How much time passes in your short stories?

As long as your short story is focused, it shouldn't matter how much time it covers. What can happen, though, is with an extended time period it's easy to get distracted and add too much non-essential stuff. Keep it tightly to that one thread you're following, and you should be able to make it work.

My last three short stories take place within 10 minutes, within maybe an hour, and over a period of about 18 years. All are under 2500 words.

Go read Cat Rambo's short story English Muffin, Devotion on the Side:
http://dailysciencefiction.com/scie...cat-rambo/english-muffin-devotion-on-the-side

It takes place over many years, maybe even decades. And it works really well. She adds breaks and little indicator words that make you aware of time passing. Like, "the years came and went" or the mention of assisted living, letting us know a character has aged significantly.

There's a lot to learn about passing time in a short story there.

I keep my short stories focused on a character. Which, depending on the story can last as short as an afternoon or as long as 20 years. Since the character is the focus, I let the character tell it the way she/he wants. To keep myself from rambling too far afield, I also write in the first person, so things just kind of naturally progress. Time passes as it needs to.

Anywhere from an hour to several years. I have read short stories that took place over several billion years. However short or long the time span in a short story, you touch on the high points, the points that matter most. There need be no more high points in a story covering a billion years than in a story covering minutes.

None of my short stories have gone much over a month (except with flashbacks). One story I've had trouble with is a week long, but in that case it's too long. Either it wants to be a novellette (at least) or it wants to be reframed somehow. The shortest two clock in at about an hour (I'd guess), though one of those involves the main character telling his story (or lying about it) to a detective, so the actually time covered is closer to a week.

I find, for me at least, that scene-length flashbacks and other tricks that make a story in one sense more temporally limited which can help me make a tighter story, without actually losing the time scope. That may or may not work for you, and that may or may not work for the story you're working on, but I tend to think the best thing about short stories is that you can easily experiment and try different things in ways that would be much harder and more time consuming if you tried them with a novel.

buirechain said:

None of my short stories have gone much over a month (except with flashbacks). One story I've had trouble with is a week long, but in that case it's too long. Either it wants to be a novellette (at least) or it wants to be reframed somehow. The shortest two clock in at about an hour (I'd guess), though one of those involves the main character telling his story (or lying about it) to a detective, so the actually time covered is closer to a week.

I find, for me at least, that scene-length flashbacks and other tricks that make a story in one sense more temporally limited which can help me make a tighter story, without actually losing the time scope. That may or may not work for you, and that may or may not work for the story you're working on, but I tend to think the best thing about short stories is that you can easily experiment and try different things in ways that would be much harder and more time consuming if you tried them with a novel.

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I don't think any story "wants" to be anything. Stories aren't capable of wanting. A story is what the writer decides to make it, and any story can be told at any length. It's all writer's choice.

However much time needs to pass.

I find that often, they take place over a relatively short period of time (a few days, at the most, often a few hours or so, even less), but it can cover any amount of time with ease. Focus on what's important and see where the story goes.

I've just finished a 5000-word story that takes place over several weeks and then jumps ahead five years. The fictional time span is irrelevant - entire novels have been written about a single day (or less) while some short stories cover years. The key is to keep the story tight - if you need to jump ahead to get to the next interesting event, start a paragraph with Two days later or, as someone else mentioned above, put in some asterisks to denote a break in time.

It depends for me but usually they happen over a day or two, not more than that. Sometimes just fifteen minutes.

I've never really thought about how much time passes in my stories because it really doesn't matter, but this is certainly an interesting sh*ts and giggles topic, so why not...

In time passage, my shortest covers roughly 15 minutes in 2,100 words. My longest is a two POV present/past novella, the past being the main story which spans about six months in 20K words.

I remember running across some guidelines from some famous author or another for short story writing once upon a time (and of course I can't re-google it now) that stated that short stories *should* usually only take place over a few hours or days at most. But if this is really true, I've read a number that violated this. The thing you don't get in short stories is chapter breaks, and in novels, chapter breaks often (though certainly not always) represent significant shifts in time.

But I've seen scene breaks, or even narrative summary, used to take care of down time in shorts.

I agree that it's different for every story. However, I think that making the story span too much time is a common mistake, and it's a good practice to always ask yourself if the story could be told over a shorter time span. Often the reason writers feel the story "wants" to start earlier is because that's when the backstory starts, but there are lots of other ways to deal with that.

Personally I have outliers on either side, but my stories tend to take place over a few days.

