The simplest form of then is a date. If you put down 13th November 1866 at the top of the first page, your job afterwards (unless you’re writing steampunk or time-travel fiction) is only to include in the story what really existed on or by that date. Supposedly. The same goes for 13th November 2019. […]
The simplest approach to writing a story is to say that the now of the narrator is the now the writer is in – the today they inhabit. And, of course, being to do with time, this immediately becomes extremely complicated. Novelists feel most powerfully, and sometimes damagingly, the effects of making now the day […]
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