A Writer's Notebook, Day Eight-Hundred-And--Seventy-Six

I keep returning to this idea I have for a longer work of fiction, but it is still quite nebulous.  It involves exploring the way the same story can be told in different settings, with changes in the people and places, even aspects of genre and the nature of the fictional reality.  For example, one can translate a fairy tale into a modern setting, or recast a drama of one period as a science fiction epic of the future.  This has me wondering how one might connect different stories into one, where it is clear, despite the same types of changes in setting and such, that underneath it is part of the same narrative structure, that the details are just shifting metaphors to do with a single story beneath it all.  Of course, I am also imagining more to it than this, and an idea of a story that would necessitate, or at least be best explored, with such a device.  I have a concept that is taking shape, but am not quite ready to discuss that at the moment.  

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