Embedded Stories

Hey! In a couple of weeks, I'm going to LTUE!

It's always a good conference; I've been going since I was an undergraduate. If you find yourself attending, or just in Provo during the weekend of February 14-16, find me and say hi!

This week, I don't have too much to report. It's life as usual, though it is a good life, and I'll keep you updated as the good things unfold. For one thing, I've already finished my taxes, and now no longer have to worry about that.

For another, I've been working on polishing and revising (not necessarily in that order) a work in progress. It's the fairy story, the YA Cinderella retelling I've mashed with a few other tropes and fairy tales, set in Vermont, and made the fairies the darker, amoral type over the Victorian kind.

It's so much fun, and I am in love with the world I set it in.

But here's the thing: creating a world based on ours, and adapting all the fairy folklore into a modern setting, means a lot of exposition. I have to explain to my readers what kind of fairies these are, what their rules are, etc., so that later, when my characters interact with the fairies, the readers understand what is happening.

I'm not sure how I'm doing so far, hence the revision.

Anyway, when I was drafting, I saw how much exposition I put in and how it made my story feel like a manual transmission car driven by someone who doesn't know how to drive manual transmission. It kept stopping the story, and I really didn't want that. I needed to give the background about the world and its rules without stopping the story.

Or, instead, making it okay to stop the story.

So I added more. More stories, that is.

One of my characters (who is a gosh-darn cinnamon roll who doesn't deserve ANY of the junk coming his way) is a storyteller. He was from the first draft. So instead of putting in exposition the old fashioned ways -- through narration or a character explaining -- I decided to put it in inside stories. When this character tells a story, I put it in the book, the whole story. What happens in the story teaches and models for my other characters what to do later.

I'm pretty happy with the effect. Of course, it means I get to write more stories, and I'm always a sucker for a good fairy tale, so of course I'd be happy.

But I'm hoping readers enjoy it too. A story has to be more entertaining to a reader than a block of exposition, right? Also, I know when I read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner I really enjoy the myths and stories of her world. Actually, I got the idea for trying this from reading Turner's books.

If you haven't read this, you should. It's so very very well done.

Another thing that's fun about doing this is that I can shape the stories so that they not only give needed information but reveal things about the characters or parallel my main character's journey. They do so much more than simple exposition can, at least for my story.

Embedded stories also reveal a lot about the culture of the story's setting. I mean, I'm not using them this way as much, but think about ourselves. How many stories do you know? How do you know them? When I say "poison apple" or "glass slipper," do you know what I mean? How do we use stories to inform us about our own lives and situations, and how do we use them to convey morals or lessons to children?

Stories embedded in the larger story do slow down the pace. They change gears, and that may be jarring for people to read. Some readers may want the main story to progress in the time it takes to tell a story. So there is a little bit of a risk in trying this.

All I know that right now, when it's under my control, I'm going to attempt something new with this story and exchange exposition for embedded stories. I'm liking it better at this point.

What do you think? Do you like stories embedded inside a larger story, or not, and why? Do you think I should keep going with this experiment? Also, if you have any recommendations for books that do this, please tell me. Like I said, I kind of love stories and frame stories working together.