[frame: source]
I've been blogging about various ways in which writers can make any piece more literary. One technique that has appeared in literature almost from the beginning is the frame story. We've all read them. The story opens with a character telling a tale or multiple characters telling multiple tales. The main narrative is framed by another story. Most times, it's used as a device in order to distance the author from the story and to allow the author to make commentary on the story.
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Centuries-old stories from Egypt, Greece, Europe, and beyond employ this technique. The Odyssey, One Thousand and One Nights, and The Canterbury Tales all feature this technique. The storyteller's frame story often makes the story a fiction even within the fiction of the story. It distances the story from the reader, makes it seem fanciful or somehow unreliable. The Princess Bride is a fairly recent book, which was adapted into a movie, about a grandfather reading to his grandson a fantasy story, which is framed as an actual tome, though it's actually a fiction story framed by yet another fiction story. This allows a modern voice to summarize and make satiric and reactive, self-aware commentary on what appears to be traditional fiction.
[Scene from Percy Jackson series; Source]
Modern writers will sometimes use this technique for some of the same reasons but also sometimes in order to create the illusion that the events of the story actually happened. Rick Riordan will sometimes start his fantasy series--such as the Red Pyramid series and the Percy Jackson series--based on mythology of various cultures, with the main character warning the reader away, saying you, too, could find out that you're in the same situation with the characters in the book. It gives the reader a sense of inclusion but also tension, thinking that this danger could be the reader's danger as well. It makes the story feel more personal. Likewise, the Bunnicula series is framed by the main character, a dog, who swears his experience with a vampiric bunny is the truth. Since it's a story written by a dog, it's clear the reader is supposed to take this to be a fiction.
There are several ways that modern readers can use frame stories. Research and read some of them. Is this a technique that could work for you? How may it help you frame your reader's reaction to your story or stories?
