Hi

I am writing a novel in two timelines with the same MC - as a teenager and in her late twenties. The timelines alternate and, up until now, I have had the older self telling a story that reflects in the younger person's timeline.

However, I've reached a stage where the ending of one chapter isn't reflected in the next chapter (the younger self's story) and so on.

Does this make sense?

My issue is that although the MC and characters remain the same, I have to introduce a character and story into the younger self's strand that can only be a vague realised memory (quickly tucked away) in the older self's strand. Although the storylines will come together later - not in years but in resolution - there is little common ground between the themes for the middle chapters.

Is this an issue? Is there something I should do or consider, so the alternating chapters work?

Always hard to know without seeing the detail of how it works out, but I think if you've established the relationship of the two strands, and how they interconnect, nice and solidly, then things can get a lot looser in the middle, and we'll go on reading them as part of the same story, and we'll be ready to pick up quite slight echoes and hints, because we have a framework ready to fit them in to.

I read something recently about writing musicals that said that the first twenty minutes of a musical is when you must establish how this piece works. That's obvious, in terms of who the important characters are and what their challenges are. But it's also structural: what are the narrative elements that make it up. (For example, if you want to have, say, a character stepping out of the frame and talking to the audience, don't suddenly do that for the first time in Act Three)

If you think of a musical as two-and-a-bit hours but a more demanding form in that the audience can't press the pause button, that suggests that you've got about the first sixth of a novel in which to establish how it's going to work... After that, within that framework, you're really quite free.

that suggests that you've got about the first sixth of a novel in which to establish how it's going to work... After that, within that framework, you're really quite free.

Perfect. I'm up to 12,000 words on an approx 85,000-word novel and it's at this point the two timespans have less obvious resonance.

I'll go forward, trying to keep the hints and echoes between the two, but I won't worry so much about the need to move apart.

Thank you.

Sounds like a plan. Good luck!

No advice other than to echo Emma, but it sounds great. And well done on progressing it so far already

Thank you

Yes, what Emma says (of course) - I've just finished a S. J. Bolton's 'Dead scared' in which two POVs are alternated for sevral capters and then a third strand is introduced. It jolts, but trust has been established so I assumed I'd fnd out in due course.
btw, Howard Jacobson is quoted as saying at this week's Hay festival "The author has an obgligation to please the reader, but the reader has an obligation to be intelligent."

I think I've got Dead Scared upstairs - or is that the one I loaned out before reading? - but either way I'll check it out.

"The author has an obgligation to please the reader, but the reader has an obligation to be intelligent."

Great quote!

It is a good quote, isn't it.