A small book came my way this month. It's called The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes,
by Joan Silbers. Very short, it explores how time appears in different
ways in story. It's useful for writers in any genre who are working
with scenes and situations in time and space.
I read The Art of Time in Fiction
while briefly stalled out with my novel-in-progress. It's at revision,
which means that I have about 120,000 words written, looking for a
better shape and smoother flow.
Some
writers find that better shape and smoother flow via plot work.
Raising the stakes. Finding character motive. I use these tricks too.
This being my second novel and my fourteenth book, I have a bag full of
revision tricks.
But
nothing was working. The book felt bigger and bigger, the problems
within it impossible to resolve. I was drowning in pages.
I
decided to create a timeline, inspired by Silbers' book. I wanted to
clearly see what kind of time I was using in my chapters. Was it
classic time, chronological? Was it a more fluid time, where flashbacks
(or backstory) plays a big role?
I
knew my transitions were pretty weak. Because the timeline jumped all
over, a reader probably couldn't follow the sequences easily. In fact,
one of my readers had already sent a list of questions about confusing
transitions--how did this person get here, five days later, and what
happened in the meantime? When you get this feedback, you know
something is amiss with time and location.
Making a Time and Location Chart
I
went through the draft and listed each scene (I call a scene or
"island" any time there is a change from one place to another or one
time period to a new time). Next to the scene I wrote its location.
Then I wrote the approximate date it happened.
If
a section was summary instead of scene (it happened over a week or a
month or a day), I wrote the span of time and span of locations.
Immediately this reminded me of why summary is less concrete for the
reader than scene!
Once
I had the chart roughed out, I looked at the list of locations first.
They varied from "airport office" to "farmhouse kitchen" to upstairs
studio" to" Molly's truck." I made sure to list these locations as
specifically as possible.
Then
I looked at the time. I got out a calendar for 2013, which is when I
hope my book will be published, and started with October 26 that year.
It falls on a Saturday. I kept giving specific dates and days to each
scene, noting how much time elapsed between them.
If a chapter included flashbacks into the past, I noted those dates and locations too.
The
task took me about two hours. When I finished I had three handwritten
pages. A good chart with some key information for taking my revision to
the next step--and out of it stall.
Using Time to Refine Your Story
As
I learned in Silbers' book, time is important to readers. They track
it. They want to know where we are in space, but also in time, at each
moment of a story. Some writers (Virginia Woolf comes to mind) like to
play with time, make it irrelevant. It's hard to get away with this,
especially if you are writing your first book and hope to publish in
today's competitive market. Most modern readers have trouble with
expanded or unanchored time. And even if it feels boring to you, or
overly obvious, to say where we are in the day or night or week, the
reader will often get lost or irritated if you don't.
It's
not that a writer has to be rigid with this. You don't need to begin
each chapter with date and hour. But somewhere there has to be a time
marker, just a mention of how the morning or evening sky looks, to
anchor the reader in time.
When
I reviewed my chart, I saw how askew this was in my draft. I had time
markers but they were not "tracking" well. For instance, a scene might
start in the morning, then suddenly it would be late evening for no
reason except my inattention to time.
I
saw that time of day and year could be much more consciously used in
each scene. If I chose to have something happen in the dark, it had a
certain emotional meaning for the reader, compared to broad daylight.
So I began playing with this--something a fiction writer can do!--and
adjusted it to make more impact. Some scenes I put at a different time
of day, but mostly I just began to sequence them better, so a reader
could track the days without any effort.
The Pros and Cons of Summarized Time
As
said above, summarized time is distant for a reader, emotionally.
Summarized time is when you write something like "Over the next ten
months, he grew to be the size of an alligator." We don't see this
growth day to day, so the process is less real to us than the end
product.
If
you need to skate through some uneventful spots, summarized time is
fine. But if you use it alot, your book will begin to read like a list
of events and changes rather than an experience of those changes.
I
found myself cheating--I would be writing along and get tired of the
endless details of scene. So I would slip into summary. Skip an
afternoon, a couple of days, even several months. My chart revealed
this all too plainly. And I saw where my boredom as a writer had
deprived my story of emotion. So, thanks to the chart, I could find the
spots where I needed to go back in and expand. Stop taking the
shortcut of summarized time.
It
also made me aware of how much total time my story covered. When did
it begin, when did it end? Was that much time essential? Could I use
flashbacks instead, to weave in what happened before, rather than having
such an endless stretch of time?
