shakespearemom

Let me tell you about a common paper I receive from English students:

The essay is about a car accident, and the student sets up all the action by describing his/her morning in excruciating detail–what kind of toothpaste was used to brush teeth, the exact words spoken between him/her and parents, what was playing in the car radio, etc. 

And then the accident happens, as suddenly and without warning as it did in real life. In a sentence or two, the person is knocked unconscious. Then, since the student no doubt wants to end the paper because the climax is finished, he/she briefly states what parents and friends say when he/she wakes up in the hospital. End of paper. 

It’s the same problem I see in paper after paper, but it doesn’t just happen in freshman essays. I see it in novels, screenplays, plays–but even in shorter works. It’s the tendency for a writer to reflect “real time” in her work, and it comes from the assumption that, for writing to be “real,” it has to be kept as close as possible to the way things really happened. 

But writers have a wealth of tools at their disposal, and one of the greatest of these is time manipulation. I contend that this manipulation is not only preferable, but essential to accurately reflecting what what is writing about. 

Here are my rules for time: 

1.  Unless something is important, it should be shortened considerably. In other words, unless your toothpaste brand–or even the fact that you brushed your teeth–has a direct effect on the rest of your story, it needs to be left out entirely. Just kill it. Movies do this well, ignoring bathroom breaks, most meals, etc. Who really cares what you ate at lunch, unless it specifically comes up (literally) later on, unless it has an effect on someone’s mood, on a relationship, something with some relevance.

2.  Less important elements should be sped up. Days can pass quickly, or weeks, months, years, with very little comment, if what happens in them does not pertain to where your work is going. If it isn’t important, and you spend chapters and chapters on it, all you will do is reflect the lack of tension involving the characters. In other words, you will bore us.

3.  The really important stuff–major climaxes, extraordinarily important exchanges or events–those elements should be slowed down. Not put in real time, but slowed down, sometimes so that a 15-page chapter reflects only a minute of actual time. You see, in a car accident, though the action of it takes only a second or two, describing it that way negates the power of the climax completely. One look between the two soon-to-be lovers should take paragraphs to describe in infinite detail. 

In effect, you the writer are manipulating time to show us what is important in your work. A brief exchange shows something isn’t highly important, while an in-depth, time-slowed description lets us know when to dig in and really pay attention. 

Look through the scenes you are writing. When do you slow down what should be sped up? When do you give too much detail to the trivial? Where do you need to set your heels in and flesh an event out far more.

Don’t neglect your climax by trying to hurry it up. Use time in your favor.

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