Five ways to write TIME into a story
Five ways to write TIME into a story
from comedy to existentialism, TIME is an underutilised force
In my debut book, Who Built The Humans? (I promise I’ll publish another one soon), TIME is not just an element to push the stories forwards. Whilst it can be a character, an antagonist, or an agent of change, it becomes something more in some stories. It stretches and compresses itself, not to fit a narrative, but so that the narrative has to fit its weird new shape. TIME can break itself into pieces, can reform in the ‘wrong’ order, can become a pressure or an abrasive force against the characters. If you wait long enough, TIME can turn one universe into another.
Because I’m the expert on the construction of my own writing, I thought it would be the easiest to deconstruct. So what follows are four examples of TIME in my stories. All of them are in WBTH1, and I picked them to show you that, even in the same collection, you can have multiple ways to use time. After that, I’ll explain some other uses of time that you might want to try.
LUCY
In Lucy’s universe, TIME is a metaphor for Lucy’s increasing isolation and insanity. As each chapter begins, we realise a long time has passed since the last. Indeed each chapter comes across as its own short story, its own universe. The only constant is Lucy, the AI who is slowly losing her mind.
FURUKAWA
In the Furukawa universe, TIME is a more obvious force. This universe deals with time travel and its existential implications. It is hinted that physics may break down if time travel is possible, that time travel implies the world is somehow not real, somehow a simulation trapped in a larger, real world. The physics of time travel, according to Nori, would only make sense if his universe was created by conscious beings who had planned out the beginning and end of everything. It’s a temporal sandbox game.
But that is not all. Time is a natural disaster. It scrambles the information left behind by human activity, it scatters the protagonists to the wind, it wants them dead. In one line of the story, Lax Morales hints at the negative health effects of using alien time machines for humans. In the upcoming EARTHLOOP TRILOGY (aiming to trad-pub that one) it is made clear that the alien ships cause radiation burns when they switch on, and that proper travel through the time gates requires a protective suit.
In this universe, I’m not only playing with the tropes of time travel fiction, but finding a way to have time as the antagonist in more ways than the usual. Aging isn’t a problem for Lax Morales, so how else can time be eroding at his being?
DWINDLING
In the Dwindling universe, TIME is again a metaphor for isolation. But it is transformative too. The universe is dying and two alien archaeologists are looking for evidence of a past so distant to them, that many of their species don’t even believe it happened. Here the passage of time has machined reality into myth. Everything that was once known is unknown. Even fundamental facts about the universe, such as the life-cycles of stars, are hidden from these far-future-dwellers because all the stars that could have gone supernova have gone supernova. There are none left to observe.
You can read this short story about the end of time now, on Royalroad. As with a handful of other stories in WBTH1, I am republishing it so it reaches a larger audience.
WOODEN ROBOTS
In the Wooden Robots universe, TIME is a comedic force. It allows for gags, unreliable narrators, and set-ups. God (or Gord) is convinced his college girlfriend lost interest in him, but only when she is introduced later on do we discover that it was in fact God who lost interest in her. Time is twisted and broken in this universe, bending for comedic effect for anyone astute enough to notice.
Symmetrical TIME
I hope I’ve made it clear now that TIME is more than just the thing which allows you to skip sex scenes in a story (I do the same). It’s a multifaceted thing, an inescapable reality in most stories and to most characters. Even those who, in Fantasy or Sci-Fi settings, are not affected by the passage of time, are still affected by it second-hand. Like Dr Who’s Doctor, they may see their beloved mortals grow old and die around them. Or they might be aware of other worldlines where everything went okay. It depends on how powerful and how weird your characters are.
But for most stories, TIME is a transformative thing that does not just permit you to turn one day into the next, but to break apart the conventional rules of storytelling.
To use another example from my own writing, in my upcoming novel THE STEPHANIE GLITCH (which I intend to trad-pub), Stephanie is in one place whilst another character, LP, is in another. Their scenes are set at the same time, not staggered. But the only way to write it that readers can read is to have the story change between their perspectives whenever something significant happens. This results in scenes which are anywhere from 200 to 2000 words long. I call these microchapters as they each have a beginning and end, and each answers a mystery and builds the story.
If I was writing a movie, I might be inclined to have Stephanie on the left of the screen and LP on the right. Perhaps as Stephanie opens a door the scene changes and we see another door LP is opening. Like in Breaking Bad, I could use scene transitions to imply a secret proximity between them.
If only it was a film.
And yet, this is exactly how I’ve written it.
Because it is okay to break rules.
Even more TIME
If you want to drag Time Travel back from the cold, high-concept stuff and down to the human, ask yourself this question and answer it honestly.
What would you do, if you could go back in time (once)
I’m not hiding the vote count so you can see how others respond, but please do be honest. Don’t let the crowd sway you.
These kinds of questions are important not just for Time Travel, but for storytelling as a whole. You can find out who your characters are by answering this question from their perspective.
Extra bits
I am writing a standup comedy set for BRIGHT CLUB at the moment which is all about time travel. Rarely touched concepts in the genre, such as Jinn entities (something that creates itself through a time loop) and the health effects of time travel all come up in the eight minute slot. I’m also applying to be at the Edinburgh Fringe, where I intend to take this set and make it half an hour long. So TIME is at the front of my mind a lot recently.
Stick around if you’ve got the time and want some more writing tips, it’s free.
There might be a paid tier in the future for more in-depth coaching, or I might just do that on zoom. So if you’re reading this in the future and the subscribe button says “upgrade to paid” that means you are already a free subscriber. You don’t need to subscribe twice. Pressing the button if you’re already signed up will take you to the paid upgrade page. Clever how that works.
Thanks for being here,
-Phillip