Wolf

The first new chapter that presents actual forward progression in the novel! It’s funny to have spent most of the month building and rebuilding the foundation of the novel, turning this humble chapel into a cathedral, adding flying buttresses and gargoyles and grand domes filled with visions of ecstasy, visions of hell, turning the dirt floor into a wooden one and then ripping that out to make way for marble, and doing the same to the altar and then adding a few more altars, a few more chapels that fit in the alcoves of this grand cathedral.

But here I am, 90,000 words in and finally reaching towards the end of this first book.

Somewhat hilariously, I have this frame structure but I’ve abandoned writing the frame part until I get this central narrative sorted. As I think I said before, the framing narrative happens in the present and then a character tells the story of their past to other characters. Typically in novels like this, the framing device is literally just a device. There’s no real narrative to the frame.

But I tried to do something much more interesting with Songs of my Mother, by turning that frame into a real narrative. The frame of that novel was probably a total of 30,000 words, which is almost nothing compared to the 370,000 words taking place in the past, but it did allow for me to do some wild things with narrative and character.

Here, I’m pushing that concept still farther. While the bulk of the narrative will happen in the past, the frame of this story will be much more of its own novel. I suspect about 50,000 words of this first novel will take place in the present, in the frame narrative. And so once I sort out this huge section outlining the childhood of our protagonist, Sao, I’ll then go back to the very first chapter and rewrite it. And I’ll be writing this frame so that it functions like a narrative, like a story in its own right which is interesting and fun and exciting in its own right.

And so there will be more of a tension in this novel, this series. When you’re in the frame, you may want to return to the story being told, but when you’re in that story being told by a character to the other characters, you may long to return to that framing narrative.

It’s something you felt when reading A Song of Ice and Fire. You came to a chapter from Bran or Catlyn’s POV and you couldn’t wait to get back to Jon or Tyrion or Jaime or Dany.

But this also gives me a bit of freedom to play with the form. If the story being told by Sao has a natural lull or a more dour section, I can fold back to the frame and give you humor and/or excitement. I can throw plot complications and add different kinds of narrative tensions to the novel.

This is the exciting part of this novel to me, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone really do this. I’m sure someone has, at least to some degree, but I haven’t encountered it. At least not yet.

And that’s exciting. To land upon something that may be truly novel in a form as old as the novel.