Dual Timelines Are Hard

(especially when you don't know what you're doing)

The most difficult thing about writing Tell Them You Lied was getting the dual timeline structure to work. At first, I tried to have the narrative jump forward in time, alternating between a 2001 “then” and 2010s “now,” but I couldn’t get past the third chapter. No matter how I twisted the story in my head, I couldn’t get it to make sense. There was no …