I have a detailed plan worked out for a new novel and have already written fragments for various widely-separated scenes. The content begins and ends in the 1990s but with a substantial section set in the 1960s which itself contains a reversion to the 1940s. I am now setting out upon the full write which I had been intending to undertake in the sequence in which things would be presented to the reader, presumably the generally accepted approach. However, at the last minute, I’ve been tempted by the alternative of writing the whole story strictly chronologically and only subsequently reorganising and adjusting everything for the time-shifts which I feel are necessary to provide interest and suspense.

How have others dealt with the question of writing for non-chronological time shifts? Has anybody else taken the line of first producing a strictly chronological narrative to be adjusted later for the time-shifts? What do people see as the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches?

My chief concern is always the order in which the reader gets to experience and understand the novel as a whole, and that includes how they'll read the individual stories that I've chopped up back together again, and the connexions I want the reader to make between them, IYSWIM.

So I'd always write the novel in the order that the reader reads it, because I'm a bear of very little brain and get in a muddle of who-knows-what-when otherwise.

But others work differently.

Thanks. I think you're right, Emma. If I go the chronological route, I'm immediately off the wavelength on which I need to transmit to the reader and it means that the crucial elements/constructions needed for interest and suspense are not dealt with until the re-working process to adjust for the time-shift, which is crazy. I was suddenly taken by the 'start with strict chronological approach' idea yesterday, but I now think it was a form of procrastination. I couldn't quite see a good opening to use at the point where I had intended to start the narrative, so just plugging through from 1942 seemed like an easy answer!