Time, Story, Structure
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This document discusses various techniques for representing time in fictional stories, including scenes, summaries, flashbacks, and verb tenses. It provides examples of how each technique can be used and considerations for choosing techniques. Scenes depict events in real time while summaries move more quickly over longer periods. Flashbacks allow looking back in time, and verb tenses should be consistent within the narrative and any flashbacks. Effective stories use these techniques purposefully to navigate events over time for the reader.
Time, Story, Structure
- 1. Fictional Time Stories are both set in time, and use time to navigate the events of the story. Time is navigated through the use of scenes and summaries. Scenes happen in the real time of the story Summaries move the reader through larger blocks of time quickly. Other time-travel techniques in fiction include flashbacks and slow- motion
- 2. Summary and Scene Summary and scene both are used to represent time in fiction Summary moves quickly over longer periods of time Scenes slow down time and deal with shorter periods of time
- 3. Scene vs. Summary Scene is always necessary in fiction Summary can be useful, but not always required Scene allows the reader to experience the action Summary can span any period of time Summary is more distancing/un- experienced
- 4. Choosing Which While a story can be written simply as a scene or series of scenes, summary helps transition between scenes Summary can help highlight the importance of those events that happen in scenes Important events should often be rendered in scenes rather than summary so that the reader fully experiences them, is shown, rather than told, about them.
- 5. “the girl who left her sock on the floor” • Page 257: Jessica dangled a sock between her thumb and forefinger, studied it, and let it drop. “There are times,” she said, “one wearies of rooming with a pig.” Pig. Francie checked to see what page she was on and slammed World History shut. “Why not go over to the nice, clean library?” she said. “You could go to the nice, clean library, and you could think nice, clean thoughts. I’ll just root around here in the homework.” She pulled her blanket up and turned to the window, her eyes stinging.”
- 6. Girl, sock • Page 262: Her mother would have been dead while Francie got up and took her shower and worried about being late to breakfast and was late to breakfast and went to biology and then to German and then dozed through English and then ate lunch and then hid in the dorm instead of playing lacrosse and then quarreled with Jessica about a sock.
- 7. Flashback • Allows the writer, and reader, to move backward in time • Overuse of flashback can result in too much back story • Flashback requires transition from past to present and back, but not overly self-conscious ones • Be wary of tense changes for flashbacks. If writing in present tense, use past tense for the flashback. If writing in past tense, use the past perfect.
- 8. Girl who left her sock • Page 263: • Francie had a memory, one of her few from early childhood, that never altered or dimmed, however often it sprang out: herself in the building stairwell with Mrs. Doughterty, making Mrs. Doughterty laugh. She could still feel her feet fly up as her mother grabbed her and pulled her inside, still hear the door slam.
- 9. A Note on Verb Tenses • The main action of a story can be written in either past or present tense. Past is more common; present tense has become more pervasive, but is still considered more stylized and, sometimes, intrusive.
- 10. Present v. Past • I see the man enter • I know what you mean • I hear an owl cry • I walk into the room • I cry without thinking • I stand over the body • My heart races • I saw the man enter • I knew what you meant • I heard an owl cry • I walked into the room • I cried without thinking • I stood over the body • My heart raced
- 11. Either/Or • You can write your story in either past or present tense, but need to be consistent so that the main action of the story remains in one or the other • I stood over the body. “I know what you mean,” I say. My heart races. • I stand over the body. “I know what you mean,” I say. My heart races. • I stood over the body. “I know what you mean,” I said. My heart raced.
- 12. Which tense determines past tense If you are writing in the present tense, then you will use the simple past tense when referring to events before the main action. I stand over the body. “I know what you mean,” I say. My heart races. I met the body two weeks earlier. Then it was alive. It breathed. Now it stares back at me without seeing.
