When I started writing I checked out all the available guidance for beginners, and found the conventional advice on plot structure—inciting incident, etc. While I could acknowledge the reasons why it became established and continues, it didn’t work for the kind of story I wanted to tell.

I needed something that both developed the high-concept theme I wanted to explore, while avoiding info-dumps and sermonizing as much as posible, AND directed the slightly more genre-conforming suspense-romance plot.

I hit upon the idea of having the repercussions from the inciting incident launch two plot lines, with the effect of each incident in one plot line instigating the next incident in the parallel plot line, (hence the double-helix image) and both lines converging in the climax.

While neither the Nobel prize committee nor Amazon customers have beaten a path to my door—because I’m the pits at self-promotion—one reviewer described it as ‘well-plotted’ and two other people who don’t know each other (okay, they were friends of mine) said it was ‘unputdownable.’

While I believe I could do better with characterization and adding emotional texture to scenes, I felt satisfied with the plot. And I’m at work on another book, this time with a triple parallel plot line.

With all the millennia that people have been writing, someone must have come up with this technique before, and there’s probably a name for it. Does anyone know?