problem complication), and all of it over time t equals x causal story and narrative time elapsed, irrespective of temporal organization.
Story time is the movement of and elapsed time within a narrative's milieu; narrative time is linear reading, hearing, and viewing time elapsed. A two-thousand word short story narrative time elapsed per average English reader is fifteen minutes. Heard is about the same as read for many readers. One hundred fifty words per minute is an average speech rate. Mileage varies. Viewed, oh ho!, about ten minutes average motion picture time.
Average English readers' rate is one hundred fifty words per minute and about 70 percent comprehension average. Experienced, close readers, about four hundred words plus per minute and 95 + percent comprehension rate.
Story time for a narrative could, though, be less, only a few moments elapsed time. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Bierce, 1890, spans a far briefer story time than narrative time (Thirty-seven hundred words, Project Gutenberg hosted). Or a near infinite span of time elapsed. "Genesis 1." Eight hundred words about six godly days, an allegory for near infinity. Both the above narratives are linear timelines, mostly.
Narrative time is more or less fixed; however long a reader takes to read the words is narrative time. Narrative time may condense, expand, or stall story time progression. (Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse, pgs 62 - 84)
A trend of late that fiction adopted from a creative nonfiction principle is a narrative of two distinct now-times, either a past and present now, or a present and future now, and how each now is interpreted in the other now. Nonlinear timelines by linear block portions are common for the method, and is common anymore for literary journal short stories, not fully realized yet in fantastic fiction, though recent Writers of the Future winners entail the dual-time emotional emphasis and force sequence rather than per se linear timeline methods.
[ January 02, 2019, 04:37 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by MerlionEmrys (Member # 11024) on :
quote: If what you're striving for is a coherent concept of what makes a story a story, then I recommend this website.
Hmm that seems a little familiar...is that somebody we used to know, Meredith, or am I just suffering another dratted mnemonic hallucination?
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan:
quote: Mandy was gone. She went quietly, her body still, and Dane was at her bedside to see her go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat.
So, you could be all intuitive and subjective, but I can see that I was confused by it being out of chonological order. And I could try rewriting it in chronological order.
quote: The ICU physician said her death was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. Mandy was gone.
Something else to consider when it comes to story chronology:
What is the most important thing, the thing you want to emphasize by having it come first?
In the two versions above, the second one seems to indicate that what the ICU physician said was the most important thing. The first version seems to indicate that Mandy's going was the most important thing.
For my part, even though it's not in chronological order, the first version emphasizes the things that I would consider most important (who is the ICU physician anyway? does he or she even matter to the rest of the story?) and I wasn't confused by the non-chronological ordering of the first version.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
quote:Originally posted by MerlionEmrys:
quote: If what you're striving for is a coherent concept of what makes a story a story, then I recommend this website.
Hmm that seems a little familiar...is that somebody we used to know, Meredith, or am I just suffering another dratted mnemonic hallucination?
Not that I know of.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan:
quote: Mandy was gone. She went quietly, her body still, and Dane was at her bedside to see her go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat.
So, you could be all intuitive and subjective, but I can see that I was confused by it being out of chonological order. And I could try rewriting it in chronological order.
quote: The ICU physician said her death was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. Mandy was gone.
If the viewpoint persona is Dane (first named), and the narrative point of view is third person, middle distance, limited, and rigidly chronological:
//Dane was at the bedside to see Mandy go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once he removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. She went quietly, her body still. Mandy was gone.//
Or if closer narrative distance and a few adjustments to suit, viewpoint persona timely named in sentence object position:
//At her bedside to see Mandy go, distress and acceptance weighed on Dane. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once he removed the ventilator, and so it was. Mandy's heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. She went quietly, her body still. Mandy was gone.//
[ January 03, 2019, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
People seem to be saying that there many good reasons for not presenting events in chronological order, even though chronological order is/might be easier to understand. Is that correct?
I am of course interested in whether people mean "is" or "might be".
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Is and might be are audience dependent; younger and less experienced readers, is easier to understand; older and more experienced readers, might or might not be easier. If hopelessly engaged, there, dependent upon emotional force movement of greater emphasis than a chronological sequence. Nonlinear sequences are more artful and of appeal if those also express attendant emotion subtext, rather than a melodrama gimmick.
