Do you experience time as a straight line? Or does it feel more like the tracks of an infinity loop? Non-linear narratives attempt to capture the choppy, fluid, indelible sensation of living, with all its nostalgic and hopeful tendencies.

Did you know that you can send information backward in time? Scientists do this in something called the Delayed Choice Experiment. What is that? I don’t’ know. I barely passed high school physics, but I’ll link an article at the bottom of the page.

The point is- time is relative, especially in storytelling. In fiction, time can flow forward and backward, and sometimes multiple timelines run parallel. This type of story is called a nonlinear narrative or nonlinear plot. Today we’re going to talk about what a nonlinear narrative is, look at examples of nonlinear plots and discuss the purpose of nonlinear narratives.

Our physical experience of life is chronological. Yet our internal experience of life may not be. We reminisce on the past and anticipate the future. This uniquely human experience is portrayed on the big screen through non-linear storytelling. What is a non-linear plot used for? Non-linear plots allow filmmakers to rearrange time in an order that best serves their story. The variations of non-linear stories are bound by the limits of time itself. In this article, we’ll explore non-linear storytelling and how some of cinema’s best films use it to tell compelling stories.

Some writers craft the opening scenes of their literary worlds with flowery, descriptive language—powerful sensory adjectives that detail the environment and set up where the story takes place. Other writers prefer to drop the reader right into the middle of the action, letting the physical aspects of the world unfold as the beginning of the story progresses.

First Nations people don’t always think about things in timelines with set starting and finishing spots. Instead, we think in patterns and cycles using the place and time where we are now as a starting point. This is called non-linear thinking.

Imagine drawing two dots and a straight line connecting them together. One dot is the start of a story, the other is the ending of the story. Your line is telling the story and goes smoothly from one to the other. This is linear time, start to finish.

How long do you think stories can be passed down, generation to generation?

Hundreds of years? Thousands?

Today, we publish new research in the Journal of Archaeological Science demonstrating that traditional stories from Tasmania have been passed down for more than 12,000 years. And we use multiple lines of evidence to show it.