Acclaimed author of Jaded, Ela Lee, is back with her second novel. Exploring the repercussions of the South Korean adoption scandal across decades and generations, Minbak shines a light on an unspoken part of Korea’s past. To celebrate publication, Ela has shared with us her tips for writing dual timelines.
“She realised when it was already too late that no two facts in life could run parallel; they had to intersect, braid together. All joys and all losses were tributaries into the present.”
The past shapes and complicates all of us, no matter how determined we are to live for today, and the same is true of characters. When a novel unfolds across two timeframes, the reader will instinctively understand that past will illuminate – or perhaps cast a shadow over – the characters’ present in important ways. Two narrative timelines can be an unwieldy structural choice for a novel, but when crafted well, they do far more than simply coexist: they generate tension, deepen resonance with characters, and create poignant moments of revelation.
My second novel Minbak opens in the winter of 1985 with the birth of a boy, who vanishes nine days later. Weaving between 1985 South Korea under a military dictatorship, and London in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crash, the novel follows a family of women as they confront what happened to that baby boy, twenty-three years earlier. It was a challenge to keep these two strands in symbiosis: distinct yet dynamic. Each compelling enough to stand alone, while also strengthening the other when intertwined.
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Give each timeline an immersive setting
I was a teenager in 2008 London. I remember the anxious atmosphere of the post-Crash era, I remember Obama’s inauguration, I remember that I had desperately wanted an iPod. However, I had to build the world of 1985 Korea from scratch. I dug out family photos, curious about what would be inside ordinary folk’s houses, what cluttered their kitchen table, their wallpaper and carpet. I went through national image archives to get a feel for the colour and scents of the local market.It’s important to note here that setting is most evocative when passing through a character’s observations, rather than delivered by some omniscient narrator. The characters should be fully inhabited through textures, surfaces, temperatures, smell, shadow, light, and taste, helping the reader see the world through their eyes. Distinct sensory worlds will help prevent the timelines from blurring together, anchoring the reader in both place and time.
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Weave historical context intentionally
Another way to distinguish a different timeline is to anchor it in factual historical events. However, too much context and the pages start to read like Wikipedia. Too little, and the characters are suspended in a vacuum. My instinct is to let historical events pass through my characters’ specific human lens. For example, in Minbak, Hana is seventeen years old and falling desperately in love. She is consumed by passion, loss and regret. How much does she really think about a crumbling dictatorship? Probably not much, it passes her by through tangential observations. Her eyes water from the tear gas wafting in the air, she briefly notices the faint wail of sirens, she knows to be vigilant about her safety, but she’s not interrogating the political machinations of the ruling junta. The historical context brushes against her daily life, rather than interrupting it.
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Choreograph knowledge carefully
Dual timelines imply to the reader an unravelling mystery or impending revelation. Practically, this usually means that different characters know different things at different times. More importantly, what does the reader know throughout? In Minbak, there is a central family secret that eludes all three protagonists, as well as the reader. Each character believes they know the whole truth, but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that only one of them does. This requires precise choreography of information across both timelines: sustaining tension, seeding clues, letting false assumptions take root, planting misunderstandings, smuggling skeletons into the closet.
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Pacing control
By the second-ish draft, I commandeer a wall of my house. Every major scene is written on a flashcard, colour-coded by timeline, and blu-tacked to the wall in order. I then take a step back and look for the following things:
a. Are both timeframes given equal attention throughout? If one timeframe dominates, or the other recedes, is this intentional, or do they need recalibrating?
b. Is the transition pattern consistent? For example, do the chapters alternate between timelines, or are they clustered together?
c. Am I spending too long in one timeframe, such that the reader might have lost track of the other? Conversely, has one timeframe jumped too fast, assumed too much?
d. Are the timelines unravelling at a collaborative pace? There needs to be a rhythm such that the past scenes reveal something about the present.
e. Do the two strands coalesce/collide at the right time? Too early and the reader might not feel fully invested in each storyline. Too late and there isn’t enough post-mortem analysis. When the strands finally meet, the impact should feel both inevitable and earned.
Minbak by Ela Lee is out now published by Harvill
