In my workshops we’re often talking technique and craft. Here’s just one of the topics that we’ve had in-depth discussions about lately. Time.
Time & Time-Shifts
Many narratives are structured chronologically, starting on a particular day or year and moving forward. But of course, characters have memories and pasts. And as more characters come into the story, the arrangement of incidents and scenes or even entire parts set in other times need to be created, ordered, managed.
This creates richness and complexity, but also some challenges for the writer—and for the reader.
It isn’t difficult to tell the reader where we are in time. Uncomplicated phrases can do a lot of work: ‘A week earlier’. ‘Five long years later’; or ‘Late on Monday morning…’ Less specific but picturesque elements can be integrated: the season has changed, the sun has set, for instance. Subheadings at the start of a section or chapter indicating the date and place can sometimes be appropriate.
Time can pass slowly or fast. Time reveals so much to us about our characters. For instance, if a week of hunger has passed, that’s one thing, but if a year of hunger has been endured, that’s very different. Knowing where and when the narrative is set at any particular moment, in time, is just the beginning of crafting the sense of time in narrative.
Where our discussions about time became more challenging and impactful, was when we analysed why a writer was shifting in time at a particular point.
There needs to be a compelling, organic reason to shift backwards or far forwards in time at any particular point in a narrative. And this is where our discussions in the workshop became more challenging and influential— when we analysed why a writer was shifting in time at a particular point.
For one writer, for instance, time shifts were frequent. I began to see that many occurred at a point when the emotions within the scene were running high. The narrative would shoot back in time to an earlier incident or memory. The writer was fleeing the room, so to speak.
Rather than fully develop the scene, going more deeply into those moments of friction, the writer was introducing a new element. The narrative would go back in time to years or months earlier, to a memory, or a related incident, or event that was in some way a progenitor for the incident we’d just been reading about. Or it would move sideways in time and place to an another character. These shifts were never confusing. They were clearly signalled by the writer. But ultimately they were not doing the right work for the story.
The writer realised that many of these times shifts had become habitual. It was a beautifully crafted habit, on the surface of things. But it was at the cost of characterisation, of seeing the characters speak and act, there and then. The deeper story wasn’t able to surface.
This became an opportunity for really purposeful revising.
This became a great opportunity for really purposeful revising. The writer knew why they needed to revise these sections, and how best to do it. Our discussions about time and time-shifts during this small group workshop were useful for everyone in the workshop.
The following examples include both simple time signals, and more complex indications, that suggest the effects of the passage of time:
- ‘January in Darlinghurst and the streets baked.’ Fiona Kelly McGregor, Iris, p101
- ‘It was very late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light.’ Ernest Hemingway, ‘A Clean Well-Lighted Place’ p 1.
- ‘Now a black crow sat in its branches, its beady eyes on the wait. Yes, someone else was going to die here…The crow would still be there in the morning. Several weeks the bird stayed. People looked the other way as they passed by. Everyone knew the crow was still there.’ Alexis Wright, Plains of Promise, UQP, p 4.
- ‘In idle moments on my first visit to Hegyvidék, and on the visits to come, I would take down from the shelf the English version of Hans Christian Andersen’s collected stories…’ Susan Faludi, In the Darkroom, William Collins, p 47
- ‘I took my phone out. That’s what I do when I’m stressed. I’m looking for some sign of life…I clicked the screen on… Still 5.17.’ Tegan Bennett Daylight, Royals, Simon & Schuster, p20
- ’11th July. It was the Wilga Rodeo Day, but June didn’t go—she hated seeing animals beaten and kicked…’ Julie Janson, Madukka the River Serpent, Magabala Books, p 3
- ‘When he got back to Moscow it was beginning to look like winter: the stoves were heated every day, and it was still dark when the children got up to go to school…’, Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog, Norton edition, p 228.
- ‘It’s now two months since the start of term, and it feels like the teachers are on a mission to make VCE the worst two years of our life.’ Randa Abdel-Fattah, Does My Head Look Big in This? Pan MacMillan, p 135
- ‘I add this last note in 1929. Over the years we have lost touch with another. It is very difficult for women to meet, when they live as far apart as we do.’ Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Sur’, in 12 Stories and Their Making: an anthology with interviews, edited by Paul Mandelbaum, Persea Books, p 202.
Because my workshops are interactive and small group, we talk about topics relevant to each writer’s individual work.
I include teaching components that provide the participating writers, and the writers I work with mentoring one-on-one, with the skills to manage narrative techniques and to craft their work through revision.
To find out how to join in these conversations through workshops or individual mentoring, contact me and let me know a bit about what you’re writing.
