Climax of Scene: Stretching the Emotional Moment Out

Question: Please go over stretching time to add more interest to a story.

Answer: We’re talking about how you can move through a period of time so the most important parts of the story get stretched. We want to pull our readers into our story and to do so in a way that allows them to be where we want them to be for the longest period of time. Let’s say there’s an emotional revelation, I’m pregnant. What if we don’t stretch it out and we tell it in real time; girl walks into room, parents are eating dinner, she says I’m pregnant, dad screams, mom pulls her hair out and then they start discussing it.

If we’ve been leading up to how afraid this girl is, then we don’t want this fact that will change her life forever, to be revealed in a moment. We want to know that she’s sitting at the table looking around, poking her food, wishing she could be talking to her friends, and then maybe within the dialogue the parents are having at the dinner table, she injects a hint-they keep eating and don’t respond. We draw out and stretch that emotional revelation that interchange, that argument, the realization of an important point so the reader can get into what is happening. We want to stretch it even if she said it in two seconds.