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I'm playing with the idea of having a story framed, but I'm not sure if it completely works, or if it might be needless and confusing. I'll probably end up asking opinions once the draft is written, but it never hurts to get an early opinion.
The idea is to have chapter one begin about three-quarters of the way through the story, with the MC meeting a minor character and explaining to her the adventure so far. This goes into the story's actual beginning, a couple of months prior, and takes a good portion of the novel, but once she comes full circle to the point where she meets the minor character, she receives an object that determines the plot's final outcome. The importance of this object is the main reason I'm considering having the character be the frame, plus the idea that the MC explains everything to the main character in detail makes it less weird for her to know certain, seemingly unimportant details.
The biggest problem I'm having is that chapter one is not where the book begins. I still want to have a prologue, which is a really, really important scene that takes place when the MC is a child. So I'm concerned that having the book begin at one point, fly into the future, go back in time, and then come forward again, would be too confusing and annoying for the reader to make "framing" it worth it. Since the novel itself hasn't been written yet, it's difficult to give you the exact context, but hopefully my explanation makes sense. I'm also not sure if this will work because after trying out different POV's, I've decided to go with different POV's in third person, so not every second of the book will be in the MC's head, or even where she is, making some parts of the novel not part of the story she's telling the character, which might make the entire framing idea worthless.
Does anyone think this would be an absolutely bad idea, good idea, wait and see idea? Anyone wrestling with similar problems?
The idea is to have chapter one begin about three-quarters of the way through the story, with the MC meeting a minor character and explaining to her the adventure so far. This goes into the story's actual beginning, a couple of months prior, and takes a good portion of the novel, but once she comes full circle to the point where she meets the minor character, she receives an object that determines the plot's final outcome. The importance of this object is the main reason I'm considering having the character be the frame, plus the idea that the MC explains everything to the main character in detail makes it less weird for her to know certain, seemingly unimportant details.
The biggest problem I'm having is that chapter one is not where the book begins. I still want to have a prologue, which is a really, really important scene that takes place when the MC is a child. So I'm concerned that having the book begin at one point, fly into the future, go back in time, and then come forward again, would be too confusing and annoying for the reader to make "framing" it worth it. Since the novel itself hasn't been written yet, it's difficult to give you the exact context, but hopefully my explanation makes sense. I'm also not sure if this will work because after trying out different POV's, I've decided to go with different POV's in third person, so not every second of the book will be in the MC's head, or even where she is, making some parts of the novel not part of the story she's telling the character, which might make the entire framing idea worthless.
Does anyone think this would be an absolutely bad idea, good idea, wait and see idea? Anyone wrestling with similar problems?
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