Fifteen minutes later, she would know the answer to her askme.
May 23, 2022 2:12 PM Subscribe
I feel I am increasingly seeing writers build a specific kind of dramatic tone into the grammar of relaying a future event, using what I think is the conditional future tense (?) for events that definitely happened. If you write this way, or if you enjoy reading it, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
The form I am asking about jumps from one time period to another, with both time periods in the past relative to the writing.
Let's say an author is writing, in an unremarkable past tense, about Mr. A.
So the author might say, in my control form:
1. "Mr. A. was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment flooded and he had to move again."
Vs this other form, which seems to suggest some kind of dramatic irony, or to foreground the limited perspective of Mr. A at the time vs the omniscient perspective of the narrator:
2. "Mr. A was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment would be flooded and he would have to move again."
Using this latter form often suggests a kind of dramatic or ironic outcome, like "He got the car out of the garage. An hour later he would be in the hospital, the car smashed on the road." Or "She asked him for directions. Five months later they would be married." (Vs, say, She asked him for directions. five months later they were married."
I'm making up these examples but the "would" form for a future event seems more heavily in use these days as a way -- I think? -- to build dramatic irony, or a sense of inevitability, or sometimes some kind of ominous foreshadowing -- or something? -- into the grammar itself.
I wonder what other readers think when they read this particular grammatical construction and what writers are intending when they choose it.
The form I am asking about jumps from one time period to another, with both time periods in the past relative to the writing.
Let's say an author is writing, in an unremarkable past tense, about Mr. A.
So the author might say, in my control form:
1. "Mr. A. was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment flooded and he had to move again."
Vs this other form, which seems to suggest some kind of dramatic irony, or to foreground the limited perspective of Mr. A at the time vs the omniscient perspective of the narrator:
2. "Mr. A was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment would be flooded and he would have to move again."
Using this latter form often suggests a kind of dramatic or ironic outcome, like "He got the car out of the garage. An hour later he would be in the hospital, the car smashed on the road." Or "She asked him for directions. Five months later they would be married." (Vs, say, She asked him for directions. five months later they were married."
I'm making up these examples but the "would" form for a future event seems more heavily in use these days as a way -- I think? -- to build dramatic irony, or a sense of inevitability, or sometimes some kind of ominous foreshadowing -- or something? -- into the grammar itself.
I wonder what other readers think when they read this particular grammatical construction and what writers are intending when they choose it.
Best answer: It's the process of looking into the future from the past. So when I say "X happened and Y happened" I am looking at both from the point of view of myself as the narrator, where all of the past is strung out behind me as inevitable and no part is more surprising as any other part. They both have the same weight to me.
But "X happened; Y would later happen" talks about Y from the point of view of X, so it has the surprise of finding out the future. Imagine today someone told you where you'd be in 5 years--that skip without the cause and effect, that sudden glimpse at the end of the timeline without having to slowly travel all the points in between, is a sense of surprise, even if the place you end up isn't all that shocking.
"I met a cute guy at work; 2 years late we would be married." That leads you to wonder what happened in between. "I met a cute guy at work; 2 years later we were married." That leads you to feel like you know the inevitable steps that happened in between.
posted by gideonfrog at 2:33 PM on May 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
But "X happened; Y would later happen" talks about Y from the point of view of X, so it has the surprise of finding out the future. Imagine today someone told you where you'd be in 5 years--that skip without the cause and effect, that sudden glimpse at the end of the timeline without having to slowly travel all the points in between, is a sense of surprise, even if the place you end up isn't all that shocking.
"I met a cute guy at work; 2 years late we would be married." That leads you to wonder what happened in between. "I met a cute guy at work; 2 years later we were married." That leads you to feel like you know the inevitable steps that happened in between.
posted by gideonfrog at 2:33 PM on May 23, 2022 [9 favorites]
Best answer: I wonder what other readers think when they read this particular grammatical construction and what writers are intending when they choose it.
Oof. I am not a fan of this stylistic trend. To me, it feels very click-baity, or local news-ish (“Bob and Sarah were thrilled when they were finally able to buy a home in the up-scale Big Money Heights neighborhood. They never dreamed they would live to regret that decision.”
