⏱️Writing From Fiction: Time Hopping⏱️
In today's Writing From Fiction, where I take a book I've read recently and look at it through the lens of a writer, mining it for lessons on how to make my own writing stronger, I look at Liz Moore’s gorgeous THE GOD OF THE WOODS.
A young girl goes missing from a summer camp in the Adirondacks, the same place where her brother went missing 14 years ago. It's a beautifully written suspense novel - so much more than a whodunnit though that element propels the narrative.
My big takeaway from this novel was Liz Moore's brilliant handling of time. The book skips backwards and forwards between 1950 and 1975, giving voice to different characters, as we, the readers, work to understand what happened to these two children and why. This time hopping is the perfect technique for this kind of book and is particularly sophisticated in this instance as there is both length and intensity in the time frames. The gaps between chapters often span years but there's a focus on the three days in August 1975 when the heart of the investigation takes place.
It got me thinking about which stories benefit from playing with time and which suit a more traditional linear narrative and how the handling of time can make a huge difference to the reader's experience.
Keep writing, my friends - and think about time and how it relates to your story. And do read this book, it's brilliant.
With love,
Virginia🤍
Virginia Macgregor is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. She has an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialisation in the teaching of writing. She lives with her husband, her three children, her four cats and a home full of books and coffee mugs, in New Hampshire. She can often be found writing at her In Real Life bookstore café in her local town.
