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How (and Why!) to Write a Multiple-Timeline Story
Here’s the nightmare scenario: you write a novel with more than one timeline, because… whatever (we’ll talk more about that in a moment). The reader picks it up, chooses their preferred timeline, and skips the other(s) altogether.
Ack. How can you tell a story that’s clearly best told with multiple timelines — and that keeps the reader’s attention equally throughout both?
The short answer is easy to say and difficult as hell to pull off: you need to convince the reader there’s a good reason for telling the story the way you have, that you’re enabling them to see how past and present inform each other and — if they’re very fortunate — to glimpse both past and future at once.
The first question to ask, of course, is why you want to write multiple timelines. Is this a story that can only be told through two sets of eyes, through two timelines? Sometimes the past is just the past and doesn’t enrich the present story; at other times, it can add texture and meaning and lift a story’s purpose. You need to be able to discern which is which.
A multiple (usually dual) timeline story isn’t simply about era-jumping. The past and the present need to work together in tandem. What is the novel really about, on a deep level? What’s the story that connects the two timeframes? The past has to be at…
