Lisa wrote in with a problem.
She has a main character who is in the later end of the timeline. Around that, she has built a substantial body of backstory to understand that character’s growth. Now she is trying to decide whether to alternate timelines or whether the choice of protagonist is wrong.
When I am writing or reviewing a manuscript and there is suddenly a lot of backstory, and it feels like important backstory, I right away ask: if you are telling so much backstory, could the story really start there? And if you are talking about another character so much, is it really their story? Whose story are you telling? Not the one you wanted to/planned to tell, but whose story are you actually supposed to be telling here in this book?
So if you are holding that much backstory, the question may not be where to place it. The question may be whether you are starting in the wrong place.
And remember, your main characters do not always need their past explained. They need to arrive at the point where something is already at stake. Backstory earns its place when it changes the meaning of an action the reader has already witnessed, or is in the process of witnessing. And what does the reader need, in this exact moment, to correctly interpret what the character is doing, and what can remain unsaid?
A dual timeline structure is not a way to include material just to avoid cutting what you already put a lot of effort into writing. It is a way to create pressure. Each shift in time has to force a reassessment of what the reader believes about the other line. If the earlier timeline exists to explain the later one, then it will read as support, not as strong story. You can test this quickly. Take one segment from the earlier timeline and ask whether it contains a decision that produces consequence inside that line, independent of what it explains elsewhere. If it does not, it is not yet ready to carry narrative weight.
Obviously, you can always break all the rules. Maybe you can be the one to redefine what we know about storytelling, but if you want to study some writers that have done a good job with backstory or multiple timelines, I think Gillian Flynn and Pat Conroy do a pretty good job of this.
Happy writing.
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