Novels that span years

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slhuang

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So I'm working on a novel right now that will span about 20 years in the protagonist's life. And I'm struggling a bit with how to structure it. The longest fictional time a novel of mine (published or unpublished) has ever covered is a few months, and most have only run about a week of fictional time -- I tend to write pretty linearly without big gaps. Even the novels over a span of months I've written were pretty easy time skips, because they were "quest" books so I could gloss over a few weeks of the journey and still have a direction.

But this book is supposed to be more like a tale of the main character's life. A bit biographical, I suppose? There is definitely an arc to the story, and I've written a full synopsis that (I think) makes sense, but unlike a quest/journey where the reader sometimes has an idea what the next goalpost is, I feel like I'm trying to fit a lot of more isolated scenes into a broader arc. And I'm having some trouble with how to bridge them and not get too mired in any particular year of the character's life (or if I SHOULD get mired in particular years and then skip between them? IDK). I'm also not sure how to show the necessary character development that happens slowly over years without showing, well, everything, which would be more than tedious. ;)

Does anybody have any recommendations for how to approach this, or any book references you can throw my way that do something similar? (Preferably SFF.) I'm determined to figure this out as I like challenging myself with new structures and styles -- I always feel it improves me as a writer. :D

TIA!

eta: It's just occurred to me upon writing this that maybe real-life biographical or memoir books are what I should try to look at. Hmm!

eta2: Someone just mentioned Jane Eyre to me off-board, which is, yeah, exactly the sort of book I mean -- I knew I must've read some!
 
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cornflake

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I'm trying to think of some of SFF that do that - don't some of the Ender's (the later ones)? I seem to recall decades going by before I dropped out.

In a general sense, you might use whatever's a touchstone in your world? Like 'by the time that Christmas had come, he'd grown three new webbed feet, but a year later, there were only four socks, despite his now nine-footed stampede down the stairs to the tree.'

A personal touchstone could work too - birthday, some random personal milestone or something that a character could reflect back on to show the passage of time (not believing how long it'd been since the aliens took grandma), or what have you.
 

Kylabelle

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I just finished a book that does that with multiple characters, in fact. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. She pulls off quite a few amazing moves. I won't say much because pretty much anything I could say would be a spoiler, but basically several characters are depicted both before and after a catastrophic epidemic that destroys civilization and kills lots of people. When I first saw she was going to be working with flashbacks (before and after the disease) I was a little disappointed as usually I don't enjoy that treatment, but pretty quickly I was drawn in.

It might not at all work for what you're considering, but I thought I'd mention it. Worth reading anyway.

ETA: The timespan is just about 20 years, too, as I recall.
 

Niccolo

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Wide Sargasso Sea and NOS4A2 are the only two that come to mind. I may think of more later.
 

benbradley

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For the other extreme, there's "Time Enough For Love" which covers, more or less, the 2,000 year life of Lazarus Long (who was born with another name and has had yet other names during his life). The MC was featured in other Heinlein books, I forget offhand but online bibliographies surely tell which ones. He tells about homesteading on some new planet, and it reads just like heading out to the Old West in the USA. He lives in some town for many decades, and he writes about, as time goes by, daily applying makeup to make himself look older, so as not to arouse suspicion that his looks haven't aged.
 

Niccolo

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While I haven't read it myself, I believe The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson qualifies as well.
 

lianna williamson

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The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. It has a funky structure, with alternating chapters following two story arcs: the first beginning with the MC's birth and following the 40+ years of his life until he sets off on a historic mission; and the second following the mission itself.
 

slhuang

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Wow, thanks everyone! This is very very helpful. :D

And some of these I've heard lots of good things about but didn't realize they were this form! Much appreciated!
 

Jamesaritchie

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I've read short stories that covered a billion years. Novels use all sorts of structure for covering many years, ranging from a new chapter that begins, Five years later, to a different section or "book" for each jump in time. There is no right or wrong way, there's only how you think it works best for your particular story.
 

onesecondglance

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I think these types of stories lend themselves well to unusual structures. Have you read Iain M Banks' Use Of Weapons? The story takes place over a number of decades, with multiple strands moving at once. Aside from just being stunningly well written, it's a great example of how to show how events in the protagonist's past affect their future (and I won't say any more for fear of spoilers).
 

Bufty

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I just want to follow and understand what I'm reading.

