October 2025
Fireside Publishing Group
3 strategy
Temporal Fracture
Twist time ever so slightly. Make readers question where they are in the story. Example: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” — George Orwell, 1984 The psychology: Temporal Fractures activate the reader’s orientation network—the part of the brain that organizes memory and sequence. When time bends or breaks, attention spikes to fix the anomaly. The mind shifts from passive reading to active decoding. Why it works in writing: Temporal Fracture introduces mystery without exposition. The reader must reconcile past, present, and future. A warped sense of time implies that extraordinary things are unfolding. It implies the narrator already knows something we don’t.
MEMOIR: “YESTERDAY I MET MY FUTURE SELF, AND HE LOOKED TIRED.” “I REMEMBER THE DAY I WAS BORN— IT WAS RAINING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WINDOW.” HEALTH & FITNESS: “I MET MY FUTURE BODY ON A TUESDAY AND IT ASKED FOR WATER, NOT PROMISES.”
GARDENING: “LAST SUMMER’S TOMATOES ARE STILL WARM ON MY TONGUE.” BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP: “TOMORROW’S STRATEGY KEPT INTERRUPTING TODAY’S MEETING.” SELF-HELP: “BY THE TIME I FORGAVE MYSELF, MY PAST HAD ALREADY STOPPED ARGUING.”
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