Frame That Story! Time and Its Impact on the Story Theme

The way we handle time in our story will affect not only the plot but also the themes

There is a fundamental difference between stories and any other account of events — and it isn’t whether those events are true or not.

The main difference is that stories are supposed to have meaning. Stories are told because they have meaning. The reason why we want to tell a story, or we want to listen to it is that we believe that story will enrich both the person who tells it and the person who receives it.

This is particularly true for invented stories, or for true stories that we intentionally fictionalise. The very reason why we want to fictionalise a true story is the sense of the story itself: by fictionalising the events — that is by intentionally manipulating them — we want to make a particular meaning or message to come to the fore.

Stories are supposed to have meaning. Stories are told because they have meaning

The story structure is one of the main tools we use to allow the meaning of the story to emerge and to be understandable by readers.

But there is another tool that we may sometimes overlook. Something that is so naturally woven with the unfolding of a story that we just take it for granted.

Time.

How the manipulation of time creates stories

Without time, there wouldn’t be a story. There wouldn’t be events to tell. There wouldn’t be an evolution, a beginning and an ending. I suppose that’s why we take time for granted: how could we even tell a story without time?

But natural and granted as time seems to be, we actually take a lot of decisions about it. Becoming aware of where, when and how we may act on time in a story, allows us to be more effective when it comes to themes.

Time plays a crucial role on many levels of the story:

1. Frame

The time frame in which the story happens is the story itself.

Stories are only a section of a longer life. A story brackets a particular section of a logger event. Even if we don’t know much about what happens outside of the story, we know that there is a before and an after.

So why do we focus on that particular section?

Of course, because we think it is in that section, out of an entire life, that something meaningful happens and is worth being passed on.

Therefore deciding where to put the first opening bracket and where to put the last closing one is indeed a significant decision. Where the story starts and where it ends influences its very theme because it determines where the reader’s attention will focus.

Today’s storytelling best practices suggest to start the story as close as possible to the Inciting Incident that sets off the plot and to end it as close as possible to the climax. This way, there’s less chance at the reader to be distracted. The focus of the story will be tighter, and the theme (the message, if you prefer) will be clearer.

2. Pace

Pace is the speed at which a story moves, an element we as authors need to give attention to since it will greatly affect the reader’s involvement.

Pace influences the reader’s reactions, emotions and the ability to grasps information, the very way the reader absorbs the story. Deciding upon the pace, not only of the story in general but of every single scene, will affect the reader’s enjoyment.

When it comes to pace there really isn’t any rule. The author is the only ruler. Though some best practices are worth keeping in mind.

When it comes to pace there really isn’t any rule. The author is the only ruler. Though some best practices are worth keeping in mind

Typically, action scenes will call for faster space, to allow the way action affects the character to rub off onto the reader and to enhance the reader’s involvement in what’s happening. More intimate scenes tend to be slower, to allow the reader to catch all of the nuances of the character’s reaction.

It is advisable to alternate faster scenes of action and slower scenes of reflection. It may be tempting to think that a story which is all action will be more engaging for the reader. But a plot that only has action won’t allow any space for the reader to catch on the theme of the story. Alternating action and slower scenes will also create movement. Odd as it might sound, a story that only offers action will tend to be monotonous, like a song that always repeats the same sequence of notes.

More often than not, the genre to which a story belongs partially determines the pace.

Genre creates expectations in the reader. Readers who choose an adventure story will expect to have more action than brooding, while readers who choose mainstream will likely expect more sedate plots.

Being aware of the readers’ expectations with regard to genre will allow us not only to meet those expectations but also to occasionally turn them over their heads.

3. Order

Some stories are linear. They start at the beginning, linearly unfold and end at the end.

It may sound obvious — but it isn’t.

If fact, if we think about it, most stories look linear, but they really aren’t. Because the story doesn’t happen in a void and many events will have taken place before it even begins, sooner or later will arise the need for us authors to relate events that happened before — sometimes long before — the first page.

Most of the ways to reveal the background of both the story and the characters involve the manipulation of time. The most obvious are:

• Flashbacks Flashbacks are very popular in storytelling to the point that sometimes they get overused. A flashback happens when a past event is recounted in the story with the same mode of the story itself. When we insert a flashback, we take the story to a halt, we bring the reader to a different time, we recount an entire episode and then take the readers back to where the story was interrupted and go on with the main timeline. It is quite a shocking manipulation of time to be handled with particular care.
• Info Dumps Info Dump is the boogieman of storytellers. We’ll have probably heard about it in a very negative way, something we need to avoid at all cost. Though that is generally advisable, info dumps exist because they have a use. Sometimes, dumping a piece of information is really the best, fastest, less disrupting way to give vital info to the reader. To do so, we do a similar operation to the flashback: we stop the flow of the story, give the info, then resume the flow of the story. The main difference is that we don’t get back in time, but we still stop the natural flow of time in the story with the same danger of disruption.

But there is another way we often manipulate the order of events. When we have multiple POVs, we always need to decide which one we’ll tell first. Sometimes it is possible to simply follow the natural sequence of events, but sometimes events happen simultaneously. In this case, we’ll have to decide which event to recount first. This decision will affect the way we express the theme and so will impact the way the reader absorbs the story.

Just like deciding which POV we want to tell an event from, deciding when we tell it, and what event we tell first, will change the reader’s perception of those events.

Conclusion

No aspect of time in a story is neutral. If we are not chronicling an event but are telling a story, we’ll manipulate time so to let the theme of the story to emerge.

The time of a story is completely different from the time of real life. Nobody governs time in real life. In stories, the author manipulates time from beginning to end.

Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently. She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/