: Re: When should one *not* present events in chronological order? Some stories tell well from beginning to end, all in a neat little line...and some don't. When can a story be improved by using

@Lengel543

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I think you found one of the big uses: Character introductions. There are many books that have a segment along the lines of "As they were riding the train to Lyon, he couldn't help but to look at her and her perfect auburn hair. It was this hair that immediately caught his eye when he first saw her 6 years ago. It was the graduation party at her brothers house..." and from there you're in the middle of a flashback that serves as introduction.

Crime Novels can benefit from this as well. You start with the Police investigating the crime, and then you intermix the story of the Murderer, how he meets his victim, how she disappointed him, how he plots the murder and how it is executed - constantly switching between present (Police) and past (Murder) until the point you merge them (After the murder, the Murderer goes hiding and from here we don't hear his story until the police (who found enough clues in the meantime) find him shortly after).

I don't know if the type out-of-sync telling that is sometimes used in movies for great effect (e.g., Irréversible is told backwards and the ending has a weird impact when watching it after the rest of the later events) works in books as well, but I think that occasional out of sync telling is extremely commonplace.

I don't know a book that's completely avoiding a traditional timeline storytelling though. The Wikipedia Article about Nonlinear narrative contains some examples.

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