Good morning and happy Friday to you all.
I've reached something of an obstacle in my WIP and I'm really unsure how to pass it. I finished planning the first act this week, but found that it all happens over too short a period of time. The first half of the 2nd act needs to cover at least 9 months, as it ends with the birth of the protagonist's son, whose conception is only revealed at the beginning of act two, so the first act needs to follow a broadly similar period of time in order to keep the book feeling consistent and maintain the tempo throughout. Reading back through it, it isn't clear that this is the case and I don't think it works well enough.
What I'm trying to ask is how do I maintain pace while ensuring each act takes places over a reasonably long period of time? Each scene will focus on a specific series of events, so there needs to be a gap between them in order to allow time to pass.
Does anyone have a good examples of books that do this well? I recently read Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis (not his best book, but quite funny), which used a device that broke up each act with a brief overview of events that happened in between, which kind of worked, but felt a little bit contrived.
I don't want to write a full on saga, but the story will take place over a period of 2 to 3 years.
Thanks for your help... if any of this makes sense!
Mark.
Hi Mark
My first thought when I read your question was: why do you need the book to cover time in an even way? Even if you're writing it as diary entries (and you didn't say you were), plenty of diarists will write short passages some weeks and longer ones on others.
With one of your characters becoming pregnant you will have simple ways of showing the passage of time - when you reach the part where you need to skip forward, you could just have her reminiscing about her long-lost flat belly whilst trying to heave maternity tights over her enormous bump. Or leave the first part with her attending her first midwife appointment, weave in a succinct sentence or two about how many urine samples she's had to carry around in her handbag, before she pitches up to the maternity unit. If you're telling it from the father's point of view, you'll have to adjust those examples somewhat.
You also asked for ideas for reading - to be honest I can't think of many books that don't skip forward in time at some point, so you could read just about anything (except Bridget Jones and Adrian Mole) and you will find at least one example of what you're looking for. I've recently re-read A Tale of Two Cities, and the passage of time is laid on with a trowel by frequent mentions of the year. Before that I read The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, which also has several occasions where years will have passed in one sentence (the whole book takes her from her teens to her forties).
Hope some of that was helpful