non-linear narratives, pt. 2

[truepenny]

Infinite thank yous to everyone who responded to the first non-linear narrative post. (It is occurring to me that a blog/online journal is also a non-linear narrative, insofar as it is a narrative, for the reader--although not for the writer.) I am discovering that this is one of those things I have a great deal of difficulty conceptualizing coherently, although I use the technique with fair frequency. So I don't think I asked the question I meant, although y'all have given wonderful answers to the question I asked.

So let me ask another question, and I promise I am completely serious about this. I'm asking because I genuinely don't have a good answer myself. For those of you who have read it, why did I write "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland" with the structure it has?

Comments

Non-Linear Narratives, Part 1 *g*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Didn't get to answer this one previously--

--nonlinear narrative is used (poorly) to start the story with a more exciting event than it actually starts with or (well) for metastory reasons--to produce a certain kind of confusion and then enlightenment in the reader/viewer.

Examples: Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks and Harlan Ellison's "The Deathbird" use a nonlinear narrative to first confuse the reader somewhat, and then to snap certain things into very sharp focus: in the case of Roadmarks, the nonlinear nature of travel along the "road" that leads between periods of history.

Other examples--movies The Limey and Pulp Fiction. The Limey is told in a series of interwoven flashbacks--some dating back thirty years, some only a couple of days. The flashbacks put the whole movie firmly in the immutable past, and make the protagonist's regret and grief--the focus of the movie--both inevitable and gutwrenching: they increase emotional response.

In the case of Pulp Fiction the nonlinearity serves to provide the viewer with a zen-koanlike kick in the skull when he suddenly figures out what has been going on under his nose for the last two hours, that he missed.

op. cit. *g*

Re: Non-Linear Narratives, Part 1 *g*

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Hmm, calling Homer a hack?

Re: Non-Linear Narratives, Part 1 *g*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g*

Dude, if you read as much slush as I do, you would have a jaded attitude toward stories that start with a firefight and then flashback to explain it on page three.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

why did I write "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland" with the structure it has?

Um, because that was what got the job done?

The unfolding of past and present in the interleaved way you have it in that story is neither accidental nor haphazard. I will have to go upstairs and get the copy of it from the big basket of manuscripts in my workshop, so I shall not make direct references now, but it does seem to me that there are at least two things in parallel and a third thing unknown until the end which turns out to also have been in parallel but we-the-reader didn't see it clearly until it was presented in its full unnatural (and, frankly, blood-chilling the the way that true tales of the Fae can be) glory. The two known things pace one another: the deepening nature of the discovery being made in the present, and the intensification and denoument of the love affair being told in the past sections (including the letters, which one might say are a third thing in parallel... and that might be most accurate, now that I ponder, because the terrifying beauty of the third thing is part of that progression, if one thinks of it as an inevitable result of the natures of the lovers).

Hmm.

Perhaps one might say that you told it that way because realization is never merely linear, and that story is all about realization. (It's not linear because past and present are both called in to be witnesses for the various ways of understanding the event in question. It's not linear because human minds do not work in linear fashion; they're much more like the motto on 3 Mustaphas 3 recordings: "Forward in all directions!" It's not linear because fairy chaplets are always braided, because the clover has three [or more] leaves, and because a labyrinth [as opposed to a maze, mind you -- a labyrinth has no choices, just inevitable unfoldings] takes the pilgrim through the seven levels by switch and double back. It is not linear because the understanding of the heart is not linear. It is not linear because neither part alone is the story, and not even the parts in sequence could be the story; it is precisely the alchemy that takes place when the elements are laid in the reader's attention in proper sequence that makes what happens in the final few lines a true Working. And now that I have resorted to Capitalization for Importance, I shall go up to the workbench and Shut Up and Work.)

[heresluck]

Why? That's between you and the eternal mystery that is your brain.

"What's the effect," on the other hand, is a question I can try to answer. We enter the story with Philip; we begin with the knowledge that there's a secret Violet's been keeping. It's important, I think, that we be to some extent in Philip's position, because otherwise he might be simply The Dullard Husband, and then the story's less complex.

