Keeping your story grounded in time balances the pace of your story and helps readers navigate your character’s journey. But how do you show the passage of time in your novel without jarring, or worse, boring your reader?
In this episode, you’ll get clear on the passage of time in your story so you can seamlessly guide the reader as your characters move through time and space.
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Episode at a glance:
[03:21] Narrative Time
This is how much time your story’s main action takes from start to finish. It’s the forward moving action. It’s not the back story or flashbacks.It’s the main present forward moving action of your novel. How much time does your story take from beginning to end?
[08:37] Past Time
This is everything that happened before we meet the characters on page 1. Flashbacks provide a wider context for the story’s present, and are most effective when they illustrate or magnify your character’s internal conflict in the present.
[16:30] Psychic Distance
How much time has passed between the events and the telling? Are the events unfolding as the character experiences them? Or did the events already happen? When there’s more distance, the character has already lived through the events being told. Psychic distance usually modulates throughout a story.
[18:25] Marking Time and Place
Time and place markers help readers navigate your story and feel grounded in where and when a scene is taking place within the overall narrative scope of your novel.
Links Mentioned In This Episode
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
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