: Re: How can I hide a second narrative within my story? (using time travel) I've been planning a story that follows two characters. At the end, one character (let's call him Joe) goes back in time

@Sue2132873

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Human learning is like a mobile (the baby toy)

We start with our core ideas of knowledge, and then hang new ideas from them. These new ideas then give us spots to attach even more new ideas. It's kind of like an upside down bush. When teaching someone for this reason it is very important to teach things in this order. If you give someone ideas that they don't yet have places to hang they will be tossed to the side. Now very smart people can later once given these anchor points attach ideas they previously tossed aside, but most people will just keep moving forward only having things hung up on their mental model of the storing which came in the correct order.

So how do we use this to our advantage when writing a twist? We want to give the reader logs of great, detailed ideas, but no place to hang them. By the time the reader is done they should have the basic story structure, but all these parts they did not know where to put. Now the second time they read it, they will already have this mental mobile made out of the parts they understood. When they look at each part anew as they reread the story they will suddenly find where to hang these ideas. This time when they are done reading they will have the structure complete, and now have a full understanding.

Let's try to do a simple example. Let's say we are reading a book and we get some facts. Now unlike here this would be burred in thousands of words, so it would not be so obvious.

Bob woke up early - OK this is our core fact. There is a character Bob.
Bob wore a large jacket. -OK we know who bob is. So we can hang under Bob that he wears a large jacket.
Caims is a city is in Australia. - What? Why am i being told this? I am not going to remember this.
It was January- OK this is another core idea Setting.
Bob is in Caims - OK I know who Bob is, let me hang this under Bob
Bob tried to draw his shotgun, but fortunately security already had him picked out- Ok I know who Bob is, I can understand this

Now that we have this structure we can go through it one more time. Now we reach Caims is in Australia. Oh now we have a place to hang this. Bob is in Caims. And now it all comes together. It is weird for bob to have a large jacket on in the middle of summer. This is how the security guard picks him out.

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