When someone watches your film or play, reads your book or short story, listens to your audio drama or podcast, they are making an investment of time.  Every minute could be spent on something else: their family, the washing up, playing computer games, or god-forbid another writer’s work.  Every minute they give you must give them more than they’ll get from getting up and going somewhere else.  Otherwise, guess what they’ll?

Yet writers rarely think in terms of time.  We talk about word limits, when we have one, or target word counts, when we’re trying to convince ourselves we can sell our 150,000-word teen thriller. But time eludes us. In this article I’m going to talk about how to think about your writing in terms of the readers use of time, and points in your story where time is especially important.

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