A Timeline Is A Writer’s Friend

Writing is all about taming the chaos in the mind, funneling countless ideas into a coherent string of events, people, and places that connect in a meaningful way and drive the plot from one logical point to the next. I wrote about how I began to create that order out of the chaos my exploratory writing for my short story project delivered in the last post on writing. That post highlighted sketching as a tool and hinted at another: the timeline. I’ll share more thoughts on its place and purpose in my routine today. And I’ll send you back to your day with another observation journal entry. I love B.S. Johnson’s novel approach to delivering a coherent story. One of his books — The Unfortunates, published in 1969 — strays from the linear structure we know. The first and the last chapter is all you get for structure. You read the other chapters in a random order. I remember this fascinating reading experiment and experience. I was skeptical but soon conceded. It worked. And how it worked. As thrilling as the reading was, I can’t imagine how he managed to weave a narrative so immaculate it allows for such flexibility in the arrangement of events. How could he keep track of all the information, the connections, and the causality?I doubt I’ll ever accomplish such a feast. Taming the amalgamation of events, places, characters without names, characters with names, and possibilities to connect everything was already challenging enough. And I have yet to determine if I’ve concluded that task to my satisfaction. Anyway. Going through all the writing I have done so far revealed a rough framework. I explored enough of the backstory (the events that explain and lead to the plot I have in mind for the short stories) to know where I want to go with all of this.

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