What is a suite of stories? That seems to be the question of the day. I’m preparing my preliminary application to begin the doctoral journey. I’ve been studying by distance for many years and as such my collection of academic books, journals and articles is astronomical. I have, a somewhat limited, access to the online journal JStor (2020), a parting gift from Macquarie University, and was able to search Google Scholar, but do you think I can find a definition to use as a reference for what is a suite of stories?

Not on your nelly!

So, here’s what it is for me and my research.

A suite of stories is a collection of stories:

• Some will be the size of vignettes,
• some will be 1000-words or more.
• A suite of stories can have a theme they explore, with each story being different, or,
• they can be the same story narrated by different actors, such as protagonist, or deuteragonist.

1. The story suite I am writing is one story told from the protagonists point-of-view (This may alter during the course of my research).
2. For each story one aspect will alter, so I can examine how that aspect of the story affects the way in which my protagonist a) views the world, and b) participates in it.

This is how I define a suite of stories: A suite of stories is a collection of short stories between 100 500+ to 1000+ words in length. Each is based on the same plot, and inciting incident, with the same primary characters in each story (Eastland 2020).

For my research I intend on removing certain characters in different iterations of the same story to examine what, if any, affect their removal has on the plot, character and setting of the stories.

Note: The above definition will likely alter and change the more I research my chosen field. All updates will be numbered and date so you can see how this idea of a suite of stories morphs during, until the completion of, my PhD.

To reference this blog post:

Eastland K, 2020, Suite of stories, https://writingurban.com/2020/10/26/suite-of-stories/

Bibliography:

CQU 2017, Master of letters, viewed 26 Oct 2020, https://cqu.edu.au

Eastland 2019, Gone but not forgotten, viewed 26 Oct 2020, https://writingurban.com/2020/07/01/writing-urban

Eastland 2020, Life is the darkness, Eastland Publishing House, Tasmania.

Google Scholar 2020, Google scholar, viewed 26 Oct 2020, https://scholar.google.com

JStor 2020, JStor, viewed 26 Oct 2020, https://www.jstore.com

LiteraryTerms 2020, Vignette, viewed 26 Oct 2020, http://www.literaryterms.net