The Arc of Time

A post at Writer Unboxed: The Arc of Time:

I’ve just finished working on a novel whose story takes place over about twenty years, following the main character from college to his mid-forties – plus a prologue  that takes place when he’s seven.  I’m also working on a science fiction novel whose action takes place over the course of a few weeks.  The two of them have me thinking about how the time scale you choose affects how you tell your story...

I laughed, because yep, the contrast in those stories would probably make any author think about time.

One Night in Boukos by Demas is a great example of a story that takes place in (a bit more than) one night, with the resulting breathless feel to the action, though actually the story does let the reader relax now and then. Briefly. It’s a delightful story, very neatly put together, with a plot that spins off in different directions and then clicks back together.

The Good Shepherd by Forrester is an absolutely amazing naval battle story that takes place in 48 hours with no breaks at all. It is one of the most nonstop books I have ever read. My favorite detail is that the captain who is defending the convoy of ships against Nazi submarines heads for the bridge without taking time to change from bedroom slippers to regular footwear, and never has time to change. I think he’s in slippers just about the whole time and I think this is a brilliant detail. Wow, this is such a great, high-tension story. Acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year upon publication in 1955, The Good Shepherd is a riveting classic of WWII and naval warfare from one of the 20th century’s masters of sea stories, it says at Amazon, and I can see why.

Then on the other hand, we have books like the Mars Trilogy by KSR, which covers a tremendous amount of time, from the early terraforming of Mars to the time that’s finished and most of the solar system has been settled. I’m not sure how much time it covers, but over a hundred years, surely. There’s a longevity thing going on that allows Robinson to keep some of the same characters all the way through.

Or, how about China Court by Rumer Godden. This is a great example of a generation story.

For nearly one hundred and fifty years the Quin family has lived at China Court, their magnificent estate in the Welsh countryside. The land, gardens, and breathtaking home have been maintained, cherished, and ultimately passed along—from Eustace and Adza in the early nineteenth century to village-girl-turned-lady-of-the-manor Ripsie Quin, her children, and her granddaughter, Tracy, in the twentieth. … Brilliantly intermingling the past and the present, China Court is a sweeping family saga that weaves back and forth through time. 

I do love Rumer Godden. I have some of hers I’ve never read. I should pull one of those off the shelf and bring it upstairs where I’ll see it.

Or how about Cloud Atlas, there’s one that covers a really long span of time.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

According to the linked post: In broad terms, shorter timelines favor dramatic tension that’s based on action.  If it takes place over a short timespan, your story gains immediacy and urgency.

I think that’s true. It’s hard to see how this could fail to be true. It’s probably easier for the author in a lot of ways, because there’s no need to compress time at all. I suppose this kind of short-time-scale story offers other challenges — where do you break the action? — I think this can be fun, though. Putting in chapter breaks that compel readers to turn the page immediately is a fun thing to do.

The author of the linked post adds: Something to watch for while you focus on the action, though — even the most fast-paced stories benefit if your characters have grown by the end.  It’s how events affect them that makes your readers care. 

I think, well, maybe. “How events affect them” does not equal “They have changed,” it seems to me. I’m thinking of The Good Shepherd here. I don’t remember the protagonist changing, except in the sense of getting more and more tired. I think he’s pretty iconic. On the other hand, in One Night in Boukos, a huge amount of character development takes place in that one night. That’s pretty impressive, now that I look back on it. But it’s true you have more room to stretch out if days, weeks, months, years are passing.

Not as much time as it necessarily seems, though, because if a whole lot of time is passing, you’ll almost certainly have to compress time, probably a lot, repeatedly, and honestly, I don’t think it’s possible to do character development while also compressing time. That’s the exact reason Hedesa expanded to twice the length of a normal novel (normal for me): because I felt I had to put in the character development and that is truly impossible to do if you slide across a two-month-long journey with a “then we arrived” paragraph.

From the linked post: If your hero has a life-changing epiphany by the end of the story, readers need to know enough of his background to really feel how monumental the change is.  It simply takes time to sketch out the emotional landscape where the real action of the story takes place.  And because of this more leisurely pace, it’s easier for readers to immerse themselves in these stories, to settle back from the edge of their seats and just let events unfold.

This seems right to me. Mostly. Partly, anyway. The Good Shepherd is immersive in a nail-biting kind of way. But the “sinking in” feeling probably depends on a slower pace and a calmer story. Good post, and certainly it’s well worth paying attention to how authors handle time in a story — let’s say, time and character arcs. Time, place, and character arcs. Big topic for sure!

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