Manual For Fiction Writers by Block, Lawrence (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

O. Henry sometimes used frames to great advantage. I'm reminded of a story called The Man at the Top. The narrator is a professional gambler, and he tells how he and two other crooks, one a burglar and the other a con artist, came into a sum of money. The burglar used his share of the proceeds to open a casino, and the narrator tells how he rang in decks of marked cards to cheat the burglar out of every cent he had. He concludes by boasting that he has invested the proceeds in something solid, and we learn that the signature on his stock certificates is that of the third criminal, the con man. The frame device gives that surprise ending an impact it could not otherwise possess.

Every story within a story does not represent a use of a frame. I can recall a story of mine, for example, in which one of a pair of lovers tells the other a fairly lengthy apocryphal anecdote. The anecdote makes a point about the lovers' relationship, and as a result of her telling it, the relationship is brought to a conclusion. That's not a frame, however, because the real story is what's going on between the two of them. The story within the story is conversation, something to move the plot, and no more a central element than the play within the play of Hamlet.

I wouldn't advise any of you to use frames for your stories, not for the time being, at any rate. The risk is usually greater than the potential reward. But it might be valuable for you to notice how some other writers do make use of this device, while avoiding it yourselves unless you should happen to hit on a plot that demands this type of treatment.

Do you have a question, Arnold?

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More of an observation, sir.

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Oh?

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You might say, sir, that you've used a frame in this chapter. Drawing the reader in by casting the chapter in the form of a dialogue with an imaginary class, and then cutting out the interruptions once you've got him hooked and getting directly to the heart of the matter.

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You might say that, I suppose. Yes, Rachel?

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And then you bring us back at the end to finish off the frame, eh, sir?

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Something like that. Yes, Gwen?

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Did you hear what Arnold just said? You've got him hooked. Why not make it him or her?

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Why not make it Venusians? Well, it looks as though our time is up, and not a moment too soon. Good morning, class.

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Good afternoon, sir.

CHAPTER 34

Documentary Evidence

Saxtons River, Vermont

26 August 1979

Mr. John Brady

Writer's Digest

Dear John,

It's a reasonable facsimile of Paradise up here. Fresh air, cool temperatures, green hills, no billboards, no litter. We've got four days before we head back to the city, and I don't wanna go.

I've been thinking of writing a column on experimental narrative techniques?writing novels and stories in the guise of diaries, collections of letters, etc. There were several contest entries of that ilk this year, some good and some bad, but one thing I noticed during the judging was how quickly those narrative forms draw you in. The special pleasure, I suppose, of reading someone else's mail or sneaking a peek at another's diary.

I myself became very much interested in these approaches to fictional narrative ten years or so ago, when I found myself souring on the whole concept of the novel, which came to have an artificial feel to me. For a while there I even found conventional novels hard to read because they seemed unreal. Whose was this disembodied voice with omniscience over the lives and thoughts of all these characters? And, even when I read a first-person narrative, I found myself quibbling. When was it that the narrator was recounting all of this? How did he remember such minutiae as what so-and-so was wearing months previously? My bout of extreme literal-mindedness put me off novels of the usual sort, and I found myself drawn to books which pretended to be actual documents?letters, diaries, journals, whatever.

This sound like a viable topic to you? I'll spend the next two weeks kicking it around. I may not come up with enough to fill a whole column, but I think there's something here worth dissecting for WD's readers.

Best to Rose and all the gang. Hang in there, big fella.

Larry

DATE: 28 August 1979

PLACE: Saxtons River, Vermont

TIME OF RUN: 7 p.m.

DISTANCE COVERED: 6 miles

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Comments: I'm going to miss running in the country. Another couple of days and it's back to grinding out the miles on the West Side Highway, pounding the concrete and gulping down the smog. I'll miss the fresh air and the scenery, but I won't miss the dogs. If I ran around here all the time I think I'd wind up carrying a gun.

Spent most of today's run musing about the next WD column, which will probably concern experimental narrative techniques. Question: why call them experimental? When I first thought about doing a book in diary form, I thought of it as an experiment; ditto when I started writing a book in the form of a collection of letters. Why? There's nothing new about it. The technique's as old as these hills I've been running through. Consider?the first novel written in the English language, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, took the form of a collection of letters from the titular heroine to her sister. (Q?was it her sister? Should probably check this. This is what comes