Story structure
Nonlinear narrative
A narrative technique that portrays events out of chronological order, so the telling does not follow the direct causality of the events it features.
A nonlinear narrative (also called a disjointed or disrupted narrative) is a narrative technique "where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured." Its devices include flashbacks and flashforwards, in medias res openings, parallel plot lines, dream immersion and reverse chronology. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929) is the standard novel example, and Pulp Fiction (1994) the film one, its fragmented timeline so influential that the effect is sometimes called the Tarantino effect.
For novelists the form trades clarity for resonance: the reader assembles causality the telling withholds, and the assembly is part of the meaning. The price is bookkeeping, because the author must know the true chronology even when the reader never sees it in order, which is the job of the timelines across POVs and flashbacks guide. Web serial writers carry an extra constraint: chapters publish in reading order with no whole-book revision behind them, so a nonlinear shape has to stay legible chapter by chapter.