Bittercon: Risky Narrative Strategies

[kate_nepveu]

Bittercon panel number two. Yes, my personal biases are showing; what of it?

Risky Narrative Strategies

Sarah Monette's Mélusine sends one of its two first-person narrators into a tailspin on his third page and drives him crazy before the chapter's over. It certainly doesn't play safe, but it's also risky because it gives the reader very little baseline for the character—particularly since the POV is so tight and he doesn't cross paths with the other narrator for a while. What other narrative strategies are risky, and how? Is information flow the principal kind of risk? In what books do risky strategies work, and in what don't they—but in interesting ways?

Presume that there will be spoilers for Mélusine and The Virtu within; for any other works, ROT13 spoilers or put them between <span style="color: #999999; background-color: #999999"> </span>.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

_The Wild Swans_: Oh, do they? Obviously, I did not know that. Well, I have _Emerald House Rising_ on my to-read shelf, which sounds a bit more to my taste anyway because it's craft-y, and then I'll go from there.

No, _Farthing_ I could see what the connection was, and _Melusine_ I knew that they'd meet within the book, so I could wait until they did. It's your A+A & B+B that's a problem for me--I suppose theoretcially there might be a case where I found each equally compelling, but I get *very* willing to just chuck one of the strands because I can't see why it _matters_.

Whiplash is rarer for me. I know some people complained mightily about _Tigana_, but, well, that was the *point*--which is not to say that they weren't right to be annoyed. I had that reaction to a Heyer, I remember--oh, _The Toll-Gate_.

Anyway, readers expect that stuff's in a story for a reason, and these problems come down to breaking that expectation, or at least not fulfilling it soon enough, I think.

Also, dramatic irony and its cousins are cool. =>

[jorrie-spencer.livejournal.com]

_The Wild Swans_: Oh, do they? Obviously, I did not know that.

I didn't know that, either. Probably because I completely dropped reading the one storyline.

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

Yep, me too. The more modern storyline just could not keep my attention.

[jorrie-spencer.livejournal.com]

lol! I believe it was the modern storyline that I read.

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

Ah! *laughs*