Hi,
I am currently writing a novel in which the MC is being interviewed by someone about a past experience. I seem to be saying a lot of 'he saids' and 'he dids' because I find it hard to make the leap between the 'now' and the 'then'. I know that I need to 'dive in' to the scene and wondered what techniques other writers use to do this.

Also, how often can you move backwards and forwards between the now and the then without the reader becoming dizzy?
thanks for any advice

Hazell

My tuppence would be to not change too rapidly...

I think I read somewhere that it takes a few minutes for readers to adjust to a new viewpoint and I would draw the parallel here with time period.

A lot of books that do this seem to make a clear distinction by either starting a new chapter or containing the past in very clearly marked dialogue. (The equivalent of the cinematic fade out / wobbly screen effect from low-budget movies a few years ago.)

But, certainly, I think you need to be careful to a) make it clear the jump has happenned and b) resist the urge to jump back and forth without good reason.

G

Where the character needs to report a past scene in its entirety, I'd just use a flashback technique. Set up the scene where the character is being asked to remember, leave one line white space and then begin the remembered scene in real time.

However if they are remembering fragments, or it amounts to less than a page of backstory, it may be worth staying in the present scene.

Yes, I think you've got two basic possibilities: a separate chunk of flashback, written in real time, as Cherys suggests, or keeping it as a conversation 'now', which will need lots of breaking up with movement, comment, stage business, thoughts, to stop it seeming like a slab of information dumped in the interviewer's (and the reader's) lap.

The advantage of the jumpcut to a flashback is that it's easy to keep the reader on track, provided you make sure you take the reader very clearly with you when you jump, and when you come back: make sure we always know where we are.

The advantage of keeping the whole thing within 'now' is that there's lots of scope for exploring the MC's and the interviewer's attitude 'now', to what happened 'then', either directly in how each of them comments on what the MC tells, or indirectly in showing us their non-verbal reaction/discomfort/evasions/silences.

Why not join a suitable group and post a chunk, to see what others think of it? You could ask if anyone else has tackled this kind of thing, and have a look and comment on what they've done - commenting will make you really think about the possibilities and pitfalls.

Emma

<Added>

I think what I'm saying is that the way to stop the reader getting dizzy is either to move once and stay there, or to keep both in play all the time:

I poured more coffee for him. "I went towards the barn, I don't know why. I do remember..." My voice stuck in my throat.

"Go on."

Drinking coffee seemed to help. "It's silly, really... But I remember thinking how sad she looked. I've never seen anyone look that sad, not in all the years since. Not even when my Dad died last year. She was standing in the shadow, you know; the barn faces North. I noticed how her skirt was stained, but mostly I saw how sad she was. It was ages before I the axe in her hand."

He didn't seem very surprised. Perhaps he knew already.

For ideas about how to handle it you could have a look at Wuthering Heights and Interview with the Vampire, both of which have their main narrative in an "interview" format.

Thanks. I was going to ask if anyone could reccomend some good novels that I could study using this technique. The two you mentioned are good, but they have quite short chunks of 'now' followed by long chunks of 'then'. Is it possible to have this rather more evenly matched without confusing the reader totally (if you know what I mean). Can anyone suggest any novels that use this technique
Thanks for your comments so far. they are useful, as ever
Hazell

There is the option of having the main narrative in present tense, which leaves you past tense for memories, whether or not they're spoken aloud. Takes a bit of handling, and only works if you're confident about mixed tenses, and it suits your purposes in the rest of the book. Two of the three first-person narration in ASA are in that form: one uses 'now' as a frame for 'then', which is the 'real' story, if you see what I mean. The other is about resolving in the present a mystery which has its roots in the past. I'm not mad about present tense for narrative, but it is very fluent for this kind of thing.

TBH, I don't think you'll know if it confuses the reader or not, without writing some and then showing it to some readers.

Emma

Why not have the present chunks written in third person and the past chunks written in first person? (Which would be more natural anyway, if "interviewed" out of the person).

I think I would be wary of trying to mix the two up too much though, try to have a substantial stretch in one POV before switching to the other, otherwise you will be constantly pulled out of the story and your reader won't be able to sink into it satisfactorily.

I think it would be no more confusing than any other multiple POV story.

Slightly different medium, but there was a very good play on Radio 4 the other day about a woman who had been in the Hindenburg disaster, and much of the dialogue was her being "interviewed" about her past experience, and the truth about her past unfolding in parallel with the narrative in the present. It's still on iplayer if you want to have a listen. It was the Afternoon play on 1st Sept and was called Hindenburg, but is listed under A on the iplayer directory (for Afternoon play).

Try Jodi Picoult's The Pact or My Sister's Keeper - they jump in time quite brilliantly. Yet you always know where you are and what's happening. There's a lot more to her writing than mere heart-tugging storylines.

There is the option of having the main narrative in present tense, which leaves you past tense for memories,

Jennifer Donnelly did this to great effect in A Gathering Light.


- NaomiM

Thank you for your replies. I have ordered A gathering light from amazon and will see how its done there. Will keep plugging away at it
Hazell