Firstly, NazgulNumber10, may I congratulate you on your poetry. Poetry is a much underestimated and misunderstood genre. I write poetry to supplement my story, and before that I wrote free standing poetry. Yours is very good and you should be congratulated for many people are too scared of what people will say to write or display poetry. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
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Plus, I'm obsessed. I get in trouble in class for not paying attention because I'm puzzling out a new scene!
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Tell me about it! That is so familiar!
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Do you use interlacing in your story? If you do interlacing, how do you do it and how do recommend doing it? What about interspersing every other chapter (I'm experimenting with that right now)? What are the dangers? Pitfalls? Benefits? Some of this has been dealt with on the "Interlacing" thread on Books II. Some comments from that thread are:
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Oh gosh! Where to start. Well, yes, I do use interlacing in my story, it wrote itself in. My whole story is based on events happening in three places across the land, which culminate in the second book.
How do I do it? Well, it varies, sometimes I change my thread every few chapters or so, I think the largest gap is three chapters, and sometimes I switch within chpters - usually when there is a lot of action going on in two of the places - this has the effect of creating cliffhangers in the middle of action, but as you pointed out some people find it hard to get into the story when it is done like that, so I do it only when necessary.
Changing thread every chapter - well, I wouldn't advise it, it is best if you let the reader get into each thread a little way before cutting them off, or they will find it hard to settle and follow the plot. I would do it more the Tolkien way - every few chapters.
The benefits of interlacing is that you can tell more than one story which are linked in some way, and have a big climax at the end - or maybe leave the book on a cliffhanger and continue in another book.
The pitfalls? Well, you can disgruntle some readers, and if they are not executed effectively they can ruin the story, making it seem jumpy and not flowing properly (gah, what awful grammer!)
I started my interlacing right at the start of the book too, for me it was the only way to introduce all the characters fairly simultaniously, portray events that happen at almost the same time but in different places, side by side, and from then on it developed into the way I write my story.
So many things in my story happen at the same time as things elsewherem this makes it very difficult to write effectively without interlacing. My story (the first book anyway) is set over a time of only 20 days, but an awful lot happens all over Philan'noth and it all needs to be noted.