Frame Story
(Source: wikipedia.org)
A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc.) is a narrative technique whereby an introductory main story is composed, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage for a fictive narrative or organizing a set of shorter stories, each of which is a story within a story. The frame story leads readers from the first story into the smaller one within it.
As with all literary conceits, the frame tale has many variations, some clearly within the confines of the conceit, some on the border, and some pushing the boundaries of understanding. The main goal of a frame tale is as a conceit which can adequately collect otherwise disparate tales. It has been mostly replaced, in modern literature, by the short story collection or anthology absent any authorial conceit.
To be a frame narrative, the story must act primarily as an occasion for the telling of other stories. If the framing narrative has primary or equal interest, then it is not usually a frame narrative. For example, Odysseus narrates much of the Odyssey to the Phaeacians, but, even though this recollection forms a great part of the poem, the events after and before the interpolated recollection are of greater interest than the memory.
Another notable example of this approach can be seen in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire (adapted from the 2005 novel Q and A), about a poor street kid Jamal coming close to winning Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) and then being suspected of cheating. Most of the story is narrated at a police station by Jamal, who narrates how he knew the answers to the questions as the show is played back on video. The show itself then serves as another framing device, as Jamal sees flashbacks of his past as each question is asked. The last portion of the film then unfolds without any narrator.
Joseph Conrad's "A Heart of Darkness" demonstrates a narrator telling a story, while the protagonist is quoted so as to give the framed appearance that he is telling the story. The narrator provides the transition to the one speaking the story.
A famous literary example is Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, whereby we learn events through a visitor to the house of the title, who in turn has been told these events by the housekeeper of the Linton family. None of the main characters ever directly narrates.
Frame stories are found in many computer role playing games, such as the early Dragon Quest IV, released in 1990. This literary device can also be sparingly used to achieve secondary ends. For instance, the Shining Force series of RPGs use narrators within frame stories to implement things like starting, saving and exiting the game without breaking the fourth wall entirely, or rather by constructing a second fourth wall to shield the player from having to suspend his/her disbelief as much