Reasonable question. No video to go with this, just a quick and I hope clear answer.
In a frame story, you begin the story by showing a character or characters settling in to:
Watch a play
Listen to a story
See old slides
Read a diary
In the frame story, the characters as they are in the present are NOT participants in the actual story you wish to tell. They could be getting ready to tell us a story of their younger selves as main characters in your main story, they could have been minor participants in that main story, or they could have no relationship to the main story whatsover.
The real story—the story that has been framed—is whatever happens once the writer cuts from the observers to the action. Once the real story ends, the writer cuts back to the frame, shows the audience getting up and leaving, or the diary reader putting the book away and going on with his life, or whatever fits.
In every case, however, the reader is reminded from the beginning that your MAIN story happened in some other place, to different people, and he is forced to see himself as a member of an audience getting the story fed to him through a presenter of some sort, rather than experiencing it himself firsthand. This is distancing, and does not make for great fiction, though writers still use the device from time to time.
Including diary entries, storytellers telling stories, or people watching plays within the body of the story, where those items are not the main story, is not creating a frame story.
I’m delighted to present “The Case of the Exploding Cat,” the first episode in my ongoing series of writing-crit videos.
If you want to write a book or novel, or build a writing career for yourself, you’ll find that each of these crits will point out mistakes writers make—some common, and some not common at all—and will help you find and correct errors you’ve made in your own writing.
This crit brought to you by me, with the help of volunteers from HowToThinkSideways.com who submitted work they knew had problems for me to crit.
In answer to a privately-asked question:
Yes, you are welcome to add this video to your own website, send people to this site, or both.
Here is the EMBED code (basically, you cut and paste this into your website, and the video will appear there.)
Write A Novel With Holly Lisle
I may do more than just crash tests on the podcast, but for now the podcast is JUST the crash tests.
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