Top Down or Bottom Up?

[AndyC]

Discuss @David Flin 's latest article here

 

[Tabac Iberez]

Honestly, I've never seen very many coherent arguments for a bottom up development of a timeline for a novel. It'll work elsewhere, but when you're trying to fit the story to the world and not vice versa it tends to produce issues and hangups.

 

[Redolegna]

I guess extemporary story-telling - of the sort parents do with bedtime stories - is the classic example of bottom up story-telling. "Daddy, is Pwff going to be in the story?" "Funny you should mention that."

I tend to regard epics such as the Iliad this way. And what did our absolute awesome hero/father of the city do, good Homer? He was there, right? right?

There might be evidence contradicting this, and I absolutely do not want to hear or see it.

 

[Alex Richards]

I've no idea about Homer and the Iliad, but I have vague recollections of my sister-in-law, who worked at Jorvik, who explained about how Nordic bards memorised huge epics for telling, which basically involved remembering the milestones of the story, some stock footage of assorted bits to shove in as appropriate, and a lot of blagging in between.

Doesn't surprise me in the least. Everyone remembers the bit of Beowulf where he tear's Grendel's arm off. Not many people particularly care exactly what treasures he was given.

 

[Tabac Iberez]

I've no idea about Homer and the Iliad, but I have vague recollections of my sister-in-law, who worked at Jorvik, who explained about how Nordic bards memorised huge epics for telling, which basically involved remembering the milestones of the story, some stock footage of assorted bits to shove in as appropriate, and a lot of blagging in between.

This eerily matches my experiences as someone who had to preform ceremonial stories. Make the meter and lyric devices happen, memorize the keynote gestures, and then practice not freezing via delivery of blag. As long as you don't freeze up in delivery, you can do whatever you want really.