If I remember correctly, Milan Kundera did a fair amount of this; being the omniscient voice that locked his characters into inevitable (tho totally avoidable) futures. I disliked it then.
I dislike this style in fiction. If you write a compelling story, you don’t need this type of a “hook” to keep me engaged. Let me get to the pivotal events and then, on my own, reflect on the chain of events and their emotional effects on the characters.
posted by Silvery Fish at 2:48 PM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
Oof. I am not a fan of this stylistic trend. To me, it feels very click-baity, or local news-ish (“Bob and Sarah were thrilled when they were finally able to buy a home in the up-scale Big Money Heights neighborhood. They never dreamed they would live to regret that decision.”
If I remember correctly, Milan Kundera did a fair amount of this; being the omniscient voice that locked his characters into inevitable (tho totally avoidable) futures. I disliked it then.
I dislike this style in fiction. If you write a compelling story, you don’t need this type of a “hook” to keep me engaged. Let me get to the pivotal events and then, on my own, reflect on the chain of events and their emotional effects on the characters.
posted by Silvery Fish at 2:48 PM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
Best answer: This is an interesting question! I do feel like I see a lot of headlines written this way, and I was thinking they were a type of response to the “She baked fifteen million cupcakes. You won’t believe what happened next”-style headline that was a thing for a bit. Like, we won’t string you along! We’ll tell exactly what is going to happen in this story!
Just some anecdotal: I remember reading a self-punned book my parents bought my sister (this was about 20 years ago, maybe more), and every chapter ended with a paragraph or sentence written in similar style. We thought it was funny and would read them out loud to each other, obnoxiously, like they were Sweet Valley High cliffhangers.
posted by pepper bird at 2:51 PM on May 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Just some anecdotal: I remember reading a self-punned book my parents bought my sister (this was about 20 years ago, maybe more), and every chapter ended with a paragraph or sentence written in similar style. We thought it was funny and would read them out loud to each other, obnoxiously, like they were Sweet Valley High cliffhangers.
posted by pepper bird at 2:51 PM on May 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I don't know the answer. But, by chance, are you reading things that have been translated from a language with a real future tense? (tenses?)
posted by eotvos at 2:54 PM on May 23, 2022
posted by eotvos at 2:54 PM on May 23, 2022
Best answer: Ack, missed the edit window. Self-pubbed!
posted by pepper bird at 2:57 PM on May 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by pepper bird at 2:57 PM on May 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Best answer: When you write it this way, I'm picturing a film where they show the past moment.
Here's Mr A, moving into his apartment in NY, showing us that he is excited. Here we are, still showing Mr A in the olden days. And then a voiceover: "Fifteen years later, that apartment would be flooded and he would have to move again." (And then maybe we flash forward to the next move, where we'd see a very sad and damp Mr A trying to piece together the ruins of his soggy life.)
This contrasts the moment that's being presented, the past moment, with the future. So the writing here is just a way of doing that narratively.
I'm going to make a big guess and say that maybe fiction writers have picked this up from film, but that's without actually looking into this and seeing if it's showing up more often in fiction these days.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:59 PM on May 23, 2022
Here's Mr A, moving into his apartment in NY, showing us that he is excited. Here we are, still showing Mr A in the olden days. And then a voiceover: "Fifteen years later, that apartment would be flooded and he would have to move again." (And then maybe we flash forward to the next move, where we'd see a very sad and damp Mr A trying to piece together the ruins of his soggy life.)
This contrasts the moment that's being presented, the past moment, with the future. So the writing here is just a way of doing that narratively.
I'm going to make a big guess and say that maybe fiction writers have picked this up from film, but that's without actually looking into this and seeing if it's showing up more often in fiction these days.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:59 PM on May 23, 2022
Best answer: Sharp eye. I would riff off the answer above and say that the actual shift is nonfiction writers taking it from fiction, and it’s the result of MFA creative writing techniques bleeding into journalism. And the reason—maybe—it rings false is that in fiction, the godlike omniscient tone makes sense (because these are characters the author made up, and so knows everything about) while in journalism, it’s like, there’s obviously a reporter who learned about the flooded apartment a week ago when he decided to write an article about flooded apartments for the NYT Real Estate section, so the dramatic irony comes off as a bit much. I see this a lot in Vows, and think of it as the “little did they know” technique. “One year ago, two boring people went on an utterly conventional Tinder date. LITTLE DID THEY KNOW that after just two years of boring, utterly conventional dating, they would be married.”
