What makes an experimental plot structure work? Something like the sequence of events is out of order or there is more than one story happening at the same time. I've seen this sort of thing in both novels and short stories, though, not often. But sometimes they work and it seems like there would have been no other way to properly have written that story. Right now I'm working on a short story where I want to play around with story form. I'm feeling pretty good about where it is at the moment. But I wanted to see if anyone here had any tips for what works and warnings about what doesn't work. Thoughts? Please share.
Not quite sure what you mean. The non-sequential plot line is fairly common, so I wouldn't necessarily call it experimental. And by "more than one story" do you mean separate plotlines that never converge? I'm guessing you're not referring to multiple POV stories where the characters don't meet until the middle or end of the story, like the ASOFAI (Game of Thrones) series where many characters don't meet for several books... or at all in some cases.
I feel like some of those novels realize that they're going to do a slow windup on the plot, and so they front-load scenes to balance things out, to either establish their purpose or show the importance of small events. I just finished "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" and it did this. The premise is that the bridge over the high gorge is going to fail and some characters are going to fall to their death. The story then tries to justify why they were on the bridge and if God/Fate was being kind/unkind to them. Slaughterhouse 5 does a bit of this too, starting deep in the story and then jumping around like mad. I think that's perhaps to show the chaos of war/life. Or something like "The Goldfinch" and "Fight Club" show an ending scene and then fall back to lead into that scene. Those two are weird especially because they weren't missing action. The Goldfinch would have opened with a bombing and Fight Club would have opened with . . . I guess another bombing, haha. They didn't need to start at the end, but they chose to. Maybe to establish a sense of inevitability? "The Wasp Factory" also did this, though it starts on a linear trajectory. The main story gets underway with the crazy brother calling home and saying he'll be there soon. (He escaped from a mental hospital.) The story then backpedals to explain the MC's life and why he's the way he is (i.e., a psychopathic villain worse than the institutionalized older brother). Whole scenes are flashbacked before returning to the present narrative. When I really think about it, it wouldn't make any sense if told in chronological order. Telling the scenes out of order claims the main narrative and then details it with the past. I'm wondering if that's for the same sort of reason as the last paragraph, just to make everything foregone. There's never a question as to why you're being shown the past, because it's explaining this messed up future, and so every strange scene is warranted.
Here are a couple of brief explanations of some alternative structures: Breaking Up With Aristotle: Alternative Plot Structures Alternative Plot Structures (Advanced)
Also American Beauty and Sunset Boulevard (movies). I'm sure many more, but those are the ones I'm aware of.
That's cool. I like that they mentioned Cloud Atlas as having an experimental structure. A "tsunami form." I can see that. Some of the oldest stories use embedded narratives, and those break the standard form. Think of "Arabian Nights," with its stories within stories.
I feel like the multiple waves is still really the same as standard narrative structure—it's the series of small climaxes leading up to the big one. You just need to tilt the diagram so each wave is higher than the last one, and then add falling action at the end.
Those were two that came to mind. I would say the main gag in the non-linear structure is to maintain a beginning/middle/end act structure even if the scenes within each didn't happen in the chronological beginning, middle, and end. So you're kind of using the end to set up the reveal of a beginning. Most famous case of that would be Memento, obviously, which is chronologically paced backwards. Literally scene by scene.
If you're gonna do non-chronological order like Memento or Pulp Fiction etc, the scenes should be arranged so information is revealed in an optimal way, in an order that makes sense somehow. That could mean a number of different things, but if you examine a story or movie that's set up that way I think (in the good ones anyway) you can find a reason it was broken up the way it was. It needs to have a reason why this order is better than straight chronological.
Agreed. But films are probably a poor example in this case. Too many visual cues that don't translate into literary form. And that short 1.5-2 hour engagement of a film consumed in one sitting keeps all those tricks and cues fresh, whereas a book that takes eight hours to read over two weeks might not always linger long enough in the noodle to have the same effect.
That's where you hope that not only does your work overcome improbable odds and gets published but that it's also so engaging that everyone reads it a second time. So they can talk to their friends (or bookclub members) in a highbrow way as if they caught all the details the first time.
I agree with you, except I don't think it has to be a mystery or reveal any clues for a piece of work to want to be resisted by readers. Sometimes maybe it's just fun to experiment a little, and maybe sometimes they become the perfect way to tell a perfect story.
