Time is one of those aspects we either pay a lot of attention to, or ignore almost completely when it comes to our books. However, the concept of a timeline is extremely important when it comes to our stories making sense, and all the pieces fitting together. For that reason it's a good idea to make sure that the order of events adds up, and that you present this order to your audience in a way they can easily follow.
Because if your readers can't follow your timeline, they aren't going to be able to make sense of your story.
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| Things can get complicated if you're not careful. |
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"When" Is An Important Question (That Needs A Simple Answer)
From high fantasy settings to investigative procedural novels, the question of when something happened is going to vary in importance to the plot. For instance, when did the Dark Lord forge their great macguffin? Whether it was 500 years ago or 10,000 years ago likely isn't going to matter, as long as the time in question is mostly gone from living memory. How long has our protagonist been married to her husband? Long enough for their marriage to get stale, and for the plot of the edgy romance novel to come into play.
However, that's a mechanical issue for you as the author. You need to know when certain events happened... but then you need to be able to turn around and explain to your readers exactly how this timeline is constructed so they don't get lost.
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| So how did this happen, exactly? |
The major advantage you have is that books are (usually, anyway) told in chronological order. So as long as your story begins at the beginning of the book, and ends at the end of the book, you already have a functional method in place. However, you still need to check your timeline to be sure that what you're telling your readers makes sense... and in this case, that your events are consistent.
There are few things more frustrating than having a timeline that doesn't add up, or which confuses your readers. For example, if a book opens in July, and the next chapter is full of snow, your readers might rightly ask how many months did the chapters skip? But if the narrative continues like it's only been a few days, that is going to be a problem... especially if this isn't part of the plot, like a sci fi atmospheric disturbance, or some kind of weather control supervillain.
And this applies to all parts of your book. Whether you're stating that it's now Friday in chapter 4 when chapter 3 ended on Monday night, or you state it's been three weeks since your protagonist was shot, or you had a full moon in chapter 5, and you need to know when the next full moon is going to occur, those are things you need to keep track of, and stay consistent with. Because if you have an error in those things, at least some readers are going to notice... and the more obvious the error, the more confused they're going to be by what's happening.
I say all of that to offer this advice... treat time the way you do size in a narrative. By which I mean that if you don't need to give specifics, don't. You will save yourself so much time and energy by letting things remain vague when you don't need to be specific.
If the audience doesn't need to know the exact height of a character, don't mention it. If they don't need to know how many miles away a city was, don't list it. And if they don't need to know what day of the week, or even what month of the year it is, don't bring it up. Because any time you drop something specific, that is now something you have to keep track of, and you have to keep it consistent with your audience. It's one more moving part that can gum up the works... so don't make more work for yourself than you have to.
Lastly, if you do tend to keep things vague in your descriptions, then your audience will notice when you get specific, and pay even more attention to those facts. So if you want them to be putting a mystery together, or building an event timeline as they read, that's one way to highlight that pertinent information for them.
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