: Re: How to not confuse readers with simultaneous events? In an omniscient third person, I have 8 (practically unrelated) events going simultaneously in different parts of a large mansion. I want to

@Gonzalez219

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You could try using a common element outside of any of the scenes themselves to establish a common reference point in time.

For example describe Alice and Bob having a heated marriage argument but being forced to resume their happy facade by the dinner gong calling everyone together.

Charlie and Danielle are describing their plans to murder the Countess but are interrupted by the sound of the dinner gong going off.

While Eric is frantically searching for the incriminating document in the Count's study knowing he only has till dinner to do so as the Count always spends the evening after dinner in his study, again being interrupted by the gong.

This way each is scene is distinct, so there is no confusion between them, and the common element of the gong shows they all happened simultaneously. While the hectic momentum would be shown within each scene rather than between it. By using short sentences and joining each scene mid way through maybe.

I think this would be more similar though to lots of rapid jump cuts in a film rather than the long single shot.

The next scene should perhaps be the dinner scene with each of the characters reacting to each other for their own reasons to reinforce that everything happened immediately before this scene.

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