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Writing a Novel With a Dual Timeline
Notes on Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants
by Bill Johnson
Writing a novel with a dual timeline requires a strong understanding of story structure. The most common failure I see is that the character in the present simply relates information in a dramatically flat, uninteresting manner. Or, the intensity of events in the past are undercut by the certainty that the narrator will survive.
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, offers a good example of how a well-written novel develops multiple timelines. First, the opening prologue of the novel starts with what in screen writing would be called an inciting incident: here, that all the animals in the circus have gotten loose in the big top. On a character note, a fry cook mentions to the narrator, "Besides," he said, locking eyes with me, "it seems to me you've got a lot to lose right now." He raised his eyebrows for emphasis. My heart skipped a beat. What it is that the narrator has ‘to lose' will be revealed later in the novel. Here the question serves to draw the reader forward. The narrator races to the scene of the chaos, '...desperate to find Marlena.' This naturally raises the question, who is Marlena? The narrator spots Marlena, and notes she is 'calm as a summer day.' The narrator then sees Marlena raise a metal stake and splits open the head of a man standing in front of her, killing him. The prologue ends with the narrator relating that he's kept the secret of what happened for over 70 years. This prologue ends with a gripping question, who is the man who died? What happened to Marlena afterwards? To get the answers, the reader has to turn the page. Excellent opening. Everything that happens in the novel – in the past and present – will take readers toward an answer to these clearly defined questions. Coming out of the first chapter or prologue of a novel without these kind of clearly defined questions creates a quality of a novel being diffuse. The reader has to keep memorizing details until a reason for the information shows up. The underlying point here is that no matter whether we are in the past or the present, we are always moving toward the answer to these questions. Readers will always have a sense of movement toward answers. When you take away this purposeful movement, the opening chapters of a novel quickly go from being a pain to read (since the details have no clear purpose) to an unpassable swamp (no way to keep track of all the details while waiting for a purpose to manifest). The first chapter opens with the narrator who is now 90 (or 93) and waiting to die. Some of the questions here revolve around whether he'll be able to walk to the end of a hall and some on-going disputes with the rest home staff. One of his major complaints is that he's not served adult food. We do get the narrator's name here, Jacob Jankowski. The big news is in this chapter is that a circus is coming to town, and elderly residents with adult children will be able to attend. This gives Jacob a reason to remember his days in the circus – and what led up to that death. But then a new resident claims that he ‘carried water for the elephants' in a circus as a youth. Jacob considers this an awful lie, which he will not tolerate. Jacob's reaction threatens to put him on new medications that would leave him unable to attend the circus, and, worse, would turn him into a semi-conscious person drifting into sleep and death. This both raises a question – how does Jacob know this is a lie and why is this so important to him – and what will be the outcome of this feud? And, will Jacob live long enough to attend this circus? This chapter also introduces a nurse's aide named Rosemary and the beginning of a tentative relationship between her and Jacob based on mutual respect, not just Jacob as an old body to tend until it stops and is replaced by another one. Jacob muses about his impending death at the end of the chapter. ‘All I can do is put in time waiting for the inevitable, observing the ghosts of my past rattle around my vacuous present...I've stopped fighting them.' The next chapter – set in the past – begins to introduce us to Jacob's ghosts. The second chapter of the book takes us back to the beginning of the time line. Jacob is about to graduate from Cornell with a veterinary degree and a job with his father, also a vet. Until Jacob gets the news that both his parents have died in a traffic accident. Making matter worse, Jacob discovers that the home he thought his parents owned had been mortgaged to pay for his college education, and that his father's vet practice is penniless. During the depression, the father allowed most of his clients to pay with food or nothing at all. Distraught, Jacob fails his final exams. He walks to the edge of town and hears a train in the distance. With no home and no degree, no job and no money, Jacob makes a decision to jump aboard the train. Changing his life forever. Not that the storyteller has given him much choice, but that's what good storytellers do; they begin a story at the moment when a character's life changes. That's why so many stories start at certain times, a birth, a death, a marriage, graduating from school, enlisting in the military. All of these take a story into a new life with new challenges. This create situations where a character must be more alert to new surroundings, giving both the character and the reader a desire to want information about environments. It's hard to take a character in a settled life, a settled routine, a predictable life, and make that dramatic. Once he's aboard the train Jacob finds himself in a life or death situation. This is a circus train, and he's jumped onto a car with several workers, including a big, violent, bruising man with the occupation of throwing off the train unneeded workers. Fatally, if the head of the circus doesn't want someone coming around again. The introduction to Blackie is also foreshadowing, to a time much later in the novel when Jacob will be at risk of being thrown off the train while it travels over a trestle. Jacob is quickly defended and befriended by a man named Camel, who promises to introduce Jacob to Big Al, the owner of the circus. That brings to an end the second chapter, with a question of whether Jacob will get a menial job on the circus. In chapter three, Jacob is introduced to the rough and colorful life of a traveling circus. Because his clothes are still fairly new, he's given a job of mixing with the real crowds to jostle them into the circus. When he uses some of his college football and vet skills (wrestling with large beasts) to deal with a rowdy customer, he impresses one of his new bosses. Soon, the owner of the circus is told that Jacob almost graduated as a vet from Cornell. Since that's the closest this circus will come to having a real vet just like Ringling Brothers, Jacob has a new job. And a new, higher social status in the circus. He now eats dinner with Marlena and her husband, the man killed in the opening prologue, seemingly by Marlena. And Jacob quickly finds himself falling in love with the wife of a charming, brutal, paranoid schizophrenic. Which he could probably survive, until she falls in love with him. The action has taken another big step toward the opening scenes and questions in the prologue. When the owner of the circus buys an elephant to up his status in the circus world, this brutal man savages Rosie the elephant for not following commands and being useless. Until Jacob realizes that Rosie only understands Polish, and Rosie's beatings become only for cause. This leaves Jacob feeling like a coward, unable to protect either Rosie or Marlena. Back in the nursing home, Jacob forms a friendship with Rosemary, interrupting his quick march toward senility and death. The circus draws near. The question also arises, if Jacob married young and had several children, was Marlena his wife? This question creates a force that draws readers forward toward an answer. As the novel advances, the friendships Jacob made in his first days on the train both haunt him and save his life as he challenges August, Marlena's husband, and must maneuver around the owner of the circus to save himself, Marlena, and his friends. And who are Jacob's real friends, and who are the enemies posing as friends, comes as a series of revelations. Not everyone does survive. Jacob and Marlena realize they must flee, but after a few last shows. This sets up the final scene in the prologue, and reveals that Rosie the tormented elephant killed August, not Marlena. In the present, Jacob discovers an adult son has forgotten it was his day to visit, and Jacob will miss the circus. Something Jacob cannot abide. He walks and totters over to the circus, and is taken in by a friendly worker, who listens to Jacob's story. It comes out that Jacob and Marlena did marry and have children. Jacob is fed his first meal of real food since arriving at the nursing home, and when a policeman shows up looking for an old man who's wandered away from the nearby rest home, Jacob's new friend covers for him. Then, in a bigger surprise, he offers to let Jacob travel with him and the circus. Jacob, who started the novel as a dying old man of 90 (or 93), has found a new lease on life. Water for Elephants is a gritty story about secrets and the friendships that develop even among the desperate. The story offers a fine example of how a novel can be constructed with the action happening in the past and present, always moving forward in a purposeful way. Top of page