Documentary Storytelling, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 5

Time on Screen

In the previous chapters, we looked at the basics of storytelling and the importance of structure. A key element in structure is how the storyteller arranges the presentation of chronological time, without altering cause and effect. Most of us have grown up with storytelling that does this. A television show may start with strangers discovering a body, for example, move forward as detectives arrive on the scene, and then move back in time to the events leading up to the murder as the detectives piece it together. Some stories, for sure, are told entirely in chronological order. Others, more rarely, are told in reverse chronological order, from the end to the beginning. This is how playwright Harold Pinter structured ...