What're some of the tricks that allow writers to slip the straitjacket of chronology?

[MDLP]

I'm probably going to be in the extreme minority here, but I've always hated novels that occupy the eternal present, ever dutifully trudging future-ward. For me, a character---all characters---should occupy the past, present and even the future simultaneously, able to dip in and out of each wantonly and at absolute leisure. And I'm not even talking about flashbacks and frames here, but about characters that have their feet in temporal existence, but their heads in the ever-churning vortexes of memory and imagination. I think a narrator can and should be able to march ever onward (EXCELSIOR!), while, at the same time, quantum-leaping into the far past or (if s/he's apprehensive) the immediate future. However, while I believe this in both theory and practice, I'm a little murky as to the latter. What are some of the tricks allowing writers to keep the plot chuffing forward, but allowing the narrator the shading of memory, of musing, of multi-dimensionality? I mean, Nabokov knew it, Morrison knows it, and I see them knowing it, but I can't...quite...grasp it.

Little help?

Respectfully,
MDLP:welcome:

[citymouse]

Hello MDLP, my first novel, in a proposed series of 5 or 6, deals with past, present and near future. My main characters age/mature a full 12 years in the first book and continue the process in subsequent stories.

I use several devices, none particularily novel; dreams, flashbacks, narratives (where two or more people are talking about someone's past/present). I also use daydreams/wishing for furure state ("what you can visualize you can actualize"). In my action chapters I have the characters engage in tactical planning.
These are just a few. I never sat and made a list.

Hope this is helpful
Michael

[MadScientistMatt]

"Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time."

Kurt Vonegut's words were the first that came to mind here. Unfortunately, that particular device for telling a story out of chronological order almost gave me headaches trying to figure out what was going on.

If you are just going on about the character's thoughts, recalling past events or anticipating the future, just tell us that's what they are thinking.

[James D. Macdonald]

Why does your story require it?

When you can answer that question you'll know how to do it.

[zarch]

Read The Historian. Elizabeth Kostova uses letter-writing, storytelling, the reading of old documents, all kinds of stuff. And she begins the novel in the future. To be honest, the multiple settings and narrators can be confusing at times, but she effectively jumps back and forth between eras.