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 3:20 PM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 3:20 PM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
Best answer: As a reader, I find that the "would" form can also act as a clear signifier that we're only temporarily peering into the future at this point, rather than skipping fully ahead to that next event. For instance, the difference between (forgive the bad writing):
1. "Mr. A. was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment flooded and he had to move again. Two weeks after the storm, as he lugged fifteen years' worth of waterlogged memories down the building's stairs..."
2. "Mr. A was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment would be flooded and he would have to move again. But on that day, the new apartment seemed almost to glow with fresh possibility, which to a less figurative mind may also have been the result of a previous occupant's floor polish."
posted by eponym at 3:37 PM on May 23, 2022 [18 favorites]
1. "Mr. A. was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment flooded and he had to move again. Two weeks after the storm, as he lugged fifteen years' worth of waterlogged memories down the building's stairs..."
2. "Mr. A was excited when he moved to an apartment in New York. Fifteen years later, that apartment would be flooded and he would have to move again. But on that day, the new apartment seemed almost to glow with fresh possibility, which to a less figurative mind may also have been the result of a previous occupant's floor polish."
posted by eponym at 3:37 PM on May 23, 2022 [18 favorites]
Best answer: I feel that the moment that this device entered into the subconsciousness of many writers was 1967, with Gabriel Garcia Marques's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
"Many years later as he faced the firing squad. Colonel Aureliano Buendfa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. "
The book's style is described as magical realism, and I think that this device is used to impart a little bit of this effect, kind of like lens flare or bokeh in photography.
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:11 PM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
"Many years later as he faced the firing squad. Colonel Aureliano Buendfa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. "
The book's style is described as magical realism, and I think that this device is used to impart a little bit of this effect, kind of like lens flare or bokeh in photography.
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:11 PM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
Best answer: Would here isn't a conditional I don't think, but rather a sort of future-in-the-past compound thing.
posted by less-of-course at 4:43 PM on May 23, 2022
posted by less-of-course at 4:43 PM on May 23, 2022
Best answer: As eponym points out, it can be a good way to contrast the future with the present with relatively little commitment.
It can certainly also be used as a drama heightener or a way of calling attention to a moment or event that might otherwise pass by: "As I would soon find out, the shout I heard wasn't just a drunk berating passing taxis." The window dressing of a distant shout now becomes something the reader is looking forward to learning more about.
It was used pretty well in a chapter I recently read in King's 11/22/63 where he meets a woman who immediately trips and falls. I don't have the quote handy, but he basically says, "I would learn over the months to come that she was not a clumsy person at all, but the kind of person who with alarming regularity finds themselves the subject of awkward physical circumstances, like getting a hem stuck in a car door or being the one whose step finally jars a loose step free."
In that case it does the work of showing that this is a fairly major new character who the narrator will clearly spend time around and care for, so don't skim over her dialogue.
But I definitely second the other opinions here that it can be, and is, done very poorly in lots of books and stories.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:08 PM on May 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
It can certainly also be used as a drama heightener or a way of calling attention to a moment or event that might otherwise pass by: "As I would soon find out, the shout I heard wasn't just a drunk berating passing taxis." The window dressing of a distant shout now becomes something the reader is looking forward to learning more about.
It was used pretty well in a chapter I recently read in King's 11/22/63 where he meets a woman who immediately trips and falls. I don't have the quote handy, but he basically says, "I would learn over the months to come that she was not a clumsy person at all, but the kind of person who with alarming regularity finds themselves the subject of awkward physical circumstances, like getting a hem stuck in a car door or being the one whose step finally jars a loose step free."
In that case it does the work of showing that this is a fairly major new character who the narrator will clearly spend time around and care for, so don't skim over her dialogue.
