Time in narrative – Past and Future – Story Teller Course

Hello friends!

Finishing our Free Storyteller Course, today, in the last Lesson, we are going to talk about Time in the Narrative. There is an excellent book by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called Time and Narrative. I studied it in my master’s degree and I would like to leave it here as an indication for complementary readings to our Course. The most interesting chapter, in my opinion, is the last chapter, when Ricoeur talks about the concept of narrative identity.

When we are going to answer the question – who am I – (or who is our main character), we are going to have to tell a story, establish a narrative that will inevitably be linked to time. In short, every narrative unfolds in time and has its own dynamic of establishing time.

Thus, it is common for the story to be told in the rhythm of the past, present and future, but not always. Some stories will have what we’ll call Flashbacks and Foreshadowing, in addition to so-called sub-plots. We do not have a correct or exact translation for these terms in English, so much so that it is common to see people talking about Flashbacks in movies, soap operas and series instead of any translated term.

Next, we will explain each of these terms and understand how these elements can become important in our creation or storytelling when the narrative is not linear (past – present – ​​future) or when we need to go back in time to inform about some relevant aspect in the plot or even predict a future event, in order to arouse the curiosity of our reader or listener.

To facilitate our understanding, let’s say that flashback (literally a flash of the past, “looking back”) therefore relates to the past and foreshadowing relates to the future. So if we’re telling an event that happened in the present, in our history, and we have to tell another event that happened in the past, let’s create a flashback. Whereas, if we jump from the present to the future, we are creating a foreshadowing.

The author or storyteller will create a flashback when there is a cause, that is, when what is to be told later does not make any sense as long as we go back to the past. It is different from a digression that only returns to the past through a meaningless association.

A flashback has to be inserted into the narrative when new information is going to affect how one understands what is happening or when the concept of a character needs to be changed.

For example, let’s say that the story we are going to tell has a dynamic of conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. We follow the course of events and each time we get a feeling in favor of the protagonist and against the antagonist until in the final climax scene, the author inserts a flashback, a childhood episode, which makes us understand (but not agree) with the evil attitudes of that individual.

That is, the flashback is always inserted when there is no other way to continue telling the story, except going back in time. Likewise, we have to understand foreshadowing, that is, when we are going to have a glimpse of the future, we have to have this glimpse when it is totally necessary or, if it is a way of anticipating an event, this anticipation has to instigate curiosity and arrest the attention.

In some cases, we can notice that the creators of stories, in movies, novels, plays manage to make use of foreshadowing in a brilliant way. In other cases, we see that the anticipation of a fact that will only happen in the future of the story is disastrous, because, instead of creating a feeling of suspense and interest, it ends up creating an anticipation that makes the story lose its fun, precisely because now we know what is going to happen.

For example, if the story begins by saying something like, “That night, he was going to break up his marriage, right after he lost his job. It all started when…”

We can see that there is a foreshadowing here, an anticipation of what the central character will see. However, before we get to that point (that night), let’s go through all the events that led to his breaking up with you and also losing your job.

Now, foreshadowing, even more than flashback, has to be used in a very judicious way, because our readers and listeners will already know what is to come. However, as I said, foreshadowing sometimes ends up being a problem (and should be avoided), while for those who know how to use it, it is an exceptional tool. In another lesson, we already quoted the beginning of the book One hundred years of Solitude:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that long-ago afternoon when his father took him to discover ice”…

So, from the beginning of the book, we will know that Colonel Aureliano Buendía would face a firing squad. However, this future episode was constructed in such a masterful way that we are left wondering what will happen so that he has to live through it (is it a crime? is it revenge? a political problem?) and, also, what will happen (will it be are they really going to shoot him? will he be able to escape?) and soon afterwards the narrative ends up describing a flashback, “that remote afternoon when his father took him to discover ice”…

Therefore, in the same sentence, the genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez manages to unite a foreshadowing with a flashback. Although, the flashback is not exactly a flashback in this case if we think that the past time ends up being theoretically longer than a common flashback. In any case, what we see is that the normally simple dynamics of past, present and future, in good tales, in good histories, is broken to give way to all kinds of constructions of time.

In some cases, it is the insertion of a flashback, in other cases, it is the insertion of a foreshadowing and in others – as we also find in the Odyssey, from Homer – an episode in the middle of the story is the beginning, the middle is the beginning and so on.

What is important to note in all cases is the connection, the nexus, the connection between these periods of time, that is, we cannot lose ourselves when telling or creating a story in digressions or useless anticipations in what we have to tell.

Here we finish our Storytelling Course. If you want to request your Certificate, see how here:

Certificate of Participation Online Course

Related