[ January 02, 2019, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
quote:I walked up to Tom and gave him a quick kiss after first saying "hi."
Whether you notice a problem with that or not, and I have made the problem of non-chronological order as small as possible, it asks the reader to imagine something and then correct it. I think that's a problem.
If you think of a book as instructions for building a world, those instructions are out of order. Insert Tab A in Slot 1. Before doing that, insert Tab B is Slot 2.
At this micro-level, there is a problem presenting events out of order because, almost always, events are presented in chronological order.
But even if the disordered time is clearly marked, chronological order is easier for construction.
Posted by MerlionEmrys (Member # 11024) on :
quote: I am of course interested in whether people mean "is" or "might be".
You're looking for final answers to things that are unfinalanswerable.
Even if we all agree that regular chronological order will be easier to understand for the majority-even the overwhelming majority-of readers, it's still a "might be" because an "is" is absolute.
In the end, it's going to be story-by-story (like most things in writing) and while it is great to have these discussions and learn from people, in the end you will have to make various decisions, each time your write a story, about the best/easiest way to handle this and various other things, for that particular story.
Or, you may very well come to the conclusion that, for you as a writer, chronological order is always the way to go (in my case, I don't feel I have, or am likely to acquire, the skill set to do fully non-regular-chronological well, so I don't see myself ever messing with it) although even if you do, your muse may one day throw something at you that forces you to change your mind.
It's off the specific topic, but if I may ask, what are some of your goals both in your exploration of this and other conceptual/structural topics, and for writing in general? For me, at least, I feel like I could give better advice if I knew more of where you are coming from.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan:
quote:I walked up to Tom and gave him a quick kiss after first saying "hi."
Consideration for that is whether nonlinear chronology expresses another circumstance that supports the structure. The three actions are a not-simultaneous nor-contemporaneous mistake, too. Walked up to and kissed cannot occur at the same moment, and after "hi" first is out of temporal logic sequence -- anti | chrono | logical (anachronism, "anachrony," "achrony").
//I said, "Hi, Tom," walked up to him, and gave him a quick kiss.//
That is serial compound predicate and object syntax, implied compound subject, often an intimation of a sequential action sequence, near contemporaneous, instead of jumbled chronology logic.
Or: //After saying hi, I walked up to Tom, _and_ gave him a quick kiss.//
Albeit a present participle antecedent clause -ing word, logical tense sequence preserved, and increase of force is the sentence's direction. The comma before "and" is wanted for the compound predicate, implied subject terminal clause separation, as above, for serial list clauses' punctuation separation: A, B, and C.
Compound predicate clauses best practice ought be of a same tense, linear tense progression, at least; exceptions abound per emotional force emphasis and catacosmesis and auxesis direction. "and" could be omitted and a dash instead of that comma for enhanced force.
//After I said hi, I walked up to Tom -- gave him a quick kiss.//
Or for greatest force increase: //After I said hi, and walked up to Tom -- I gave him a quick kiss.//
Or force decrease, logical tense sequence preserved, albeit a terminal clause present progressive participle -ing verb: //After I said hi, I walked up to Tom, giving him a quick kiss.//
Not //I gave Tom a quick kiss, after I walked up to him, _and_ saying [having had said, said] hi first.//
Conventional grammar, syntax, and temporal logic is a principle guide, unless unconventional for a persuasive reason otherwise: Is the "I's" emotion so overwrought "I" cannot keep thoughts straight?
These above are a version of Erasmus' De Copia exercise, of abundant variation, a rhetoric exercise for concisest expression, strongest and clearest intent exhibited, and creativity's development sakes.
[ January 02, 2019, 09:45 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan:
quote:I walked up to Tom and gave him a quick kiss after first saying "hi."
Whether you notice a problem with that or not, and I have made the problem of non-chronological order as small as possible, it asks the reader to imagine something and then correct it. I think that's a problem.
I agree. That's why you have to be careful with non-chronological ordering. I just don't think that particular problem existed in the first example in your original post.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
quote:Originally posted by MerlionEmrys: It's off the specific topic, but if I may ask, what are some of your goals both in your exploration of this and other conceptual/structural topics, and for writing in general? For me, at least, I feel like I could give better advice if I knew more of where you are coming from.
I explore principles of writing. Those explorations help my writing, sooner or later, sometimes more and sometimes less.
