Hi

Just wanted to chuck an idea around.

I have started my second novel recently, and am setting it in 1864, in England and the USA.

My original idea was to take my two main characters - a governess and a slave woman - and start Part One with them both narrating their separate stories, and then to have them meet in Part Two and form a dubious lesbian affair after which one will inevitably end up dead at the other's hand, while the other is insane.

However, I have since had another idea, which is that the two women's narratives run side by side, linked only by theme. The governess - whose name is Rose - will narrate through diaries and some 3rd person stuff about how shit her life is* - the loss of status, sexual repression, no children of her own, etc etc, inevitably ending in the lunatic asylum after running off with her employer's child, whom she adores. The lack of her own child will be her grief.

Then, the slave narrative, which will take place at the same time, will be about a woman whose children are sold at auction. I don't know what else it will be, because I haven't researched it yet.

Do you think this is possible? To have two characters narrating, and yet to never meet?

Does this even count as a novel? Would it not just be two rather disjointed novellas?

I know what will happen now. Some people will say, 'Yes, do it!' and others will say, 'No, don't!' and I'll be none the wiser.

Alternatively, no one will say anything at all, which is fine, but will leave me feeling unloved.

Now don't go getting all paranoid.


Have you read Cloud Atlas? Struck me that this is a novel of parallel narratives where the characters don't meet. On the other hand, it is a very unusual and risky premise in many ways and he only just carries it off because of the writing (in my humble.. etc).

On the other hand, there's a detectable excitement about giving it a go here, which might mean it is worth doing!
Could there be something that links them, but doesn't dominate the story?
Think of that Robert Altman film Short Cuts (and lots of others that escape me right now)which has characters just brushing against each other in terms of plot, but is much more about their distinct stories. Just a thought.

Sarah, the difficulty with parallel narratives is that there has to be a really solid, coherent, comprehensible reason for them to be in the same book.

For the writer, that can mean linked themes, ideas explored from several angles, words and phrases echoing to-and-fro, compare-and-contrast implied in speech and incident.

For 99.9% of readers, (for which read 100% of agents and editors) that has to mean plot. Sorry. Boring. But yes, Plot. Action. Basically, things in one strand have to affect things in the other happen, otherwise even the keenest reader spends most of the book waiting for the connection, not concentrating on the individual stories, and so ends up feeling that the book doesn't add up.

I don't think they have to meet - they might be centuries apart, or continents - but they have to have that vital connection between them, 'vital' in the accurate sense of 'living': something connecting the two lives involved.

More cynically, I know of agents and editors who don't like parallel narrative for the very good reason that they fear readers will always end up liking one rather than the other. And certainly, if you like one more than the other, it shows. (c.f. Byatt talking about Possession).

But don't let me put you off - I adore them, and think if you can pull it off they can be rich and thought-provoking in a way a single-narrative can't ever be.

Emma

You could always have two parallel narratives with similar themes and then have them linked through a plot point at the end.Different relationships to another key character for example? Like The Hours.

I suppose it depends largely on what you want to say with the book.

Why are you exploring these two different women's stories? What is it you are telling us?

For example, Jean Rhys showing the hypocrisy of colonialism by showing the same character in the two different contexts - such as Rochester in England or Rochester in the Caribbean. So you might have a character in England and in US who changes according to the context. Or the employer of the English one may be an anti-slave campaigner and give us a foot in both contexts.

As your themes seem very bound up with the idea of mothers and motherhood, one thing might be to have the link character as being the child stolen by the first, who somehow appears as a character in the second strand - maybe as an adult? Who has some sort of official or personal relationship with the second woman? But we don't know it is the same person until the end.

I'm rambling now. You get the idea.

Just thinking, the advantage of a link character like the child is that the events of one story (because it is her childhood) will inform how she acts in the second story. Making the whole thing beautifully motivated as well as parrallel. And maybe to strengthen the mother theme, exploring the relationship of the child with her real mother (who presumably locks the governess away in a lunatic asylum without a care for how the child will feel about it, when we assume, in those days the governess would have been like her mother.)

