Timeline Nightmare
Every writer starts their story with a certain time frame in mind. Say for example, Dan Brown thought 'OK, so they're chasing the Holy grail. To make this a gripping mystery, let me see if I can fit the entire thing into two days.'
He thus starts out with a tentative time line in mind and then lets the creative horses gallop. I'm not saying that that is exactly how Dan Brown writes, but its safe to say that it goes something like that. Every writer thus, has a specific time line in mind.
Things start on a Tuesday, end on a Sunday. The protagonists meet in the begging of the year and then never again until the end of the year. That's the simple time line.
Have you seen the movie 'Duplicity'? The protagonists in that movie have a specific time frame in which they hatch a plot, do prep work and ultimately realize it. Simultaneously, other characters are plotting too, and thus their time line i.e the days on which these secondary characters do things that affect the story also need to be kept in mind. That my friend is when time line gets very complicated.
Moving onto my current story. As I said before, time line is very tricky business. I found that out 14 chapters in. Suddenly, I had no idea how many days had passed since the begging of my novel. Of course I've been writing it for over a year now, but how many days had it been for my characters. I was drawing a complete blank.
Time line.
Time line turned out to be a minor snag in my case, cause I had notes kept aside to keep track of it. But the enormity of the situation dawned on me. Can you imagine what could've happened had I not kept notes? A ruined time line could affect my entire story.
That would've made me crazy.
So folks, always be wary of the time line. For it is the glue that holds the story together.
He thus starts out with a tentative time line in mind and then lets the creative horses gallop. I'm not saying that that is exactly how Dan Brown writes, but its safe to say that it goes something like that. Every writer thus, has a specific time line in mind.
Things start on a Tuesday, end on a Sunday. The protagonists meet in the begging of the year and then never again until the end of the year. That's the simple time line.
Have you seen the movie 'Duplicity'? The protagonists in that movie have a specific time frame in which they hatch a plot, do prep work and ultimately realize it. Simultaneously, other characters are plotting too, and thus their time line i.e the days on which these secondary characters do things that affect the story also need to be kept in mind. That my friend is when time line gets very complicated.
Moving onto my current story. As I said before, time line is very tricky business. I found that out 14 chapters in. Suddenly, I had no idea how many days had passed since the begging of my novel. Of course I've been writing it for over a year now, but how many days had it been for my characters. I was drawing a complete blank.
Time line.
Time line turned out to be a minor snag in my case, cause I had notes kept aside to keep track of it. But the enormity of the situation dawned on me. Can you imagine what could've happened had I not kept notes? A ruined time line could affect my entire story.
That would've made me crazy.
So folks, always be wary of the time line. For it is the glue that holds the story together.
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