2 timelines in the future

I think the standard that I've tended to use (and I've seen other people use as well) with multiple timelines is to have the "standard" timeline use regular font and the "non-standard" timeline use italics. It sounds like the "present-day" situations are more like flash-forwards, so I'd assume those would be the italicized bits. Alternatively, if the flash-forward bits are separate chapters, you could open them with a time-stamp header - either the actual dates or just "several weeks later" or something to that effect.

Well, nothing is ever literally the present, even "live" sports have a delay of some seconds just because of the data moving to various tech systems to finally reach your eyeballs. Saying "the present" in your book would mean stuff that is currently happening to your characters (and present tense), while "the past" is things that already happened to them, cannot change, and are currently affecting your characters or world in some way (and past tense). People will get that.

For a few short flashbacks, italics might work. But if you are talking about pages, then no.

Change chapters and show the date, like this example:


I have two timelines in my story, a character in the present story and chapters where she is younger. In the earlier chapters I note her age in the chapter title. In the present day the reader can do the math to figure out her current age. I Just note the date.

I like this. It's similar to how I've seen it done in other books. I think the key is to be "minimally invasive," meaning to do as little as you can when switching between the timelines to keep from jarring the reader. I recently read a book (Happiness by Aminatta Forna) where the author used italics for flashbacks. Please do not do this. It was super hard on the eyes and unnecessary. There are other, better ways to establish timeline in the story. (Although I recall a Simpson's flashback scene where a guy is reading a newspaper with the headline "Dick Cavett Born." It took me a few seconds to realize why that was funny.)

For your example, I like the "Present day, Los Angeles, 2090." Although it's technically redundant (the story would somehow tell us what year it is, and that it's the main narrative timeline) it is minimally invasive and plants us in time in only 4 characters.

I think bolding would be jarring. I like the very short headings for the section breaks as you have in Post #6. Nothing more is needed.

My opinion in blue:

Present day, Los Angeles, 2090 <--may need to tweak the punctuation a bit, otherwise totally fine.

“Good people don’t kill,” I say.

*

Sometime earlier <--- 'sometime' can be from a few hours ago to 3000 years prior. The span is too huge to make it meaningful without context. How about several weeks earlier, the previous winter, a few years earlier, a couple of decades earlier... vague but with a range.

Maybe selling drugs

That works. An alternative is to use em-dash between present day and 2090 (but comma works).

lyann88 said:

What about if I used bolded for the flashforward/present part?

Click to expand...

Anything you do with the font that goes on for paragraphs or pages is going to annoy readers. Italics are bad, bolding is worse. Italics are fine for inner monologue as long as it's not pages and pages.

One thing I will defer to others is how to manage ESP communication as far as italics go.

But you don't need it. What is stopping you from using different chapters with headings that designate the time?

Scene breaks within chapters are fine. Find an example that works for you and use the same format.