I explore in ways you probably don't imagine, including discussions at writing forums. I end up with things that seem useful and more or less unavailable. So I try to make them available.
This thread was triggered by my explorations of starts. So far, when a book starts with action, I have been annoyed only when it is out of chronological order.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
The above two EmmaSohan examples' narrative distance are detached, remote, middle distance narrator reports. Outsider looks in, no per se insider looks outward and inward viewpoint persona, and only the events' subtext aptly expresses emotion. The first of mine above is detached, remote, middle distance narrator, too. The second of mine above is closer middle distance narrator access to Dane's perceptions and scant thoughts.
Somewhat an influence for chronological order, also possibly an alternative influence to chronological progression and force movement, narrative distance is the degree of separation between a narrator's viewpoint and a focal agonist's viewpoint, part or most from how agonists' thoughts are accessed and represented, includes how a focal agonist perceives and responds to external sensations.
Third-person, close narrative distance, psychic access limited to one agonist persona, is one of forty-plus narrative points of view possible and that is next-most closest to first person's by default potential closest narrative point of view narrative distance. Though third can be as close, or closer than first, if narrator viewpoint and focal agonist viewpoint and attitudes contrastively align to readers' social-moral aptitudes and attitudes, and read and comprehend aptitudes.
First person also might entail further distance than prose's closest possible distance. This is if a viewpoint persona, at times or throughout, assumes the role of narrator direct and indirect address to readers, summary and explanation tell, rather than unadulterated, unfiltered viewpoint persona received reflections expressed. An at times and/or throughout "visible" narrator -- Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games uses that distinct first person narrative point of view and variable narrative distance.
Narrative distance goes by that label and "psychic distance" and "psychical distance." Edward Bullough coined the latter term and concept from which others carried forth. John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 1984, several paragraphs definition and explanation, several pages demonstrations, pgs. 75, 81, 99, 111 - 12, 158; the middle term above applied and summarily explained and demonstrated. Dave King, the former term above, "Decoding Narrative Distance" (2012 essay, Dave King website), though confuses narrative point of view and viewpoint.
Bullough's signal and seminal 1912 text: "'Psychical Distance' as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle" (Sophia.org hosted PDF). Psychical distance "appears to lie between our own self and its [self, id, ego, and superego] affections, using the latter term in its broadest sense as anything which affects our being."
"our self and its affections," affectations, too, and "affects our being" are essential facets of narrative distance principles for prose overall and prose's overall social-moral function, related to reader intellectual, emotional, recreational, social, and moral engagement from start and throughout.
Among the many matters prose, includes chronology and affect force movement, narrative distance's methods is one of the more relative and relevant and greater appeal challenges for creative writers' struggles, and timely for any who would set upon the sacred Poet's Journey. This -- not taught for assembly-line, secondary school English composition, nor much, if at all, for that matter, from college and university creative writing programs, either.
[ January 03, 2019, 07:07 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
Originally posted by EmmaSohan:
quote:
quote: Mandy was gone. She went quietly, her body still, and Dane was at her bedside to see her go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat.
So, you could be all intuitive and subjective, but I can see that I was confused by it being out of chonological order. And I could try rewriting it in chronological order.
I don't see anything out of chronological order. The narrator states an event that has happened in the past (Mandy's death) and all subsequent narration is also in the past as a monologue explanation of why her death in hospital did not come as a shock; he'd been told what would happen and it did. Where is the chronological discrepancy?
It's the same as writing, Mandy died. They said she would, and she did.
Phil.
[ January 04, 2019, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Simple past tense is a prose metaphor for simple present tense used because of past tense's stronger present sense "objectiveness" compared to present tense's "subjectiveness." (See "Tense," Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse, pgs 79 - 84.)
Another consideration is whether the first sentence of the sample is a "topic sentence" that telegraphs the paragraph's content, blunts progressive detail emphasis and force movement, and summary tells the whole beforehand. Who perceives, says, or thinks what, narrator, physician, or Dane, direct or indirect, free, intimated, or tagged discourse? Also, "Mandy was gone." at the paragraph end is a conclusive expression, not an outset expression, not a claim assertion, or thesis statement, at the end not a recap per se, and at the end, a free direct thought, say, of Dane's.