Structure it as you think fit.
 

flapperphilosopher

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If you're still looking for reccomendations, East of Eden by Steinbeck is a good one (albeit not SFF). It starts when this fellow Adam is a kid and ends when his sons are 18/19. There's a lot of time skips. Sometimes the events of that time are briefly summarized (eg. he was in the army for four years, then had nothing better to do so joined up again for another four [not an exact summary of what happens]). Other times the general situation of things in that time is shown through the characters' present feelings and relationships. For instance, Adam is left with twin infants when his wife leaves him, and we dwell on the reaction for a bit. Then we skip ahead to when the twins are like 9. We learn very quickly that Adam has taken care of them but been very distant and unaffectionate, because one of the twins is just desperate to earn his affection, and thinks longingly of the occasional times when he sits close to Adam, and Adam, without thinking about it, absently strokes his head, and the boy just lives for those times. Though we didn't see anything from years 1-8 of his life, it's clear the way those years shaped his character and established key relationships (also including the one with his brother, which is very relevant to the story).
 

harmonyisarine

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Any I could think of off the top of my head were listed above, but I would like to add that I'm doing this in WIP as well. For mine, the entire story is backstory to another WIP I have and, in the actual world of the later story, this one has quickly become myth and legend. I wanted to reflect that legendary feel so I figured out which parts of the story matched that mood (your chosen mood may be very different) and then which parts of the story would support or contrast with that mood. Those became my touchstone events, and I really just skim through or skip all the times in between. It's still too long, but that slimmed it up by more than half.

This structure really worked with my story and style, and produced the first draft of that WIP that really worked for me and a few readers from a writing group.
 

Tazlima

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Lightning by Dean Koontz.

IMO its his best work and it covers approx. the same amount of time as your story. It follows the MC from her birth to her twenties or early thirties (I don't remember how old she is at the end of the book, but she's on the young end of adulthood).

I know Koontz is marketed as a horror author, but Lightning was really much more sci-fi than horror.

ETA:
Clan of the Cave Bear also follows a character from early childhood to adulthood, and Roots does it not once, but repeatedly. Oh, and A Prayer for Owen Meany too. Now that I think about it, there are lots of them!
 
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Roxxsmom

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Hmm, so if it takes place over 20 years, I assume there will be places in the narrative that skip months or years of the action?

There are so many ways to do this, depending on how it's structured.

If it's first person or omniscient, it's pretty easy to have the narrator sum up a block of skipped time.

The next ten years passed uneventfully. I thought about Bob sometimes, but mostly I got on with my life. I got married to a guy I met in Chemistry class, and we had two kids. Then we got divorced, and single motherhood took over my life. So when I was in the store with the kids two weeks after my Son's sixth birthday, I didn't even notice the guy standing in line next to me at the checkout counter, let alone recognize him, until he said my name... [cut to scene where she and Bob are reunited]

I think it's a bit harder in a deeper third, though the narrative time summary might be a good place to pull out to a more zoomed out pov for a transitional paragraph.
 

slhuang

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Whee, thank you so much for all the continued ideas! This has given me plenty of things to think about. I've actually read a number of the books mentioned and just . . . couldn't think of them for some reason . . . and they're all different styles and structures so this is really helping! :D

Thanks so much, guys. I'm not feeling blocked about this anymore at all -- these pokes in the brain pan you all have given me were exactly what I needed! SO many thanks; this board is invaluable. :partyguy:
 

kelliewallace

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My current WIP spans 70 decades. To conquer this, Ive broken the novel into parts. It might work for my novel but it may not work for yours. Good luck!
 

JRBrule

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Slhuang, check out The Time Traveler's Wife. The story takes place over decades of time without ever losing the feeling of a burning passion. I'm not normally one for romance, but I love sci-fi and the paranormal, so the time traveling aspect appealed to me. And, admittedly, it made me cry more than I'd like to say.

Here it is on Amazon if you decide you'd like to read it: http://tinyurl.com/p4e7cg8
 

kwanzaabot

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I actually registered just so I could throw my hat into the ring on this one. I'm working on a novel right now that does this exact thing. It's a sci-fi novel about a spaceship crew travelling 200 light-years in the space of about 20 years. With the exception of the pilot, the whole crew spends most of the journey in suspended animation, only waking up every few years so the suspended animation doesn't kill them (too bad about all that lovely cancer-causing radiation floating around in space, though). The story itself takes the form of a series of vignettes that occur whenever some or all of them are awake, and documents the pilot's loosening grip on reality, thanks to the isolation.
 

Sumi Long

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Also doing this with my novel. It can always be tricky to figure out the pacing.
 

Fantomas

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Personally, I've always had mixed feelings about novels that span several years. There are some that I like, but in general, I prefer ones with a tighter time frame. The stories I write are all in a short time frame, usually one-two weeks at most.

That being said, I feel novels can achieve this better than film. If a film shows the progression of many years, it can feel rushed and that we didn't get to know the characters enough. Whereas in a novel, the story is more intimate and we are able to get inside the character's head and age with them.
 
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