Writing a Dual Timeline: I Must be Crazy

by Marilyn Forsyth

I love dual timeline and timeslip novels! Barbara Erskine’s Lady of Hay, Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth, Tracy Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue are all on my keeper shelf, and I’ve read dozens more. 

My signed copy of Lady of Hay.

So why not try my hand at writing one, I thought.

Hah! Turns out it wasn’t quite as easy as I thought.

Image courtesy of giphy

I did my due diligence. I analysed a heap of timeslip/dual timeline books to try to figure out what made them work and, utilizing what I’d discovered, and after drafting an outline for the entire novel, I started to write.

Gwenllian’s Ghost (working title) is a tale of two women born nine centuries apart whose lives become interwoven after a ghostly encounter. Thrown into reliving her ancestor’s life through dreams, Hannah seeks an answer to the question: can the love of a lifetime endure beyond time itself?

I’d classify this story as a timeslip. The medieval story takes the form of living dreams that cause my contemporary MC massive problems with her everyday life. The two stories, with two adventurous heroines and their worthy heroes, are interwined through those dreams. 

Inspiration for Gwenllian courtesy of Pinterest

I wrote the complete medieval tale first. It seemed logical to stay in my medieval MC’s head while writing about her amazing and tragic story (Gwenllian is based on a true-life Welsh princess). It also ensured that the voice I used remained true to that period and its characters.

Next I wrote Hannah’s story, taking time and care to make her romance as gripping as Gwenllian’s love story.

Then came the hard part. Somehow I had to meld these two stories together.

Seamlessly.

That’s when I realised what I’d got myself into. You see, in structuring this type of story, the choices made in where to transition from one timeline to the other are crucial to the enjoyment of the reader.

Celeste Ng, whose novel Everything I Never Told You is a fabulous example of a well-written dual timeline, says that at each switch in the timeline there has to be a reason for the shift from past to present. She calls it a ‘handoff’ and it acts as a link between those chapters, grounding the reader in the ‘new’ reality so that she/he doesn’t lose the sense of cohesion so necessary for a successful dual timeline. This ‘handoff’ can be many things: an object e.g a diary, a dream voice echoing in a head, a feeling, a memory, or even a smell.

So, to structure my book for best effect, I went back over both stories to see where they could overlap, where the tension in both peaked (so that it didn’t correspond exactly when I interspersed the chapters), and to come up with a suitable ‘handoff’. It was a challenge but, hopefully, it worked. Time will tell.

That wasn’t the only thing to think about, though. For a reader to become totally immersed in tales from two different worlds, each with their own characters and conflicts, both stories have to be compelling. BUT, having said that, there can only be one main story - the one that ties both stories neatly together in the end.

In Gwenllian’s Ghost that main story belongs to Hannah, my modern MC. However, the medieval story moves along side by side with it, adding tension, conflict and, of course, gut-wrenching emotion to the tale.

Image courtesy of giphy

I love dual timeline and timeslip novels! Their complexity, the mystery of how they’ll tie together in the end, their mix of styles of writing.

If only they weren’t so damned terrifying to write!

So why am I now writing another one? 

Image courtesy of giphy

Because I’m crazy.

Have you read any really good dual timeline/timeslip novels? I’d love some recommendations!

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