One of my students once wrestled with the story’s timeline because she needed enough time for a horse to be born. The foal had to have been sired by a wild stallion the main character loved, thus providing a sweet resolution to the book. The trouble was, she thought she had to write in everything that happened to the character from the time the stallion fathered the foal to the point where it was born. Horses’ gestational period is long, and the story was dragging. What to do?
We’ve been delving into the technique of gathering scenes and plotting them on some kind of continuum. This allows you the writer to see a visual of the shape of your story in terms of conflict, obstacles and resolution. I read somewhere that a passage that takes you an hour to write only takes your reader a minute or two to read and may span only a few seconds in the real time of the story. So we have different kinds of time to account for as we write.
Writing Tip For Today: Author Gary Provost advised novelists to only include those scenes along the timeline that move the story forward. For the horse story this means using transitions to bridge the time gap and keep the reader grounded. The writer might say, “For the next two weeks she watched the mare’s belly grow.” OR perhaps, “By the time the first leaves were turning color, she knew her mare’s foaling time must be close.” Keep the transitions simple and as short as possible. It isn’t necessary to think of a transition no one has ever used. Simple statements such as, “The next morning,” “By Christmas,” or “That afternoon” are acceptable ways to bridge a time where nothing important to your story happens. In real life we eat, sleep, drink coffee, wash our hair. But unless one of these activities is crucial to the story, it may be better off with a transition.
Notice how the transition does not say, “Everything was calm and nothing big happened.” OR “Things went smoothly.” It’s my personal opinion that even when bridging gaps in time with a simple transition, a writer ought never tell the reader the missing piece of time was hunky-dory or uninteresting or even ordinary. Easing off the tension won’t help propel your reader. Keep transitions as simple as possible, but remember to keep the tension as high as you can.