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I got in my first car accident when I was sixteen.
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I had just gotten my license and I was driving home
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when a car pulled into the intersection
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and bang! It hit me.
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It had happened that quick.
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Bang!
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But when I play that memory back,
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it doesn't take two seconds.
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I see the tires of the car rolling through the stop sign,
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I have time to think,
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"You know, I think that car is going to hit me."
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I see the right-hand corner of the hood
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crumple up like tin foil,
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I see the red paint flake off and drift off into the air,
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I can see all of that, like it's happening in slow motion.
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In my memory, that experience takes ten seconds.
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But why?
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Why did that memory play back longer
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than the actual time it took?
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This is an interesting phenomenon
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and it's not just for car accidents,
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a roller coaster,
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or a first kiss.
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These events seem to take longer than they actually take.
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But why?
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And when it comes to writing about that experience,
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how do I get that peculiar feeling across?
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How do I slow down time as a writer?
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To get the answer, we have to visit Hollywood.
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You see, the way filmmakers create slow motion
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will tell us a lot about how writers can create slow motion.
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First, let's remember how film works.
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When the camera turns on, it's not recording motion,
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it's taking lots and lots of individual pictures.
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Then when those pictures are played back in the projector,
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they blend together and create the appearance of motion,
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like a flip book.
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So, let's imagine that a camera man needs
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to film his actress skipping through a field of daisies
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in regular motion.
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Ready, action.
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She skips across the field,
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he records it,
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and...cut.
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Let's say for the sake of easy math
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that our camera man took 50 pictures,
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50 little frames on that length of film.
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Now, let's take that film and play it back
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at the rate of 50 frames per 5 seconds.
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This rate is constant,
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the projector will always go at the same speed.
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It's easy, we got 50 frames, so our film takes 5 seconds.
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She skips across the field...
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...and cut!
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So, then, how do we slow down time in film?
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How do we create slow motion?
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Maybe this is a surprise, but we don't take less pictures,
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we take more pictures.
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Ready, action!
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She skips across the field,
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he records it,
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and cut.
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Now we have a lot of film, a long length,
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let's say 100 frames long.
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Now, when we play it back,
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it takes a longer time to get through,
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and there's the actress in slow motion.
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Skipping through the field of daisies!
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Which brings us now to writing.
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When you're writing a narrative,
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you may want to use slow motion in one of your scenes.
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It's a cool effect, just like it is in Hollywood,
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and it draws the reader's attention to important moments.
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Well, here's how you do it.
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You see, when we read,
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our brain makes the words into pictures
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and the pictures blend into action.
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So what we read is what we see
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in the time it takes us to read it.
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For example, imagine you're writing a narrative
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about your game-winning free throw in the championship game.
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Here's a moment as a writer
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that you might want to slow down time
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to really capture the second-by-second tension
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produced by the scene.
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You concentrate,
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you put the pencil to paper,
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you really want to slow down time,
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you write,
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"I shot the ball in the hoop.
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Time slowed down. Then we won."
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To read that, takes two seconds;
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therefore, your reader imagines a scene that takes two seconds.
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Ball goes up, comes down, done.
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See, even though you wrote, "time slowed down,"
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you didn't achieve that effect for your reader.
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Just saying it doesn't make it happen.
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Now, let's take what we make about film,
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time slows down with more pictures,
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and try again.
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This time write A LOT more.
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"I bent my knees and held the ball loosely.
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Letting the ball bounce on the floor once more,
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I gathered my thoughts.
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This was the moment.
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My right arm extended as I released the ball with a gentle flick,
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it rotated slightly as it arched toward the rim.
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I held my breath.
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The ball nudged the back rim,
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falling through the net with a gentle, satisfying swish.
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And the crowd exploded from their seats."
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See, we just slowed down time through our writing.
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The bottom line is this:
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there are moments in life that take longer
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than they actually take.
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When you're planning out your narrative,
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think about those moments,
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those snippets of life that took longer than the watch:
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the moment of hearing bad news,
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the moment of hearing good news,
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the moment of exhilaration when you realize you hit the jump,
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or the moment when you realize you aren't going to land it.
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Once you identify these moments in your narrative,
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you can use this effect of slow motion when you write.
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Just remember, it's not enough to say, "time slowed down"
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and it's not enough to throw a couple adjectives
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in a sentence and call it done either.
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Descriptive writing is good writing, that's true.
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But if you want to express the feeling of slow motion in life,
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you have to actually take up
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more physical space on the page,
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use more film so to speak.
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In doing so, you will create tension
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and keep your reader interested.
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And that way, the next time you write,
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you'll control the camera of your own writing.