The Nonlinear Narrative

Haruhi Suzumiya was my first experience with Anachronic Order and it's become nostalgic. Later on, I would watch Memento, and an 18-minute explanation by the director about how much thought went into the film's structure. Then I did some google searches about "disjointed narratives", while writing my own story.

I decided I wanted to tell a disjointed story from the beginning, using flashbacks and flashforwards that would be tethered using phrases and actions near the beginning and end of each scene.

But then I thought, does that really matter? Someone could still read this and call it needlessly disjointed. Maybe the story would be better if I didn't bother, I mean, Memento was about a person dealing with amnesia, so having a jumbled narrative fits. But I'm not telling that sort of story. My story is about a person becoming an evil genius, I don't really have a thematic reason to use flashbacks/forwards, but I think it would be more interesting that way.

But maybe that's just a poor attempt at being clever.

Anyone have an opinion on non-linear storytelling?

edited 23rd Feb '15 11:18:16 PM by FOFD

Depends on who you're writing it for, if for others though, a disjointed narrative can be a nice tool to use but it should have some explanation or purpose beyond "just because". There's a reason stories are told chronologically or in self contained units, and that's because it is easy to follow. If a reader on the edge finds it hard to follow they'll likely bail, so it's good to bear in mind "Just because you're unique doesn't mean you're useful." But you'll find as many opinions on if and how you should do it as there are stars in the sky.

But typically I'd suggest writing the story however you think the best way to tell it is. If you think a disjointed narrative is the way to write the story than don't hesitate, doubt and uncertainty are the killer of creative projects.

edited 24th Feb '15 3:52:51 AM by Slysheen

Hmm ... well, my opinion is that it is generally neutral and it all depends on the execution and suitability, meaning on the type of story it is, on how the non-linearity of the narrative is used, and on what it is used to achieve.

The first one is because non-linear narrative works pretty well for some stories—stories that are slower at their core, built around exploration of the world presented therein, short stories that present the final situation first and then show how it got there, or coming-of-age stories (I've found that presenting pieces of back-story only when relevant via non-linear narrative is generally better for those than starting with 20 pages of info-dumping to show what the character is like at the beginning)—and worse for other kinds of stories—fast-paced stories, stories with a first or second person narrator, and stories with a high tension (horrors, thrillers, and so on).

The second one is because there are many ways to use non-linear narrative and some of those ways suit certain stories better. And, of course, there are ways to do it that don't really fit any story at all, like the sometimes used by beginners with a lot of hubris method of inserting flashbacks when their character uses yet another broken ability that they shouldn't have, which generally interrupts the flow of the work because it's a flashback in the middle of an action scene or a high-tension scene. It has to be remembered that scenes from the past generally are slow-paced (there are exceptions to that one though), low-tension, and should not (again, there are exceptions) be low on drama or emotional baggage of some sort; all of that is important because pace, tension, and drama generally have to be managed properly if the story is to feel right for readers.

And the last one is because—though there are exceptions to what follows—non-linearity of narrative generally should be used to control the flow of the story (if using a linear narrative would result in it lacking any sort of appropriately-timed climax), to expand on a character in order to show the readers something about them that they do not yet know and could not have learned previously (either because doing so would have resulted in an unnecessary beginning-of-story info-dump, because it is a newly-introduced character and the detail is something from before their introduction to the story, or because the character themself didn't have the memory of it and something had unlocked it now) but either should or might want to know, to heighten the level of drama in the story by introducing limitations or drawbacks or problems of some sort (I don't think I need to explain that one), or to introduce unusual plot twists (for example, you could write a past scene in which the character is in a potentially deadly situation and actually does die, making it clear that the character does have memories of someone and maybe thinks they are this someone but truly isn't).
And on the other side of that spectrum, we have people who use flashbacks in the middle of a high-tension (probably dangerous) situation to show that the character is prepared and great and effectively invincible, which obviously breaks the tension and feels like a cheap and anticlimactic cop-out (because it's a situation that was supposed to challenge the character in some way, the readers were prepared for it, and the author effectively went "hahah, nope, blaah"); that and there's also people using flashbacks to show a situation in which the character is in danger (in the past), making it a cliff-hanger, and then making the character survive without a scratch ... that's pointless people, unless you are showing that stuff to pull an unusual plot twist, don't do "will the character survive?" cliff-hangers in the past when the character is clearly still alive, stuff of that sort is nothing more than a senseless waste of ink (or monitor space).

So yeah, it does matter. It's just that sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and generally it depends on how and when and why it is used.

edited 24th Feb '15 9:35:52 AM by Kazeto

Kazeto said it very well. There are reasons to do it, and there are challenges, but ultimately it is down to execution. The nonlinear format works extremely well for mystery and intrigue stories, since it may make for better flow to start at some time in the middle. John le Carre's spy stories are my go-to examples.