Splicing Time: Handling Multiple Storylines

Time is always tricky in structuring a novel, even one with a single line of action. Maybe your two sleuths split up to investigate two leads at once. In what order do you present their interviews? Because at some point you’ll need to bring them back together, and it should be in the smoothest possible way. But even more challenging is the ordering of a book with multiple timelines—two characters’ independent stories, for example, that braid together until they unite at the end. Or even a tale full of interleaved flashbacks. Put on your DJ hat, because you’ll be doing a lot of mixing.

This can be one of the strongest parts of your book … or it can be a disaster that leaves your readers confused. Let’s reflect on some of the ways you can complicate your timeline and how to carry it off.

Brief Bifurcation

That’s a fancy way to say that two (or more) characters temporarily go their separate ways, and you want to show both. These forked paths are simultaneous and don’t last long. In an hour or two, our twin investigators will get back together and pool what they’ve learned. You could just let one or both of them report, but since showing is cooler than telling, why not bifurcate? Just be aware that the order in which you show their independent moments may make it harder or not to get back into the tandem action. It’s difficult to think of an example—or to explain why one order sounds better than another—but I just encountered this problem in real-life writing. And be sure that the BB is worth the trouble. Make it an equally big scene for both characters, with a juicy contribution to their investigation. This sometimes appears as a sleuth’s action/villain’s actions divide, with the villain only progressively identified to amp up the suspense.

Extended Multiple Timelines

The operative word here is extended. This means whole chapters or even longer sections of your book that have spliced together different timelines. Time travel novels are full of this phenomenon, but there don’t have to be centuries between stories. Anytime you show several characters moving through their lives until they serendipitously encounter one another, you’ve waded ashore in the Land of EMT. Often such threads are separated by an overt Part I-Part II-Part III structure. Sometimes there’s simply a clue like a year or a protagonist’s name printed at the top of a chapter to orient the reader. These are artificial devices, but don’t be too proud to use them. Your readers will want to be oriented, believe me.

One might also include under this rubric the extended flashback. For example, “Part I” could show the protagonist as a child, witnessing or undergoing something that will impact his adult life. This is actually a pretty common device. Sometimes the flashback is no longer than a chapter, and it’s presented as a prologue. This is a little too common, for my taste, but a lot of people like it.

Interleaved Flashbacks

As we’ve seen, flashbacks can be long enough to constitute an entire part of a novel or as short as a chapter, or probably even shorter. The issue here is that they be inserted between blocks of a different storyline. Flashbacks are very popular as ways to provide a backstory without someone reporting it in the main timeline. But this reader has found they’re not always successfully used. I once read a (translated) book by a prize-winning author with a chapters-long excursus that was stuck about three-fourth’s way through a story. It was a recounting of his war experiences by a minor character who had no importance to the main plot. While the flashback was actually more interesting than the rest of the book, I came away with the annoyed sense of having spent hours trying to find my way back to the highway after an unsuccessful attempt at a shortcut. If this noted author couldn’t handle it, let the writer beware.

And that brings us to a final point for your consideration. It’s not easy to write spliced timelines. Sometimes that’s the only way to say what you have to, but sometimes it’s just a gimmick. Be sure you’re ready for it, then splice with confidence.