Questions tagged [time-depiction]
Questions about depicting time in written works. Do not use for questions about managing time.
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How do you make characters relatable if they exist in a completely different moral context?
Usually when I read books in ancient-like settings (settings that are either in real ancient civilizations on Earth, or fantasy settings similar to those), there are relatable characters who employ ...
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How to continually and organically let my readers know what time it is in my story?
My novel takes place in a big world, with MANY POVs. Although I know when things are happening, I am afraid my reader doesn't know, due to the aforementioned fact. I do not want my reader to be ...
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Time measures in fantasy worlds
I wonder, what could be a good way to provide time measures in a fantasy universe. I don't mean the calendar which is covered in the question: Out of this world... Giving it time?, but measures like ...
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How can I show time passing with no way to measure time?
In the writing, I was doing recently, a character is locked up in a wagon and dragged across the country by rich slavers. How could I show the reader that time is passing when the character wakes up ...
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How do I cleanly show the passage of time, with multiple, varying time scales?
I was re-reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone recently to get a feel for the way J.K. Rowling passes an entire year in a fairly short book that feels content packed, and I noticed something ...
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Little disjointed scenes
My MC is going through boot camp. Physically and mentally, he goes from high-school boy to soldier prepared for combat. Along the way there's struggles, there's new friendships formed, there's the ...
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What is the proper way to write time in a manuscript?
I haven't been able to find an answer to this question for a while now. What is the proper way to write time in a manuscript? I'm referring mostly to A.M. and P.M. Should it be written in caps? With ...
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How can I convey dates (with ordering) for events happening under different dating systems, e.g. a Sci-Fi story spread over the galaxy?
So I want to write a Sci-Fi where humans have spread across the solar system and into the galaxy. There are multiple stories going across at several different times. E.g.:
Aliens attack Pluto
3 weeks ...
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Out of this world... Giving it time?
I am starting to write a fantasy story. For the first time, i am using computer software to help organize my story. The program confronted me with a question. What is the birthday of a character?
It'...
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How can I make a non-linear timeline less confusing?
My story is broken into 8 sections. Sections 1 and 2 take place simultaneously, in two different worlds. The other 6 continue in a linear fashion (switching back & forth between the two worlds as ...
user36961
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The advantages and disadvantages of Fantasy-time
Many works of the High Fantasy genre are set in a pseudo-European fantasyland, in a rather amorphous time-period that mixes early-medieval and late-medieval arms and armour (but never gunpowder), late ...
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What is the correct way to write a fractional number in a formal letter?
If I'm talking about a length of time in a cover letter, let's say 5.5 years, what would be the correct way to write this?
five-and-a-half years
5-1/2 years
5.5 years
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How can I indicate time passing?
There is a scene in which my main character is hiding from the villain while they are both in the same room. I want this to be a suspenseful and agonizing stretch of time, but I’m not sure how to show ...
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When writing Sci-Fi whats a good way to determine the year?
I'm having trouble deciding what year I want my Novella to take place. How do other Sci-Fi writers make up what year it is in their writing? I want it to be far enough in the future that the present ...
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How do I show a long amount of time has passed?
How do I write the passing of a few years in a story? I have two separate character timelines and I want to show the characters aging throughout the story. Should I divide it up into parts? You can ...
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20 Minutes into the Future - problem with setting the period
I have just finished a short story, set in what is known as 20 Minutes into the Future - a time frame that's only a little into the future from our own. There is a change from modern times, but it is ...
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How do I cover many years with little activity without it feeling rushed?
In a story that I am writing, due to some time travel issues, the protagonists will have to wait a number of years before the next stage of the story happens. Things that happen between then and now ...
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How do I show that two days have passed in a short story?
So two days before my character is thinking about something and she is in her room. How do I show that two days later her friend is talking to her?
Here are my rough sentences:
She relaxed when ...
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How do I cover a lengthy time period with only a few interesting details?
I'm writing a book about my three weeks of travel in Belize (is that even enough time for a book?), and I'm wondering how I can cover the first day and build a foundation without being boring. There ...
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What format should I use when beginning a chapter with the time and location of the events?
What format should I use when beginning a chapter with the time and location of the events?
I was thinking to use:
Nine pm. Sunday, in Los Angeles, CA, USA.
but I don't think it looks good, so I ...
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What chapter timestamp to use in fantasy time travel novel?
(By 'chapter timestamp' I mean the text at the beginning of a chapter indicating when it is taking place).
Here is a basic summary of the story so you understand what I'm working with:
A man named ...
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How often can I use time lapses?
I looked at a few questions regarding time lapse, but I didn't find one that helped.
In my story I skip parts of the life of my main character, because they don't drive the plot, but of course write ...
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How can you put a lot of time-skips as soon as possible in a story?
How can you put a lot of time-skips as soon as possible in a story? Because of certain restrictions, I am forced to put a lot of time-skips at the beginning of a story, but how do you do that ...
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How to skip over a long period of time
I'm writing a ficional story about a historical figure. My MC takes twelve years to achieve a major success. But the bulk of the work takes place in three stages: at ages 17, 23, and 29.
I have ...
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How should I deal with travel time in fantasy?
I suppose this is more of a question of if its even necessary, but I'll just assume it is. I am currently writing an outline for a fantasy story, and I don't know how to deal with distance. It's ...
