non-linear narratives
Jun. 1st, 2003 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI am going to try very hard to ask this question in a way that will make sense. Bear with me.
I'm wondering what reasons there are for telling a story out of order. Let me be clear: I mean REASONS, not DEVICES. For example, you can have a narrative that starts at a wedding and is a series of flashbacks interspersed with the ceremony to show you how these two people ended up marrying each other (and trust me, if I were actually writing that story, their motivations would not be romantic). But that's not a reason to tell the story out of order; it's a device to structure that non-linear sequencing.
What I'm after is why. WHY does a story need, as some stories inarguably do, to be told in a nonlinear fashion? What are the thematic and structural underpinnings that will show the reader the choice is about something other than showing off?
Am I making any sense at all?
I'm wondering what reasons there are for telling a story out of order. Let me be clear: I mean REASONS, not DEVICES. For example, you can have a narrative that starts at a wedding and is a series of flashbacks interspersed with the ceremony to show you how these two people ended up marrying each other (and trust me, if I were actually writing that story, their motivations would not be romantic). But that's not a reason to tell the story out of order; it's a device to structure that non-linear sequencing.
What I'm after is why. WHY does a story need, as some stories inarguably do, to be told in a nonlinear fashion? What are the thematic and structural underpinnings that will show the reader the choice is about something other than showing off?
Am I making any sense at all?