- 13. Or… I stood over the body. “I know what you mean,” I said. My heart raced. I had met the body two weeks earlier. Then it had been alive. It had breathed. Now it stared back at me without seeing. If the present action is in past tense, then the past is rendered in past perfect.
- 14. Exceptions? But of course. • The actual dialogue or thought may be rendered in present tense even if the narrative is in past (but does not have to be). “I know what you mean,” she said. I thought I knew him, she thinks to herself.
- 15. So what is a story? And what is plot? Stories have characters who have faces, bodies, emotions, words and experiences They have settings They have event(s) that happen over time They have themes, ideas They are made out of words And yet a piece of writing can have all of these elements and still not be a story. Pop quiz: What does every story require in order to be a story?
- 16. Conflict Conflict is the dramatic struggle between two forces in a story. Without conflict, there is no plot.
- 17. Plot analysis: Potential Types of Conflict Man vs. nature Man vs. society Man vs. self Man vs. Man
- 18. Man vs. Man This type of conflict finds the main character in conflict with another character, human or not human.
- 19. Man vs. Nature This type of conflict finds the main character in conflict with the forces of nature, which serve as the antagonist.
- 20. Man vs. Society • This type of conflict has the main character in conflict with a larger group: a community, society, culture, etc. May also include man vs. technology
- 21. Man vs. Self Conflict In this type of conflict, the main character experiences some kind of inner conflict.
- 22. Conflict does not mean extreme action • Plot does not require bank heists or aliens landing on the planet • It does require characters to want something and to be changed through actions in the story • It requires conflict that reaches a crisis and is resolved to some degree • Ordering events to show conflict, crisis and resolution in some way is what constitutes a plot.
- 23. Plot Plot is the literary element that describes the structure of a story. It shows arrangement of events and actions within a story.
- 24. Pyramid Plot Structure THE MOST BASIC AND TRADITIONAL FORM OF PLOT IS PYRAMID-SHAPED. THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN DESCRIBED IN MORE DETAIL BY ARISTOTLE AND BY GUSTAV FREYTAG.
- 25. Aristotle’s Unified Plot The basic triangle-shaped plot structure was described by Aristotle in 350 BCE. Aristotle used the beginning, middle, and end structure to describe a story that moved along a linear path, following a chain of cause and effect as it works toward the solution of a conflict or crisis.
- 26. Freytag’s Plot Structure Freytag modified Aristotle’s system by adding a rising action (or complication) and a falling action to the structure. Freytag used the five-part design shown above to describe a story’s plot.
- 27. Plot Components Exposition: the start of the story, the situation before the action starts Rising Action: the series of conflicts and crisis in the story that lead to the climax Climax, also known as Crisi Action: the turning point, the most intense moment—either mentally or in action Falling Action: all of the action which follows the climax Resolution: the conclusion, the tying together of all of the threads
- 28. Modified Plot Structure Freytag’s Pyramid is often modified so that it extends slightly before and after the primary rising and falling action. You might think of this part of the chart as similar to the warm-up and cool- down for the story.
- 29. Checkmark—plot condensed in shorter fiction From “Story Form Plot, and Structure,” Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction
- 30. Plot & Story Simply put: A story is an event or series of events A plot is the arrangement of these events to that shows causality, drama and meaning. The King Died. The Queen Died. (Events/Story) The King Died. The Queen Died of Grief (Plot).
- 31. The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor • What happens in this story? • What is the meaning that’s revealed? What’s it about about? • How would you describe Francie and how is she revealed through direct characterization? • What other questions and observations do you have about the story?
- 32. Writing Exercise Déjà vu • Write a scene in which a character experiences something significant, which reminds him/her/them of the FIRST TIME he or she had the experience of: • Death, love, violence, shame, wonder, anger, etc. • Transition from the current experience to the past experience and back
- 33. Monday, March 4 Assignments Quick Review of all techniques in order to review together the critique sheets we will use for our first workshop In-class writing exercise to be used in first small-group workshop Formation of critique groups