This document discusses various techniques for representing time in fictional stories, including scenes, summaries, flashbacks, and verb tenses. It provides examples of how each technique can be used and considerations for choosing techniques. Scenes depict events in real time while summaries move more quickly over longer periods. Flashbacks allow looking back in time, and verb tenses should be consistent within the narrative and any flashbacks. Effective stories use these techniques purposefully to navigate events over time for the reader.

1. Fictional Time
Stories are both set in time, and use
time to navigate the events of the
story.
Time is navigated through the use of
scenes and summaries.
Scenes happen in the real time of the
story
Summaries move the reader through
larger blocks of time quickly.
Other time-travel techniques in
fiction include flashbacks and slow-
motion

2. Summary and
Scene
Summary and scene
both are used to
represent time in
fiction
Summary moves
quickly over longer
periods of time
Scenes slow down
time and deal with
shorter periods of
time

3. Scene vs.
Summary
Scene is always necessary in fiction
Summary can be useful, but not
always required
Scene allows the reader to
experience the action
Summary can span any period of
time
Summary is more distancing/un-
experienced

4. Choosing
Which
While a story can be written simply
as a scene or series of scenes,
summary helps transition between
scenes
Summary can help highlight the
importance of those events that
happen in scenes
Important events should often be
rendered in scenes rather than
summary so that the reader fully
experiences them, is shown, rather
than told, about them.

5. “the girl who
left her sock
on the floor”
• Page 257:
Jessica dangled a sock between
her thumb and forefinger, studied
it, and let it drop. “There are
times,” she said, “one wearies of
rooming with a pig.”
Pig. Francie checked to see what
page she was on and slammed
World History shut. “Why not go
over to the nice, clean library?”
she said. “You could go to the nice,
clean library, and you could think
nice, clean thoughts. I’ll just root
around here in the homework.”
She pulled her blanket up and
turned to the window, her eyes
stinging.”

6. Girl, sock
• Page 262:
Her mother would have been dead
while Francie got up and took her
shower and worried about being
late to breakfast and was late to
breakfast and went to biology and
then to German and then dozed
through English and then ate lunch
and then hid in the dorm instead
of playing lacrosse and then
quarreled with Jessica about a
sock.

7. Flashback
• Allows the writer, and reader, to
move backward in time
• Overuse of flashback can result
in too much back story
• Flashback requires transition
from past to present and back,
but not overly self-conscious
ones
• Be wary of tense changes for
flashbacks. If writing in present
tense, use past tense for the
flashback. If writing in past tense,
use the past perfect.

8. Girl who left
her sock
• Page 263:
• Francie had a memory, one of
her few from early childhood,
that never altered or dimmed,
however often it sprang out:
herself in the building stairwell
with Mrs. Doughterty, making
Mrs. Doughterty laugh. She could
still feel her feet fly up as her
mother grabbed her and pulled
her inside, still hear the door
slam.

9. A Note on Verb
Tenses
• The main action of a story can be
written in either past or present
tense. Past is more common;
present tense has become more
pervasive, but is still considered
more stylized and, sometimes,
intrusive.

10. Present v.
Past
• I see the man enter
• I know what you mean
• I hear an owl cry
• I walk into the room
• I cry without thinking
• I stand over the body
• My heart races
• I saw the man enter
• I knew what you
meant
• I heard an owl cry
• I walked into the room
• I cried without thinking
• I stood over the body
• My heart raced

11. Either/Or • You can write your
story in either past
or present tense,
but need to be
consistent so that
the main action of
the story remains in
one or the other
• I stood over the
body. “I know what
you mean,” I say. My
heart races.
• I stand over the
body. “I know what
you mean,” I say. My
heart races.
• I stood over the
body. “I know what
you mean,” I said.
My heart raced.

12. Which tense
determines
past tense
If you are writing in the present
tense, then you will use the simple
past tense when referring to events
before the main action.
I stand over the body. “I know what
you mean,” I say. My heart races.
I met the body two weeks earlier.
Then it was alive. It breathed.
Now it stares back at me without
seeing.

13. Or…
I stood over the body. “I know
what you mean,” I said. My heart
raced.
I had met the body two weeks
earlier. Then it had been alive. It
had breathed.
Now it stared back at me without
seeing.
If the present action is in past
tense, then the past is rendered
in past perfect.

