Writing Dual-Timeline Stories That Readers Love
Author Stefanie Koens shares her approach to writing dual-timeline stories that readers love to keep them coming back for more.
Dual-timeline stories are notoriously difficult to write—and justifiably so, since they ask a lot of a writer. Readers want to feel like they are part of a bigger story, a story that makes them care about—and relate to—the past. But they also want complexity and subtlety. Deep and flawed characters. Breadcrumb plots that make them focus and try to piece information together themselves. Readers want times, places, and events that feel like they are happening in raw and real-time, even if they are set 400 years ago.
All of this, I did not achieve in my first attempt at a novel of this kind. In fact, my first piece of feedback was particularly scathing. I was told that my draft failed "to use the potential in two powerful story lines in more than a mildly interesting way.”
It was tough to swallow, but it forced me to redefine how I approached crafting this kind of story, and I’ve listed some of those steps below in the hope that it helps someone else in their dual-timeline storytelling journey.
Think of timelines like a braid.
In my initial attempt, the historical setting formed the main strand while the contemporary setting around was no more than a few hairs wrapped loosely around it. This meant that certain scenes and events were either too thin or too wobbly, or both. The braid certainly wasn’t even or neat.
Both timelines are important, or you wouldn’t be writing about them. Make sure each strand of the braid is strong and full and healthy-looking. The time for thinning out will be later, but that’s much easier to do if there’s lots of hair in each strand to begin with!
List every event in the past and present timelines.
I realized that in my first attempt, my past timeline held all the action-packed and gripping narratives, while my present timeline was more emotional and psychological. Neither was more trivial than the other, but it was important that I created balance.
Compare the past and present events side by side and think about creating connection between them where you can. If there’s tension in the past, create some sort of tension in the present. If there’s a flashback in the past, mirror one in the present.
I like to make a table in Word, a visual representation of the plot in chapters, because that helps ensure each timeline makes sense and stands on its own merit. It also helps me to more easily identify pacing issues or places where the overall story might lack cohesion.
Figure out what kind of braid you want.
Braids come in all shapes and sizes. Some require two sections, others require three. Some braids are flipped inside out and upside down. Find whichever style works for you and get to braiding. For me, I eventually discovered that having three main points of view (three sections) helped to create the fullest version of my story, but that might not work for the story you’re crafting.
The point here is that once you understand the braid you're twisting together, you can pour everything you might possibly need into each section, so that when the time comes to weave them together, each section is strong—and that means the entire braid will be perfect and tightly bound.
“Writer’s intuition” is unique to each writer.
I used to believe some people had so-called writer’s intuition and others just didn’t. I no longer believe this to be true.
Think of “writer’s intuition” as a spectrum. It’s built from years—probably decades—of reading other people’s writing and figuring out what you like and don’t like and discerning how you will make stories your own from those understandings.
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And after all that, I still wouldn’t discount the found-diary technique (I’ve seen it done well!) and it’s dreaded only because it can seem a simplistic and unsatisfying way of allowing a mystery to be solved or truth come to light.
A piece of advice that you might consider is this: Objects can help tie a narrative together in a powerful way. Something as simple as a piece of jewelry from your past timeline could find its way into the hands of someone from your present timeline, and that jewelry can tell a story all on its own without the help of any written words. It can provide that wonderful twist or reveal or the ending you didn’t see coming—a satisfying sense of closure between past and present. After all, as Pericles put it: “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
Dual-timeline stories are hard, but they are also so satisfying when done right, and readers will return to them again and again because of that. Don’t let it daunt you. Don’t let it scare you. Or better yet, absolutely let it do those things—and write the story anyway.
Check out Stefanie Koens' Daughters of the Wreckage here:
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