Time lines

 The backbone of a book but one that's easy to get tangled. It can be micro or macro - the day that apparently lasts for 36 hours or the 12 month pregnancy. 

The manuscript I am currently wrangling, which is intended to turn into Riviera 5, was one I started some while ago and shelved because it wasn't talking to me. It's suddenly decided where it wants to go, so I am sorting out the 40,000 words or so that I already have. This is the point where I realised that the first day, when the heroine arrives on the Riviera to start a new job, seemed to be going on for rather a long time ... and unfeasibly long time, when I really thought about it. Cue some hard looks and determined back tracking to cut one day into two. 

Time lining is fiddly, but I usually enjoy working it all out. Bless my gnarled little bureaucratic heart. In my first published book the copy editor queried whether I had the villain in two places at once. I was able to point out, with flight plans, how he got from one place to another. I'd carefully worked it all out - and learned from that encounter that I needed to keep doing it. You learn something every time you have an edit - or at least I do. 

Travelling is actually one of the things that can get the time line in a knot - air travel in particular involves so much add-on time at airports at both ends, as well as the flight itself. That's how the new manuscript managed to have an extra long day. Stories with several plot lines can get muddled too, as events in each one have to keep up with each other. I've never had trouble with the twelve month pregnancy - not quite. Readers of the most recent Rivera books will have noticed that they all take place in the same time space - 2019. That was my way of avoiding the problem of the pandemic and lockdowns - so Cassie's pregnancy is a feature of all of them. At some stage that baby is going to have to be born. I think I have found out how I m going to do it. 

Looks like Rivera 5 might have it's own time line, plus one that stretches back over 3 previous books! Figuring that one out is going to be fun.