Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

frame narrative

Use a good King Arthur framework and write

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Find at Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes & Nobel.

So you have some story or novel planning to do. You’re feeling a bit pressed for time or pressed with concern for writer’s block. Try a classic story line and build your story around it.

A. A table has been dropped by your character’s house. It was just left on the porch. Round, inlaid with beautiful fine strips of wood: black oak, cherry, beech and black bean. Bits of blue glass are imbedded in the center of the tabletop and thickly lacquered into place. The legs are turned and carved deeply with vines and wavy lines, and strips of onyx rise up from the ball feet.

B. Take the Arthurian Legend and tie it to the mystery of that small round table landing on his porch.

Put them together and write C.

Smashwords link for The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks
Where you can purchase in popular eReader formats.

Amazon link for The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks

The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks is published!

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Narrative Frameworks

My newest book The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks for writing novels and stories is now available for download at Smashwords and will soon be available at B&N, Sony, Apple, and Amazon, along with a number of other distribution sites. 

The organization of a story is dependent upon its structure.  That is, of course, obvious, yet it can be overlooked so easily in the process of writing or reading.  But the conflict formation or the character development is essential to the story.  This handbook is about that unpinning, the structure that carries a story.

In addition to the examination of classic plot and character development, I have included worksheets after each framework for use in designing a story as well as for examining a story for its organization.  My intention was to create a resource book for reviewing and examining the structure of a narrative for design and understanding.  My hope is that writers and readers will find it a practical addition to their resource libraries.

Not just sitting around

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Not just watching the flowers grow.

So I have not been preparing my Tuesday prompts and am not busy teaching, but that doesn’t mean I am just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.  I have been steadily working on two separate projects.  One is getting the second of my Student of Jump books (No-time Like the Present) ready for publication at the end of this month.  I just finished what is my pretend final edit.  The one I convince myself is the last one needed.  But in a week or so it will go through another which will no doubt result in finding so many errors I will be a basket case for a few days, losing all confidence before I do another edit which will do the exact opposite, and I will split the difference and feel fairly confident that I have taken care of all I can.  I have my absolutely wonderful beta reader tackling it right now, which will provide the impetus to make changes and edit again.

The other project is The Handbook of Narrative Frameworks for Novels & Short Stories.  This is a gathering of the narrative mode posts I have been doing since February 2013.  After pulling them together, I edited, added, and am currently creating worksheets that will help make use of the frameworks each one provides for novel and story writing.  All and all I have been busy and since school has let out, intensely content finding myself immersed in my writing, spending time with my family, and taking care of those little jobs that always wait for summer to come.

Narrative Mode: #11 Dream Vision

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The dream vision format can manage on just two characters:  the dreamer and the guide. This format has both an outside story (outside of the dream that is) and an inside story (which occurs inside the dream).  Seem familiar? This a variant of the frame narrative.

  • The dreamer starts out awake, though several authors who have used this have avoided the opening waking segment that is traditionally used. It is up to the writer to determine how long the dreamer is awake before he falls asleep and the means by which he falls asleep and therefore into his/her dream. Sleeping due to exhaustion, meditation, normal sleep pattern are common, and I suppose being knocked out would suffice as well.  The waking hours provide the laying of the outer story which is the difficulty that the awake dreamer is suffering. This can be the loss of a loved one (already quite famous in The Pearl by an unknown writer — the same believed to have written Sir Gawain and Green Knight).  This outer frame is useful because it supplies the drama needed to find the wake dreamer so unhappy that he seeks sleep to avoid it and finds his answer or solution in the dream to come.
  • Now we have the dreamer sleeping.  He finds himself in a landscape both familiar and unfamiliar (the nature of dreams, you know).  Soon in his wanderings, he comes across an individual (the guide) who challenges the dreamer to an examination of a philosophical nature.  Strangely, to the dreamer, this has nothing in common with the problem he is experiencing in the waking world.  But he gets drawn into the discussion.  In the various forms of this narrative mode, this can be provided by more than one individual: talking animals, plants, bright lights, etc.
  • It is common to the form to carry numerous motifs, repeating images and themes.  So this is a style of writing that calls for deep description, symbols and metaphors.
  • Over the time of the dream, the dreamer begins to gain an understanding of other issues of either greater or equal value.  He suffers a change, giving his support, emotional investment, and loyalty to this new ideal or understanding.  
  • When he awakens, what was once his greatest sorrow though unchanged or remedied is no longer his driving force.  He has found a new faith.  “The Dream of the Rood” follows the path of an unhappy man whose guide is the tree which later became the cross that Christ was crucified on.  It is a very short example of the form, but a very worthy one to examine.
  • Here’s the clincher:  the dream vision narrative is a poem and a very old format.  But no prose writer should let that stop him or her.  It has good bones and could be fleshed out in prose with some creativity and a strong muse.  