From what's given, this below is ordered chronologically linear from Mandy still alive to at Death's door to passed, by affect force increase, past tense's present sense objectiveness, for narrative point of view insider viewpoint persona introduction up front, and perceptions and thoughts, and keeps in touch with Dane (KIT per C.J. Cherryh).
//At her bedside to see Mandy go, distress and acceptance weighed on Dane [Dane's mixed external perception and tagged indirect thought]. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once he removed the ventilator [indirect tagged speech to Dane],[.] And so it was [Dane's direct untagged thought]. Mandy's heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. She went quietly, her body still [Dane observes, direct, untagged perception]. Mandy was gone [Dane's conclusive direct, untagged thought].//
Often ample to be verbs bog down narrative in static voice; this, though is apt state of being for the paragraph topic, that is, end of being. I'd, though, substitute more robust verbs and recast for three close proximity "went"s, unless the close repetition aptly expresses Dane's emotional state of being. Mandy went, went, went, was gone.
[ January 05, 2019, 04:51 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by Grumpy old guy (Member # 9922) on :
If you want to read artful chronological dissonance I suggest you check out kdw's example, Chronical of a death foretold. Exquisite.
Phil.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
I read the novel some years ago, soon after the 1982 English release. "chronological dissonance" is an apt term for the dual incongruent timelines of the investigative journalist's present sense now and revelation of the past events that lead up to the start, nonlinear throughout, and catch up at the end.
One shortfall for me is the first person narrator's personal motivations and conflicts entail little, if any, representation or relevance to the overall narrative. Narrator is present though dispassionate, impersonal, and uninvolved, unless readers know the murder account is adopted from actual Márquez family, religion, and community history. A personal clash there of traditional journalism's detachment demands realized present within the novel's milieu and a real writer's tragic past personal circumstances held at bay. Sublime.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan:
quote: Mandy was gone. She went quietly, her body still, and Dane was at her bedside to see her go. The ICU physician said it was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat.
So, you could be all intuitive and subjective, but I can see that I was confused by it being out of chonological order. And I could try rewriting it in chronological order.
quote: The ICU physician said her death was inevitable, only a matter of minutes once they removed the ventilator, and so it was. Her heart went into premature ventricular contractions, stopped, restarted momentarily, and then the line on the heart monitor went flat. Mandy was gone.
The second just lacks the punch of the first, which emphasizes the death as the important thing.
The absolute simplest way to fix this fragment is to use past perfect, so that readers know immediately that some parts happened further in the past. It also has the side benefit of slightly de-emphasizing that part.
"The ICU physician had said . . . "
If you're writing an essay, you want everything to be clear and in a logical order. If you're writing fiction, most of the time the "logical" order is the one that produces the emotional impact you are trying to achieve.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
I concur with Meredith's recommendation to add "had" to the sentence starting with the ICU physician.
You could consider that a mini-flashback that doesn't halt the forward movement of the story.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
It turns out that we almost always write events in chronological order. That's almost always assumed, check any paragraph in any book. And if you stopped using that convention, which it almost impossible to imaging, you would have impossible chaos.
extrinsic mentioned a topic sentence. Those are confusing to me, and in my grammar book I suggest using fragments to reduce ambiguity.
quote:My arrest. The Downtown Civic Club met each [continues the story of him being arrested] (The Racketeer, Grisham, page 35)
The exception, as far as I know, is the first sentence of a book. "Mandy was gone" could be considered setting. And yet it's not setting for what follows, so it's still out of order.
Yes, you might write events out of order for a variety of reasons, including that you want as interesting a first sentence as possible. I just asked if that ever increased clarity. I think it always hurts clarity, at least at the paragraph level. If not, we would do it more often.
It obviously creates confusion when the flip in time isn't even noted. In the Mandy example, the second second sentence could have been written in "past of the past": "She had gone quietly."
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
An editor project given to me contained four hundred past perfect and pluperfect tense constructs within a first chapter of a thousand or so words, roughly one of either every other sentence, two or more per sentence at times, too. Made the read hopelessly confusing, not to mention a population explosion of characters and pure undramatic back story explanation and summary.
Pointed out, the writer was "Oh!, a tic? What do I do instead?" Realize a present now dramatic start that initiates and moves forward what the novel is really about, not in reverse.
