everything falls apart — author’s note

First off: I lied.

I said in an earlier post that I intended to approach this story as a challenge in experimentation with epistolary storytelling.

I started with the best of intentions, but then things took on a life of their own once I started developing and writing this story. There is significant daylight between what I said I was going to do and what it has become.

“Everything Falls Apart” is not epistolary. Not really.

It is more “salvage” fiction.

That is to say that the story is all about digging into found communications and information — a bit here, a piece there — and then bringing the whole mess to the surface to recover a story. It might not feel complete, but you get enough to extrapolate the rest.

In playing around with how to develop EFA, it became clear that it might work best to have it framed from a single point of view. I decided that it would be Alice’s, filtered through a “caretaker” character (going by the handle a_boojum), and pulled from her phone. Instead of messages coming from a bunch of different sources and changing the POV based on the message or email, the story is (mostly) only what is on Alice’s phone.

A few housekeeping details:

You might be a tad confused due to the nonlinear nature of the serial if you are just joining.

The intended reading order is in a separate table of contents. I’d start there if you want to catch up.

The posts when viewed on the original site navigate forward and back at the bottom of the entry, should you want to read it like a book in the intended order. The Jetpack App renders the site via a redirect to a nonstandard browser. If that does not function as intended, return to the TOC to navigate.

On structure:

Headlines carry the timestamp of the original item. Dates jump around and show month and time but no year. This is intentional.

Almost everything in brackets is a_boojum’s, not Alice’s. His notes, image and video descriptions, and transcription guesses. His longer notes are signed.

The rough edges are intentional. Typos, shorthand, emoji, deleted messages, and drafts that were never sent are all preserved as found parts of Alice’s life.

~x~x~x~

As always, I appreciate your continued readership, as well as your comments.

Feel free to comment either below or at the end of one of the story’s posts. Thanks!