I agree with James; you touch on the high points, I don't think the actual length of time it spans matters.

One of my favourite short stories is one of Asimov's that spans maybe billions of years, not sure exactly. I'm glad he didn't stop to wonder if he should have crammed it into one day.

As a reader, I don't care about the time span, I only care about the story, the writing, and/or the characters.

Generally mine take place from 1 to 3 days. I'm averaging here for me, of 1,000 words being about a day.

That's one reason for novels, I had to train myself to think about them a little bit differently than just a single arc.

The main reason I start earlier for my longer stories (let's say around 15,000 to 16,000 words), is usually I consider myself plotting in the middle first.

The recent ones, that I can think of, take about 3 to 5 days at most.

As far as to much time, well that to me depends on what your going for. Like if we are talking about 1,000 years in 2,000 words than yea not enough words to really get to know anybody.

But I wouldn't myself consider a week or so to much time.

For months time, I often feel I could have read a novel that actually spent time getting to know the characters than something in 3,000 words.

Very short. Generally no more than an hour or so. One of my mostest favoritest unpublishablest stories involves a storyteller who relates a tale that involves many years, but the telling of the story is no more than an hour or so.

It would be an interesting question to pose about famous shorts. I handed out five of those to my composition class tonight, for reading during the week and discussion at next class. These include stories by Bradbury, Clarke, Ballard and Wells. None occupies much in the way of time passage.

Ambrose Bierce's most famous story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," occupied no more than a minute or so of time passage.

caw

I think it depends on the length of the story. If we're talking 2-5 k words, I feel that a shorter time-span, say over an afternoon or a day, tends to work better because it allows a chance to focus on character development very intimately, via a poignant scene or two.

But of course there will be writers who do the opposite and do it well.

blacbird said:

It would be an interesting question to pose about famous shorts. I handed out five of those to my composition class tonight, for reading during the week and discussion at next class. These include stories by Bradbury, Clarke, Ballard and Wells. None occupies much in the way of time passage.

Ambrose Bierce's most famous story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," occupied no more than a minute or so of time passage.

caw

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On the other side, Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" covers decades.

It really depends on what I want to accomplish within the story and how it's structured (perspective, tense, etc.). I find first person, present tense is great for "slice of life" stories where you're only following the characters for a few hours. Sometimes they'll span an entire day or a few weeks, but more often than not, for me, short stories don't tend to stretch very far.

Marlys said:

On the other side, Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" covers decades.

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Yep. Certainly there is a big spectrum of possibility, and anything that works, works. But I never thought much about this before, and am intrigued. So I'll toss out what I remember about some of my favorite short stories:

"The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson. A couple of hours, tops.
"The Dwarf", by Ray Bradbury. A few hours, as I recall.
"Flowers for Algernon", by Daniel Keyes (the original short, not the later expanded novel). Many weeks, months, probably.
"Silent Snow, Secret Snow", by Conrad Aiken. Days or weeks? I can't exactly recall, but it was an extended period of time.
"Wine in the Desert", by Max Brand. Hours.
"To Build a Fire", by Jack London. Hours.
"The Country of the Blind", by H.G. Wells. Months, maybe more.
"Afterward", by Edith Wharton. Months, as I recall. Which is exactly what made it work.
"The Monkey's Paw", by W.W. Jacobs. Days.
"The Wall", by Jean-Paul Sartre. Days.
Many Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Usually, several days.

The thread question is a great one, and has made me think about stories in a way I've never done before. I don't know that it will change anything about the way I write, but it does now figure into how I read short stories, and in a good way.

caw

Belinda Rees said:

One of my favourite short stories is one of Asimov's that spans maybe billions of years, not sure exactly. I'm glad he didn't stop to wonder if he should have crammed it into one day.

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That's the one I was trying to think of, I believe. If I remember right, it's a fairly short story, at that. I think it's "The Last Question", but I don't have it, so I'm not positive.

blacbird said:

The thread question is a great one, and has made me think about stories in a way I've never done before. I don't know that it will change anything about the way I write, but it does now figure into how I read short stories, and in a good way.

caw

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I don't think I've ever considered how much time passes in one of my short stories before writing it. Time just passes. Events happen, and they take as long as they take.

I usually don't talk about unpublished stories, but I wrote one not long ago that is still out on submission, and has been for better than four months, and it covers more time than most of my stories.

It begins the day the protagonist is born, and ends the day he dies, which is exactly seventy-five years later. Anyone who knows much about Mark Twain will know where the basic idea for this story originated.