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Week 12 Story Lab: Harnessing The Power Of Time In Your Storytelling

I've searched through and read several articles in Writers Write website. One article that really caught my attention was "Harnessing The Power Of Time In Your Storytelling". This article caught my attention because I couldn't agree more on how time consuming the storytelling process really could be. I'm also struggling to manage and set aside time to write stories.


So I thought reading this article could really help me. And it did! I even like the very beginning of this article. Obviously, the author of this article was highly poetic and creative person, so he described in a uniquely poetic way: "the sky was low and turning to a dirty purple twilight."


I really like how the author described how he felt about flying time: " I was conscious of time—not as anything artificial and clear as the white digits on the face of an iPhone, but as something moving us all along, me along. Something moving within me, inside of me, even as it moved outside of me."

This resonated with my personal experience because I also often felt like time was moving along with me when I looked at my iPhone to check time.


This is a very thoughtful reflection on time: " In many ways, those moments on the train helped me grasp the ‘ungraspable’ nature of time itself: that time is ‘now’, that it is behind us, in front of us, everywhere.  It’s just you moving, being moved, threaded invisibly through time." I think this is the very nature of time and what time essentially is.

This is so true, and that's why I'm so struggling with it: "Time is indifferent, abstract, anonymous. It simply doesn’t care, it can’t care." Creation of stories does take time. Imagining characters, plots, and backgrounds takes a lot of time; nonetheless, I don't get extra time beyond twenty-four hours each day.


I agree with this author: "There is no 'humanness' to time, no emotion. Only our memory of it, which is human, shades it with emotion." I think we feel about time. we often feel certain time was good or bad. Time flies, but only memories leave in our minds. Like the author said, we remember things differently depending on our ages. Memory is emotional, subjective, and fallible.


This is what I like the most about creative writing: "You can play with or manipulate the experience of time for the readers or the characters in your story." I get to manipulate experience of time in a way that I want to tell readers. I don't have to be linear or straightforward like some other "hard" subjects that involve lots of math and reasoning.


This is what happens in our mind and brain when we read or listen to interesting stories: "As we read, as we follow the stories, we want to get through to that moment of truth, for it to be illuminated and revealed to us."


I can feel this all the time when I'm creating new stories every week:"that is what time does in the story: it creates distance, it gives perspective. It allows for a more subjective and richer viewpoint." In addition, I've done this in all the stories I've written: "how you structure and arrange your scenes can help you manipulate story time to help deliver the emotional impact you want the reader to feel." I've especially added rich visual details and dialogues to create the upmost emotional impact on readers.


This was an amazing article about time and creative writing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this particular article, along with other ones in the blog. This article made me reflect on time and my efforts on creative writing.



Time flies. Source: Time is constantly moving

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