How To Write The Passage Of Time
Time is a crucial element in writing that shapes the narrative. From linear progression, to flashbacks and foreshadowing, it gives you complete control of how your story unfolds.
Here are some tips to write the passage of time to make your narratives more compelling.
Use the natural world
- Describe the changing seasons
- Show plant growth and death
- Visualise the ebb and flow of tides
- Describe the decomposition of flora and fauna
- Describe the ways that landscapes change on long journeys
- Use the weather to illustrate time jumps
- Illustrate the affect that shifting shadows have on a location
- Use heavenly bodies like stars, the rise and set of the sun, and phases of the moon
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Describe physical activities
- Show family gatherings and how they change over the years
- Describe the process of finishing a creative pursuit
- Create repetitive activities and routines
- Have a character engage in an activity, like gardening, that visually changes
- Have your characters learn a new skill
- Write a change in location that requires a journey to get from point A to point B
- Use your setting’s seasonal celebrations to illustrate a time shift for individual characters and their world
Use sound
- Describe the ticking of clocks
- Have your characters’ voice change with their age
- Illustrate changing musical styles
- Have your characters improve an audible skill like singing, swordplay, or learning a musical instrument
- Show a character’s conversational style changing as they grow
- Use the sounds of nature, like leaves becoming brittle as they crunch underfoot, or rain turning into storms
- Use silence to illustrate it getting late
Describe objects
- Have food left out go mouldy
- Illustrate buildings and settings being overtaken by nature
- Show the lifecycle of a family heirloom
- Describe textiles fading and degrading over time
- Describe the freshness of paint; is it wet and glistening, or cracked and dry?
- Illustrate technological change and advancement
- Describe the repairs in a beloved object
- Show a common object like a pencil to describe how it changes with use