By Judy Sternlight and Leslie Wells
How do novelists and memoir writers travel through multiple time periods while keeping readers on board and engaged?
5E editors Leslie Wells and Judy Sternlight explored this question in a recent 5E Office Hours session with two seasoned writers—Dinitia Smith and Charles Salzberg—and veteran editor Anne Horowitz. Here are some highlights:
On How a Story’s Central Question or Theme Shapes Its Structure
Dinitia Smith’s novel The Honeymoon is the story of the English novelist George Eliot, who married her young financial advisor, John Cross, near the end of her life. On their honeymoon in Venice, Johnnie leaped from a hotel window and begged the gondoliers who rescued him to let him drown. What led up to this remarkable moment? This question captivated the author, as well as her readers. “I wanted the reader to ask questions that would propel them through the novel,” Dinitia explained. In each chapter, she built suspense, creating questions that could be answered by shifting to the past, and then returning to advance the present action.
Charles Salzberg agreed. “Whether or not a book falls into the mystery genre, you need mysteries in any book, so the reader keeps turning the pages.” His novel Devil in the Hole is based on the true story of John List, a New Jersey man who killed his wife, his three kids, his mother, and the family dog, and then disappeared. List remained a fugitive for almost two decades, and the mysteries surrounding the case opened the door for Charles to invent what really happened and why. Each chapter is narrated by a different character, shedding fresh light on the killer’s past, his family life, and his recent circumstances. Picturing himself as an invisible journalist interviewing all the key players, Charles was free to move through time, chapter by chapter, building a full picture.
Anne Horowitz recently copyedited Shanghailanders by Juli Min, a novel about a wealthy, complicated family living in Shanghai. The father is a scientist interested in the nature and predictability of the universe. At the core of this story is a question: How well can we ever really know each other, even those we are closest to?
According to Anne, “The structure of a novel should be in service to the book’s themes.” Juli Min’s high-concept novel is a great example of this, as—taking the father’s questions about the universe as its central metaphor—it moves backward in time, from 2040 to 2014, each chapter capturing the family in an earlier “universe,” to retroactively reveal more about their motivations in the opening chapters, all while rotating among the points of view of the various family members.
Anne’s challenge was to see this complex novel as a single universe, tracking the histories of all five family members on a timeline to make sure there was continuity from chapter to chapter. Anne created a detailed spreadsheet to track all the story threads over a twenty-five-year time span, and she shared it with the author.
On Methods of Juggling Time
According to Charles, memoirs are almost always set in the past, yet they’re also anchored in the present as the writer reflects back on what happened. He offered several options for handling time travel (which work for fiction, too!):
When a new chapter opens, a writer can move to a fresh point on the timeline.
Within a chapter, a writer can create a space break and then jump to a different point in time.
Writers use exposition to provide context (back story), but it’s generally good to limit this omniscient exposition, to sustain the sense of pacing and keep readers engaged in the immediacy of the storytelling.
Anne pointed out that “where you position yourself on the timeline” is an essential question, affecting everything from verb tenses to your perspective on the events you are narrating. “Memoir can navigate between time periods in all kinds of ways. The structure often emerges through successive drafts. But there tend to be two levels: the chronological order of events as they occurred, and the order in which they are told.” She added that while editing a novel entails tracking the consistency of the underlying timeline, editing a memoir is more about streamlining and ensuring that those transitions work smoothly.
On Propulsion
Dinitia noted that “a lot of writing is instinctual, not schematic.” Inspiration comes from “a punch or a physical feeling that makes the writer want to write the book, and then craft kicks in.”
Anne talked about helping writers “to create a smooth and propulsive reading experience.”
We touched on some tools writers utilize to weave the past into a present-action storyline while preserving a consistent sense of momentum. These included exposition, quick memory fragments, and dialogue that illuminates events that happened in the past.
One participant asked how long a flashback can be, noting that she’s enjoyed some books with long flashbacks. Charles and Anne both felt that if a flashback is too drawn out, it can pull the reader away from the main storyline. One alternative is to create a separate scene or chapter for the flashback, but whichever approach you take, make sure that the digression to the past connects to the main plot or theme in a fundamental way, and that placing it there is instrumental to keep the story moving forward.
Dinitia added that flashbacks, scenes, and chapters should have an internal structure that propels the reader, just as the main plotline does.
On Knowing Where to Start and End Your Story
Where a writer opens the story is an important choice. Charles noted, “The first page is the DNA of the book.”
Dinitia said that in The Honeymoon, she was interested in a particular period of Eliot’s life—her marriage—rather than in telling her subject’s whole life story. Anne agreed that that in locating a beginning, it’s crucial to know which particular arc or theme of a character’s life you are focusing on.
Dinitia admitted that lately, she has come to believe that endings should be less cut-and-dried. Rather than leaving the story neat and tidy, it’s more interesting to leave readers with a sense of forward motion, and questions about what the characters will do next.
On the Writer and Editor Partnership
Charles explained that while some writers—like Jeffery Deaver—work best with an outline, he, like Dinitia, relies on his intuition, letting the story develop organically. But ultimately, “putting a story together is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. You need to get each piece in the right place.” And often, this means bringing in a skilled editor.
He recounted how his friend Roy Hoffman wrote a novel that was edited by Joyce Johnson, who returned the novel to the author with the first chapter missing. She told him that he, the author, had to know everything that happened in that early chapter, but readers didn’t. Some editors describe those early pages as “throat-clearing” or “getting a running start.”
When Dinitia was revising The Honeymoon, editor Judy Sternlight encouraged her to focus on “What does George Eliot want?” which led Dinitia to develop a heightened through-line for the famous novelist, connecting the past and present storylines.
Leslie Wells spoke about the role of the editor in shaping and organizing a narrative structure; a scene that occurs in the middle of a novel might be better placed at the start of the book, to set the plot in motion.
Anne concluded the session by describing how writers (using creativity and intuition) and editors (bringing in a fresh pair of eyes) come together to refine a book, removing what’s extraneous, heightening what’s there, and pinning down the right structure.