too many rabbits

[marycatelli]

Opening a novel with shifts between wide-separated, aparrently unconnected characters has its virtues.

For one thing, it establishes the POV pattern, so it doesn't come as a surprise and disruption to introduce another.

For another, if the events happen more or less simultaneously, this keeps them in sync.  Multi-thread stories where the events in one sequence are not in the same time frame as another sequence can be annoying to work through.  Which I have found true even when the final structure of the work made it the clear and correct aesthetic decision for the structure, and that's rare.

For a third, it gets the subplots rolling.

For a fourth, you can start the dramatic irony really early.

But it does have its price.  Short glimpses of people, especially disjointed ones, do not inspire sympathy and identification the way concentrated and prolonged doses do.  I find it harder to get into the story because I'm less concerned with how things turn out.

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Yes. And if the glimpse goes on long enough that I begin to identify with the character or get really interested, then the jump away is a jolt.

[marycatelli]

That's always a danger -- I don't know why I didn't scream when I read the first page of The Return of the King -- but it's especially dangerous in the opening, when the story hasn't got its momenteum going.

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

My favorite version of that is Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where the three main characters are separated not only in space, but by time as well. How they intermesh is really awesome...

[marycatelli]

People don't try to pull it off for no reason.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

It may work better when the second group of people is doing something that the reader knows will affect the first group. Like, if the first group are soldiers, and the second group are officers or nobles deciding where to send the soldiers next. And so on.

[marycatelli]

Yes, the more hints of their eventual interweaving you get, the better.

Sometimes, of course, that would throw off the story in other ways.