Out of order

Writing is, among other things, an attempt to make sense of the world. To find meaning, or at least patterns.

Our storytelling may be less about what happened, or when, than about why and how. How did we get here? What does it mean?

On chronology, Beth Kephart says this:

"How many times, in class, to students, to writers, have I said: Don't tell me the story in a straight line. Break the grid. Steer your way toward wisdom by scrambling the sequence of facts."

She goes on to quote Abigail Thomas on the pitfalls of chronology, in a blog post worth reading.