Shouts From Down Under

Time. Is it totally our enemy, or our besty?

We've all had those days / hours / minutes / seconds that vary in length. You do know the ones.

Those last 3 days of work at a job we hated. The last couple of hours of that eternal nightshift. That Christmas eve when, as children, we felt it took forever to fall asleep. You wonder how astronauts handle it, when there's nothing to show any change, nothing to measure progress, nothing to even create an illusion that time is passing.



Is that what it is?

Does ordered calmness, or adversley, heart pumping chaos trick our minds into believing that time almost ceased, or flew by in an instant?

There are, as you would all no doubt be fully aware, various bits and pieces to work into our writing to create this effect for the reader.
Yes, we will shamelessly manipulate poor hapless story starer into feeling as if he / she / they / other are in an imaginary world where some scenes and situations labour up an endless mountain road of suspence, or of impatient plodding; stodgy flatline ambience.

Then the journey for the wrenched reader plunges off a cliff of clockwork, dropping into the Grand Canyon of shock and drama. Shouting shreiking shananigans of ShreKingHam-ness. (Don't panic if you've lost the meaning here; I'm just writing it as it rotates, and is ripped off the "toilet roll holder" of my mind)

Time is instantly instant. The decaf of every cheapshot, shoulder holstered, contrivance the sweating, brow creased author can dig out of his nail-bag of literary skill sets.

Of course there's the choice of words to emphasise fast or slow progress of periods of time, the length of sentences, and the rhythm of the whole rendition you've written.

There is the (old fashioned now?) trick that was used in novels to create some sort of suspense from the get-go, by inserting the time into the narrative every so often, whether it be the start of chapters, within the body of text, people mentioning it every now and then.

I've used this MO in The Influence Gene from the beginning of Chapter 1 and reducing the amount of text, and story action, by decreasing chunks until the final catastrophic melt-down explosion.

I'm no expert or hardly even an amateur at these things, and I fully expect some criticism for using such an outdated scheme, but I know I've always enjoyed reading books where the author has made an effort to strongly reinforce what they want to get across to you, the reader.

Surely we all give permission to varying degrees for authors to do some hearty storytelling, unless it's way over the top and amounts to storyletting.
No, we don't want to bleed all the trust and forgiveness out of the reader, do we? No one can convince someone of the truth in a lie by making it all lie, now can they?

Reminds me of a certain politician here in Australia that went all out for his election campaigne, focussing on HONESTY (and it was genuine) to the point of just about announcing his credit card details and PIN number.
But he wasn't voted in. I'm talking John Hewson, of course. (Ok maybe he wasn't an angel either but this is just for arguements sake.)
I sometimes ponder, to this day, why people didn't want a squeaky clean, genuinely honest politican, after loudly moaning, as we all do, about how corrupt and all that politicians and head honchos of every country really are.
No, they didn't want a totally honest as the day is long guy running our country. And I think it's because it's like giving your money to a Bank to look after it, who is so NICE that they donate it to poor people, or are just green and newbies with it, and a nasty sod comes alone and nicks your cash. That's why we never want a Prime Minister running our countries, do we, who isn't as whilley as a fox. He / She has to have some nouse; some guts, some street smarts, so that mongrels DON'T come along and do our country over.
Funny how the media have people convinced about different things that are unproven, and anyone disagreeing is shouted down. Sheep. Mobs of sheep.
Well, as all authors do in unedited and un-written-rewritten-40-times-manuscripts, I'm wandering with my blog entry here.
Perhaps it's even become boring and wishy washy; lacking real facts or any solid opinion. Perhaps it totally sucks. And maybe, dear person readin this, it has become interminably long winded.

Maybe time has slowed down and you just wish I'd hurry up and GET ON WITH IT, MATE!

Time. The only artificial way to slow it down when you really want to enjoy something to the fullest, is with a steaming mug of coffee.

Yes. One sip at a time.



Sparky

This video is to introduce Carly.