Using Framing Devices

“He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.”

An elderly man corners a guest at a wedding and enthralls him with a strange tale. In the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the scene with the Mariner and the guest is a framing device. It “frames” the poem at the beginning and again at the end. Think of a framing device as a passageway to the main narrative. Framing devices are also called  “bookends.” They appear in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, television, and films.

Writers often use framing devices as a contrast to the main narrative in format, style, or tone. The most common type of framing device is the flashback, in which the narrator or character tells the story that makes up the rest of the work. Framing devices can also be:

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• A single word, image, or quotation
• News articles
• Letters, emails, or text messages
• Log or journal entries
• Dreams or visions
• An interview
  

As with any literary device, writers should have a solid reason for framing a story. Framing devices can set up an unreliable narrator, create suspense or mystery, or counter readers’ likely objections to the story or reactions to a character. A framing device can also illustrate a shift in perspective due to time passing or how much a character has (or hasn’t) changed because of the events in the story. Think about how the framing devices in the book (and movie) The Princess Bride or the television show How I Met Your Mother build on and inform the rest of the narrative.

When the Mariner finishes his story, we return to the wedding celebration, where the guest has been shaken by what he's heard. 

“He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.”

Sometimes, the events of the main story resonate, changing not only the protagonist but the characters in the framing device as well.