Time Passing In Short Work

[PixelFish]

Recently, all I seem to read are shorts that take place within the space of a few days. The time element is very short, and I was wondering if it is a handicap to span many years within a short story.

I'm currently working on a story that has events that take place over a fifteen year chunk of time, and I was wondering if this should be expanded into a longer work or kept short.

I'm not doing any elaborate cut scenes to relly emphasize time passing currently. I just cut and go on to the next important scene. (If enough time has passed, I try to give some kind of verbal clue, but not hit people over the head with it.)

Any thoughts on this? How do most of you handle time in short stories? Do most of you keep your shorter works to a more confined period of time?

[mammamaia]

imo, it's not the time frame that matters, but the story, and how well you write it...

i can't tell if what you have in mind will 'work' unless i read it... if you want an opinion, or any help with it, you can email me...

love and hugs, maia
maia3maia@hotmail.com (maia3maia@hotmail.com)

[veingloree]

I would have thought that a sharp cuts was the simplest way to show the passage of time in a short piece -- otherwise you end up with those cliche sentences like "twenty years later..."

But anything is possible...

[PixelFish]

Mamamaia: Well, it'll probably be about a week before I need any beta readers, but I will certainly let you know when I do. :)

Vein: Yes, I am trying to stick to simple, as I think it will work better.

BTW, the piece in question is an urban fantasy piece, but it seems that most of the urban fantasy (or really any fantasy)I have read lately covers very little time at all. I went looking through my recent Realms of Fantasy's and other collections, and discovered that all the stories recently published covered a timeline of a few weeks to a few days. None seemed to stretch out for longer, so I wondered if this was perhaps a limitation I should take into account. (Granted, I don't have ALL the recent editions of Realms or SF&F, but I thought I'd ask.)

[FM St George]

I certainly think it can be done, but maybe with some honking symbol for the reader to notice... like a tree starting off as a young sapling and then growing noticeably as the story moves along; letting the reader "see" the years go by...

I'd say go fer it!

[qatz]

In my view, Pix, you are an urban fantasy! And a good one!

You don't know how long I've wanted to tell you that, speaking of time passing.

Depending on how you treat it, any short story can have any timeframe. I don't think there's any rule to the contrary. It's just more difficult to write a short story covering eons, so people don't do it. One of my favorite short stories, a trad short, is about the end of the world; it's by Arthur C. Clarke. It ends with the stars dropping out of the sky. I think it's called "The Ten Million Names of God."

I'd like to read your story if you're willing.

[zerohour21]

Most of my short stories span the timeframe of about a day. Sometimes maybe two days, or a week, or month, but most don't span longer than a day, and many are significantly less than that. I do have a short story that spans for eight years, between 1995 and 2003. During intervals between the scenes, the characters just give an overall synopsis of what he did during that time. Like a few important events go by where something happens to him, then afterward a few months or years go by during which he lives in certain conditions, then something else happens after a while. I hope it works well enough in that story; people who have read it seem to have liked it. Actually, its not much of a short story since it is 70 pages and well over 21,000 words, but you get the general idea I am trying to get at. This same thing might be applied to shorter works, I suppose.

As for the "20 years later" approach, well, maybe some people might find it cliched, but hey, it's simple and it gets the point across easily enough so that the reader knows that 20 years have gone by.

[Jamesaritchie]

Most short stories do rely on a short time span, but there's no rule about it. I've read short stories that covered less than an hour, and other short stories that covered billions of years.

It's all in the story, and how you handle the story.

[Maryn]

qatz, that story is among my favorites, too. Its title is "The Nine Million Names of God." Elegantly simple yet profound, eh?

Gee, I haven't read it in ages--I hope the anthology isn't in the bookcase with all the spiders, because I may have to dig it out real soon!

Maryn, goofing off tonight instead of working

[MissKathyClarke]

Well, how long is it? It may span 15 years, but you may start in one year and then just skip a couple years. Or, you may be writing many chapters for each of those fifteen years. It depends all on how you do it. ;)