Question about time sequence

As long as you keep the POVs straight, there shouldn't be a problem.

I'll go for the obvious and say make it clear what you're doing. One easy solution is to run the same lines of dialog from both perspectives. But doubtless you've already given thought to technique.


Any time you depart from the convention of ongoing time sequence, you're going to give the reader a little jerk that shakes her out of the fictive haze. You knock her on the head and say, 'Hey girl, you're reading a book.'
Your simultaneous scene -- however wise and careful you are in presenting it -- will give the reader 30 seconds when she stops being in the story and comes back to earth to figure out what the heck is going on.

You will pay a price for your 'simultaneous scene' technique.
Is what you gain by this technique worth it?

If the other option is to stay in the ongoing timeline and simply switch POVs once or twice in the middle of the action, this might actually be less distracting.


Now you are asking about this ...
so you've already thought of everything I just said.

Giving a straight opinion here ... I once played around with the idea of running two bits of action simultaneously and, in the end, decided against it. The technique is just too open to the reader. I like to hide technique where possible.

Readers are pretty quick. Just leave enough clues and trust them to figure it out. But like job said, make sure there's a nice payout for the reader.

Nicole

Tom Clancy does this.

In one of his books he had 3-5 people all seeing the same event, and he described it from each person's point of view.

Unfortunately NONE of them saw anything different, reacted in a manner important to the story, or added anything to the plot.

This complete waste of pages for pointless replays got me to stop reading him.

Now that you know this pitfall you won't be making his mistake!

those tom clancy video games are a helluva lot better than his actual books

Tom Clancy MOVIES are better than his books...and I don't say that very often.

job said:

Any time you depart from the convention of ongoing time sequence, you're going to give the reader a little jerk that shakes her out of the fictive haze. You knock her on the head and say, 'Hey girl, you're reading a book.'

Click to expand...

Don't men read?

seun said:

Don't men read?

Click to expand...

I always figure the use of 'she' and 'her' can be taken to include the male also.

As long as your have some kind of indicators, or indirect references of the time or events, your readers will be smart enough to figure it out.

In Atonement, for example, the disjointed chapters are not always in linear chronological order, but you never really get lost because McEwan deftly overlapped events or made subtle references so that the readers know they're reading about the same time/events from different POVs. It's very powerful in that much of the story is about perception -- what is seen and interpreted from one POV is very different from what really happens, for example. It works beautifully.