Y'know, you've hit an important nail on the head there. The difference between linearity and non-linearity in writing. It's like jazz: polycentric. About 40 years ago I read a book about jazz dancing. The author emphasised mainly the polycentric nature of jazz dance. Lots of different elements are working at the same time, the bass, the lead, the percussion. The human body moving in the surrounding space following the multiplicity of the groove. When this polycentricity is employed in writing it always makes my experience as a reader more exciting. I remember the first book of yours, Toby, that I read was Beatniks. I loved the layering of the English characters' story over the exposed skeleton of Jack Kerouac's road trip. Also, I think of Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg. Several of the characters are jugglers, travelling on the road, performing their juggling act as their main livelihood. There's a great symbolic contrast between the line of the road stretching away into the distance (stay on the path Hansel and Gretel!) and the multiplicity of the juggling act, grabbing whatever is thrown at you from many directions and taking control of the object's momentum, adjusting the spin, re-directing everything into the planet-like dance of the odd assortment thus formed.
Am I rambling on? Yes, I am.
Anyway, I always try to embrace the non-linear groove in a story I'm writing. For the fun of it, mainly, even if it may not make sense to a possible readership. I've always loved Iain M. Banks' writing for his ability to make a whole bunch of stuff happen all at the same time from different directions.
I think obstacles are like one of those management initiative tests where the players are given a bunch of useless objects which just get in their way and they have to find some way of turning these objects to their advantage.
Y'know, you've hit an important nail on the head there. The difference between linearity and non-linearity in writing. It's like jazz: polycentric. About 40 years ago I read a book about jazz dancing. The author emphasised mainly the polycentric nature of jazz dance. Lots of different elements are working at the same time, the bass, the lead, the percussion. The human body moving in the surrounding space following the multiplicity of the groove. When this polycentricity is employed in writing it always makes my experience as a reader more exciting. I remember the first book of yours, Toby, that I read was Beatniks. I loved the layering of the English characters' story over the exposed skeleton of Jack Kerouac's road trip. Also, I think of Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg. Several of the characters are jugglers, travelling on the road, performing their juggling act as their main livelihood. There's a great symbolic contrast between the line of the road stretching away into the distance (stay on the path Hansel and Gretel!) and the multiplicity of the juggling act, grabbing whatever is thrown at you from many directions and taking control of the object's momentum, adjusting the spin, re-directing everything into the planet-like dance of the odd assortment thus formed.
Am I rambling on? Yes, I am.
Anyway, I always try to embrace the non-linear groove in a story I'm writing. For the fun of it, mainly, even if it may not make sense to a possible readership. I've always loved Iain M. Banks' writing for his ability to make a whole bunch of stuff happen all at the same time from different directions.
I think obstacles are like one of those management initiative tests where the players are given a bunch of useless objects which just get in their way and they have to find some way of turning these objects to their advantage.