“We don’t want men of your fibre here.”

“Fibre? Whadya mean? I got cool threads man!”

Ah. But it is not just the threads themselves. It’s finally how they bind together. Actually, most stories are more of a rope or cord than an entire weave. By the time you get to a weave you’re talking something of the breadth of strands of say LotR.

Having mostly finished the work on CECILY, I have been trying to recalibrate my brain (and the phrasing and language) back to something more in my usual vein. I tend to immerse myself in the style I am trying to write, reading it and listening to it. When I had to write the first Karres sequel, I practically immersed myself in James H Schmitz’s work and read nothing else – I have carefully NOT done that since, as there is no doubt that some of the style, language and structure rub off. So: I tend to make sure I have number of influences — Unless I am trying to write in something close to the author’s style. I conclude, no matter how hard I try, my work still reads rather like Dave Freer (whoever he was). I must have spent too much time immersed in his world to shake it.

Anyway, to return to threads. Some stories are a mere linear string of events – the same characters, possibly even the same POV. It is both easiest, and most challenging form, IMO. Easy to do, very hard to do well.

Many novels tend to have multiple points of view, multiple threads of sequenced events, which eventually bind together. This is slightly harder to do, and easier to not do catastrophically badly. People still manage. We’re talented like that.

When you start getting to multiple threads of several points of view, non-sequenced (jumping forward, jumping back in a different thread…) if you can do it at all, well done. If you do it really well, I probably ought to kneel respectfully at your feet. Binding it into a final coherent story is really hard. Whatever else people may say of your work, you’re amazingly skilled.

To pick up my thread on immersion: I have just been reading Diana Wynne Jones – FIRE AND HEMLOCK, and HEXWOOD. Both of these are multiple threads, several points of view, and one point of view at different times – going from later to earlier. And from older to younger. I did this once, with a time-travelling Goth meeting the younger Pausert, but it is pure hell to keep straight enough in your own head, let alone the reader’s head.

I’ve been looking for ‘help’ with this, because I have to fit several threads of flashback – or simply that character in a different time and place and all I can say is it is a really stupid idea and why on earth did I decide to do that? So I was trying to look at ways she made it work.

The first is: the threads are distinct and interesting of themselves. The second is always clear who the thread is about. It is not actually clear that – in some instances – the thread is about a younger self – or that the older self is particularly aware of it. That strikes me as cheating – but it did fit both stories where outside influences were messing with the memories of the characters. It might only work because of that (in both cases the plot needed the older self to be unaware, and to solve that). The other thing that struck me (and this is a criticism of one of my favorite authors) was that the threads did not always lead you to foresee that they had to mesh. You became – because she draws characters well – invested in each separate thread – so I didn’t necessarily want them to mesh or see that one affected the other. Foreshadowing could have been somewhat more. Your reader needs to be somehow prepared and desirous of that thread binding onto the next.

I think I may be biting off more than I can chew. But it is a challenge…