Underway Again On Another Twisted Path

 
Today I wrote the first 521 words of my new novel project, which I will refer to as "Sigils".
 
Those first 500 words have been a long time coming. I wrote the first notes for this novel back in July of 2005. Which makes it one of my earliest ideas for a "post-modern, nonlinear" story–more than a year before I structured and wrote The Summoning Fire.
 
The Summoning Fire was built in the shape of a spiral, four storylines spinning out (both forward in time and backward) from a single, explosive event. (You can read more about that here.)
 
Sigils was built as parallel lines. The beginning of the first storyline is the end of the second, with both storylines told in parallel. Unlike The Summoning Fire, though, the parallel storylines both go forward. The viewpoint switches back and forth–then, about halfway through, forth and back.
 
I blame the movie Memento for making me see the possibilities of oddly structured stories. There are other examples of convoluted storylines, of course. Like Twelve Monkees and Sliding Doors and Slaughterhouse Five. So it's not like I'm inventing anything new here. Nonlinear stories go way back. But I find them fun and challenging.
 
Hopefully that's what Sigils will be: Fun and challenging. And, hopefully, my readers won't get too lost at the beginning.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
How I Built The Summoning FireThe Origin of Nasty, Brutish & Short ShortNano Plotting