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Plot and structure

Outlines, pacing, point of view and endings that land. Moderators: oldharbour, verity_s

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How to ask for a critique in this forum Locked 0 verity_s 9,120 03 Jan 2005 09:00 verity_s
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Keeping a timeline straight across four narrators New 63 tessellate 2,417 12 Jun 2005 15:52 redpencil
Two timelines that meet in the last chapter New 12 marlow_p 431 12 Jun 2005 11:08 calloway
Where should the midpoint reversal fall? Answered 21 calloway 906 11 Jun 2005 21:14 oldharbour
Outline for a heist in three acts Critique wanted 4 juniper_m 188 10 Jun 2005 18:30 juniper_m
Is a flashback inside a flashback ever forgivable? 37 fenwick_j 1,362 08 Jun 2005 11:47 inkwell_ada
Killing the subplot you like best 58 redpencil 2,044 07 Jun 2005 19:26 tessellate
An unreliable narrator who does not know it Answered 16 inkwell_ada 742 05 Jun 2005 08:13 verity_s
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Keeping a timeline straight across four narrators

Started by tessellate on 11 Jun 2005. 63 replies, 2,417 views. New

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Posted 11 Jun 2005 09:14Post 1 of 64
tessellate Workshop host Posts: 2,318 Joined: Mar 2003

The novel has four narrators and covers eleven days. Each of them tells some of the same hours, and by the third draft I had two people eating breakfast in different towns on the same morning.

I have tried index cards, a wall chart and a spreadsheet. The cards get shuffled, the chart does not travel, and the spreadsheet tells me day 6, 14:00 without telling me who knows what by then. What do the rest of you actually use?

Draft four. Do not ask.

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Posted 11 Jun 2005 10:02Post 2 of 64
oldharbour Moderator Posts: 7,540 Joined: Jan 2002
tessellate wrote: The spreadsheet tells me day 6, 14:00 without telling me who knows what by then.

Then the clock is not your problem; knowledge is. Keep the spreadsheet for the hours, and add one column per narrator that holds a single sentence: what this person believes at this moment. Read down a column and you have that narrator's whole arc.

It is tedious for a week. After that you will catch every contradiction before a reader does.

Critique the writing, never the writer.

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Posted 12 Jun 2005 15:52Post 64 of 64
redpencil Member Posts: 204 Joined: Nov 2004

Late to this, but the one thing that worked for me was drawing the eleven days as a single line on a roll of lining paper and giving each narrator a coloured pencil. Where two colours cross, both of them were in the room.

It fits in a drawer, which a wall chart does not. Number the days in pen before you start.

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Keeping a timeline straight across four narrators New in Plot and structure 63 12 Jun 2005 15:52 redpencil
Critique swap: three short poems Pinned in Poetry desk 17 12 Jun 2005 13:20 marlow_p
Where should the midpoint reversal fall? Answered in Plot and structure 21 11 Jun 2005 21:14 oldharbour
First rejection letter, and what I learned from it in Submissions 29 11 Jun 2005 17:41 fenwick_j
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