Narrative Structure

Sometimes I just tell a story.

But most of the time, I tell a story a particular way.

For instance, in my upcoming novel, Freudian Slip, the LAST sentence of the male character's POV chapter is the FIRST sentence in the head of the female POV character's next chapter. It was a b*tch to write it that way, but it was a fun twist.

In Invisible Girl, Jimmy Malone was so paranoid about conspiracies that he believed the ONLY way to protect a secret was to never tell one living person all its parts. Therefore, he parceled out the pieces of his secret to three or four trusted friends. My main characters had to find each secret-holder to get the whole story, therefore it didn't emerge in linear fashion but in the piecemeal way they got the secrets. I thought it was a cool way to tell the story.

In The Roofer, the story unfolded in flashback over the course of an Irish wake and funeral.

In my new work in progress, the story unfolds in horicultural terms--each chapter deals with something in a specific garden.

In Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven, Lily tells one chapter, Michael the next, and every third chapter is either her newspaper column or a chapter from his unfinished novel.

I love twisting narrative structure when I write.

So how about you? Do anything different with your storytelling?

Why Do I Do This to Myself?

Yet again, I am kicking around a novel in my head, putting some notes down . . . and I already know the narrative structure is going to be difficult. It is a novel told, somewhat linearly, but with a theme each chapter. I am pretty sure what I want to do will work, but even as I am plotting it, I am kicking myself.

When I wrote Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven, I told the story one chapter from Lily's point of view, the next from Michael's (her best friend), the next a column of Lily's with a title (she was a lifestyle columnist for a newspaper), the next Lily's POV chapter, the next Michael's, the next a chapter from Michael's novel--which unfolded in linear fashion every sixth chapter. And yeah, it was a b*tch. It was also the novel that sold the best and got great reviews . . . and judging by the emails I got, meant a great deal to many readers.

When I wrote Freudian Slip, my next RDI (out 2008), the last sentence of each of the hero's POV chapters is the first sentence in the mind of the female main character's next chapter (he talks to her in her head). And every once in a while, what the two main characters are doing ends up in a video stream on the laptop of Albert Einstein, who works in a sort of cosmic purgatory. And yeah, it was a b*tch.

When I wrote Invisible Girl, it was even more complex than the other two in terms of narrative structure. Because the father of the heroine believed the only way to keep his secrets from Vietnam was to never tell any one person all its parts, Maggie and her brother literally had to find each person who had a part of the secret and ascertain their story and place in the secret . . . which was not linear . . . and piece it all together. And yeah . . . it was . . . fill in the blank.

So as I ponder this new book idea, I know it will be difficult and I wonder why I do it to myself. On the one hand, I know when I pitch books to my editor, I don't have cookie-cutter ideas. On the other hand, I torture myself with these difficult narrative structures. But it's how the stories come to me.

Anyone else just really make things more difficult for themselves?

Cheers,
E