An ever completed, over and done, regressive past sense of further past being? Could be artful and apt if trackable and part of the meaning designed for the whole. At haphazard, though, no thank you. Simple past linear chronology is a best practice first resort for objectiveness' sake, next most, simple present for subjectiveness' sake. Third or first person, respectively, likewise.
Past perfect tenses have a place for prose, though timeliness [sic] and judiciousness are as paramount as for any facet of expression.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
extrinsic, are you trying to say that presenting events out of order takes the reader out of the story? I am taken out of the story when the narrator describes the future.
But I think merely a few sentences out of order just confuses or annoys me. Like maybe an ambiguous pronoun.
I usually try to be as psychically close as possible, but I some scenes don't work well with that. (I had one scene that only worked third person for the first half and first person present for the second half. Ugh.)
And what do you want to say about the start to Catcher in the Rye?
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Nonlinear chronology might or might not take readers out of a story's milieu or narrative. Reader comprehension aptitude dependent, does, if of no timely accessible purpose or beyond reader aptitude; not, if of a timely, strong, and clear purpose aligned to story and narrative substance, and meets reader aptitude.
Though Shandy rambles all over its story time timeline, alignment is intended to be with the narrator's unconstrained stream-of-consciousness attitude at the now time and location of composition, not a story place or time now within the story setting's milieu, per se.
J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye start is a present now back story summary, likewise at the location and time of composition, that step transitions to a past now present main action. All of the novel reads to me like a teenager's make-believe aftermath account, like a locker room brag that wants audience belief, that an individual tells to avoid self-realization and actualization about a sibling's untimely demise, which could be construed as allegory about coming of age's abrupt death of childhood innocence.
A label for Catcher and narratives of the same chronological structure is "button loop" timeline. At some point in the timeline a now moment loops from a present now to a past now and later returns and catches up to a present now. Charles Frazier, Thirteen Moons, Donna Tartt (Shrine), The Secret History employ the button loop time sense, also.
Many readers, hearers, viewers label such time transitions "flashback" and "flash-forward." Those are subtypes of analepsis and prolepsis, past-ward regression and future-ward progression, respectively. Common and all but all that cinema can do are flashback and -forward to other nows through gimmick transitions, prose entails a fuller set of non-flash time transitions of analepsis and prolepsis types and combinations. Otherwise, cinema expresses analepsis and prolepsis through now-present spoken or voice-over gimmick thought recollections of past and subjunctive anticipations of future now times.
Prose does, too, though may slip the surly bounds of present now time and gimmicks far more ways than cinema. One of note is if a now moment milieu present nests an embedded other now time milieu and both's story timelines run concurrently, though different narrative times. Tobias Wolfe, This Boy's Life, and linked-above short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Bierce.
When is the present now of a narrative? An apt present now is when a complication-conflict crisis onset initiates. Catcher's start initiates focal persona personality introductions for audience rapport's sake, disbelief suspension, and transition setup, little, if any, much else.
[ January 05, 2019, 10:35 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
The Curse of Chalion contains, as backflash/backstory, the moment he offeredhis will to the Gods. It occurs near the end of the book, and only then could I appreciate it.
But I could also see what was important and what wasn't. So in a way I understood the story better.
The fact that I didn't know the story for most of the book didn't matter, because the main character forgot about it.
Posted by Meredith (Member # 8368) on :
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan: The Curse of Chalion contains, as backflash/backstory, the moment he offeredhis will to the Gods. It occurs near the end of the book, and only then could I appreciate it.
But I could also see what was important and what wasn't. So in a way I understood the story better.
The fact that I didn't know the story for most of the book didn't matter, because the main character forgot about it.
That story comes out in drips and drabs throughout the book--as he tells others a little bit here and there or when he realizes who 'Dani' really was. But Caz himself doesn't understand what it was all about until near the end, which is what makes that self-revelation work, IMO.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion is an allegory of the precursor real history events of Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Spain's rise to the Castile throne, a fantasy alternative history novel, somewhat invented, somewhat actual, experienced through invented persona Cazaril's perceptions.
The three mythopoeia novels of the series span courtly and at-large political intrigue parts of the unification of Catholic Spain before, during, and after invader Moors' reigns end, deftly veiled by the fantastic.
The fantasy saga exemplifies techniques espoused within The Historical Novel, György Lukács, 1962, except for the Soviet Socialist rhetoric overburden, which is best read past and neglected.