But I definitely second the other opinions here that it can be, and is, done very poorly in lots of books and stories.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:08 PM on May 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: I didn't want to lead this question with my own response to the form, but now that we're a ways in: when I asked this question I felt much like Silvery Fish: the technique often seems heavy handed to me, and I was curious to see if people here would show other applications of it. It has been very illuminating to see so many angles on this.
posted by nantucket at 6:52 PM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by nantucket at 6:52 PM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: It's a way of making the narrator more visible, kind of the modern version of, "Gentle reader, ponder how little thought she gave to the consequences of disobeying her parents." It immediately give you a sense that the narrative voice is that of someone who is assuming a superior position to the reader. I'm smarter than you are. I know more than you do. You should heed my advice, type of attitude.
It's also an effective toll when writing over dramatic prose. You wouldn't use it for anything meant to be factual or even taken seriously.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:56 PM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's also an effective toll when writing over dramatic prose. You wouldn't use it for anything meant to be factual or even taken seriously.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:56 PM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I feel like the "would" construction tends to be used by sportswriters, and has for a while.
posted by NotLost at 7:19 PM on May 23, 2022
posted by NotLost at 7:19 PM on May 23, 2022
Best answer: Random thought: I feel like this is maybe used a lot in documentary/true crime-type podcasts, or at least in their trailers. So maybe that's also one of the reasons it's starting to feel more common. If you've got a podcast that's several hours long in total, that's very long long-form content, so when you've only got a 30 second trailer to hook people in, you need to escalate the suspense/tension as quickly as possible. You also need to try and give a sense of the entire podcast, and link the early scene-setter events (which people can understand when new to the topic), with the more elaborate, unexpected outcomes that appear later in the series, in an efficient way. This construction gives suspense, and ties early and late events together, so is a really efficient device in this context.
Not sure how true that is, but it feels true in my brain!
posted by penguin pie at 3:46 AM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Not sure how true that is, but it feels true in my brain!
posted by penguin pie at 3:46 AM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I just finished Slow Horses by Mick Herron (award-winning spy novel). It was gripping with great characters but (and?) used this construction a lot. I'm neutral on it because I don't demand that my fiction be "literary", but to me the construction signals a few things:
* Page-turner. The author tends to write in short sessions or snippets of a few pages, with each one ending with a statement like this or a similar weighty-sounding statement.
* Filmable. A lot of mainstream fiction, especially genre stuff, seem to be written with an eye towards the TV or movie rights and cliffhangers or key spots for commercial or scene breaks.
* Summer read. That's how I'd classify Slow Horses, with the caveat that it is not formulaic or poorly written at all! It just wants you to read a bit, then take a break to put on sunscreen while you get excited about the next telegraphed development.
* Mini spoiler. These sentences prime you to know what's going to happen and promise to make it exciting even if you've guessed what's next.
* Trickery! The prior item, except the teaser statement misleads you and gives you a nice plot twist.
posted by freecellwizard at 5:29 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
* Page-turner. The author tends to write in short sessions or snippets of a few pages, with each one ending with a statement like this or a similar weighty-sounding statement.
* Filmable. A lot of mainstream fiction, especially genre stuff, seem to be written with an eye towards the TV or movie rights and cliffhangers or key spots for commercial or scene breaks.
* Summer read. That's how I'd classify Slow Horses, with the caveat that it is not formulaic or poorly written at all! It just wants you to read a bit, then take a break to put on sunscreen while you get excited about the next telegraphed development.
* Mini spoiler. These sentences prime you to know what's going to happen and promise to make it exciting even if you've guessed what's next.
* Trickery! The prior item, except the teaser statement misleads you and gives you a nice plot twist.
posted by freecellwizard at 5:29 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I concur with eotvos, in French at least we are taught to use the conditional as the "future of the past", so this the grammatically correct tense.
posted by anzen-dai-ichi at 8:47 AM on May 24, 2022
posted by anzen-dai-ichi at 8:47 AM on May 24, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
Yes. To this reader, the "X happened. Later, Y would [remarkably] happen" form is a lot more effective, for the reasons you've given, than the simple "X happened, then later Y happened" form. I don't think it's new; I believe I've been seeing it forever. And little did I know, when answering this question, that soon I would be ....
posted by JimN2TAW at 2:27 PM on May 23, 2022 [2 favorites]