breezing over the years

[marycatelli]

Start the story with the main character as a child. After a period, the story really starts moving again with an adult.

BUT it's important for the reader to know some of the things that happened. So that you know that the princess is a pain, or how the main character is unpopular but beloved of a few who know him well.

sigh

Comments

[nodrog]

“That's pretty good, son, but that ain't the way it happened.  If ye’ll shoot me a snoot o' that sour-mash, I'll tell ye the whole tale…”

This allows for the possibility of an unreliable narrator, i e  yes, that IS how it happened.

[marycatelli]

Doesn't work for every story. In particular when there is no character who would talk like that.

[nodrog]

Oh, come now, there's always some licensed storyteller or garrulous old coot to be found somewhere.  (Supposedly that's what all the talking heads of EC Comics were - the Crypt Keeper, the Old Witch, &c., a whole jury of them, all telling tales.)

[marycatelli]

No. Not in these stories.

[nodrog]

Twas a balmy summer's evening and a goodly crowd was there,
Which well-nigh filled Joe's barroom on the corner of the square,
And as songs and witty stories came through the open door
A vagabond crept slowly in and posed upon the floor…

“Say, give me another whiskey, and I'll tell you what I'll do —
I'll tell you a funny story and a fact I promise too.
That I was ever a decent man, not one of you would think;
But I was, some four or five years back. Say, give me another drink.
“Fill 'er up, Joe, I want to put some life into my frame —
Such little drinks, to a bum like me are miserably tame;
Five fingers! — there, that's the scheme — and corking whiskey too.
Well, here's luck, boys; and landlord, my best regards to you.
“You’ve treated me pretty kindly, and I'd like to tell you how
I came to be the dirty sot you see before you now…”

J H Titus, "The Face Upon the Floor" (1887)

[marycatelli]

Neither story ventures into a barroom, so that's a problem.

[nodrog]

Baa-aahh.