: Timeline back and forth Presently, my story is following two plots that will become one. Two groups who have different objectives but will gather towards the ultimate one in a point in the

The Lord of The Rings used this setup in its second and third tomes ("The Two Towers" and "Return of the King").

Both tomes were divided in two "books" (LoTR nomeclature is confusing) and every "book" follows a different group of characters. The first one follows Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli (and Merry and Pippin, in RotK) while the second follows Frodo, Sam and Gollum.

The events in the "books" happen concurrently but are told sequentially, meaning that Tolkien describes the actions of group 1 during a time span and then rewinds back to the beginning of said time span and this time focuses on group 2.

So, about your question:

Can you do it?

Of course, one of the most acclaimed and influential authors ever did it in his most famous book.

Should you do it?

I personally think not. Even thought the structure is viable, I remember being awfully confused when reading LotR for the first time (I was 11, I think).

LotR particularly also has the problem that the sequences with group 2 are, truth be told, boring. They don't do anything but walking most of the time. Instead of tolerating some chapters of walking sprinkled around group 1's interesting sequences, now you have to endure half a book of walking.

This problem was so accentuated that the Peter Jackson movies removed all signs of this and simply showed the events in the order they happened, without caring about their geographical distance or which characters were seeing them.

However, I'd like to point out that this method has its flaws too. "A Song of Ice and Fire" has a huge number of POV characters and, at least for the first books, tells the events in the order they happen, jumping around perspectives.

I personally, once again thought that this led to the problem that it was very hard to develop any attachment to the characters. It is difficult to care about someone when you only read 15 pages about them every 150 pages and there are so many other characters competing for attention.

As a final verdict, I'd say you write whatever way you want, as long as don't make mistakes such as having long boring sequences, drowning on your own plotlines and writing unlikable characters.

Everything can be done as long as you know what you're doing.

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If it makes logical sense (from the story), you can have two different timelines, but you'll certainly want to make it clear that the change is happening - a new chapter for each section, possibly with a heading "Wednesday, 5pm, Moscow" or something else that clearly defines events as being before those in the previous chapter. Films do this quite a lot, with the time of each scene written on the screen at the beginning.

The important thing is the logic of the story. If you're getting each group to a similar point in their respective quests, that will make sense - but if not (or if there isn't an equivalent reason) there could be potential for reader confusion.

The other way of doing it is to stick to a single timeline and switch between groups, irrespective of where each group is in their quest. That said, the way you're thinking of doing it sounds more interesting.

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