Tempus fugit.
– Ovid
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
–Groucho Marx
Susan Sarah here...I love our new rotating schedule! It gives us Wenches more time to get our blogs done, and gives you all more time to read and jump into discussions.
So here I am...with a few thoughts about time.
It's interesting that we often refer to reading in terms of time (it being a temporal occupation on one level)-- I flew through that book, we’ll say. Oh I crawled through that book. Oh I had no time to finish it, oh I have lots of time for reading this weekend (I wish!!).
This also applies to writing the books--mostly I crawl through writing the first half, and fly through the second half racing the deadline. Authors can spend months, even years, writing a book, and some readers can speed through that story in an afternoon. So there's the time we take to write them, and the time we take to read them. And there's the time that the story itself takes, which is where I'm heading today: the time frame covered in the story.
Romances in general seem to be getting shorter. I'm asked to wind a story up in under 95,000 words now, shorter if possible. Ten years ago my books were around 120,000 words -- lots more time (so to speak) to develop the story, so it's an interesting challenge when the book itself has to be shorter. This is happening more often--paper costs as well as the hours readers realistically have to devote to reading, along with a bit of the fast-food mentality applied to reading. We speed through reading books like we speed through so many things-–speed dial on the phone, drive-throughs, HOV lanes, speed checkout lanes, 15 Items or less; computers are faster, and now that I have wireless internet in my house, if it goes out, I have little patience for the dial-up dinosaur that I thought was so cool only a few years ago.
That subtle shift in society and mindset is affecting fiction and romance too, I think. Many romances, possibly most, that I read lately seem to cover a time frame of a few weeks, even a few days. I know this is sometimes true in my own stories–-there have been times when I’ve told my editor, but it’s only a few days, or under two weeks! That’s okay, she says. That’s good. We don’t want the hero and heroine apart for too long.
I remember reading big hefty juicy romance reads where the stories took months, a year, even years to develop between hero and heroine. But the genre continues to develop and change, and is never stagnant. Fiction itself, whatever the form, is not a stagnant art, it keeps altering and morphing its shape. Is it an improvement in romance to have the hero and heroine meet quickly, jump each other’s bones quickly, fall in love (in whatever order), resolve all differences and live happily ever after in a matter of, say, ten days?
It might seem unrealistic--though I will bet it's happened many, many times to people who fall in love. Love at first sight, for example, together with a strong conflict--how much time does that fictional couple need to get to a resolution? Not much, really. A fast time frame can add real immediacy and a sense of urgency to a story, which heightens other tensions in the book, which helps us sit on the edge of our seats, and fly through a book. The time frame is brief and to the point, and the story is focused.
Just now I’m revising my December Avon, To Wed A Highland Bride, which has a time frame of about a month. I had to stretch that out--it could have been two weeks, easy. I established an earlier meeting for the hero and heroine, a couple of months prior to the action of the book. Often a previous meeting or encounter years earlier can help set up a conflict and an attraction that will ignite and carry through the rest of the book. For this particular book, the story didn't need a long time frame, and that helps focus the lens of the romance, that hyper-focus that centers on the H & H.
True, there isn’t much room for extraneous subplots and characters when the manuscript itself needs to be short, and the time frame of the story is brief. But the story doesn't need to drag on to pad in more time to make it "believable." Once a story gets rolling–-which is hopefully right off the bat–-we want it to keep going at a good clip, so that we can roll right along with it.
So time flies in lots of romance. The technique works better with some storylines than others, of course, such as love at first sight. What a short time frame needs, besides an intense, passionate attraction–-real chemistry at work between two potential lovers--is intense conflict to balance that potential happiness. We love romance, but happiness is boring. Give us contrast, challenges surmounted, impossibilies conquered! And then we can have happiness.
What’s also interesting, I think, is that often a romance author does not make that time frame clear. The ticking clock that works so well in other genres-–mystery, romantic suspense, thriller and horror, for example--isn’t essential in the main plot of a romance. Yet a bit of ticking-clock tension helps give the conflict some added fuel and helps keep the story moving along toward an exciting, adventurous, passionate, satisfying conclusion. But where a thriller author will make sure you see that clock, even noting it scene by scene, sometimes blurring it in romance works best.
A sense of the passing calendar can distract the reader, or give attention to a non-essential part of the story. The thrust (ahem) of the story is the romance, and the process and stages of falling in love and overcoming great odds to do so, whether it's on the dramatic, paranormal, or humorous side. And partly we don't wave that clock or calendar around in historical romance because...well, it can be a bit of a stretch to accept that a couple could meet, be thrown together in sometimes extraordinary and at the least challenging circumstances, while at odds with one another over some key conflicts..and for that couple to fall into each other’s arms, fall into bed, fall in love while resolving said conflicts...and all, often, in a week or two of the real time of the story.
But that’s the fun of it--that speed, that heady rush, that delirious experience of falling in love and conquering the odds, climbing that virtual personal mountain, to get there.
I also write mainstream historical fiction, where the time frame is just the opposite. A story may cover several years, decades, even a lifetime for the main character. The writer has to cover long lengths of time, with some events seen so close up that they encompass whole chapters, and others covered in a few sentences. It’s a delicate balance. The reader could fall asleep, or feel bored, or simply put the book down and not come back. Even while covering forty years, that story has to keep moving at a good clip. And often, the writer has a page length similar to romance; my first mainstream fiction came in at a little over 100,000 words, and covered decades.
But, time being what it is, constantly rolling forward (though there is that concentric theory, everything happens at once, and sometimes it feels that way...) --I have to get back to my revisions!!
What do you all think of the shorter time frames in historical romance novels now, and the fast pace of the shorter books that we are seeing more often in the genre? How do you feel about larger historical novels that cover great gobs of time – do you lose interest, do you feel satisfied or not, do you stick with it or let it gather dust? Or do you notice one way or the other?
~Susan Sarah
p.s. The final cover isn't finished yet for my next Sarah Gabriel novel, To Wed A Highland Bride, and I'll show you that as soon as it's ready...but here's a wee peek at what promises to be a gorgeous cover!
