An Author's Sidebar

[Peg Herring]

We're all interested in something, and often it shows in our writing. Sometimes it fascinates the reader to learn what we know about history, technology, philosophy or whatever. Other times we wonder where the editor was when this author got sidetracked. The story-within-a-story is a device that authors seem to like but this reader finds irritating.

I'm reading a really good thriller in which the action frequently stops so that a character can tell a serial-type story. There is no way this story can have anything to do with the plot. It isn't foreshadowing or revealing character. It goes on for three or four pages at a time. I try to hold onto a faint hope that there's a reason for it, but I find myself skipping ahead to where real people again take center stage and we leave the cartoonish inner-story characters behind.

It happens that in another book I'm reading (this one's in the bedroom) a major character is an author, so there are segments where her stories are laid into the narrative. Again, I hope that they are meant to do something for the overall plot, but so far they don't, and I am not really interested. I'd rather get on with the main story.

I'm sure these authors thought the inner story had a purpose, and maybe I'm just slow to pick up on it. If the books turn Dickins-like and every scrap of sub-narrative has a reason for being there, I'll admit my mistake. But I bet that even then I'll wish the sidebars had been shorter, fewer, and better integrated with the whole.