In particular, I'm torn as to where I draw the line between good character history that the author should know, but not necessarily mention. In my case, the MC is by far the most interesting and unique person in the book, but he is rarely a POV character - he's something of a spy, and all of my test readers have enjoyed being surprised by him most of the time, but in on the deceptions in key instances. His struggles and successes in childhood, though are such key parts of who he is that I want the reader to experience them. A few of my test readers have really enjoyed the childhood scenes, so I'd like to keep them in somehow.

I think it's workable. I suppose I was more wondering if there are some easy gotchas that people know of from others who have tried and failed to incorporate child/adult past/present storylines. I've only read a few examples in published works, and those went quite well, but it's the kind of storytelling device that I could easily see being misused.

As a contrast, I know the silly pitfalls of bad description and classic examples of tell vs show. "Bob was scared of the ghost and was too afraid to run." vs "Bob fell back into the corner, his eyes fixated on the pulsating wisp floating like the breath of a tomb. He wanted nothing in the world but to flee, but he couldn't force himself to move."

Does anyone know of a few cardinal sins of parallel timelines, particularly when used with the protagonist as a child and then as an adult?

mute - 1. not speaking; silent--adj 2. unable to speak--n 1. a deaf mute 2. a device that softens the sound of a musical instrument

I know it's not science fiction or fantasy, but the best example of parallel timelines that I've ever read was Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud. The author was a master of intertwining the two from going from present day back to over 1000 years into the past. She knew her history, did all the research, and wrote the book. Although it is more a mystery than anything else, it's well worth the read.

A child suffering from mutism often is perfectly capable of speaking, and furthermore often does so at home, but usually not in a public setting. It does not correspond with a lack of confidence. In fact, such a child is often very much in command in a setting where they refuse to speak (though are often expected to do so), such as at school.

http://neurology.health-cares.net/mutism.php
"Mutism is the inability or unwillingness to speak"
"The child has the ability to converse normally, and does so, for example, in the home, but consistently fails to speak in specific situations such as at school or with strangers. It is estimated that one in every 1,000 school-age children
are affected."

I am indeed worried about the cardinal sin of confusing the reader about what is past and what is present. I'm hoping that making it obvious that in one setting/timeline, the characters are children, and in the other they are adults, this is made pretty clear. I was hoping to avoid the bluntness of printing a date at the beginning of each chapter, and I think I'll be able to do so.

The author may have felt it wasn't necessary, or even edited the ages out under the idea that they were boring, but I was a little frustrated by it because the chapters were not inserted in a consistent order, and I wanted to know which incidents/scenes happened in what order.

The gist of the post was that although Holes has a rotten premise, it very well-written. It's a YA story, and I think it's well worth looking at if you want a simple story with multiple timelines.
Melanie

Another thing to think about is whether the character is experiencing the time jumps with you, in the form of flashbacks. He sees a person or an object that reminds him of something, the scene ends there, and begins the next scene in the earlier time, for instance.

The point of the earlier chapters is to get into the head of the MC a little and understand how he became the way he is. It also gives a little bit more time for the story to be focused exclusively on him.

Is that a danger though? I didn't particularly plan to go through the lives of the other major characters - few of them are as interesting as the MC and many of them have more "standard" childhoods. This isn't the story of a childhood group of friends who grow up to work together, (like King's IT). Some of the characters knew each other as children, and that childhood background plays a small part in how they know each other as adults, but it isn't a focus of the plot.

My idea in keeping it focused on the main character (shameless plug** whom you can interview in the Character interviews board on Hatrack) was to give that storyline almost a feel of its own, rather than using glimpses of the past to explain a mystery in the future.

Will readers then expect to see a glimpse from the childhood of all the main characters? Will they expect to see the villain at this time frame? The MC has no interaction with the villain as a child, and the villain is 1 generation older than the "heroes" anyhow.

That being said, doing that would be difficult. You'd have to be very careful how you did it. I don't think I could pull it off at this point in my career..