GhostingReality101

Below are two very simple examples of how tim and sally could grow up. How as a writer would it be possible to tell a story starting with 1A all the way till tim and sally die. Then without confusing the reader tell the story starting from 1B up until tim and sally die?

Event 1A
Tim and sally are twins shortly after their 5th birthday their mother dies. They grow up living in their mother's sister house.

Event 1B
Tim and sally are twins who are raised by their mother.

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Ilasir Maroa

Write two books, physically, or labeled as such, and make your intent clear, either directly, or not.

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Jeff Colburn

I agree, these are two very different stories.

Have Fun,
Jeff

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lisajane

You could probably write alternate chapters, but I don't see why you need the two storylines in the first place.

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streetkid

As said earlier, 1a and 1b are two different stories. Presuming you want to write one of them that spans the lives of two characters, you're really going to have to tie the two of them together through the entirety of the story. People do this all the time with characters who are childhood sweethearts who get separated (at childhood or at adolescence), or with regular lovers in stories covering their courtship, marriage, trials and tribulations, but unless you're going for the forbidden love angle, you'll need to think some about the structure of the story, and why you'd want to cover both characters through their entire lives. What ties them together?

Also keep in mind that stories spanning lifetimes don't have to take characters from 0-80. Most people don't live that long anyway.

Something else to also keep in mind is that even when stories cover entire lifetimes of people, they tend to focus on specific ages or events in their lives. Know when to zoom in, and when to zoom out.

Destroyer

Parallel universes that combine partway through the book. Though that'll bring you into really complicated and annoying territory that's best left alone, unless you've given it an immense amount of thought like I have.

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GhostingReality101

One story divided into six parts or books, it spans over 2 trillion years. This story can end in an infinite number of ways, I choose to cover two different paths the story can take however these two paths share a number of events though each path has a slightly different version of some events. A few characters from one path arnt in the other but most of them are, both paths end with the same characters but in different situations.

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