In a new post, C.S. Lakin identifies ways writers can speed up time for their readers.
One way is through narrative tricks, like sentence fragments and short words. “If you show a character’s attention zipping from one thing to another, never able to focus long on anything, that’s one way to speed up time,” Lakin notes. “We know what an adrenaline rush feels like in an emergency situation—how the heart pounds and blood races in our ears. Writers can use the character’s internal and external impressions to create a sense of quickened time.”
Lakin shares an excerpt from Shibumi by Trevanian, in which an injured man is trapped in an underground cavern, and must hope that an underground river will pull him to safety. In this sequence, Trevanian heightens the tension by drawing out every minute detail. Because the character is experiencing every fraction of every second, time seems to move slowly for the reader, but the effect is that the reader understands that the character is running out of time.
“We’ve often sat in movie theaters biting off all our nails as a character is trapped inside a house and trying to get out, and we’re urging her to hurry, hurry, to get out of danger,” Lakin writes. “To us, it’s taking forever to get to safety. But to the character being chased by a killer, time might be racing, slipping from her grasp.”
Stream of consciousness writing can also help you achieve this effect when characters are in crisis. “Adrenaline kicks us into heightened awareness at times like these,” Lakin writes. “For some people time moves extremely slow instead of racing, and they notice everything—every dust mote, every nuance of sound.”
