{"id":1398,"date":"2021-05-19T13:35:12","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T17:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1398"},"modified":"2021-05-19T13:35:12","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T17:35:12","slug":"time-waits-for-no-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/19\/time-waits-for-no-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Time Waits for No One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On April 13, 2020, Clare H. wrote, Any suggestions on a good way to show that time has passed in a book? Currently, my character is twelve, but I want him to be 17 or 18 by the time I hit my climax, that way readers will see him grow. So far I am trying to show that the seasons are changing and I have thought about using holidays almost as checkpoints.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of you weighed in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erica: Depending on what else you have going on, you might want to put in a big time jump somewhere, such as skipping directly from 14 to 16. I would suggest either making the passage of time fairly slow or fairly fast. If you do put in a big time jump, though, try to have it occur between chapters. It\u2019s less confusing for the readers that way.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katie W.: I vote for the big time jump. As a reader, I find it much less confusing than simply speeding up time, (i.e., skipping ahead in a movie instead of fast-forwarding.) especially if you can divide the book into parts and have the time jump take place between parts, rather than inside one. A simple \u201c4 years later\u201d (or whatever time interval you want) heading works wonders.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa Mead: Do you want him to go straight from 12 to 17, or show some things happening in between?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s one way I dealt with a big time jump:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c(Juvenile demon) dropped into a hunting crouch beside Malak, who realized with shock that (the youngster) was now as tall as he was. (JD) had changed from a spawnling to a long-legged juvenile before Malak had even thought to notice the transformation. Once, twenty years would have seemed an impossibly long time, but among Aureni years passed almost without notice. He\u2019d lived years upon years, more than a Deeper One could count on hands and feet\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks, Melissa Mead, for the big-jump demonstration!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m with Erica and Katie W. that it\u2019s best not to jump over changes that need to evolve in our story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like a direct approach, like seasons and holidays. Chapter headings or book sections can indicate the year\u2013in our world or in a fantasy universe with a different calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on our story, we can use current events rather than years, like Royal Birth, Coronation, Royal Marriage, Assassination, Accession. Not in my case, but in most, we can even use height markers: 4′ 9″, 5′ 2″, etc. Diary entries can work too. July 1, 2008, March 13, 2010, November, 22, 2011. And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can get creative and have a different character mark the changes, say from a parent to a grandparent in letters, emails, phone calls, texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we\u2019re spanning time with a young MC, we have to think about growth. A twelve-year-old and a seventeen-year-old are different–emotionally, intellectually, and physically. The teenager will have more experience and a broader understanding. For example, if we\u2019re using diary entries, the voice is likely to change over time. And yet, he still has to be the same person, even if the challenges in our plot also cause him to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my opinion, L. M. Montgomery does a great job with this in Anne of Green Gables<\/em>, one of my childhood faves. At the beginning, Anne speaks at a thousand words a minute with barely time for breath. That fades, though, as she matures. Yet, she remains thoughtful, smart, and imaginative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These changes will mark time too, more subtly than direct markers, which we\u2019ll probably still need (or I\u2019d still need).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can list ways our MC may change. Here are a few for starters:
\u2022 talkative to quiet, as L. M. Montogomery does it
\u2022 quiet to talkative, as our MC becomes more assertive
\u2022 incautious to careful
\u2022 clumsy to graceful, like Ella after finishing school<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What else? List five more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we have to weave these in\u2013draw the reader\u2019s attention to these qualities at the beginning and again later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can also take advantage of plot in the aging of our MC, who at twelve will approach a problem one way, at seventeen another\u2013different, not necessarily improved. We can change the challenges too and raise the stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having said all this, though, if we can\u2013if our plot lets us\u2013there\u2019s an advantage to having our story happen in a short time, weeks and months rather than years. The advantage is just that it\u2019s a little easier, because we don\u2019t have to work to close the gap, as Clare H. is asking about. LOL: I should talk, because five of my novels progress from my MC\u2019s birth or early childhood to her teen years!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Intelligent life in the world of your science fiction story is a species that follows the life cycle of a frog: egg, tadpole, frog. It\u2019s a thinking creature every step of the way, but its understanding and temperament change as it goes along. Give your creature a goal or a problem from inception and write its story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The evil queen in \u201cSnow White\u201d changes as the story goes along. When the fairy tale opens, she\u2019s beautiful and content; Snow White is barely a blip in her consciousness. After the mirror declares the girl lovelier than she is, she\u2019s filled with rage but not ready to kill Snow White herself, so she commands the hunter to do the dirty deed. When he doesn\u2019t, she\u2019s ready to take over and commit murder. There\u2019s a possible next transformation when she names the punishment that will be inflicted on her (dancing in the red-hot shoes). Write the story in a way that explains the transformations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Your MC Marietta is seven when her beloved older sister disappears and she swears to get her back. Your story takes her from seven to fifteen, when she either succeeds or fails definitively. Write the story, showing how she changes as she grows older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On April 13, 2020, Clare H. wrote, Any suggestions on a good way to show that time has passed in a book? Currently, my character is twelve, but I want him to be 17 or 18 by the time I hit my climax, that way readers will see him grow. So far I am trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[291,278],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}