“So give me music then, young maestro, please. Make it occur the way nobody ever made it occur before. Stop time. Celebrate it. Demolish it. Slow the clock down so that the tick of each and every second lasts an hour or more. Take shotgun leaps into the past. Put backspin on your memory. Be in two or three places at one time. Destroy speed and position. Make just about anything happen. Bring back high buildings across the skyline. Unmuddy the Mississippi.” (Colum McCann , Letters to a Young Writer)
Writing Exercise: Warping Time, Memory, and Perception in Fiction
Key Techniques in the Quotation:
1. Temporal Distortion – The passage challenges writers to manipulate time, making moments stretch or collapse, creating an experience beyond linear chronology.
2. Subjective Memory & Perception – It invites exploration of how memory reshapes reality, adding “backspin” or revising the past.
3. Lyrical and Expansive Prose – The language itself embodies the distortion of time, using rhythmic, evocative phrasing to immerse the reader.
Writing Prompt (500 Words):
Write a scene in which a character experiences time in a way that defies conventional reality. They might relive a past event while simultaneously existing in the present, slow time to a crawl in a moment of crisis, or experience a flash of memory so vivid it feels more real than now. The distortion should not simply be a stylistic trick but should serve the emotional or psychological truth of the character.
Examples:
• A retired jazz musician hears an old song and finds himself physically back in the club where he once played, watching his younger self.
• A woman caught in a car crash experiences every fraction of a second in excruciating clarity, while also remembering a childhood game of freeze tag.
• A man standing in a city that has long since been demolished sees the skyline as it was decades ago, unable to tell if it’s memory, grief, or something stranger.
Constraints: Keep the writing immersive. The reader should feel time bending without the character explicitly saying, “Time felt strange.” Instead, convey it through sensory detail, shifts in rhythm, and the way moments unfold.
Evaluation Criteria:
• Effectiveness of Temporal Manipulation – The scene must make the reader experience time distortion rather than merely stating it.
• Emotional Resonance – The time shifts should deepen the character’s conflict, loss, joy, or realization, not serve as an abstract exercise.
• Prose and Flow – Strong responses use language that mirrors the distortion, whether through long, flowing sentences or abrupt breaks.
Strong vs. Weak Execution:
Strong Example: “The clock on the wall hiccups—2:14, 2:14, 2:14—while the street outside flickers between winter and summer. He is here, he is there. His mother is still alive; he is six, he is sixty. The taste of her cooking thickens on his tongue as he grips the steering wheel in his shaking hands. The car in front of him hasn’t hit the brakes yet, but it will.”
Weak Example: “As he sat in his car, he suddenly felt like time was slowing down. He remembered his childhood, as if it were happening all over again. It was weird, like he was in two places at once.”
Follow-up Workshopping and Revision Questions:
• Does the reader feel time bending, or is it simply described?
• How does the manipulation of time serve the character’s emotional arc?
• Are the shifts in time and memory woven smoothly into the narrative, or do they feel abrupt or gimmicky?
Recommended Reading:
• “The Rememberer” by Aimee Bender – A short story that collapses time and evolution into a single, surreal transformation.
• “Pet Milk” by Stuart Dybek – A memory-driven piece where the past and present intertwine through sensory details.
• “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and So Forth” by John Updike – A story where time stretches and loops within the mind of a schoolteacher.
Two hours. No hesitations. Make time behave.
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