A while ago (around 14 years ago!) I started writing a short story inspired by the Mariah Carey Christmas song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Â Through the years the story has stuck with me and every once in a while I reread it or added a little bit to it. Â I have always really liked the story though it isn’t quite how I want it to be…it’s not quite finished. Â As we are getting closer to the holiday season, I have started to think about this story again and had a (brilliant????) idea to make it a frame story (or a story within a story) but I have never really done anything like that before.
Any tips or suggestions for writing a frame story? Â I don’t have much time to devote to this project right now, but I would like to work on it…especially since it is the Christmas season! Â It’s actually a little harder to do than I thought it would be. Â I think that it will make the story much longer than it was originally. Â I’m trying to find the balance of how much of each story to tell.
~Melissa 🙂
Melissa Morris Inoa🌱 
I don’t think you need to worry so much about the balance, as long as all the stories are complete. I just have one book in my mind right now, and it is a Romanian one. The author starts the main story in the first chapter, continues with the other included stories in the subsequent chapters and only in the last one he returns to the main story to frame everything up. But I would think you can mix it however you want. I like that technique a lot and I love the Mariah Carey song. Good luck with the story.
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Try not to make the stories overly similar. Obviously, the stories will inform each other, but it can be a little grating when the story within is too parallel to the main story. Let them be thematically similar, just don’t make it seem like the same story is being told twice.
I trust your instincts in writing, but just something i see often when someone is trying write a story within a story.
Russell
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