STRUCTURAL NIGHTMARE: the dense plot from the denser mind of a writer on his latest novel By Eric Beetner

Why did I do it to myself?

I am an outliner, but this isn’t about the eternal battle lines between plotters and pantsers. For my latest novel, There and Back, the 36th novel I’ve completed (some co-written, some very short, some under pen names, some so bad they’ll never see the light of day) I came up with a story that I liked quite a lot and I wanted to follow it where it led.

The trouble became that it led to those two words all writers should dread: dual timelines.

In the novel a group of young...