Category Archives: Timeline

Playing with Time

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Savings Time Clip Art drawing (Vector cliparts) anousment media,2 pm,time goes by

 

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Is your internal clock still confused by Sunday’s changeover to Daylight Savings Time? Me too. Now is a good opportunity to talk about playing with time in fiction.

In real life, time unfolds in chronological order. We’re born on Day 1, followed by 2, 3, 4, etc. until the last day when life ends.

That chronology can’t be changed.

We’re often Monday-morning-quarterbacks, kicking ourselves for what we did or didn’t do, what we said or didn’t say and should have. We’d love to go back in time to fix wrong choices or bad decisions but the best we can do is learn from them and not repeat mistakes.

In fiction, however, we have a chance for a do-over. It’s called rewriting.

In real life, a perfect comeback usually eludes us at the time but later occurs to us. When that happens in a story, we can simply plug it in when it’s needed. How cool is that!

Manipulating time chronology in mystery fiction can be an effective technique to build tension and suspense, disguise the villain, and misdirect the reader.

Let’s look at two movies that use the time jumping technique. I chose films as examples rather than books because visual models are easy to learn from.

The 2019 film Knives Outi is an unabashed tribute to the immortal Agatha Christie. Rian Johnson wrote and directed the film, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Hercule Poirot is updated as 21st century detective Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig). Wealthy novelist Harlan Thrombey (played by the late Christopher Plummer) is found dead, his throat slashed. A star-studded ensemble cast provides multiple suspects in the suspicious death. Driven by greed and jealousy, they fight among themselves over Thrombey’s fortune.

The complex plot jumps around in flashbacks from the points of view of different characters. Each new revelation of what supposedly happened sends the audience down a fresh trail of misdirection.

Time is critical in determining whose alibi is genuine and whose is false. Suspects claim to be in a certain location at a certain time. Blanc deduces who is lying by pinpointing the exact time where each actually was.

As a writer, I’m curious how Johnson wrote the original draft. Did he write it in chronological order then rearrange scenes during rewrites? Or did he bounce back and forth in time while initially drafting?

Same question about the filming. I’m guessing, for budgetary reasons, it was shot in chronological order because that’s the most efficient use of time and resources. Later, Johnson probably cut and pasted the scenes for the maximum dramatic suspense.

That system works for books also. Once the story is drafted in chronological order, the writer can cut and paste at will, rearranging the time sequence to keep the reader guessing.

A 2023 Czech film, Unspoken, directed by Tomas Masin, is another good example of how to play with chronology. The story concerns a veterinarian whose life changes in an instant when he’s kicked in the head by a horse he’s treating. The accident leaves him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Three women care for him: his wife, his mother, and the woman who owns the horse, later revealed to be the vet’s lover.

Jealousy and resentmen lead to power struggles among the women. For different reasons, they disagree about how the man should be cared for. He cannot voice what he wants and can only watch helplessly as they argue over his fate.

Two detectives are shown investigating the case. Initially they appear to be focused on who’s liable for the accident. Gradually it comes out they are actually investigating the veterinarian’s death. While the audience watches his struggle at rehabilitation, they also know that ultimately he will not survive.

Time jumps from present to past to future as detectives question the three women and others, including nurses and doctors.

More layers unfold as it’s revealed the man managed to attempt suicide but was saved. Fingers of blame are pointed at professional caregivers as well as the three women. Who allowed the attempt to happen?

Then in yet another jump forward in time, it’s revealed that, shortly after trying to kill himself, the man was murdered.

The detectives’ questions dig farther back in time into the murky relationships he had with his wife, mother, and lover. The lover is now discovered to be the mother of his young child.

Each jump in time adds to the mystery.

The cause of death is a fatal dose of insulin injected into his IV. The time of death is determined to be a brief window when the man’s squabbling wife, mother, and lover all had access to the IV. Which one did it? Or did a doctor or nurse make an error? Or did someone decide to end his suffering with a mercy killing?

I won’t spoil the surprise ending. The film is available on a free streaming channel. It’s worth watching to study how effectively time jumps can be used.

If you decide to experiment with time, keep a detailed chronology.

