OK, imagine you’re walking along a peaceful sidewalk. It’s a lovely afternoon, the sun caresses your face. You feel the scent of geraniums floating in the air. Then all of a sudden, you hear a snapping sound coming from above. You look up and you see a large piano falling toward you. You step aside at the last moment before it kills you. And you’ve just gotten a bag full of interesting stuff: trauma, fear, and stress. They’re not identical, but they have something in common: time. Let’s talk about the nature of stress.
I’ve said in the past how memory is everything for a writer. More importantly, however, it’s precisely the memorable experience that is useful for authors. In other words, experiencing something that affects you helps create an image of the experience. This mental image, though accessible only by and through your mind, is very vivid and powerful in terms of affect. Perhaps it is its very nature – abstract, rare, living its ghostly existence only in your consciousness – that gives it its power. Compare that with the modern habit of taking too many photos without the experiences associated with them.
It’s insidious.
I doubt – though nowadays, you never know – you took actual photos during your first date with your loved one. Which one do you remember the best, particularly in terms of affect? The first date from ten years ago with zero photos or a vacation four years ago with hundreds of actual photos (and plenty more selfies)?
Taking too many photos without the experiences the photos refer to renders them both meaningless. Let’s see why, and it’s particularly from an author’s standpoint I’m examining this. It all began… with a dream.
I’m using this image to connote the concept of “memorable experience”. But from the couple’s own perspective, the only image of their experience worth having is the one in their minds(more…)
The use of tenses in fiction (and writing in general) seems like a self-evident thing. You use the past tense when things happened in the past, the present tense when they happen in the present, and the future tense when they will happen in the future. It seems so simple, and yet picking the right tense at the right time is a crucial element for success in writing fiction.
You see, one major aspect that most writers don’t seem to grasp, is that a novel is not an exercise in writing “proper” English. Instead, a work of fiction is a necessary medium for an author’s thoughts to reach an audience. As a result, rules are secondary; affect is primary.
Still, even within a “playing-by-the-rules” context, the choice of the right tense isn’t always an obvious thing. In today’s article I’ll let you know how to pick the right tense at the right time. By “right”, we mean the tense that allows affect to be expressed. We are not concerned about “proper” English. We are concerned about affective power.
Often in photography it’s not about what you show, but about what you don’t. It’s the same in narrative, and choosing the right tense can be crucial about “nudging” the narrative in the proper direction, temporally and emotionally.(more…)
