Perceptual time, character and storylines
The Ideas for Writers Series #3
The endless days of summer, when we were kids.
The years are going by so fast…
An aspect of character often overlooked by novelists, that can be a driver and an unexpected twister of storylines, is perceptual time.
Constructing character
Novelists concerned with character seek a deep understanding of their characters, even aspects not explicitly present in the published work that may still inform what their character does.
This is a problem, because most people keep their deepest motivations and fears hidden, sometimes even from themselves. The writer can draw on their own inner depths, but they are just one part of the subterranean human emotional universe. There may be interesting, even critical aspects that they cannot find in themselves.
When novelists succeed in revealing these deep forces, they serve one of the highest functions of art, for the reader also is blocked by ignorance of what emotions others hide (and perhaps they themselves suppress) and will grow from insight and increased capacity to see others.
A way the writer can approach this problem is to develop awareness of all the types of emotions that can drive people. So they want to know about their spirituality, their beliefs and fears about God, their morality (from petty things to the big things), their introspection/gregariousness, passions and so on.
And they need to be aware that the outward interplay of these factors with events in the world is not constant. Emotions can vary, change, sometimes in fleeting ways that may happen to coincide with key moments and so drive unusual actions.
Perceptual time as a driver and twister
Perceptual (personal) time moves faster as people age and this shifts their attitudes to many things, sometimes in unexpected ways (maybe focusing their actions, increasing risk taking, forcing things forward, maybe leading to a letting go and even peace-making).
Advancing perceptual time can lead to sudden abandonment of long-term objectives, a stripping of inessentials, a review of relationships and a diminished fear of risk and consequences.
When people have known someone a long time (eg, family) they tend to have fixed views of them. Sudden and significant changes can blindside them.
Perceptual time can be measured (see my Medium article Measuring the speed of perceptual time).
Perceptual time speeds up as people age, it’s consistent over the longer term, but not necessarily in the short term.
Factors affecting localised perceptual time include busyness, boredom, activities and external factors (that might, for example, remind of mortality).
Drugs doubtless affect perceptual time, along with fear of the future (perhaps some impending event, or despair). Having children, certainly.
Prison sentences will be viewed differently according to perceptual time, whether they are best just endured or whether the cost is too high and desperate measures justified. There’s a paradox in there that will be played on by character: the older a person is when convicted the more of the time they have left will be consumed, but the faster that time will go. The same 10 year sentence may be assessed quite differently by people with different perceptual time.
So consideration of an individual’s perceptual time line can change them gradually throughout a novel and suddenly within a chapter.
An interesting writer’s tool then, especially as perceptual time relates to emotions often deep and hidden. It’s an enigma that all readers know. Insight could be a big reward of reading, a reason to keep turning the pages.
