Playing with Time

by

Mitchell Wiesjahn

 

            Writers are effectively the masters of time because we can determine how long events transpire and can essentially revert to the past or even fast-forward to the future with minimal effort. It’s a powerful responsibility that we shoulder, and even some of us forget or are possibly afraid of using our superpowers in our works. I’m here to tell you that manipulating time to your advantage is easy once you understand how to make a timeline for your own story.

 

            Let’s start with a simple question you will probably ask yourself before you write your novel, or you may have written it and now you can revise with this in mind: When does your story begin and how long do the story events take? Let me bring in two examples of a video game and a book that have a very specific time frame for their stories. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One’s stories take place within a very specific three-day timeline. Despite the many differences these stories share, they both are wrapped around a very short time span, but Zelda writers and Whitehead are not constrained by this timeline at all because they know how to extend the boundaries of this time, with Whitehead using irregular flashbacks and Majora’s Mask actually making the player the master of time by constantly reverting back to the first day in the story to start from a different objective and effectively building to more than four different stories despite being trapped in a three-day cycle.

 

What you can take from my examples is that shifts in time meaningfully change the story in interesting ways. In Zone One, the protagonist often finds his thoughts shifting to his past in the apocalypse and we get a better sense of his character’s development and trauma that occurs from the zombie outbreak, while in Majora’s Mask the hero Link is unable to rectify the crimes the Skull Kid has wrought on the four regions in the game and so Link has to use his Ocarina to extend the timeframe. When you take into account how long your story will take place, you will be able to do what Link does with his Ocarina: bend time to work for you.

 

While your story doesn’t need to be as tight as three days, you should be aware of what your story’s timeline will do to your characters. Consider, for example, a time frame of fifty years. If the story is set within the first twenty, what will the other thirty years do for the story’s plot and how will the character grow in those thirty years? We all age obviously, and we will experience a lot of life changing events throughout our lifetimes, so mastering time involves creating the life changing events and still trying to hold up to the major story. Considering the example again, if the character was the exact same person, this wouldn’t make sense. If the character was the same, time is not being used to effectively portray the character and just isn’t a realistic depiction. Keeping the story real is important, and while it may seem intimidating, you should just remember that you aren’t the same person you were 5, 10, or even 20 years ago. Getting to know your different selves could help you build a character and his or her different selves throughout the many different timelines you may use within your stories.

 

So we’ve talked about the linear framing of timeline, but now we should focus on how to mess with time to structure your story differently. In the cases of the stories above, it was an integral part of their being to be set in a three-day timeline that jumps into the past on occasion, but they still progress forward. Your own story may not feel right to you, and maybe you can’t pinpoint why. You should now ask yourself this: Does my story have to go from Time A to Time B? If your work really only picks up near the middle of your story and the beginning seems to drag at some points, you might need to redo the order. You’ve probably been told to start in media res, or starting in the middle or the action, and in the above scenario, it just seems to be that as a time master, you really need to cut the middle and paste it at the beginning, and you’re following that rule now. If that beginning is so important to you, don’t you think you might explain it another way? You could explain it as a flashback, or a character may just reiterate the beginning instead, but that way you have reworked your story into something that is not only more compelling, it also gives the story a unique twist. Consider another book, The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin; the story switches between the present and the past every chapter. This gives us insight into the Anarchist society of the planet Anarres during the past segments, and the present gives us the anarchist look into the planet Urras. The past in the story leads to the present, while the present in a way brings us to a point before the past segment begins. The story’s beginning, in media res, actually would have made for a climax if the story was told chronologically, but the way it intros brings readers into the action and disorients them, helping to make for an intriguing tale.

 

            Copying this style may not be the way to go about writing a story all the time, but beginning in the heat of the action and using time manipulation to back track will likely lead to an interesting starting point for a story. While you may not be comfortable with using time to build an intriguing story now, eventually these things will be learned from simply reading books or playing games like the ones above. Watching someone else manipulate time is surely the best route to figuring it out for yourself. You will learn what other authors do to make successful transitions in time, and hopefully they will help you become an excellent master of time.

 

            Consider checking these articles out for more information:

 

http://romanceuniversity.org/2010/11/05/its-all-a-matter-of-time-exploring-linear-vs-non-linear-story-structure/

 

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/6-ways-to-pull-off-dual-timelines-in/



Your Creative Environment

by

Mitchell Wiesjahn

 

Most writers will want to have a separate environment for writing their greatest works. So if you have this separate space, wherever it may be, you should now prepare it to be a proper writing environment. You may ask: what would qualify as a good place to write? How do I prepare it for writing? Why do I really need to prepare it for writing?

Preparing a proper space is necessary because your designated writing space needs to allow you to write without distraction and needs to ensure maximum creative productivity. This is part of the reason you won’t want to write in a living room that could have distractions like television, people, or pets disturbing a peaceful writing session. Distractions like these not only hinder your writing, they can take away from your creative muse. That great idea you had is gone as quick as your dog can bark. A proper environment should block out the rest of the world to let you write in peace. Think of places in your home that might provide such a place. You may have an office space already, but if not, you could set up shop in a laundry room (Stephen King did that at one time), an attic, a basement, or even possibly your bedroom, if you can modify it to your needs as a writer.

             That’s not to say that your environment should just be about finding peace. It also can bring up great inspiration. As a writer, you may be building fantastical worlds for readers to escape to. Think of setting up your writing space as an exercise for building your grand world. Think about your work and what you need to envision as you write, then just decorate as necessary.  As a fantasy writer, maybe you’ll try to fortify your space with illustrations of Middle Earth. Science Fiction writers will probably want to use this space to properly set themselves in outer space by setting up constellations. Throwing in a Death Star would most likely help too.

            You might also want to think about making your space as real as possible, not just an artificial environment that you are piecing together. If we are to think of this place you’ve constructed being as real as any setting, not to mention making the space help you write about vibrant settings, could you add a touch of smell that could invoke your creative muse? Maybe you are writing about a doctor as a main character and his adventures in the medical field, how about making your working space smell as sanitized as a hospital to help you become one with the character? Depending on what you want to write about, you may want to put some thought into what sort of smells your characters will encounter, for that can only help you in making your own writing come off as realistic and sensory as possible.

            If we talk sensory, then touch is also noteworthy. It might be easier to envision than smell, as you might be more aware of what you touch than what you smell (unless the smell is very distinctive from others). If you’re in fantasy, maybe incorporate some tree bark or castle concrete into your space. This not only serves as a visual element, but if you are procrastinating and suffering from writer’s block, touching these items could get you back into the fold, and they will serve as comfort in such times. In this case, your environment is becoming a breathing entity, and if you’re incorporating smell, then it becomes even more alive with every addition you make.

Decorating doesn’t need to be expensive, but it needs to inspire you to write. What you write could potentially benefit you tremendously, so keep in mind that this expense of decorating (or world building exercise if you prefer) is really just a small investment. Posters are not expensive, and if you’re nerdy like me you may just use childhood toys to help you out. Something that you may also want to consider is the positivity you should put into your space. You may think a cheesy line about believing in yourself doesn’t help, but a few inspirational quotes can go a long way in getting through those plot holes you need to fill up.

Maybe this doesn’t work for you, or you aren’t sure how to go about using space to generate creativity. You might consider examining some of these articles, which can provide you more information about where to write your great novel or short story.

 

http://thewritelife.com/10-creative-writing-spaces/

http://www.pw.org/content/writing_spaces

http://thewritelife.com/writing-spaces-9-famous-creatives-best-work/