It’s about time

This week, I am going to talk about time. Which is relative because your ‘this week’ may not be my ‘this week’.

I’m not talking about time-travel although in essence all stories, unless they happen in an instant, do travel through time. No, this is about how time is represented in fiction and how, as writers, we have to understand all of its dimensions if we are to make the stories work.

Let’s first look at ‘the time’ as in the period. Is the story set in the past, present or future and do you, the writer, understand the restrictions of that period? Can you describe the general rules of society or the everyday items your characters will have? Anchoring your story (or at least parts of it) to a period you know in detail gives you ample opportunity to show-not-tell. It also allows the reader to make sense of the world in the same way that the characters do. Even stories set in the present or future must provide the reader with enough information for them to understand the broader context of when things are happening. My ‘now’ may not be the same as yours.

Then we should probably talk about the time as in ‘tense’. As a writer, will you choose the past or the present tense for your narration – each one offering a very different road through your story? As with points of view, a writer can shift from past to present and back again but there must be a clear narrative structure for the reader to follow otherwise they’ll get lost (probably in another book!). Using the past tense tells the reader that you’re looking back; that you already know what happens in the end. The present tense can be more uncertain.

It’s also important to consider how you want the reader to experience time within your story and how to use it as a plot device to hide or reveal secrets. Are you going for a ‘real-time’ experience where the plot unfolds moment by moment? This idea of ‘showing’ suggests the reader and narrator are experiencing the story as one, moving through time, learning as they go. Hours, days or weeks may pass but decades could not be described with the same level of detail. ‘Telling’ on the other hand allows the narrator to summarise. Decades and centuries can pass in no more than a sentence.

Then we come up against the linear nature of time. Does your story move forwards or back along a single line or multiple lines? The Washington Post reports that “gratuitously confusing timelines” are high on the list of What readers hate most in books and I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of this in the past. Overlapping stories and timelines can be great but by their very nature make the story more complicated. In a bid to improve my story-telling, I have moved to a more linear plot structure – hopefully no less engaging but a lot easier to keep track of (for all of us).

But linear doesn’t always have to be simple (or forward). Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place, Wrong Time pulls us backwards through the story with a Day Zero, Day Minus Twelve and then Day Minus Six Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Eight (yes I did have to Google that one). It’s perfectly linear but in the wrong direction.

Remember though, if you are going to make it complex, you have to give it structure or make the time shifts explicit. Nothing is more frustrating that a “gratuitously confusing timeline” that doesn’t make sense even at the end.

Finally (perhaps) I have been thinking about those stories when Time itself becomes a driving force in a novel. Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life and Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August both have protagonists who are condemned to live over and over until they make the right choice. Are they controlled or liberated by an endless amount of time? No other dimension can so fully control or shape a narrative in the same what that time does.

So in summary, when talking about time in fiction, a writer needs to think about the period, the tense, the timespan, the direction, the structure and even Time itself as a controlling force.

As The Doctor says “It’s all starting to feel a bit timey-wimey”.