So, you want to tell two sides of the same story, and you’ve chosen a dual point of view (POV) or dual timeline as your medium. How exciting.
Whether you’ve chosen a dual POV or a dual timeline to show your readers two aspects of the same story, you’re weaving together disparate character experiences and blending them seamlessly into the reader’s experience, which allows for more personalized reader interpretations and gives the reader a chance to choose, to pick sides, to believe one part over the other.
Playing with POVs or timelines can make an engrossing story even moreso, but there are questions you must ask yourself, considerations you must make to ensure that the two-sided story is right for the story you’re writing now.
Dual POV Stories
Dual POV stories are those stories in which you’ve selected two different characters — lovers, enemies, a parent and child, etc. — to deliver their interpretations of truth as, usually, first-person narrators. Lots of stories use a dual-POV model.
Many romance novels, including young adult romance, use a dual-POV method to share the intimate experiences of two characters we already know will become lovers, for example, but allow us to glimpse how each character processes, rationalizes, and agonizes over the decisions made (and not made) throughout the story. In fact, one of my first ever book projects, Forever My Girl by Heidi McLaughlin, is a dual-POV romance novel, which unpacks the leftover love and trauma the protagonists hold years after their romance ended, so they can repair those old wounds and move forward together.
Writing a dual-POV story, though, is not as simple as assigning a POV in alternating chapters. The craft matters.
You must have a reason to use dual POVs
When using a dual-POV method to tell your story, make sure each character needs an elevated voice. If one of your characters is pretty flat, doesn’t grow or change much throughout the story, and doesn’t make a lot of decisions that propel the story forward, that character’s POV is probably not needed. In fact, including POV chapters from a non-essential character can leave your reader feeling confused about what they just read, and why.
The best dual-POV stories tell two sides of the same story. Beyond romance, dual POV can work well in crime thrillers and mystery stories (like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn), and for bringing together two people from different geographies (like Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi). Regardless of the reason you have for using a dual-POV storytelling method, make sure each of your characters has a specific reason to tell their side of the story.
Characters who tell good stories are those characters who:
- Have a specific goal to accomplish and a clear motivation for wanting to accomplish that goal
- Are held back by internal or external factors that must be overcome before achievement is possible
If your dual-POV story hits the same scenes and same plot points over again without differences in perspective, facts, or clues, you’re inadvertently dragging down the pacing of your story and boring your reader with unnecessary detail.
Your dual-POV voices must be distinct
No two people talk exactly alike. No two people describe the same events in exactly the same way. No two people process their experiences and emotions in exactly the same way. And while you, the author, are but one person, wielding dual-POV voices well means your narrators sound like themselves, not like each other. Each character then must have their own manner of speech, their own body language tells, their own subjective links to their pasts, their own goals for the future.
While clever grammar rules can work a bit (using contractions in dialogue versus using no contractions in dialogue, for example), a good dual-POV story also plays with each character’s psychic distance and willingness to divulge.
- Does one narrator always say exactly what they’re thinking, even if it’s unkind?
- Does the other character philosophize and refuse to take sides?
- Does one character explain everything down the minutiae?
- Does the other include only sparse detail?
If in your dual-POV story, the two narrators are nearly indistinguishable, it may be that you, the author, have supplanted the characters’ voices with your own, which means you’ll need to better understand who your characters are, where they came from, and where they want to go to provide more individuated voices suited for them.
Your dual-POV story must be properly balanced
Balance, in this context, is not about how many scenes or chapters are told from one POV or the other. Here, balance refers to the reasons each character wants to speak, what scenes they share with the reader, and asks you to make sure the character narrating the scene or chapter is the character responsible for moving the action forward.
Sure, there is some consideration for the amount of page time each character has — readers may be confused if one character tells 90 percent of the story, and the other only 10 percent — but it’s most about what each character brings to the proverbial table. Avoid switching POVs just for switching’s sake.
If you’re not sure which character should provide the POV for any one scene, step back and ask yourself which character has the most to lose, thus has the biggest emotional stake in the scene events. That person should likely narrate the scene.
Dual Timeline Stories
Dual timeline stories are those stories in which you’ve selected two different times or realities — past and present, present and future, or alternate presents — to deliver the full breadth of the story to your reader. And like its dual-POV counterparts, there are lots of dual-timeline stories.
