Rearranging the narrative to build better stories

The problem

There was one interview subject that led to a change in direction for David, when he realised the material was best suited to a work of fiction. But with seven drafts in seven years, David found it was not a natural transition from journalism to fiction writing.

"He had an amazing story: he grew up in a town south of London, and essentially became the Mr Big of that town. He ran the drug trade, had an overdose, became a Christian, became not-a-Christian.

I said, "I'll interview you, and then I'll turn your story into a novel", thinking I would apply the same process: timeline, look at the events, and then just tell a story. I used Aeon Timeline to pick out the best bits of his story: the fun stories, the stories that resonate with the overarching theme.

I've written seven drafts of this book, but something about it just wasn't working. It might sound strange, but it’s not a natural transition from journalism to fiction: I thought I was writing a novel because I made stuff up... but that's not a novel, that's not a fictional narrative."

A major breakthrough

Using Aeon Timeline 3 during its beta phase helped David realise that even though he had 160,000 words of decent material, he was still writing a biography.

"I realised I could take the events from the timeline, and arrange them any way I wanted in the narrative. Just the freedom to be able to throw these events around made me realise I had been getting it entirely wrong.

In his early 20s, he goes to prison for 3 days: he's been a drug dealer and an addict, he's beaten people up and threatened to kill people, but here he is in prison because he's not paid £2000 in tax.

Looking at this on the timeline, I thought, that's actually the beginning and end of the story. Because in prison, he is confronted with himself, with loneliness, with his doubts — he thinks he might never get out because his enemies are right there with him.

I've taken 20-odd years of information, and I have turned it into a weekend. I had worked on it all that time, and I wouldn't have even seen that if it wasn't for Aeon Timeline 3."

Crafting more powerful stories using themes

Being able to plot both a chronological timeline of events and an independent narrative structure is now central to David's work.

"So I've taken the events from the timeline that are this weekend, and they now frame the story in the Narrative View. Within that, I've plotted events from the period he's reflecting on, and interleaved events and characters from within the prison, because that's the frame I'm using.

Narrative View takes dates and events and moments, and enabled me to construct an entirely different narrative structure, that is now a fictional book and not just an autobiography in drag.

The cream on top has been the work on the themes: I have gone from having a lot of themes, but not really knowing what any of them were, to now having just three key themes that the characters carry through the novel — some of which just weren't there before.

It becomes a very powerful story thematically because I was able to boil it all down."