Capturing Objective Temporality in Narrative Fiction

Abstract

In conventional narratives, time is compressed to include only noteworthy events, such that the time spent reading a piece of fiction (“reading time”) is often shorter than the amount of time that passes in the world of the story (“narrative time”). This project has created a new form of narrative that attempts to approximately match reading time and narrative time through applying a calculation similar to that used to measure reading speed and barring certain temporal techniques, such as anachronism. This project has produced five short stories in order to analyze the effects of this new narrative mode and its viability for future works. The results show a massive increase in the time and effort inherent to the writing process, but a promising new perspective when it comes to short-form literature. While this project has laid the groundwork, there is still plenty of unexplored potential utilizing this narrative form.