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Should I specify the year for a somewhat-near-future sci-fi novel?
I'm writing a fiction book as close to hard sci-fi as I can (aside from some handwaving of one major story element to actually get the plot going), and I'm working on sorting out the timeline. I've ...
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Portraying life in a current milieu for science fiction that wants to be timeless
Should a science fiction that wants to stand the test of time go into detailed daily life of the city it is set on, with all it's modern references that might become outdated?
An example would be a ...
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What's the meaning of the running numbers in left margin of a movie script online?
Currently, I am going through the script of The Battle of Algiers. On the left margin, there are numbers starting from 1 to 146. It is a 120 minutes long film. What are the significance of these ...
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How to write time duration correctly
Within a user manual, I need to convey the maximum time period allowed as "365 days 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds" - are commas expected between each component? Is the word "and" expected before the ...
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How can I radically time-jump for my epilogue well?
I'm working on a branching narrative kind of story, and the entire story focuses on the reader uncovering a mystery in the house that they're in.
There's only one ending where they survive. In the ...
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Time gaps in a novel
I am having issues when it comes to how time passes in the book I'm writing. I usually find myself describing the day from start to finish, and that's just useless material since nothing relevant ...
user36687
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How to depict writing from a different time period?
I am writing a story where the character is reading a writing from someone in Europe during 1348. The thing is I don't know how a person from that time would speak or write.
The line they are reading ...
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Starting from future smoothing your way to present
Ok, so the hook for my novel is a quote from the future that my protagonist will eventually say. But I need a way for my novel to go back to present tense. In what way can I smooth my novel back to ...
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Reminding the reader that while characters are out of the spotlight - they are still contributing to the story
Today I have a question about writing a long period of elapsed time.
I have three main characters who each get their own chapters from their POV. Two of those three characters do not need much ...
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Is it better to divide writing time for a 'many short times' approach instead of 'one long session'?
Most authors I read write in small chunks of time (1hr~40min). I wonder if this is a writing technique. I always find myself writing for 3 to 4 hours straight (taking 5 minutes breaks). The thing is ...
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How do I indicate that the next scene actually happens at the same time as the previous scene
I'm currently working on a script for a college project and there's one part of the script that sorta goes like this:
A character heard a scream from outside of the room they're in and decided to ...
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Illustrating time differences between "then" and "now" in flashbacks
I am writing a medieval fantasy story, in which MC has suffered some serious injuries and has lost most of his memories leading up to when we pick up with him. Now, he does have the occasional ...
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How to keep my ideas organized and respecting a timeline?
I've always wanted to get into writing but always found myself coming up with increments of an event that already happened or imagine something that would only happen a bit ahead, distracting me from ...
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Is it acceptable to have a subplot run out of sync with the main plot by a few days?
Is it acceptable to have a subplot run out of sync in front of the main plot by a couple of days and hide that fact from the reader until near the end, where it then becomes synced with the main plot? ...
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Writing a story about a immortal character
I have a character that I want to have live for 200 years. I've used the beginning to fill out his backstory with events that are critical to the story, including how he became immortal. How would I ...
user34315
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A mix of the Medieval Age and the 21st century period
Just a short question, but is there a term for eras or ages being mixed together in a story?
To be more specific, I'm writing a story which is primarily set during the Middle Age. However, some of ...
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How to show time lapse between two chapters?
I have a ten year time lapse between an event in my first chapter and the second chapter.
The first chapter has an event that takes place during the protagonist's teenage years that lays the ...
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What's the most natural way to show a passage of time between the prologue and chapter one?
In my current novel, the protagonist is driven forward throughout the plot by events that happened to him in the past. The reader needs to know these events, so I'd like to include them in a prologue. ...
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For trilogies, is there any order of time periods the story should follow that is considered more appropriate?
Like totally chronological (starting in the beginning of the world's story events and going on to the future), or in the present-past-future order, or another?
Is there any specific time order ...
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Using alternative phrases to "meanwhile" or "elsewhen" to describe a non-linear flow of time as two consecutive events
I am currently writing a "time-travel" themed story that is more of a first-person perspective of all involved characters, and I want it to include the before and after reactions to the &...
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What genre mixes History and Time Travel?
I am trying to write a time-travel short story about two real people from history. The individuals are
Jack Sheppard, a robber notorious for being a popular criminal who escaped four times in his ...
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Do I write the later chapters of my book in present tense because they happen after the prologue, or in past tense like the chapters before?
I've written my prologue in present tense. The rest of it is a flash to the past that leads up to that moment which I write in past tense. When I get to the current part of the book where the prologue ...
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Writing: Self made logical issue with time travel in a story [closed]
So, I have not gotten anything published yet, but I have had plans for future novels including the one I am most way done with at the moment. As for the Details: It's going to be a multiverse existing ...
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How to write a time-lapsed style scene in a screenplay?
This is a brief example, but it gets the point across ...
deep in thought Bathsheba shakes off her zoned thoughts by dipping her brush into the green paint and beginning on the canvas with her three ...
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What are some of the ways you can cue in your reader that your chapter is a timeskip to the past?
What are some of the ways you can cue in your reader that your chapter is a timeskip to the past? Let's say you write a chapter just to go back in time and reveal some details about some characters' ...
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