Temporal distortion

A temporal distortion is an effect of poor writing often included in fanfiction.
Temporal distortions have strange and unpredictable effects, and can be anything from merely disorienting to outright deadly.
==Temporal Distortion Effects==
*Time Skips: When the passage of time is not mentioned or inadequately described, the story can skip ahead hours or, for that matter, years. The skipped time passes in an instant and is experienced by readers as extremely short, but other effects of time's passage may still be present - the story's action will have progressed and traveling characters will have skipped ahead in their journeys.
*Time Crunch/Stretch: Time crunch occurs when events seem to progress at more than one second per second. This is different from Fast Forward Syndrome (below) in that it does not have to do with unrealistically undetailed, quick description or dismissal of canon events, but has to do with the actual stated times in the canon. If an event takes a single day to happen, a time crunch can make a whole day's events happen in mere hours or even minutes. Time stretch is the opposite: events in a fic are stretched out and background activities might appear in slow motion. Time stretch can allow days or even weeks to pass in what should be one day or even only a few canoncial hours.
*Time Shifts or Time Rifts: Time shifts are similar to time skips, except that the shift is a poorly described scene break where the action resumes at the same location but at a later time. Rather than being left behind by the action. This is similar to a badly-described scene break or new chapter.
*Time Dilation: When things add up so that things simultaneously take two different amounts of time, the effect can be pretty disorienting; this is usually caused by bad math.
*Fast-Forward Syndrome: When an author writes a fic that describes canonical events extremely quickly. This tends to be severely disorienting.
*Time Stop: When something should be happening elsewhere but is not, time may have stopped entirely outside the confines of the viewed scene. This is a serious offense, as it prevents off-screen developments from happening, and prevents other characters than the pictured ones from living their lives.
*Age Distortion: Characters can be forced by temporal distortions into ages that are much too old, much too young, or even negative numbers.
*Temporal Merging: When two inconsistent times are given, the canon may flicker back and forth between them, with characters and objects changing or disappearing and reappearing as the canon tries to decide which point on the timeline is supposed to exist.
*Spatial Distortions: When journeys are given unrealistically short or long times, the geography of the canon can be distorted.
Category:Terminology
Category:Flaws