Many thrillers use a dual-timeline approach for storytelling, such as Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, which not only tells the story in the past and the present but switches narrators while storytelling. Using a dual-timeline method means your reader gets to unpack the story, its origin, and its consequences over the course of time, as the past affects the present, and the present enlightens events of the past.
Writing a dual-timeline story, though, is not about telling a long story over decades. Rather, it’s about what each timeline says about the other, how each timeline fills out the reader’s understanding of the story events and how the characters got to this point. Again, the craft matters.
Both timelines must be equally engaging
One of the biggest issues with under-developed dual-timeline stories is that one of the timelines is far more interesting than the other. When that happens, readers may find themselves skimming to get back to the good part. However, in good dual-timeline stories, both parts are the good parts. Each timeline must have its own plot movement and characters with their own motivations and goals.
Since there are two narratives at play in your dual-timeline story, make sure that the plot points in each timeline are present and timed appropriately to carry forward the story. If using the three-act structure, for example, each timeline must have a setup, a confrontation, and a resolution, and within each of those story parts, the timelines must each include an inciting incident, a midpoint context shift, and a climax. A quick way to know if one timeline is lagging? You’re leaning too heavily on the other for context.
In a 2011 article for Writer’s Digest, horror author Stephen Graham Jones shared, “If you keep having to dip into the story’s past to explain the present, then there’s a good chance your real story’s in the past, and you’re just using the present as a vehicle to deliver us there.”
Now, non-automotive vehicles are good. Tortilla chips make great salsa-delivery vehicles; pita, hummus. But if you’re using the present story as a way to describe the events of the past, chances are your story will be better if you focus on the past where the actual story lives.
Transitions between timelines must be clear
Your readers must know in which timeline they are at any given moment in your story, and there are lots of creative ways to handle such clarity. Some authors separate the two timelines by chapter, effectively creating new chapters every time they switch. Some name their chapters by time or year, depending on how far apart the two timelines are. Some stories use two separate narrators, specified immediately, at the start of each POV shift. Regardless, the goal is to orient the reader in spacetime right away.
Stories with confusing transitions that don’t tell the reader where they are, who they’re following, or what they’re supposed to be doing often end up in DNF piles, because the reader is unable to keep straight the who and the why, which saps the joy right out of reading.
The two timelines must tie together in the end
In dual-timeline stories, the past often informs and influences the present, such that understanding who a character was explains why they act now. And as you make your way closer and closer to the end, readers should start to see how the earlier timeline affects the later timeline. In Pieces of Her, for example, Andy watches her mother murder a man in a restaurant and spends the rest of the novel learning who her mother truly is. As it turns out, her mother is using an assumed identity as a protected witness to a major crime committed during the earlier timeline. While the murder itself in the restaurant is a one-off event, Andy’s mother acted in alignment with her past training. The past informs the present.
If you’ve written a good chunk of your story, even the whole thing, but something feels off, your timeline scenes may be out of order. Pull them apart, spread them out, and examine the two timelines and their respective events and characters.
- What are the major links?
- And do the two timelines help you see theme?
Linking two timelines presents opportunities and challenges, but the overall goal is to keep your reader invested and collecting information to inform their experience of the story along the way. As such, you’ll use your two timelines, often in parallel, to relay a single narrative to your reader.
TL;DR: Before writing your two-sided story, make sure you understand your reasons for doing so.
Knowing a little about your story and why you’re writing it will help you understand your reasons for using dual POVs or dual timelines. Each method offers ways for you to wield the power of juxtaposition, thus helping you create vibrancy in characters, settings, and plot events. And the dual approach can skillfully reveal connections and secrets that may otherwise remain hidden.
So, are you writing a two-sided story and, if so, which method are you using?
And if you have dual-POV or dual-timeline story development questions, hit me with ’em.
Happy writing!
<3 Fal
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Fallon Clark is a story development coach and editor with more than a decade of experience in communications, project management, writing, and editing. She provides story development and revision services to independent and hybrid publishers and authors spanning genres and styles. And in 2018, she had the joy of seeing Forever My Girl, one of her earliest book projects, on the big screen. Fallon’s writing has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and The MicroZine. Find her online at FallonClarkBooks.Substack.com, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Substack.