Writing a Dual Timeline Novel Across Continents

When I started writing The Forgotten Midwife, I knew I wasn’t just writing one story. I was writing two stories separated by decades, an ocean, and approximately 10,000 family secrets.

For me, dual timeline stories are a writer’s dream. The scope is endless. One chapter, a character is lost in New York City with an iced coffee in one hand and Google Maps in the other, yelling at her to turn right at the corner. The next, another character is standing in 1954 County Tipperary where everyone knows her business, nobody talks about feelings, and if the local priest catches her alone with a man, her parents will know about it before she has time to let go of his hand. Different worlds. Very different problems. Still human. Still drama.

(The Back in Time Job.)

And I think that’s what makes dual timeline novels so compelling. Often, they feel less like two separate stories and more like one long conversation happening across generations and locations. Even if neither character knows of the other, the reader does and that’s a power. The reader can spot and grab hold of that early thread that might tie these stories together in the end. The fun comes when you create lots of knots that must be unraveled first mwahahaha (imagine me with elbows on my desk tapping my fingertips together with an evil smirk—then, I have to do the school run)!

Start with emotional contrast. One of the easiest ways to make dual timelines feel vivid is to lean into how differently each world operates. In present day New York, life moves fast. People are busy, distracted, and constantly connected to technology. Families can live 10 miles or 10,000 miles apart. Either is no big deal, someone is hopping on a train or on a plane for a visit.

But rural Ireland in the 1950s is an entirely different thing. Community is unavoidable. Privacy barely exists. Reputation matters. The Church matters. Your neighbors know when you leave the house, where you went, and probably what you were wearing when you got there. And as for an ocean separating family? That almost certainly meant a permanent goodbye.

The more emotional contrast there is between your timelines and sense of place, the more satisfying it becomes when the stories begin echoing one another.

My favorite part of writing dual timelines is figuring out what carries across generations. Sometimes it’s something huge, like a secret, a betrayal, a missing person. But other times it’s much smaller. A recipe. A phrase. A letter tucked into a drawer. These little details matter because they remind us that history doesn’t stay neatly in the past. Families carry it with them. Across oceans. Across decades. Across generations of people insisting they are ‘absolutely nothing like their mother’ while behaving exactly like their mother.

Treat each timeline like its own character. This is where a setting of different continents becomes such a useful tool. Lean into each location as if you’re trying to transport your reader to that exact time and place. Just as your characters have unique personalities, your settings should too. Give each location its own voice—sights, sounds, tastes, and rhythms. You want your reader to follow your story, sure. But if you can make them feels as if they’ve lived it too, then you’re doing something right.

The New Jersey chapters in The Forgotten Midwife feel quicker and more immediate. The Tipperary chapters feel quieter on the surface, but there’s enormous pressure simmering underneath every interaction. Even the pacing is different. The dialogue and sentence structure can subtly shift depending on where, and when, you are in the story. No one wants to hear their historical character say ‘six, seven!’ Although, honestly, do present day character’s want to hear this either?

I think the best dual timeline novels have some kind of question sitting at the center. A disappearance. A family secret. Something intriguing that when your present-day character pauses her life to dash across the world on a whim in search of answers, your readers are ready and willing to go along for the ride.

The historical timeline shows us how the wound was created. The modern timeline shows us what happened afterwards. And one of the greatest joys of writing dual timelines is knowing the reader will eventually start connecting the dots before your protagonist does. There is truly nothing more satisfying than a reader gasping, WAIT… THAT’S WHO THAT IS, while you sit at your desk feeling a little smug.

And honestly, that’s the magic of it for me. Because at the heart of every dual timeline novel is the same idea; no matter where we are in the world, or when we lived there, in the end we are all simply human, aren’t we?