The Perception of Time

There are some days when every time you look at the clock, it hardly seems to have moved at all. The day drags and just takes forever to get over with. And yet, there are other days when you’re so incredibly busy that the entire day is gone in the blink of an eye and you have to pause and wonder where all that time went. And how often have you reached the end of the day on Friday and could barely remember Monday because it was so very long ago — or the opposite, the week went so fast you’re certain you must have missed something?

Our perception of time is, to say the least, skewed. Depending on what we’re doing and how much we have to do, it can either go so slowly it seems as if every minute takes an hour or, conversely, that every hour lasted only a second.

The same is true in a novel.

There are some books where there are so many scenes one right after another, a day can last for two or three chapters. Other times the author starts a new scene with the words, “The following week…” The time in between the previous scene and this one — well, it’s gone. Disappeared in a blink of an eye and presumably nothing of import has happened in the intervening time.

I have read books where all 350 pages span a day, and others that span years, if not decades. One of my clients’ books spends four chapters showing the key highlights as his…