Stop me someone.

Why are you exploring these two different women's stories? What is it you are telling us?

Ah, fuck that. I never worry about messages and stuff. I just look and see what's there at the end, and think, 'Goodness me, I'm so profound.'

I like your suggestion, though, Snowbell. Will give it some thought.

<Added>

Actually, Sonowy, I REALLY like your sugestion. I mean this genuinely, not merely to soften the above 'Fuck that.'

Fascinating idea, Sappho.

I think that Emma sums it up very well indeed (have been grappling with these issues myself lately, as am also planning a PN in which the characters don't meet face to face but depend on written correspondence based on invented identities). And Snowbell's suggestions about linking throught the child is very similar to what I was thinking.

Might you invent a third character to bridge the gap? That way, the two women don't have to meet or even know about each other - but someone else *does*. For some reason I'm imagining this person as a man with a Jekyll/Hyde complex (say, he seduces one woman and exploits the other). Only it might get a bit out of hand if you're juggling two first person narratives and a third one on top...hm.

There I go, creating more problems...

For 99.9% of readers, (for which read 100% of agents and editors) that has to mean plot

Ah, these fucking readers. They ruin everything.

Thanks for your help, everyone.

I'm none the wiser. This is a Bad Writing day, which means I am being really vicious to those I live with.

There I go, creating more problems...

Nah, my solution to problems is often to add something. In fact, I wonder if this question is another to add to my list of problems for which the answer is 'either less, or more'.

Emma

Sorry to be so obsessed with this. I really should be able to make my own decisions by now.

Do you think I can get away with two parallel narratives where the connection isnt made until right at the very end?

I haven't read The Hours, Snowbell, but it is on my Long List of Things to Read This Year, along with Mrs Dalloway. I should read Mrs D first, I think?

So much to read, I cannot fit it into one lifetime. Should not have pissed my twenties away in a gutter. . . . .

Do you think I can get away with two parallel narratives where the connection isnt made until right at the very end?

Depends how you do it. It's one thing to have readers intrigued and trying to work it out, it's another to baffle them, because on the heels of bafflement quickly comes boredom. I have to say that I think you're risking a lot more people not 'getting' it (for which, possibly, read 'not buying it'.) On the other hand, as a reader, the sense of all the dominoes falling into place behind you at the end is satisfying. I'm just not sure it's easy to make is satisfying enough for the reader to feel the novel's justified purely in retrospect. The two strands of TMOL weren't linked in plot, originally. The sophisticated types on the MPhil were happy with it like that, but the differently sophisticated book trade wasn't. I kicked and screamed, but did it in the end, and I have to say I think it's the better for it.

Having said that, the link-at-the-end is basically how The Hours works, in plot terms - there are loads of thematic links - and yet it's the most wonderful book. That's partly because the writing is little short of miraculous. The book's also very short, so you're not puzzled for very long. Really, really worth reading.

Emma

Thanks, Emmma.

You're making perfect sense. It's just something I need to let drift around my head for a while, seeing as I won't have the advantage of miraculous writing on my side, which is a pity.

I think it could work if the reader has the sense of it moving towards something and if the two strands mirror each other as they go along so there is satisfaction to be had the whole way through.

Alternatively you could come up with a question/mystery (not talking whodunnit or anything but maybe a why a character is like that or something) in one strand that will eventually get answered by the other strand and if you could give the reader the growing sense of this connection and then the payoff at the end, I think that could be very satisfying and keep the reader connecting the two and interested to know what happens in both.

Mind you, with the latter, you might then want to think not just finally answering the question, but a twist on our expectations of what the answer might be, or else it may become flat at the end.

Actually NOT alternatively. IN addition. I think the reflecting and mirroring would be important in any case

Yes, The Hours is a great example of this 'separate stories that interlink' technique. I thought the film was brilliant (though others might disagree), and would heartily recommend it if you don't have time to read the book. The characters' lives subtly intwertwine, and finally come together in one place at the end.