How does one write alternating storylines?

[metalikhan]

Those pages of tips have been more helpful and more valuable than any classes I've attended or writing books I've ever studied. Nuts & bolts stuff!

I agree -- emotional levels of characters are hard to monitor, especially the ones that I personally experience only rarely. When I write of a character reaching an emotional peak or pit that I don't know, I spend extra time re-reading and drumming my fingers, wondering if I captured it or not. I guess some characters I identify with more closely than others; but it surprised me to learn I could write more easily from the POV of a soldier, a flock of cardinals, and sand than from the POV of a meek young lady.


Another lesson, learned many years ago, was to check how long it really takes to do something. I wrote a novella about a two-foot high race whose main type of personal transportation was skates. About 3/4 of the way through the writing, I realized the reference map I drew of their little country was off. Geography played a role in the story. For the characters to reach their goal in the story's time frame, these short-legged folks would have to skate about 175 miles per day. I love erasers. I moved a mountain range about 600 miles west.

It was a fun story -- maybe someday I'll put it back together. It (plus five short stories and just over 150 poems) fell victim to a litter of ten hound puppies getting out of the whelping room and having a jolly day of Shred and Spred. This was pre-home-computer days, although the typewriter was a word processing kind (one line at a time).

I stay on the lookout for a writers group that doesn't interfere with my work hours. Right now, the main feedback I get is from my husband who doesn't care much for fiction. If I get more reaction than a grunt or an I-like-it, I'm doing okay.

[violan5]

I just write and switch to characters when it seems right. I also keep an idea notebook.

[Divides the Waters]

I am almost done with the "frame" story, and will soon be going back to fill in with the alternate POVs. Pretty excited!

(Looks like another 500-pager, too.)

[metalikhan]

Just out of curiosity, Divides, when you get that close to completing a major part of a story, do you feel energized or do you fold up in exhaustion (if only for a little while)?

[Divides the Waters]

It kind of depends. I struggle with depression, so writing can be simultaneously exhilarating and emotionally draining. My major problem is wanting to "rush" when I get so close to the end, and I've had to go back and slow down the pace a bit to make everything match and seem less forced. Of course, this isn't really the end, since I have three other plot lines to go back and follow (and interweave), but it's good to have the skeleton on which to hang the meat!

[waldenwriter]

One thing that did seem odd about LOTR was the fact that Tolkien didn't alternate the Frodo/Sam/Gollum storyline with what was befalling the rest of the Fellowship. He did alternate storylines between the Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas and the Merry/Pippin storylines though. One thing that resulted from this lack of alternation, I think, is the huge amount of exposition we get in the Council of Elrond chapter.

One thing I think they did do right with the LOTR movies is to alternate the storylines; they would've had to do that with film anyway. Also, some of the exposition from the Council of Elrond chapter in the book was shown as scenes instead (like Gandalf's confrontation with Saruman), which makes more sense in a film.

Someone mentioned Star Wars. That is a good example as well. The prequels explain a lot of things in the original films, although some stuff is only explained in the expanded (non-film) Star Wars canon, like the backstory of the Jedi/Sith conflict and of Qui-Gon Jinn. (A female Jedi he loved died, which probably explains why when Anakin says "No one can kill a Jedi" in Episode I Qui-Gon says sorrowfully, "I wish that were so").

Personally, I'm in favor of alternating storylines, having read several third person omniscient novels that did so. First-person multiple POV does this too. I haven't written it though since I tend to write in first person, through one character's perspective (I have trouble writing third person).

[misterchris]

I chose to use the chapter-by-chapter switch. It worked well, and as Jeff said, you get to a point where you say, 'This is a great place to leave the reader hanging and switch back to the other line.

In my story, however, that was usually when the MC fell asleep...
:-)

[Divides the Waters]

Yes, that's what I do. The question was specifically how people write that effectively, not how the book will eventually read. Love the input, though.

Waldenwriter, very cool that you read the Star Wars EU. I always thought that line in TPM was meant to be foreshadowing for Qui-Gon's own death, but you have put an interesting retcon spin on it. Nice. And you're right, the LOTR films did a much better job of keeping the story going by keeping it chronological. Tolkien, bless him, would never get published today, but then, without Tolkien, very few of us would, either. The Chinese have a philosophy that every masterpiece is in inherently flawed. Tolkien was a master storyteller and a worldbuilder without peer. But his craft could have used some modern honing. One of the things the LOTR films taught me that was invaluable in my own work was how to turn a long rambling story into a long focused story.

[waldenwriter]

Nov 28, 2009 0:33:05 GMT -5 Divides the Waters said:

Waldenwriter, very cool that you read the Star Wars EU. I always thought that line in TPM was meant to be foreshadowing for Qui-Gon's own death, but you have put an interesting retcon spin on it. Nice.

Well, I haven't read any of the books yet - except the novel of Episode I, which I didn't like very much. My knowledge of the EU comes from randomly browsing starwars.com and Wookiepedia (a Star Wars wiki). Personally, I had wondered for a while what Qui-Gon's remark in TPM referred to, but now that I know a Jedi Qui-Gon cared for died, the remark makes more sense. In a way, Qui-Gon had a very similar experience to Anakin - he fell in love with someone he was forbidden to love, in his case his fellow Jedi, Tahl - with the result being disaster. However, with this context, Qui-Gon's almost joking comment before that, where he says about his sword "Maybe I killed a Jedi and took it from him," seems inappropriate.

I'll admit it...I'm a Star Wars geek. When I go to the bookstore, I'm constantly tempted to buy those Star Warsreference books with droids or ships or what-not, and keep resisting since most of that info can be found on starwars.com anyway.

Nov 28, 2009 0:33:05 GMT -5 Divides the Waters said:

And you're right, the LOTR films did a much better job of keeping the story going by keeping it chronological. Tolkien, bless him, would never get published today, but then, without Tolkien, very few of us would, either. The Chinese have a philosophy that every masterpiece is in inherently flawed. Tolkien was a master storyteller and a worldbuilder without peer. But his craft could have used some modern honing. One of the things the LOTR films taught me that was invaluable in my own work was how to turn a long rambling story into a long focused story.

Yeah a chronological story made more sense for the film medium -- and since they filmed all 3 films at once, this would've been easier to do (despite the fact that films are usually filmed out of sequence). They kept things more or less chronological, though they moved a couple things that I can think of. Boromir's death and send-off in the funeral boat, which in the books takes place at the beginning of The Two Towers, was moved to the end of movie 1, which for the movie sequencing made more sense. The second is Gollum's story, which is shown in flashback at the beginning of movie 3, even though his story was given to us via Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring in the books. (Galadriel refers to Gollum in her prologue bit in movie 1, though).

They also condensed some, mostly stuff in the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring book that were probably cut for pacing. In the book, Frodo doesn't leave the Shire until 17 years after Bilbo's party, during which lots of things happen that don't really impact the quest at all. Parts like Rivendell, Moria, and Lothlorien were cut down too I think. Moria is a pretty big place (as my experience in The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age has taught me -- in that game Moria is so big it's split into two areas -- West Moria and East Moria).

That Chinese philosophy reminds me of something my Lit Theory teacher said about Plato. He believed that a chair, for example, was only a representation of an ideal, and that a drawing of a chair was a representation of that representation.