{"id":920,"date":"2014-04-16T16:29:32","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T04:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csidemedia.com\/gryphonclerks\/?p=920"},"modified":"2014-04-16T16:33:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T04:33:12","slug":"technique-parallel-stories-slow-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/csidemedia.com\/gryphonclerks\/2014\/04\/16\/technique-parallel-stories-slow-reveal\/","title":{"rendered":"Technique: Parallel Stories, Slow Reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"

I review books from Netgalley, and I recently got two significant short story collections: Writers of the Future Volume 30<\/em><\/a> and Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight<\/em>. So far, I’ve only read the first one, but it’s taught me something.<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s exactly why I read it; I wanted to see what is considered really good spec-fic short story writing these days, rather than just reading classic short stories. I’ve been writing a few short stories lately, mostly for the collection I’m doing with HDWP Press<\/a>, and based on the feedback I’ve had\u00a0I seem to be getting better. I’m yet to sell a story to a major magazine, but I’ve had a very encouraging personalised rejection from Strange Horizons\u00a0<\/em>and some good comments from critique groups.<\/p>\n

Part of the point of writing short stories is to improve my craft by working at the short length, and then take those lessons into my novels. Here’s the lesson I learned from several of the stories in Writers of the Future<\/em>, which I call “parallel stories, slow reveal”.<\/p>\n

The clearest and best use of the technique is in Shauna O’Meara<\/a>‘s story “Beneath the Surface of Two Kills”. At the opening of this story, we learn that the narrator, a professional hunter, is hunting a rare animal for the last meal of a convicted felon on death row. As the story progresses, we discover more about the “two kills”: the one which the hunter is working towards, and the one which we know occurred in the past to place the killer in prison awaiting execution. The hunter thinks about the news coverage he has read of the killer’s stalking of his victim as he, in turn, stalks the rare beast.<\/p>\n

This works for a few reasons. Firstly, the parallel stories obviously reflect on each other (and the conclusion differentiates the two characters). Secondly, as also happens with several other stories in the same collection, we start out knowing the ending of a story that occurred earlier, and gradually learn how that outcome occurred.<\/p>\n

Now, given how some people react to “spoilers”, you’d think that would be a problem, but done well it actually keeps the reader’s interest. We know the outcome, but we don’t know how it came to be, and we want to.<\/p>\n

Here are some ways I can think of to use the slow reveal:<\/p>\n