(But it's also important that we know before Philip does that Violet's lover is a she, not a he -- that we have information he does not, so that we, like Violet, can be irritated by his lack of imagination.)

And it's important that we know about the husband and the child in advance of the section in which Violet meets the Queen of Elfland; it changes that scene, adds another element to the excitement of the seduction, to know that Violet will give this up. It changes the story's question, which is no longer "what will happen?" or "will this last?" but "why *didn't* it last?"

I suppose that could also be a general answer to your original question, actually: one tells a story out of sequence when the most important question is not "and then what happened?" I haven't thought that one all the way through, so there may be gaping holes in it -- consider it a postulate, not a theorem.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I knew I did it on purpose. But if someone had asked me WHY, I wouldn't have been able to come up with anything as cool and/or coherent as what you just did. I was saying over on matociquala's journal that I've got some sort of weird mental blind spot (I think the analogy I used was a mute piano key; the piano I learned to play on had one key, the F below low C, that would not sound, and that's what this feels like). It doesn't prevent me from DOING interlaced structural things, thank goodness, but I do it on a very intuitive level, based on what "feels" right. (Both "LfaTB" and "K:ST" were structured by me cutting the sections apart and laying them out on the floor, and then moving them around until they were where they seemed to belong.) And of course, this annoys me because I don't LIKE not being able to explain why the story works the way it does. I am not, by and large, a person happy with intuition as an explanation--another reason China Miéville's GoH speech really struck a chord with me.

Your explanation is beautiful. Thank you.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you very, VERY much. The pure reader's perspective is one I lack, a priori; it had never really occurred to me that the reader's subject position is with Philip to begin with. Of course, it is, and of course that makes a tremendous difference in how the reader experiences the story, but it wasn't consciously intentional. It was just how the story needed to work.

This is appalling. Next thing you know, I'm going to be saying stuff like, I just listen to what the characters say, and I'm honored that they've chosen me to tell their story. Gah.

I appreciate the application of your analytical brain on my behalf. :)

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Next thing you know, I'm going to be saying stuff like, I just listen to what the characters say, and I'm honored that they've chosen me to tell their story. Gah.

And if you do, I shall smile wryly and invite you to come sit over by me and the beads, because that sounds very much like what I wind up saying.

OK, except for the last part. I mean, I am honored, but that's not the heart-meat of it. What it is, really, is something several intersections past honor, down into deep-felt glee and the besotted pleasure of a lover. Nor do I have any amendments to offer to a semi-Zen Buddhist viewpoint that the beads and I are made of the same stuff, so blaming one of us for the other's action is about as sensible as carrying stars in a sieve.

Still, make no mistake, it's work and it's craft. That's why there's a workbench, and tools, and why the hands and the arms get stronger. I bend and shape the metal, and choose the beads, and you do the same with the words and the shapes behind them, yes?

But it is a dance. Partnership, maybe. Collaboration with the materials, I like to say. People blamed or credited the muses for ages; perhaps so many writers now credit the characters because pinning it on the muses seems like lese-majestie or something.

[And I too think the analytical brain there did a nice job.]

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

As per usual, I have managed to put things the wrong way round. *sigh*

Partnership, absolutely. A three-way partnership between the conscious brain, the Underconscious (which is my word; I use it to mean the subconscious, the unconscious, dreams, and all the liminal bits that can't be qualified properly), and the materials--beads for you, primarily (although I know you do other things), words for me.

What I was objecting to, and phrased badly, is the same sort of thing China Miéville was objecting to in his GoH speech: the abrogation of responsibility. The artist is a partner, not merely a vessel.

Is that clearer/better/less snotty?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Ah! Makes more sense now; thank you. (And I never thought of it as snotty. Is just other way of thinking at it all.)

Your mention of it reminds me that I should go find out whether there is a transcript of China Miéville's speech, so I can find out what he said when I saw him giving it. (Someday when the world is perfect there will be accurate real-time captioning.)

And yeah, the "I didn't do it!" thing, the abrogation of responsibility, that is yuckish in a whole bunch of ways.

Thank you for clarifying, says the just-woke-up Lioness.