  • Account for each day, hour, or minute.
  • Use a physical calendar or writing software.
  • Note each character’s location at the time of each important plot event or action.

A side note on chronology: this post focused on the big picture handling of chronology at the plot level. However, on the micro level, sentence chronology is also important.

With my editing clients, I frequently see sentences and paragraphs that are awkward and clunky due to chronological confusion.

Here’s an example:

“Why the sour face?” Frank asked when he came in the door after Maureen and the kids had finished dinner just before she would tuck them in for their 9 p.m. bedtime. Frustration had made her break a plate while washing dishes. Beer fumes wafted from him.

What’s wrong? The words are clear enough, but they are not arranged in the order that the actions happened. The focus of the paragraph—the reason for Maureen’s anger—gets lost as the reader has to figure out who’s done what and when they did it.

Sentences and paragraphs read much smoother when they’re written in chronological order.

Rewrite:

Maureen and the kids had given up waiting for Frank to come home and ate dinner without him. While washing dishes, Maureen cracked a plate, stifled a curse, and chided herself. Not in front of the children. She was herding them toward bed at 9 p.m. when the kitchen door opened. Frank stumbled in, beer fumes wafting from him. He shot one look at Maureen and asked, “Why the sour face?”

Writers often like to use dialogue to make a dramatic statement, so they start a new scene with a character speaking. Then they have to backtrack to explain when, where, and why the character made that statement. The context eventually becomes clear but, meanwhile, the reader struggles to mentally rearrange the sentence in chronological order.

That’s a speed bump.

If speed bumps happen too often, the reader gets tired of them and doesn’t finish the book. They may not even be aware of what bothered them. They only know the writing irritated them.

The cleanest, clearest way to construct sentences and paragraphs is chronologically. A happens then B happens, then C, D, E, etc. The reader instantly understands what’s going on and can focus on the story.

Back to the big picture view of time manipulation: Personally, I write in chronological order. Occasionally, I use a flashback to explain what’s occurring in the present story. If I played around with time too much, I’m afraid I’d get totally confused.

However, I admire books and films like Knives Out and Unspoken. The authors who played with timelines have a deep understanding of the plot’s forward momentum. They use time rearrangement to build suspense and tension. When done well, out-of-order chronology can be a fresh way to present a story.

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TKZers: have you ever played with time in your stories? Were you satisfied with the results? Or did it wind up an incomprehensible jumble? Any suggestions?

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Time to try a new series? Please check out Tawny Lindholm Thrillers, available at Amazon and other online booksellers.

Handling Age and Time in Series Fiction

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

 

Age.

Like the weather, we talk about it a lot but can’t do anything about it.

Remember the original Nancy Drew books? I devoured 37 of them before outgrowing the series. From the first book The Secret of the Old Clock (1930) until #37, The Clue in the Old Stagecoach (1960), Nancy was 16 to 18.

Thirty-seven adventures in two years? Busy young lady, that Nancy.

But she started me thinking about writing series characters.

Can they stay the same age through numerous books?

Should they age?

That raises more questions when writing a contemporary series with continuing characters.

What kind of character arc can an author create if the hero doesn’t age?

Is an evolving character arc important to today’s readers?

How does an author keep characters fresh and interesting if they remain approximately the same age over a number of books?

Classics like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple remain basically static; the plots change but the characters don’t.

Then there is the quintessential hard-boiled hero, Philip Marlowe.

Even Philip Marlowe was young once – photo credit Maika, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Although I don’t believe his specific age is ever mentioned (please correct me if I’m wrong), the reader has the strong impression that, at birth, Marlowe was already old and cynical.

Over two decades, starting with The Big Sleep (1939)  and ending with Playback (1959), Marlowe was repeatedly beaten up, double-crossed, and betrayed. His life remained solitary with occasional sexual encounters that didn’t end well. The tarnished knight won a few victories but ultimately lost the war against evil. As vivid and memorable a character as he was, he didn’t change much, except for more scars. (Note: I’m not counting Poodle Springs, Chandler’s unfinished novel completed by Robert B. Parker and published in 1989 where Marlowe married, at least for a little while.)

How would readers react to Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, or Raymond Chandler if their books were released today?

