Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Time

I thought Bogart did a good job making the distinction between objective time and subjective time. This was never something I really put a lot of thought into when I work with fiction, but having it broken down into terms like this made it easier to turn to my own work and apply this. I found it interesting to think of the times I've read or written a physical representation of time in a piece of fiction, be it a clock, watch, etc. This piece made me wonder why we use these images. What about time are we trying to represent with these?
I think the most helpful line of the article that simplified things in a way I can apply them to my own writing is, "You cannot literally manipulate time, but you can influence perception of it" (129). Time is a difficult thing to work with in writing and molding it can be confusing when you don't have the right approach. This quote made it easier for me to understand what I set out to do in a piece of writing, that I'm using words, pacing, and tension to manipulate a reader rather than the story.

1 comment:

  1. Your response made me think about the difference between objective time and subjective time. I guess time is important in writing in that sometimes we are outside looking into ourselves and sometime we are the root of the experience.

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