Blog 29: Story Flavours

We are now comfortably into the wonderful season of Summer, and I have been enjoying the sunshine (when it appears). Something else a lot of us love to partake in during this time of year is ice cream! And, wouldn’t you know, it's National Ice Cream Month. You have to agree that there isn’t anything better to indulge in when the sun’s shining and you get a hankering for something tasty to cool you down. And there are so many choices: vanilla, chocolate, bubble-gum, toffee, cookies and cream, and you can have it with flakes, sprinkles, and different flavoured sauces, or you can go with the old favourite 99 whipped ice cream with a flake. Perhaps you are more of a Magnum person (the white chocolate one is my fav), a Cornetto, or a choc ice. Whatever mood you're in, there’s sure to be a type that will hit the spot. Hang on a sec while I wipe the saliva from my mouth.

Like ice cream, there is quite a variety of story types to whet your appetite. You don’t have to stick with a beginning, middle, and end linear style. You can mix it up, begin near the end, around the point of climax, then go back to the beginning and catch up, and then onto the resolution, giving you a loop story. I read a story a few years ago entitled The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, which was non-linear. It went back and forth over the lives of a group of school girls and their teacher, telling events from when they began school, then after they left, even foretelling when one was going to die, then back to events that happened during their school days. It takes quite a bit of skill to use this story formula, and it was tricky to keep up with what period of time they were up to, while trying to link it all together. But it is certainly a different way to tell a story, keeping your readers on their toes and guessing what the outcome is going to be.

You can also write a story within a story, referred to as an embedded narrative, a nested story, or a frame story. Hotel Des Boobs, a short story written by David Lodge, is a great example of this, where the reader doesn’t realise they are reading a story that the main character is writing until near the end. I have also seen this technique used to tell four stories, where someone from each story reads another story, and so on. You can also incorporate pieces of other styles into the main one to complement the theme. In the novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, written by Andrea Lawlor, she intersperses mini fairy tales within it, as the shape-shifting main character tries to work out his gender and sexuality while searching for a place to belong.

But you don’t have to stop there, you can write in the format of a letter, or several, diary entries, or texts, which are called epistolary stories. Weather, by Jenny Offill, is numerous diary snippets, which come across as a stream of consciousness. A more famous example of this style is Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie, written by a mixture of newspaper articles, government reports, and pieces written by one of Carrie’s peers. You may also be familiar with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written with letters, telegrams, and memos. And the more recent Bridget Jones’s Diary, written by Helen Fielding, which, as the title suggests, is in the form of diary entries.

For those of you who just can’t make up your mind, there are also hybrid stories, where memoir can meet poetry, or fiction with screenwriting, and even incorporating artwork. These non-typical formats can sometimes be a risk to put out there, but can also get attention with their unique style and are a fun challenge to get your teeth into. Book of Leaves, by Mark Z Danielewski, is an interesting example.  The novel is a combination of epistolary fiction and metafiction (where the narrative draws attention to its own fictional nature). It’s about a fictional documentary entitled The Navidson Record, where a family realises that their house is bigger on the inside than the outside. No, there are no Darleks in it. It is presented as a story within a story, as the primary narrator reports his findings by way of fictional documents as this tale goes down a dark path. Some of the pages have few words, others are diagonally across the page, or upside-down. If you want a straight-up unusual read, check it out! It may inspire you to throw the creative dice yourself and see what kind of story tumbles out.

Writing Exercise time

This week, I want you to mix things up. Go against your normal style of writing and get your experimenting hat on. Whether you choose a loop story, epistolary, a story within a story, or try your hand at hybrid, it’s up to you. Just have a tinker and see what happens. If you want any advice on how to approach it or guidance as you go along, please feel free to drop me a line. Have fun!

Right, I’m off to destroy an ice cream. But which one should I choose?

Catcha later.