Contemporary readers seem to lean more toward series characters who go through ups and downs similar to those we face in real life.  

In James Lee Burke’s series, the beleaguered Dave Robicheaux moves from New Orleans to New Iberia, switches jobs, falls off the wagon and climbs back on, gains and loses spouses and friends, and adopts a child who grows up through the books.

Readers meet Kinsey Milhone at age 32, with a police career and two marriages already behind her. In the course of Sue Grafton’s 25-book Alphabet Series, Kinsey has her home blown up and rebuilt, loses her beloved VW convertible, discovers the roots of her absent family, falls in and out of love several times but remains determinedly single. In the final book, Y is for Yesterday, she is 39.

Judging by their popularity, readers relate deeply to characters like Dave and Kinsey. We’ve been in the trenches beside them as they live through the same life trials that we ourselves do. They become close friends we’ve known for years.

What do series authors need to consider when time passes and their characters age?

When I wrote Instrument of the Devil in 2015-6, I didn’t envision a series. The book was set in 2011 as smartphones were transitioning from exotic toys for geeks into phones adopted by ordinary people. Because of a new smartphone, my character Tawny Lindholm stumbles over her milestone 50th birthday and into a nightmarish world of technology. Unbeknownst to her, it has been rigged by a terrorist to launch a cyberattack she’ll be blamed for.

The book was published in 2017, six years after the story takes place.

Near the end of Instrument, a brilliant, arrogant attorney, Tillman Rosenbaum, came on scene to defend Tawny. He was intended as a minor walk-on character. However, the match and gasoline chemistry between him and Tawny propelled them into more books where she goes to work as his investigator despite her dislike for him.

[Spoiler alert: they ultimately fall in love. But you’d already guessed that, right?]

What I originally conceived as a one-off had longer legs than anticipated.

Although there are no time stamps, roughly two years pass during the second and third books in the series, Stalking Midas and Eyes in the Sky.

Then, in 2017, Hurricane Irma struck Florida and knocked out power to 16 million residents.

The event tweaked my writer’s imagination. Reports of people who mysteriously went missing during that storm, along with scary personal experiences related to me by family and friends, turned into Dead Man’s Bluff.

After drifting along a vague fictional timeline starting in 2011, all of a sudden there’s a real date that’s set in stone. Uh-oh.

Okay, I figured from now on, I’d just make oblique references to Tawny’s age. Her children are in their thirties. Let readers infer she’s somewhere in her fifties.

As often happens with writing, life had other plans.

2020 hit.

Can an author ignore monumental events that tilt the world on its axis?

Not unless you write alternate history.

For much of 2020, writers debated how to handle the pandemic in current fiction. If it was incorporated into the plot, readers who were sick of it might be alienated. If we tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away, we risked being perceived as unrealistic and insensitive. (Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?)

Some authors attacked it head-on with thrillers about biological weapons or adventures in a post-pandemic, futuristic, dystopian world.

Some retreated in time to historical genres where major outcomes—like who won the war—had already been determined.

Others dove into fantasy genres where the author, not real life, decided the outcome.

Now in the last quarter of 2021, the world changes faster every day. What you wrote this morning may well be obsolete and out of date by this afternoon.

The sixth book in my series, Flight to Forever, is set in spring of 2020. When a Vietnam veteran can’t visit his beloved wife in a memory care facility because of pandemic restrictions, in desperation, he busts her out, seriously injuring two employees during the getaway. They flee to a remote fire lookout in treacherous Montana mountains. Tawny races to find them to prevent a deadly showdown between the cops and the vet who has nothing to lose.

Do the math. If Tawny was 50 in 2011, that made her 59 in 2020. 

Uh-oh, I really should have hired a stunt double for her in this book.

Even though 60 is the new 40, will readers find some of the action implausible for a woman her age?

Many people in their 70s and 80s are in fantastic shape. Recently I wrote an article for Montana Senior News about the Senior Olympic games where nonagenarians are setting athletic records.

Yet ageism lurks in the world of publishing and literature.

Especially about sex.

Many younger readers are creeped out by the notion that characters who are their parents’ or grandparents’ age enjoy sex.

Newsflash, kid—that’s how you got here. And, since you grew up and moved out, it’s even better.

