The time of clocks & emotions & the space between

The title of Suzanne Frank’s talk at this month’s meeting of Dallas Mystery Writers was “Writing in 4D.” “Did you think that was a typo?” the head of SMU’s creative writing program asked her audience of writers. “I have written mystery, time travel and women’s fiction,” she said, declaring that she wanted to bring multidimensional lessons from those multiple genres to bear on any form of fiction writing.

And although Frank’s talk spanned second, third and fourth “dimensions” of writing, it was the 4D one that particularly resonated for me. In physics, the fourth dimension is usually considered to be time. In fiction, it’s also time, but not necessarily “chronos” time, the time of the ticking clock variety.

Instead, Frank prefers to concentrate on the emotional component of time, the “kairos” moments. It was a concept I’d heard years before, during a workshop the late Lisa Lenard-Cook presented, based on her book, The Mind of Your Story, (discussed here) in which she advocated harnessing the chronological time, the series of constant, measurable moments she termed the story’s “every-ticking present” and emotional time – the way the characters feel about those moments. 

It’s those life-defining kairos moments, interrupting the passage of the chronos moments of ordinary time, that Frank emphasized. The ones she calls, “Coca-Cola moments,” from her first recognition of this following the death of her grandfather.

image: pixabay

“My grandfather broke his leg, went into the hospital, and died. He and my grandmother had a lifetime romance.” 

A tragic but all-too-common end to a long relationship, a few moments out of trillions in chronological time. But in this case, marked by a moment that became family legend as the bereaved grandmother, exhausted and sweltering in her black mourning clothes in the heat of a Texas summer day exclaimed, “I’d give $100 to anyone who gets me a Coca-Cola.”

And for that moment, time shifted from the ever-ticking present to an eternal kairos in which the grandmother’s cry of grief and physical anguish would be suspended for generations. And then, as always in our human condition, melded seamlessly again into chronological time.

Every life has those defining moments. And so must every character if there’s any hope of readers care for her. 

Frank challenged her audience not just to recount their character’s progress through events, but to understand how those events define the character. 

“Everybody has 12 defining moments. If you ask a 6-year-old, they’ve got 12 defining moments. If they’re 60, they’ve also got 12,” although not necessarily the same 12, she said, urging us to remember those 12 moments for ourselves and notating them both in kairos and chronos time. 

“In a book, you are trying to stuff in as many kairos moments as you can, because you’re trying to stop time for your readers. We’re trying to consolidate a life into a book. This is the fourth dimension, because you’re moving through time. I think this is the thing that brings the most magic to fiction.”

And it occurred to me that the definitive, time-suspending nature of the kairos moments were also the essence of Benjamin Percy’s discussion of “Set Pieces: Staging the Iconic Scene,” in his book on fictional craft, Thrill Me, reviewed earlier at this site. 

“What do you remember when you think about the films splintered into your psyche?" Percy writes. "There are probably several pivotal scenes—scenes of spectacle, scenes of horror or joy or absurdity or shock or profound empathy—that you cannot forget.

“Riffle through the catalog of literature and something similar will occur…those moments that exist like dreams—or life, if only life could be so full.”

Find them, use them, and give them their due, without worrying about getting to the next plot point, Frank said. “Your readers don’t want to get to the next thing. They want to be there.”

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Given that Frank is head of SMU’s creative writing program, she did dwell on a few moments of chronos time, including an upcoming information program at 7 p.m., May 22 on SMU’s programs, including an upcoming workshop in Taos, New Mexico, “The mystery of writing a mystery.”

Conveniently, this will give writers interested in writing mysteries time to prepare before the World Mystery Convention, Bouchercon arrives in Dallas Halloween weekend of next year!

The information program in SMU’s Dallas Hall, but Frank recommends registering for it, to get the perk of a parking pass on the university campus. For registration and additional information, see SMU’s creative writing site.