Date: 2018-02-19 11:59 pm (UTC)
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
From: [personal profile] igenlode
Let the readers think Raoul's dead--it will come as a welcome surprise when they learn he's alive.

I don't know that I can -- I don't know how to write it out of order. I can conjure up Raoul sitting there in his lifeboat at dawn thinking back over the events of the wreck that caused the current situation, but I can't picture myself writing a massive flashback that starts off with him safely ashore in the Arctic. Hmm. Or maybe I can... maybe he's spending an uncomfortable night in cramped accommodation, and that makes him think of uncomfortable nights in the boat, and that makes him think of how he ended up in the boat (which is what the readers are presumably going to be immediately puzzled by, if he has been presumed dead for six or seven chapters....)
I think you'd potentially run into the same problem that I had with In Regret, Always, where the flashback extends over multiple chapters beyond the scope of the framing device; how do you get neatly 'back to the present' and then continue on from where you started?

Or I try to do a Tolkien, and restart the story with a second set of characters back when the first set originally parted company with them. (I seem to recall that Tolkien actually starts off his Frodo-and-Sam segment with them meeting Gollum later on, set up by a bit of flashback/summary explaining that an intervening week or so has passed in trying to cross the hills!) The main trouble I can see with that approach is how you establish that the story has done a 'rewind', and how you make the jump back seem neat and credible -- short of actually writing 'Book IV", "Book V" etc.

The other thing that worries me about both scenarios is the idea of the story feeling like a 'cheat' rather than a big reveal -- coming across after such a long delay as if I've suddenly decided to change my plot and rewrite the past to make Raoul magically alive after all, having run out of ideas, rather than having genuinely intended for him to survive all along :-(

I really don't know. I'm flip-flopping all over the place at the moment.
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igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
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