How about physical wear and tear on characters?

Gunsmoke cast – public domain

Remember classic TV westerns like Gunsmoke? Whenever Matt Dillion got shot (reportedly more than 50 times), in the final scene, he’d be back in the saddle with one arm in a sling. By the following episode, he resumed life as usual—galloping horses and engaging in fisticuffs.

How realistic should series fiction be? How far will contemporary readers go to suspend disbelief?

If we put our lead characters through hell, in the next book, should they suffer from PTSD or physical disability?

 

What if you write middle grade or young adult books? Every year, there’s a new crop of readers to replace older ones who’ve outgrown a series. Perhaps MG and YA characters don’t need to age. Nancy Drew did all right. What do you think?

For now, I’ll keep writing Tawny and Tillman in their fifties and hope no one checks my math too carefully.

CC by 2.0

Or maybe I’ll let them drink out of Nancy’s fountain of youth.

~~~

For discussion:

Question for series authors: how do you handle age and the passage of time with continuing characters?

Have you found workarounds, tips, or tricks?

Question for series readers: Do you care about the main character’s age? Do you want to see evolution and change in them over time?

~~~

To follow series characters who age more slowly than the calendar, please check out Tawny Lindholm Thrillers with Passion.

Amazon link

Other online booksellers:

Instrument of the Devil    Stalking Midas    Eyes in the Sky

Dead Man’s Bluff        Crowded Hearts     Flight to Forever

My Obsession with Twilight

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twilight And no, I don’t mean the wildly successful book by Stephanie Meyer, or the film based on the book. Although I hear they’re both excellent.

Something became painfully clear to me last week as I mapped out the timeline for my next book, The Gatekeeper. Since I never start with an outline, one of my final acts before handing in the draft is to map out exactly when and where each scene takes place. The main action in all of my books occurs over roughly a week, give or take; that’s never the problem. No, what I invariably discover is that almost everything happens at night. Particularly at twilight. I’ve been known to have twenty-five incidents of twilight in a weeklong span. It’s not pretty, trust me.

I wish I knew where this unhealthy predilection originated. I’m a big fan of the daytime, and there’s no good reason why, in a thriller, critical scenes can’t take place, say, mid-afternoon. There is admittedly something spooky about the darkness, but in Gatekeeper, spookiness wasn’t really what I was after. So why was the sun constantly going down?

Another problem I quickly discovered: teleporting. This is the first time I’ve attempted to write across time zones. My first book took place entirely on a college campus, then with the second I widened the scope to a region (The Berkshires). Now I’m attempting to portray multiple points of view scattered across the country. Worse yet, the characters fly from one to the other with abandon. Or rather, based on evidence in my initial draft, they teleport, since they frequently get from New York to California in mere minutes. Even with the time change, they probably shouldn’t be landing at precisely the time they left: twilight, of course. (Although after traveling over the holidays, I’m wondering if teleporting is ever going to be a possibility. I’d even settle for a flying car: weren’t we supposed to have those by now? A two hour flight from Phoenix involved three hours of waiting at the airport, another two on the tarmac, no water, threats to divert to Monterey, and an extra $100 because we dared to check bags. Beam me up, Scotty).

So I spent the better part of a week mapping out the action scene by scene, minute by minute, checking flight times to insure that my characters were experiencing the same travel nightmares the rest of us undergo on a regular basis. (It’s pretty much the only time in my life I use Excel, but wow, I love that program. I just wish it was easier to get everything to fit on one printed page).

I rewrote scenes so that characters were no longer darting through the shadows cast by moonlight. I eliminated their flashlights and night vision goggles (another weakness of mine: flashlights have been prominent in nearly every book. There must be some sort of twelve-step program that deals with this). I gave them sunscreen instead and pushed them out the door into the light.

After a lot of work, I got it down to a week of sunrises and sunsets, with plenty of light in between. There are, granted, still scenes that occur at night, but at least now it’s not all of them. And as always, now that the draft is done, I’ve promised myself that next time in an effort to avoid this problem I will absolutely try to work off an outline. (I won’t, though. I never do. I might as well promise to stop eating mass quantities of soft cheese, it’s just as unlikely to happen.)