Sometimes, the best way to tell a story is not in chronological order.

If you're writing a short story or an essay, you can play around with the structure of your stories by rearranging the scenes and seeing what works best to build and main tension throughout the story. This is an especially useful activity to try if your story plays out over several years and/or includes flashbacks.

Here's how it works. Print out your story and cut up all the scenes and lay them out on the floor. Mix them up, as if you’re shuffling a deck of cards, and then rearrange.

When I do this activity, I don’t have a formula of how I rearrange. I just go with my gut. I scan the scenes and place them one after the next.

Don't be afraid to make wild changes here! Move the ending closer to the beginning. Or pick a scene from the middle of the story and make that the beginning. And then see how the story flows.

More often than not, this process gives me deeper insights into my story.

I can discover whether I’m missing some crucial scenes, if my characters are underdeveloped or not pulling their weight in the story, if I have too much backstory, and so on.

It also helps me spot the weakest parts of my story, especially scenes that don’t fit in the story or scenes that don’t add anything new to the story, all of which I end up throwing out.

This exercise can feel daunting, but treat it like play.

You have a copy of the story on your computer, nothing is being lost here. You’re simply trying something out, like a new outfit in a dressing room, and seeing if it fits. Breaking out of a linear/chronological structure can sometimes crack open your story in beautiful, unexpected ways.

If you're working on a longer project like a novel or a memoir, you can try this with different chapters instead of individual scenes.

Or you can write a summary of the main events in your book on cue cards or sticky notes and move things around that way.

I recently read Hala Alyan's memoir "I'll Tell You When I'm Home" and I found the structure so fascinating, the way the memoir feels random as you're reading, but the scenes are still held together through a larger narrative structure.

If you want to read examples of short stories or essays with a non-chronological, seemingly random structure, let me know and I'll share them with you.

With best wishes & duas for your writing,

Hajera

Here's how I can support you in your writing:

✍🏽 Learn craft and write stronger stories: Join the waitlist for Grounded Writers, a creative writing community for Muslim women​

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