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Narrative Mode ~ #5 Frame Narrative

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framed with a strong outer shell

The frame narrative is a fairly difficult format because it requires a fair bit of juggling between the framing story and the story within the frame.  The two must be connected, each enhancing the other by offering interpretive value on the part of the frame, while the inner story offers details and meaningful specifics.  Before I lay out the process, let me give some examples most people will be familiar with.

  • Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales ~ Chaucer sets up his frame with a menagerie of characters who are individually or in small groups going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.  They meet at a tavern and agree, with some finagling by the tavern owner, to travel together and participate in a story-telling challenge.  This is a very complicated frame narrative because not just one story is to be told but several, two by every member heading out on this jaunt and two by everybody on the return trip.  Chaucer never finished all the stories, but it was even more complicated because within the outer frame were several inner frames (various mini prologues and epilogues) which introduced and leapfrogged off each story to the next.  To add to the complication, Chaucer created a character named Chaucer who was the speaker in the outer frame who was retelling each of the stories by presenting it exactly as “he” heard it told by his fellow pilgrims.
  • Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ~  Conrad’s framing was not nearly so complicated as Chaucer’s.  His frame has five characters on a ship on the Thames in England.  One is telling about where they are and who the other characters are.  A second (Marlow) is telling his story about an experience he had on the Congo in Africa, but the story is retold by the original frame speaker who on occasion intrudes on Marlow’s narrative, inferring meaning and commenting on Marlow’s actions and personal interpretation of his experience.
  • Bronte’s Wuthering Heights ~ Bronte sets up a visitor (Lockwood) coming to the region to rent a manor house and its surrounding property from Heathcliff, the unscrupulous owner of side-by-side properties.  The visitor retells for a large part of the story the narrative of Nelly, all-around servant of the Earnshaw/Heathcliff/Linton families.  Nelly shares with Lockwood the activities of the other characters over the past twenty years in several gossip sessions the two hold over the course of his several months stay.  Lockwood picks up near the end of the novel upon revisiting the manor to tell much of the finale of the inner story.  His part in the frame is limited, his character more a foil for Heathcliff and a vehicle for telling the story than anything else.

So those are the popular examples.  The format breaks down in the following manner.

  1. First an outer story which provides an opportunity to tell a story.  This can be two people meeting at a coffee shop or something else equally simple or much more complex. If one of the two characters comes in appearing moody and withdrawn, the other character may wish to know the reason for the emotional condition. 
  2. The second then may agree or not agree to share the problem.  What is essential is that the frame and the inner story must be connected and somehow one of the characters feels free to or is compelled to tell a story.
  3. One option to the example above is that the first speaker tells about his recent experience.  If written ironically, the reader may come to understand that the recent experience of the happy character is the cause of the moody character’s troubles.  A second option might be that the moody character’s telling of an experience leaves him feeling better and the first, happier character is made moody because he is affected by the story told.  In any case, some story of epiphany would tie the two together.
  4. The inner story must be a thorough immersion for the reader whose return to the framing story completes the last piece to understanding the whole story (frame and inner narrative).

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.