Zach Wilson--Outside Reading 3

Heart of Darkness is a novel which is written from the author's perspective and experience.  Joseph Conrad, the author, was a pilot of a Belgian Congo steamboat.   Conrad's experiences on the river led to the development of characters.  This technique was used by Lewis in The Space Trilogy, where he wrote himself into the storyline of Perelandra, and sets the story of That Hideous Strength in academia, with which Lewis was well-acquainted.
The frame narrative is also a technique employed in Heart of Darkness as well as in Lewis' work.  The use of a frame narrative is the placement of a story within another story.  The frame narrative is utilized as a backdrop for the entirety of the Narnia series, as Lewis implies that he knew of Narnia's events after Susan told him the stories.  This utilization of story within a story creates a certain reality, that the story that is being read or explained has an origin which can then be explained by yet another story.  This is a technique which has been used in many stories, and most notably in the recent film Inception.