Jeff LaFerney
Author of Loving the Rain, Skeleton Key, and soon to be released Bulletproof
Jeff is an author from WORLD CASTLE PUBLISHER
Jeff LaFerney has been a language arts teacher and coach for more than twenty years.
Well,
here I am after writing three books, and I’m an expert, right? Not even close…but I’ve learned a few
things. I’d like to comment about what
I’ve learned about time…time in the books.
My first book practically was written stream of consciousness. I started and never slowed down until I was
done, and then I decided to revise. What
I found was that everything I changed and added to the book generated a thread
of errors throughout the rest of the novel.
I found that I messed the timing and chronology all up when I made some
really beneficial revisions, and fixing things was difficult and frustrating. So in book number two, I kept a
timeline. I wrote down a summary of each
scene of the book, including a record of time.
What day did it happen? What time
was it? I found that I caught myself
quite a few times writing things that weren’t possible or miscalculating
reality. It helped me revise and
maintain chronology as I went along. So
when book three began, I felt I had a handle on the whole time thing. Boy, was I wrong. I kept painting myself into corners for which
there was no way out. Numerous times I
had to go back and rewrite scenes, add scenes, and reorder scenes so I could
maintain appropriate chronology. I
literally had to write down each date (even dates mentioned of things that
happened in the past) and each mention of time, age, years, days, hours—even
minutes. I also continued to keep note
of times in the scenes as I summarized them.
It was a challenge to be faithful to reality and to keep my details
consistent. The end result? There were hours of frustration at times, but
I had told a story for which I’m very proud.
Time matters. It’s real, and it
affects believability of stories and consistency of story-telling. Keeping track helped me to eliminate gaps and
to be accountable to a realistic timeline.
The next time you write or begin to revise, keep track…that’s my
“expert” advice.
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Call in number - (714) 242-5259
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