Total Time--What's Most Effective for Your Story?
Memoirists
run into this question all the time. When does my story begin? I'm
writing about my life, or part of it. Do I need to put in that much
about childhood? When is the story really over--since I'm still living
it?
Memoir
is not autobiography, so memoirists need to choose a snapshot from
their lives to include in their books, then flash back to the past to
bring in small bits that are needed for context. Why a grown man
trembles in church? Flash back to his abuse as a choir boy. Why a
family lives far away from relatives? Flash back to a huge falling out
ten years before. You don't need to start with the abuse scene or the
fight--the passage of time between then and now is not part of your
snapshot. Using flashbacks is a great way to handle total time, so it's
more manageable for the reader.
In
fiction, same rule applies. The characters have a past too. But
choose the start of your book's total time in the current dilemma, not
in the history that caused it.
Depth versus Breadth
I
looked at my total time and saw I'd added on too much. I needed to
figure out where I could employ flashbacks instead of including past
events as scenes.
As
a reader, I am happiest with books that do not span centuries.
Occasionally, I enjoy an epic. But mostly I like depth rather than
breadth in a timeline, personally. I like to go deeper into specific
meaningful events rather than have lots of them without meaning.
In
my own books, I strive for short total timelines, if possible. My
chart allowed me to see where I could condense each of the three acts in
my draft. My end result:
Act 1--October 26 through November 8
Act 2--December 15 through February 15
Act 3--February 28 through March 3
Acts
1 and 3 are very condensed. This is where the big crises happen. Act 2
is longer, slower, and goes deeper in meaning. I may end up condensing
Act 2 even more, but that's where it stands now, since my chart-making.
I
also have some gaps to deal with: November 8 through December 15, and
February 15 through February 28. These are where I can use summarized
time. Not much happens in the story there. These gaps aren't long;
they just need to be justified.
Looking at Location and Emotional Meaning
My timeline spanned about four months, which is a good period for a novel in my genre.
But
my locations were all over the place! There were way more locations
than I could give meaning to. I needed to also condense my location
choices and make them each have meaning.
I
began a new column on my chart: meaning of locations. The farmhouse
kitchen was first. I scanned the scenes there and saw that most of them
contained revelation of some sort--a big fight, a meal where some
secret was told, a reconciliation. I began looking for scenes that
weren't in the farmhouse kitchen, but could be, if I wanted to tie this
meaning to this location. I found a few and easily moved them there.
Then
I went to the next location--the artist's studio. Again, looking at
the scenes there, a pattern emerged. Searching the other scenes allowed
me to move a couple and condense and focus the location's meaning.
This was quite fun, and easy to do.
Memoirists
and nonfiction writers can use this same technique, but just imagine
instead of location, they are using a camera lens. Within a real-life
location, there are a thousand views. Choose the view that has the most
meaning.
For
instance, in a bedroom, what object, view, or setting detail evokes the
meaning you're after for that scene? Same with a classroom or
corporate boardroom. You are not able to change the location of a true
event, but you can change the camera angle or view of that location.
Use this.
How Storyboards Support Your Chart
In
my online classes and my workshops, I teach writers how to organize
their books' structure by using a filmmaker's technique: the
storyboard. Storyboards are the "go-to" brainstorming tool for
sequencing everything: from scenes to locations to time to where to
place flashbacks.
To make a storyboard, you can watch my video here.
Or come to one of my workshops and get hands-on training. Storyboards
are the first step I recommend, before tackling the Time and Location
Chart, because they give you the bigger picture.
Basically
you write your ideas on Post-It notes and arrange them on a
posterboard, then fill the boxes in with more ideas as you continue to
build your book. Easier to manipulate than an outline, storyboards make
room for the right brain too--you can move those Post-It notes around
as you figure out better flows.
Storyboards
are great to learn about--if this interests you and you live near the
Twin Cities, join me at a two-day storyboarding workshop on October
26-27 (click here for details).
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1. Get out several sheets of graph paper or open a spreadsheet on your computer, like Excel.
2. Create three columns.
3. In the first column, list the dates of each "island" or scene in your book so far. List them in the order they appear in the chapters. If a section is summarized, write the span of time.
4. In the second column, list all the locations used, for each scene, also in the order they appear. Be as specific as possible.
5. In the third column, write the emotional meaning of the location and time/day.
6. Consider the results. Where can you trim? Where must you expand, so that the reader can easily track time and location in your story?
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