That time I completely lost track of chronology

[filthytrancendence]

I figure it might be even more valuable to share an embarrassing failure than a great success.

So there I was, working on my draft, and I kept running into problems. Like every paragraph I penned was like wading through molasses as I attempted to get the story from where it was to where I wanted it to go.

And then it hit me like a lightning bolt. The chapter I'd written 2 chapters ago was supposed to have occurred the morning after the chapter I was working on. I realized most of the molasses I was wading through was intractable chronological confusion brought on by my adherence to a very restrictive format without an adequate plan to keep the chronology straight.

With a mounting sense of dread, I plugged all my written chapters in to a timeline, and as if by magic, the source of my problems came into sharp focus.

The chronology looked like this: 3, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 7, 9, 12, 10.

That's really not as bad as it looks, because of perspective switching, until you get to the gap between 8 and 9, and then it completely goes off the rails. So anyway, I spent basically all my writing time yesterday formulating a plan to correct this and reflecting on how it happened and what to do about it.

How it happened

I was focused on other things. I decided early on to do a round robin of 3 perspective characters. I did not consider how intensely that restrictive format conflicts with chronology when you begin to bring those 3 characters into each other's timelines (and most specifically, when you have any 2 together and 1 apart). I'm basically at the point where I'm bringing all 3 together, after dancing around each other for 12 chapters, and so of course this previously obfuscated problem made itself unmissable.

What to do about it

I've had to accept that the round robin format is a bad idea. I chose it because I didn't want any of the 3 to get lost in the narrative. And I do think it was a good place to begin, as a way to introduce them each on their own terms. However, once I got to the point where they start meeting each other, I ought to have started viewing it differently.

I ended up making a spreadsheet to track who is in each chapter as well as what PoV it's from. This makes it clear who I am in danger of losing track of at any given time, and who is in danger of dominating the narrative. I needed to look at it on several axes at once, but I was only paying close attention to the axis of PoV. The other two really important ones were chronology and who else was present, even if they weren't the PoV.

And with all of that, I put together a plan to restructure everything to un-confuse the chronology and unblock the path forward.

Anyways, hopefully that's helpful to someone. If anybody else has more experience with the self-imposed torture of weaving 3 PoV as MC's together, I'd be happy to hear about any other blind spots I'm destined to discover in this process

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Thanks. This is pretty relevant to me, since I'm in the middle of two novel-length stories that need to share a timeline (although they don't actually share any characters or events--people talk about things that happen in the other story).

--Annie

 

[TheRedLantern]

I ended up making a spreadsheet to track who is in each chapter as well as what PoV it's from. This makes it clear who I am in danger of losing track of at any given time, and who is in danger of dominating the narrative. I needed to look at it on several axes at once, but I was only paying close attention to the axis of PoV. The other two really important ones were chronology and who else was present, even if they weren't the PoV.

I can't remember where I saw this, but some writing advice book or video used this idea and took it further. They'd track the beginning and ending emotional states of the characters to make sure they hit all the right arcs. They also tracked repetitions of thematic elements like locations or objects to show how those things changed from scene to scene.

This was about novel writing, but something as complex as a story with 3 POVs could certainly warrant some bookkeeping on the side to keep things straight. They're details you need to have organized, so might as well just put them in a structure.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Yes, I wrote a novella that ran on two timelines, a present day main timeline and a past flashback timeline. The two timelines converged towards the end. About a third of the way through, I realized that I had to sort out my timelines and map them so that I could strategically switch between them and also that I didn't completely flambozzle my brain trying to keep them straight.

 

[filthytrancendence]

I can't remember where I saw this, but some writing advice book or video used this idea and took it further. They'd track the beginning and ending emotional states of the characters to make sure they hit all the right arcs. They also tracked repetitions of thematic elements like locations or objects to show how those things changed from scene to scene.

This was about novel writing, but something as complex as a story with 3 POVs could certainly warrant some bookkeeping on the side to keep things straight. They're details you need to have organized, so might as well just put them in a structure.

Oh, the spreadsheet has a great deal more than what I said, but I was trying to limit my word count, lol.

I've been trying to still lean on my working memory as much as possible, but... this incident has demonstrated that I try and lean too hard on memory, and my memory has a limit. Tracking emotional states is a good idea, for sure. I think I'll give that a shot.

No way around this being a novel. Not really what I intended when I started, but that's where I'm at!