Stretching the Bounds of Your Story
An easy way to delight your readers
There are certain conventions of fiction that we all know instinctively. There’s the author, the narrator, some characters, the genre. Most writers like the clear delineation between each of these things, so they maintain it. But what happens if they don’t?
Let’s take a look at three fun examples.
Fwaming. Fwaming is what bwings us togethaw today.
If you’ve ever read The Princess Bride by William Goldman, you were probably left asking the same question I was when I enjoyed it for the first time about fifteen years ago: “You can do that?” I was in high school, a fledgling writer who mostly dabbled in short fiction of a literary bent but was already dreaming of someday being a famous writer. (I’m still not famous, but I do make a living off of it, so I’ll take that.)
What blew my mind about The Princess Bride was the framing. William Goldman, the author, blurs the lines by positioning himself, more or less, as the narrator. Then he further pushes the boundaries of convention by pretending that not he but rather S. Morgenstern (who is not real, by the way) is the original author of The Princess Bride and his book is only an abridged version with his own interjections mixed in. Goldman plays…
