In an article for Writer’s Digest, Stephanie Marie Thornton offers advice for managing multiple timelines in your novel. In her novel Her Lost Words, Thornton examines the relationship of Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, even though the latter died when her daughter was only 11 days old. “That’s not a fact a historical writer can fudge, unless writing alternate history,” she writes. “This meant it was necessary to pull out some writerly fancy footwork.” Thornton’s tips include:
- Find common themes. Shared interests, family, acquaintances, and secrets can help you connect two characters separated by time.
- Use locations and objects. Have your characters visit the same places and interact with the same tangible objects.
- Use other characters to make the connection. “Consider using secondary and tertiary characters—those non-narrators who did live through the entirety of a story and knew both narrators—to create links in the chain of a dual timeline,” Thornton writes. If the eras are too far apart, use journals and letters.
- Use memory. Use the older narrator or a secondary character to reveal information the younger narrator seeks. “One chapter may have the younger character seeking information or suspecting something that happened, followed by a chapter in which the older character informs the reader of that actual event,” Thornton explains. “Memories can also revolve around the five senses—what can two narrators share when it comes to sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells?”
- Make your eras distinct. “Sometimes vast swaths of time will separate narrators, and other times, mere decades part the storytellers,” Thornton writes. “Just as narrators have separate personalities and voices, so should different time periods also read differently.”
