This engages the reader by making them feel included in the active writing process.Īndrew Altschul’s novel The Gringa is narrated by Andres, an American expat writer living in Peru. One way to include a story within your story is to have your character write the inside story. You can use these strategies to create interesting, multi-layered novels. Authors have come up with many different ways to include stories-within-stories. The story-within-a-story concept was around a long time before Netflix. Natasha Lyonne’s Netflix series Russian Doll is named for its use of this plotting method. This is because their interlocking structure resembles a set of Russian nesting dolls. Sometimes a nested story and its frame story together called matryoshka stories. There is another entire scene inside that smaller frame.Ī nested story creates this effect on the page. As you take in the scene depicted on the framed canvas, you notice a framed picture on the wall within the painting. Imagine you are looking at a painting on the wall of a museum. The outside story which introduces or surrounds the shorter story is called a frame story. However, this structure might actually only be one layer of your novel.Ĭomplex plots often contain multiple layers of story.Ī shorter story contained inside a longer story or novel is called a story-within-a-story, an embedded story, or a nested story. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled 7 Ways to Write a Story Within a Story (Nested Stories) ‹ Back to blogĪ key part of writing a novel is figuring out the structure of your story. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. But her loose fair hair was wet there was a wreath of roses on her head. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere-at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself-were flowers. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday-Trinity day. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window.
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