THE GAPS IN STORYTELLING

This week’s reading (‘Blood in the Gutter’) was interesting to me because although I’m not big on reading comics, the ideas it covered particularly the idea of gaps between panels, also related to the way movies and television shows are edited. We talked about this idea even more during the lecture. When a there is a gap in between shots, we as an audience are not confused by it as we assume that it indicates time passing. We assume that the events that happen in that gap are not interesting, something we do not need to see.

While we were discussing this, I wondered how this was done in books. When I write, I often have trouble deciding when to stop a scene, I often go on and on and end up writing mundane things that should definitely removed. In this way, writing is then similar to editing a movie or creating a comic. I guess any medium that tells a story has to encounter the ‘gutters’, the ‘gaps’ between scenes for any story has mundane, boring parts that are unnecessary and need to be cut out. So I wondered how books did this. Was that the reason for chapters? If so, what about the scenes in the chapter? Is it just one long scene until the chapter ends? This intrigued me and so I checked.

I went to my bookshelf and picked a classic – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Each chapter signals a new ‘scene’ as it were, that is a convention we are all familiar with. However, the chapters themselves also have different ‘scenes’, though they may not be as obvious.

With a few words, the author can speed up a scene. For example, in chapter three of the Philosopher’s Stone, when the Dursley’s take Harry Potter to the middle of nowhere to get away from the letters, J.K. Rowling uses the words ‘as night fell’ to speed up the time spent in that place. She doesn’t need to explain what else they did because it isn’t important to the plot.

“Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver post. Harry privately agreed, though the thought didn’t cheer him up at all.
As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them.”

– Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter Three.

What is interesting is that in the same chapter, J.K. Rowling also uses an asterisk to indicate a larger gap between scenes. One scene ends and in the scene that follows the asterisk, we are told that it happens ‘hours later’. She does this as well earlier in the chapter as she goes through what happens to Harry Potter every day of the week.

“‘I’ll take them,’ said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

*

“Wouldn’t it be better to go home, dear?” Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn’t seem to hear.”

– Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter Three.

Obviously different books and different authors have their own ways of indicating a gap between their scenes. However, I don’t doubt that many if not all authors also face this challenge of deciding when to put a gap in their stories and how big of a gap it needs to be. Just a few hours? Or maybe a few days? They have to edit their stories in a similar way that editors edit their videos.

When we tell our stories, no matter if it’s through video, through comics or through words, we all have to pick and choose the best sections to tell.