The speech I delivered in eighth grade was all about time. It even included a line from the Alan Parsons song “Time.” I had gotten the idea from helping my teacher referee basketball games. It was my job to hold the stopwatch and call out, “Time!” at the end of each period. It was less pressure than being the score keeper, that’s for sure!
That memory surfaced while brainstorming ideas for marking time in narrative. The objective is to move away from exact data measurements and dive deeper to reach the reader on an emotional level. This can apply to fiction, but can also be creatively incorporated into memoir. Sometimes using a numerical measurement just does not do enough to convey meaning. I mean, is it a story or a textbook? Yikes!
For example, “He started high school in 1997,” would be an accurate statement but falls flat. If the narrator marks the time with a scene, this same information could be told like:
Continue reading “On Time”
Pauline Shen 