Scene/Setting Transitions

[M. Blaekr]

I've been having a slight issue with structuring a story. I have two major characters (the protagonist being one of them) split up for a while and go down parallel plot lines. I know this isn't a rare thing in literature, but I don't know how to do it well, personally.

My guess is that it is good to switch while one or the other of the two are traveling (i.e. down a path or to a safe house). Is this the only good way to handle it, though?

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this? Or can give me a book title where this is done? I don't mean a part where the antagonist is focused on for a little bit to give personal or plot-related insight, but two characters doing different things for, what I would call, a little longer than brief.

Thanks.

 

[Blackrook]

Lord of the Rings is a classic example. The Fellowship breaks up at the end of Book One and then we follow three groups of heroes on separate paths. I don't think Tolkien did a good job of it though.

 

[M. Blaekr]

I don't think Tolkien did a good job of it though.

How so?

 

[The Judge]

One way of handling it would be to stay with character A until you reach a certain event/location where the two of them meet up, then switch to B and show everything she's doing until you get back to that point. The advantage of this is that your readers can concentrate on one person at a time for long periods. This for me would be best suited if you had distinct parts of the book, so eg Part 1 is A's story; Part 2 B's; Part 3 the pair of them.

The drawback to that approach, of course, is that at the beginning of B's story you are effectively going back in time. If it's only a few hours, that might be no big deal, but if months or years elapse, that could be a real problem. Also, you run the risk of readers forgetting about A or B while the other's story is being played out.

An alternative is to maintain strict(ish) chronological order, so you have alternate chapters, even alternate scenes, showing what A and B are respectively doing at any one time. This would be best where they are both engaged in the same quickly-completed venture eg like a bank heist, because we would want to see A impersonating the bank manager while B is tunnelling through the vaults. But the problem with this is that it can read in a very disjointed way, particularly if there is no link between what A and B are doing and their separation lasts months so the continual to-ing and fro-ing becomes a distraction.

Then there's a kind of in-between way, where you stay with A for several chapters and/or a few days before switching to B, where you do the same, before switching back again This has the advantages of both, but also runs the risk of having the disadvantages of both as well. I guess this is what you are trying from your talk of changing while the other is travelling.

I think the overall answer is, how you deal with it depends on what kind of story you are telling, the amount of time covered while they are separate and how linked their respective stories are (ie whether they are both engaged in attaining the same goal or not). To me this last in-between way is probably the most useful and easily used. And yes, swapping when the other is doing something boring is as good a way as any.

 

[Ursa major]

The drawback to that approach, of course, is that at the beginning of B's story you are effectively going back in time. If it's only a few hours, that might be no big deal, but if months or years elapse, that could be a real problem. Also, you run the risk of readers forgetting about A or B while the other's story is being played out.

There may be another drawback if one is writing a thriller (in whatever genre): The reader knows B survived his or her adventures before they are described. Now if B happened to be the book's main protagonist, and the reader knows this, they might already guess that B would survive to (near) the end of the book. Where B is not the main protagonist, some (a lot?) of the possible tension related to the wellbeing of B is lost.

 

[Blackrook]

How so?

He told us all the adventures of Aragon's group in Two Towers up to the Battle of Helm's Deep.

Then during Return of the King, he goes backwards in time to the breakup of the Fellowship and follows Frodo and Sam.

In the movies, the parallel plots alternate back and forth, but that's not how it was in the books.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, actually, half of The Two Towers is about Frodo and Sam, as half of The Return of the King is about Aragorn & Co. (Aragorn being the King who is doing the returning ...)

Whether Tolkien handled it well or not is open to debate. He at least did it well enough enough for the story to be considered one of the greatest classics of fantasy literature, and and many people place it among the greatest books of the 20th century. Would it have been better if he had structured it differently? Perhaps, or perhaps not.

But the structure of LOTR is adapted to the story Tolkien had to tell. He did not break up the fellowship until all of them had been established and become familiar to the reader; a book that starts out with two separate plot lines, or that splits up the major characters early would have to be structured quite differently. A book where their stories weave in and out as characters part ways and come back together again and again would require yet another sort of structure.

Besides, you will have to consider the moments in your novel that provide natural places to pause -- whether because some action comes to an end, or, if you want to maintain readers in a state of suspense between sections, where the points of high drama come in. That would make a difference in how often you would want to transfer the reader's attention from one part of the story to another. Ideally, you would read as many books as you possibly can with multiple story lines and/or subplots and see which approach applies the best to the rhythms of your own story.

 

[Murtagh's_Muse]

Really it just depends on where your story has natural pauses or breaks. Depending on your style that could be when something has just finished happening or when something is just about to happen (cliffhanger). If you don't mind reading a longer book for some inspiration on this I might suggest Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" trilogy. He works with more than two character sets (closer to 7-10), but he transitions very well.

 

[M. Blaekr]

If you don't mind reading a longer book for some inspiration on this I might suggest Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" trilogy. He works with more than two character sets (closer to 7-10), but he transitions very well.

Thanks, I'll look into that.

 

[Dozmonic]

For me it's too much to change from scene to scene. James Patterson does this (he calls scenes chapters) and it makes for horrendous reading. Following a chapter or two at a time does, for me, make better reading. But it all depends on your style, the type of story you want to tell etc. I have two parallale stories that merge after 4-5 chapters each, so I just alternate them. Telling a chapter of X, a chapter of Y, back to X, back to Y. They merge and spawn about 5 threads, A, B, C, D, E which are told in combined chapters and get a little more complex.