Stories in Stories

Although the vast majority of my fiction reading these days is cozy mysteries, every now and then I like to shake it up. Earlier this month, I read Life of Pi. The first part of the book is, in my opinion, low stakes with little conflict, as Pi tells us about his early life. This is before the main action of the novel, so how does the author keep the reader engaged in this section?

There are a couple of ways the author keeps the reader interested. The first one is using a lot of solid details to bring the zoo to life. It's more than just invoking the senses; it's also the authoritative tone he uses to describe how to care for the animals. However, there's another technique to keep people reading. There are also miniature stories and anecdotes woven into this section of the book. The most dramatic of these is when Pi's father demonstrates to him and his brother exactly how dangerous the zoo animals are. Part of this involves making them watch a tiger hunting a goat. Other stories relate the kinds of things visitors feed the zoo animals (and unfortunately, how some of them are cruel to the animals). These stories add conflict and interest to prose that otherwise might be telling instead of showing.There are a few sections where the author stops the story to list things or the style becomes very simplistic; I admit I skimmed over those places. The first part of the book also contains italicized chapters written from the perspective of someone visiting Pi many years after the main events; I didn't think they added much to the story. But it's been instructive to observe how the author develops themes while providing us with background.

Have you read books that detail long passages of time where little happens story-wise? If so, what techniques kept you reading through those sections? Feel free to comment.

End of August Project Update

The last couple of days have been very much "A Hard Day's Night" work-wise, so I'll just quickly summarize where I am with my multitude of writing projects:

1. Cozy Mystery #2--I'm not sure yet if I want to call it Restaurants and Revenge or Food Safety Can Be Fatal. (I think the second one is more fun, but since I work in food safety, I'm not sure how that would look professionally.) My plan is to write about 500 words a day and aim for about 15,000 words/month. I'm around 13,000 at the moment, so I should make my goal. I just need to figure out a few more details about the murder.

2. Untitled Fantasy Short Story--I have a complete first draft around 4,300 words. I rewrote the opening scene, which naturally will affect the other scenes even though they feel more complete to me. Hopefully by September I can start submitting it to markets.

3. Dryads and Dragons--My original plan for August was to write about 200 words on this project per day. I made my goal for several days, but between squeezing in other projects and trying to figure out how I get from the middle to the end, I haven't worked on it for a while. 

4. Cozy Mystery #1--It's been about a month since I finished it, so it's time for the first read-through. How many inconsistencies will I find? Did I portray my heroine's Filipino heritage accurately? What will the beta readers think? Tune in sometime next month (hopefully) for the answers! In the meantime, enjoy the Beatles:

https://youtu.be/Yxq40ZYIibw

The Storytelling Animal

We authors might like to think our drive to tell stories makes us special. However, humans have been obsessed with telling stories for thousands of years, and this characteristic has shaped our evolution. Jonathan Gottshall discusses this topic in his book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human.

 Make-believe is an essential part of a young child's development. It's a way of practicing social and problem-solving skills. However, we continue making up stories our entire lives, and they're not always wish-fulfillment fantasies. Our nighttime dreams are more often nightmares instead of pleasant vacations. Stories can bring groups together and establish social norms. On an individual level, our memories aren't exact, but fictional recreations. Even our self-images are fictional versions of ourselves where we're always better than average and the hero of our own stories. People suffering from depression have more realistic images of themselves, but in this book, that's a sign of how important storytelling is to our mental health.

Storytelling has taking many forms during human history. We no longer depend on oral storytelling for our fix. We consume stories through books, video, and games. Even if reading fiction becomes a lost art, we will find ways to tell new stories.

In my Season Avatars series, there's a Goddess who calls Herself the Grandmother of Stories. Although She originated in a quasi-Polynesian culture, She is aware of events happening in other parts of the world. She uses her understanding of human and divine nature to protect Her chosen people and uses storytellers as Her Avatars. Even deities from other cultures respect Her.

Do your own stories reflect the power of human storytelling? If so, how? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

A 19th Century Book in a 21st Century Head

First of all, can anyone name the song that this blog title references? I remember hearing it on the radio, though I admit I had to Google the lyrics to come up with the title myself.

Anyway, this weekend I finished reading Adam Bede by George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans). If you're not familiar with this novel, it was published in 1859 and is considered a classic of 19th century British literature. Most of the book is set in a small English town and revolves around the relationships of four people: the titular Adam Bede, a carpenter; a local squire named Arthur Donnithorne and is Adam's old friend; Hetty Sorrel, a pretty but vain seventeen-year old whom both men are attracted to; and Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher who is Hetty's cousin. Although the book has received lots of praise since its publication, I found it hard to get into because in many ways it's different from the more recent books I normally read. I'm not even sure a traditional publisher would accept it today. Here are some of the things that I noticed about this book:

1. Sentences tend to be longer and more complex than in modern books.
2. Compared to modern books, the pace is slow. Much space is devoted to description, daily life (which is actually a feature that draws praise from critics) and to characters who don't impact the main plot--or do much of anything.
3. Dialect is spelled out, which sometimes means it's difficult to decipher.
4. Head-hopping in a single scene is common.
5. Authorial/narrator asides are common and are frequently used to "preach" at the reader.

These writing practices can work under the right circumstances, but for me and my modern tastes, they weren't that interesting. There was also a lot of overt and covert sexism and classism in the book, which is to be expected given the era it was written in. I did care enough about the characters to push my way through that book, plus I wanted to finish it so it would count for my reading challenge.

I do think this book shows how much fiction has changed in over 150 years. Will my books be read 150 years from now? Probably not. It does make me wonder how storytelling will change. I don't think our species will ever give up stories, but the mode of storytelling may be through immersive technology or something else we haven't thought of yet. The past and present stories that future generations find valuable will be translated into new forms. Let's see if this book makes the cut.