Thrillers are odd animals. Sometimes youll see date/timestamps posted on each chapter so the readers can keep track of the timeline. Other times, I imagine the writer has their own system for keeping track and hides it from the reader. The danger in making those timestamps visible to the reader is in the editing. If you move something around, you then have to change the timestamps accordingly. The other danger is in estimating how long a scene lasts. The decisions the writer makes are obviously a question of taste and whether or not they want the reader to experience the 24 style of thriller. Im currently writing the paraquel to The Black. While The Black took place over several days (almost a week), the paraquel is much more compressed. Much more. That means I have to keep track of every hour to make sure its not only realistic, but also to keep all the events sorted out. Again, especially important if I end up moving scenes around. But the question is: do I show this to the reader? Does it make sense to let them in on the crazy? Its decision I probably wont make until I go through the final edits. Im leaning toward no. One thing Im doing differently for this novel is actually using Scrivener/Aeon timeline synchronization. I spent this morning setting it all up and its glorious. Makes it very easy for me to keep track of the times in the Scrivener synopsis view as well as use Aeon for visualization. I know it seems like a small boon to the process, but it is helping. A lot. But heres a question for you writers and readers: which do you prefer? Timestamping all the scenes/chapters? Or simply put the scenes together in as close to chronological order as you can and let the readers figure it out? If time is important, characters or the narrator will need to let the reader know how much time has passed whereas the timestamps take care of that. What do you think? Which is less confusing for the reader and which do you prefer?
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:50:04 +0000
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