Structural help needed please!

[MacaroonMama]

Hi All,
I never usually post here but sometimes lurk...
Could I ask for advice about structuring some writing please? I'm writing a novella, loosely based on events that happened when I was 13/14, the key event being a dreadful accident in which several children from my school died. I have been writing it on and off for years, but cannot figure out if it should follow:
A) chronological, first person account, written from Sept-August (so a school year)
B) two narrators, the teenager, and someone else, possible a deputy head at the school, so a different perspective, same timeframe
C) first person narrator but two timeframes - one, during that school year, and the second intercut with her first year after uni living in a new city, so using sort of flashbacks

Does any of that make sense?! The genre is just straightforward fiction, I guess.

Any help very gratefully appreciated!

Oh that sounds interesting. What an awful event. No wonder you want to write about it.

I like two narrators, but both in the first person. Others do it with both in the third person, or one in each. Personally I would choose one person who'd died and one who lived/observed what happened.

I think the problem with writing about a real event is trying to stick to what actually happened when sometimes that doesn't work for the story. You will have to decide how happy you are to fictionalise some of it.

In terms of the chronology, does something happen to the narrator at university that links the two stories? If not, it's hard to see the point of showing that time period. For example, if she met someone at university that she then realised was responsible for the deaths, then you could show those two storylines in chronological order and show how they intertwine.

Are you interested in publication? I'm only asking as novellas are almost impossible to publish. If you had the two storylines you'd have enough for a novel, surely?

It sounds like all three could work.

The first would be most straightforward though possibly the most intense or claustrophobic if that's how you write it.

The other two both introduce differences (Perspective or time) and hence possibly complexity and richness or the ability to allow the reader additional insight into the character and events though possibly at the cost of pacing?

It's difficult to say as some much will depend on how you write it.

I'd write the first chapter (or two if POV alternates across chapters) in the different styles and see which works best or feels more natural.

Hollow, has the era of KDP riches from novellas passed (Were any of Wool, The Martian, Villanelle novellas? Presumably they were published some time ago?). If so, how unfortunate, there goes my easy route to a fortune.

I think they could all work, but C. would lend itself to more narrative possibilities, particularly the opportunity for your protagonist to reflect from a distance on what happened, or possibly to introduce some irony into the then and now contrasts.

If your framing narrative was the post-university timescale, this would also free you from having to relate the school events chronologically, which would give you opportunities to include tension and suspense to draw your reader in and would mean you could place the accident at the centre of the novel or at its climax.

It sounds really interesting and I'd definitely want to read it based on the information you've given so far. Best of luck.

Thank you all so much, you are asking exactly the questions I needed to think about!

I think A would make it intense yes but also a bit one-note. B would be harder for me as I have fallen into writing this in the first person as it is based on real events. I like the idea of using C to structure it so that the accident happens in the middle of the book, but yes I can see I need something to tie the past and present together.

It is also true that it is hard to write about because I feel disloyal changing what happened to fit a story, it feels like the real events are sort of sacred because it was so awful - yet I also really feel I need to write about it, and have written chunks already (only about 10,000 words and not quite chronologically).

In real life, the only tie between past and present is that at Uni, I made friends and had a brief but quite intense relationship with someone who turned out to be the cousin of one of the girls who had died - he is half hidden in a photo in the section about her in a memorial book one of our teachers made, so that felt strange.

Thanks for the positive comments, I feel this could be unethical in a way to write about, but I would not make anything up about those who died or anything like that. It was also long ago enough that I think would be ok (early 90s).

Re: novella- I think it would be novel-sized really, it just scares me saying novel!

Thanks again all. I may share some of what I have if anyone would be interested?

I don't think it's unethical at all - from what you say, this is about your experience and reaction to the tragedy, rather than anyone else's, so it is your story to write. Part of your reaction will be the 'what ifs' that form the basis of fiction - so there is nothing wrong with changing events to make this work as a story.

The intense relationship you mention sounds like it has lots of dramatic potential.

I'd love to see some your draft when you are comfortable sharing it.

Hi again all,
Just wanted to say thanks for all help and advice and thoughts. I am trying writing in the C option, with the older and younger narrators, and that seems to be working in terms of structure.
I haven't contacted anyone from the time, but when researching found interviews with some of the parents, on newspapers online. I am going to contact the old Hesd of the school too, to see if all the telegrams and letters of condolences were kept (I remember putting them into ring binders the days following the accident), as I think they would help shape things.

I will post when ready to share a bit more - thanks so much again everyone xx