There is a device in fiction that writers call the broken second. Of course, this device is not limited to fiction that uses writing as its media of conveyance. The broken second device can also be used in other media that convey fictions, such as motion film or water color painting, where fictions are as numerous as ants.
The broken second as defined by writers is a method of taking space time and expressing a part of a thing so that a thing–an object, an emotion, or some other human metric–is created in multiple parts of a second. Writers can measure a broken second object as a millisecond, for example, so that a human being inside a fiction becomes an elbow. The elbow may appear but for the broken second device to work, the elbow must happen fast (in a millisecond, for example) and then it must disappear. The rule of the broken second, however, is that the reader must be able to do three things: recognize the elbow and determine the owner of the elbow as a complete entity (it must be made plain that it’s a monkey’s elbow or the elbow of a newt or, indeed, the arm joint of a woman) and to assure that this incremental phenomenon is part of a larger sum of knowledge called the second, which, while referencing a complete section of time (an element of closure), cannot be a thing to itself but is really several items placed one after another, as in:
1. An elbow appears
2. It disappears
Hense, the audience is gripped by the effect of the broken second or several parts of a second broken into slivers of occurrence that amount to 1 and 2 above. The effect being questions.
1. An elbow appears
2. It disappears
3. Questions follow
It doesn’t matter what the questions are just that the writer or the filmmaker make them possible. In order to master the broken second device the fiction writer must go inside a second and live there as if it were a space unto itself. Swim in it, say. But the fiction writer must not dwell on it more than a second, even though the writer must enter that small space and poke around, pry into, and rummage around it for a lengthy span. But not for more than a second, otherwise the creator will die. And not know it. More than millions of writers have died by breaking the broken second rule. They forget, they get lost, they wander the halls, they watch meaningless scenes or read meaningless books, here meaningless meaning that the subject matter cracks no hulls, empties nothing into the watery matter of the known or the plain or the obvious, thus leaving them dead or lifeless or dull with nothing to add. Which is a kind of death.
Yes, the writer must live there but not for longer than a second. But it must be remembered that the second or parts of the second (the phenomenology of the broken second), which can last forever but no longer than that, must reverberate so that the second and seconds after the second and still more seconds recall the initial etching, the part that started it all, the first note, the starter drip, as in Henry, who, after closing the door, saw motion out of the corner of his tired eye (he’d just come home from work after all, or a long walk, or from climbing something high), something quick, something fast, an elbow disappearing around the corner into the living room. And everything in the house is so quiet and every expectation that he had prior to closing the door has been shattered. Did you see it, the broken second? Did you see it? Can you still see it? What will Henry do; what will he think; will he make for the phone and call the police; will he follow the afterimage and than see another, a heel, the heel of a women, the heel of a woman disappearing behind the bottom frame of the door to his bedroom?
