Today I decided to talk about frame stories. “Frame story” is a bit of a misnomer; it’s actually short for “story with a frame,” and it’s a very specific story structure in which the opening (whether that’s the prologue, Chapter One, or the first scene) and closing (whether that’s the epilog, last chapter, or last scene) form a separate-but-related story or incident that “frames” the main story. Some stories have a double-frame – the story-within-a-story-within-a-frame – and you can theoretically take it down as many levels as you want, as long as you can keep it all clear for the reader.
Frame stories used to be a lot more popular than they are now. The as-told-to frame, where two characters are talking (often in a bar) and one starts telling the other the story that is the main story, got used quite a bit – supposedly, having an authority figure within the story tell a tall tale made it more believable or acceptable to the reader.
Personally, I think that the reason frame stories fell out of fashion is that it’s difficult to come up with a framing incident that is interesting enough to get the reader involved, memorable enough that when the reader gets to the end they’ll recall what’s supposed to be happening, but not such a tense cliff-hanger that the reader will scream in frustration and flip straight to the end to find out what happens.
There are, however, two kinds of frame stories that you still see every so often. The first is the prologue-epilogue frame, in which the prologue and epilogue form a separate-but-related story or incident that brackets the main story. The prologue presents a character who is going to read, write, tell, be told, or set in motion the main story, and the epilog returns to the character to give his/her reaction once the story is finished.
A frame prologue-epilog usually takes place later in time than the main story, making the bulk of the novel a sort of mega-flashback. Generally the prologue/first frame scene ends with someone leaning back and saying or thinking “So why shouldn’t I hang/courtmartial/fire/exile you?” and the person in front of him saying “Well, sir, it’s like this…” and we’re on to the start of the real story, only coming back at the end to find out if sir really did hang/courtmartial/fire/exile the tale-teller.
The main trouble with this one is that the main story needs to be very strong to compensate for the fact that we know the characters who’ve appeared in the prologue are going to survive. I’ve also seen a few of these in which the author appeared to think he/she needed an excuse to write in first-person. If that’s all the frame is, it’s probably scaffolding that can be taken down and dispensed with once the rest of the story is finished, as most of the readers I know don’t need that kind of justification for a first-person story. (And I should probably add that a story within a frame does not have to be in first-person, even when the first frame scene ends “Well, sir, it happened like this…”)
The second sort of frame story you see around a fair bit is more like one of those shadow-box frames that has multiple compartments, each containing a different picture. It’s usually used to string together a bunch of closely related short stories. If the frame story is strong enough, and does a good enough job of stitching the short stories into a coherent whole, you get what’s commonly referred to as a “fix-up novel;” if it’s not, you get something more like a short story collection with a series of introductions by the characters, like Poul Anderson’s Tales of the Flying Mountains.
A good writer can use a frame structure to reinforce or undercut the events or the theme of the main story. You can give things an unexpected or humorous twist in the final segment of the frame, revealing information about motivations or manipulations or behind-the-scenes players that nobody in the main story had. Also, the frame story does not actually have to include the protagonist of the main story; maybe the frame is the sidekick or one of the villain’s minions explaining what happened to his/her mother.
The main question to ask when considering whether to use a frame is: does it add anything significant to the story besides word count? Does it make the overall story even cooler? If it doesn’t pass the coolness test, you should probably pass on including it. On the other hand, if all the story coolness is in the frame, maybe the frame should be a story of its own. Frames are, after all, supposed to enhance what they surround, not draw all the attention to themselves.
Arthur C. Clarke had stories with the framing set in a pub. That is what held them together collectively. Isaac Asimov had a similar thing with the Black Widowers stories. I rather this use of framing.
Permit me to state that I rather like verbs in my sentences.
There was a time when fantasy stories (intended for general consumption) had to have some sort of a frame — usually a dream; they couldn’t be presented as a story in its own right.
P.G. Wodehouse ‘s early stories were all frames, told by The Oldest Member or Mr. Mulliner or … I forget who else. Often the frame would involve the listeners trying to get away before the story started.
Generally, I’m not a huge fan of frames. But I think that’s because I’ve read quite a few recently where they weren’t done well. If they are done well, then I don’t mind them as much (The Name of the Wind comes to mind)
When I read this post, I thought of The Name of the Wind, too, Tiana. That has to be one of the best books I’ve read in years. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as taken with The Wise Man’s Fear. I wonder if the frame will serve Rothfuss well as the story continues. I’m not a writer, but it seems to me that it would be limiting, or at least constraining, to use a frame before the story is completely fleshed out.
“…if all the story coolness is in the frame, maybe the frame should be a story of its own.”
This.
I haven’t read any frame stories lately, but I remember encountering a rash of them several decades ago. Several were dull, as you describe, and would have been better left off. At least one was fabulous, wholly eclipsing the story it framed. I always wanted to know more. I wasn’t angry with the author. It was better to have read the snippet that was the frame than to have never encountered it all!
Mary Gentle’s Ash. It looks like it is a random-excuse kind of frame story at first, but as you read further you realize that the frame and the story it contains are more and more intertwined, until you cannot extricate the two at all. It messes with the framing convention in all the best ways and EATS YOUR HEAD. In all the best ways.
Bujold’s Borders of Infinity has one of those “fix-up-novel” frames, yes?
I suppose the Ancient Mariner is one of the other sorts…
The Thousand and One Nights aka the Arabian Nights has frame story within story within story – at least four deep.
Some of this was necessary, some wasthe “storytellers bowl” needing to be filled before the stories could continue”.
Little Egret
Mr. Mulliner actually wasn’t very early. Wodehouse had whole notebooks full of ideas too silly to use until it dawned on him that a frame story was the perfect tool, because it doesn’t lend authority to the story, it undermines it by making us wonder about the teller.
Well, sometimes. The big use of a frame story is to position the reader relative to the story. The little boy in the Princess Bride is used to catch our skepticism and so undermine it.
Michael Flynn’s January Dancer starts out with a frame — the harper wants to learn the scarred man’s stories to write songs about them. By the end of the book, the revelations about why have made the frame as much the story as the stories.
In short form, there’s very skillful use of a frame in Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. The prolog is short enough not to delay the story, and raises no suspense of its own; the epilog unexpectedly outshines –out-shocks? — the framed story.