14. Exceptions?
But of course.
• The actual dialogue or thought may be
rendered in present tense even if the
narrative is in past (but does not have to
be).
“I know what you mean,” she said.
I thought I knew him, she thinks to
herself.

15. So what is a
story? And
what is plot?
Stories have characters who have faces, bodies,
emotions, words and experiences
They have settings
They have event(s) that happen over time
They have themes, ideas
They are made out of words
And yet a piece of writing can have all of these
elements and still not be a story.
Pop quiz: What does every story require in
order to be a story?

16. Conflict
Conflict is the dramatic struggle between two
forces in a story. Without conflict, there is no
plot.

17. Plot analysis: Potential Types of Conflict
Man vs. nature
Man vs. society
Man vs. self
Man vs. Man

18. Man vs. Man
This type of conflict finds the main character in
conflict with another character, human or not human.

19. Man vs. Nature
This type of conflict finds the main
character in conflict with the forces of
nature, which serve as the antagonist.

20. Man vs. Society
• This type of conflict has
the main character in
conflict with a larger
group: a community,
society, culture, etc. May
also include man vs.
technology

21. Man vs. Self Conflict
In this type of conflict, the main character
experiences some kind of inner conflict.

22. Conflict does
not mean
extreme
action
• Plot does not require bank heists or
aliens landing on the planet
• It does require characters to want
something and to be changed through
actions in the story
• It requires conflict that reaches a crisis
and is resolved to some degree
• Ordering events to show conflict, crisis
and resolution in some way is what
constitutes a plot.

23. Plot
Plot is the literary element that describes the structure of
a story. It shows arrangement of events and actions
within a story.

24. Pyramid Plot Structure
THE MOST BASIC AND TRADITIONAL
FORM OF PLOT IS PYRAMID-SHAPED.
THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN DESCRIBED
IN MORE DETAIL BY ARISTOTLE AND BY
GUSTAV FREYTAG.

25. Aristotle’s Unified Plot
The basic triangle-shaped plot structure was described by Aristotle
in 350 BCE. Aristotle used the beginning, middle, and end
structure to describe a story that moved along a linear path,
following a chain of cause and effect as it works toward the
solution of a conflict or crisis.

26. Freytag’s Plot Structure
Freytag modified Aristotle’s system by adding a rising action (or
complication) and a falling action to the structure. Freytag used
the five-part design shown above to describe a story’s plot.

27. Plot Components
Exposition: the start of the
story, the situation before the
action starts
Rising Action: the series of
conflicts and crisis in the story
that lead to the climax
Climax, also known as Crisi
Action: the turning point, the
most intense moment—either
mentally or in action
Falling Action: all of the
action which follows the
climax
Resolution: the conclusion,
the tying together of all of
the threads

28. Modified Plot Structure
Freytag’s Pyramid is often modified so that it extends slightly
before and after the primary rising and falling action. You might
think of this part of the chart as similar to the warm-up and cool-
down for the story.

29. Checkmark—plot condensed in shorter
fiction
From “Story
Form Plot,
and
Structure,”
Janet
Burroway,
Writing
Fiction

30. Plot & Story
Simply put:
A story is an event or series of events
A plot is the arrangement of these events
to that shows causality, drama and
meaning.
The King Died. The Queen Died.
(Events/Story)
The King Died. The Queen Died of Grief
(Plot).

31. The Girl Who
Left Her Sock
on the Floor
• What happens in this story?
• What is the meaning that’s
revealed? What’s it about about?
• How would you describe Francie
and how is she revealed through
direct characterization?
• What other questions and
observations do you have about
the story?

32. Writing
Exercise
Déjà vu
• Write a scene in which a
character experiences something
significant, which reminds
him/her/them of the FIRST TIME
he or she had the experience of:
• Death, love, violence, shame,
wonder, anger, etc.
• Transition from the current
experience to the past
experience and back

33. Monday,
March 4
Assignments
Quick Review of all
techniques in order to
review together the
critique sheets we will use
for our first workshop
In-class writing exercise to
be used in first small-group
workshop
Formation of critique
groups