A Small Yet Important Story Consideration to Avoid Unnecessary Revision Pain Later
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the story elements I see writers consistently overlook, especially when they don’t story plan. One in particular is such a small question to answer, but if you don’t consider it from the very beginning, you can really veer off-track:
Where does your narrator stand in time when they’re telling this story?
In other words, is this story unfolding in real time? Or is the narrator telling it with hindsight as they look back on events that have passed?
A narrator who is telling a story with hindsight knows how the story is going to end.
They are looking back and therefore have knowledge of events that haven’t yet come to pass in the story’s present.
But a narrator who is telling a story as the events unfold in real time cannot have this same knowledge. The character is experiencing the story events in real time just as the reader is.
I’m always surprised by how often I’ve asked a writer this even after they’ve already written a full draft, and they don’t know the answer. They haven’t even considered it.
It may seem like a minor point, but if you overlook this, it’s so easy for things to snowball.
It’s like taking a journey where you inadvertently step one degree to the left and then keep walking straight. 👣
At first it might not make much difference, but the farther you walk, the farther you get off-course.
The same thing can happen if you’re not clear on where your narrator is standing in time.
Sometimes it’s not a huge deal. Maybe in a couple scenes the protagonist has future knowledge they shouldn’t have. That’s easy enough to clean up.
But sometimes it gets more complicated.
Because an author who hasn’t intentionally thought about where their protagonist is standing in time can start to get confused themselves.
Then we see scenes where not only does the protagonist have knowledge they shouldn’t have, but we also seem to be jumping around in time.
For example, a story that’s supposed to be unfolding in real time might include proleptic passages where the protagonist says things like, “But things were about to get worse” or “Little did I know, she was exactly who I was looking for.”
And when passages like this start to pile up, it’s a lot more work to detect and extricate these in revision. Your story may feel confusing yet it’s often tricky to even pinpoint why.
But if you’re clear about your narrator’s perspective from the get-go—whether they’re experiencing events in real time or telling the story after it’s happened—you’ll be more intentional in your word choices.
One important reminder: Just because a story is in past tense does not necessarily mean the narrator is telling the story with hindsight. Literary past tense, where the story is told in past tense even as events unfold in real time, has long been the default storytelling method and is probably still the most common.
Yes, you can write a story without story planning, but your revision process will be much more painful because you’re writing without considering the holistic picture—that’s exactly how someone makes missteps like these with their narrator.
However, story planning doesn’t have to mean long, detailed outlines—it simply means making some key intentional choices from the outset.
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