Have I written the book in story order in a page, and listed what my order adds?
Which architecture does the book use, and do its parts serve that architecture’s work?
What frame does the reader build from the first pages, and is it the one I want?
The strands
Can I write each strand’s question in one line, and do the other strands leave it open?
Is every strand declared by its second instalment, within the first fifth of the book?
Does any recurring material from another time lack a question of its own, and should it be cut to cutaways?
Do my strands move at different rates, and where does a crossing show the difference?
The markers and switches
Does every instalment tell the reader its time within two sentences, using the strand’s own material first?
Are the markers strongest where the strands share a place, a cast or an object?
Is each strand left on an open question, and entered at a point that pays at once?
Is the rhythm of alternation regular, and is every break in it deliberate?
The meeting
Where do the strands meet, in time, by cause or by identity, and what does the meeting change?
If an object joins two times, does its condition or custody change between them?
Does the order withhold anything that a character would have told, and does the book give a reason?
Exercises
The order chart. Number every chapter or scene of your draft by its place in story order, list the numbers in text order with each unit’s position as a percentage, and mark every departure. Beside each, write in a phrase what it gains over the chronological place.
The chronological retelling. Write your book’s events in story order in no more than three hundred words. Then list what a reader of your arrangement knows, wants or fears at the midpoint that a reader of the retelling would not. If the list has fewer than two items, rewrite the opening chapter in chronological order and compare.
The strand table. For each strand, write its question, its span of story time, its page count, its rate, its viewpoint, its markers and its meeting with the others. Find the strand whose question the other strands answer, and either give it a new one or redistribute its material as cutaways.
The first two sentences. Copy the first two sentences of every instalment of your weakest strand onto one page. Mark each opening that does not place the reader in time. Rewrite three of them using only the strand’s own material, without a heading or a date.
The crossing. Find the place where your strands’ times are nearest, or where an object or person appears in both. Rewrite the scene so that the difference between the strands, of rate, of condition or of knowledge, is visible on the page, and so that the meeting changes what one strand meant.