The Shroud Underground

I need a framing device for my short story collection/MA thesis, which is due at the end of the fall semester. I have a novelette about an author having nightmares, then a potential novella about a traumatized Iraq war vet with a split personality, and a whole mess of short stories all happening in the same town. Any suggestions? Goofy ones appreciated, serious ones good, too.

Is it too cliched to play with the metafictional aspect of writing: IE, writing fiction taps into another reality, ALA Peter Straub, and then somehow connect it to my vet with a split personality? Trying to do something that's f interest to ME, without being cliched, also.

The good thing is, it's not something I'd try to pitch anywhere, anytime soon, just for my MA thesis.

Can you frame them with the theme of psychological illness or the "dysfunctional mind?" or something like that? Or, you can alter the novelettes and set them in the same town as the short stories and have the location be the theme...

Just off the top of my head....

shroud wrote:Can you frame them with the theme of psychological illness or the "dysfunctional mind?"

That's what I believe I'm going for, the trick, I think, is being very deft at hiding this. I don't want readers guessing by chapter two: "Oh, look....these are different parts of the same mind."

Anyone see Identity, with John Cusak? That one had me going, right until the very end. That's what I need to do, just start writing, and as the story flows to the top, look for the best way to arrange things so things will be concealed...without readers ever knowing something is not there.