Well hey, Reader!

I grew up swooning over young Dr. Carter, played on ER by Noah Wyle in the 90s. So when he returned to the ER in The Pitt this year as older Dr. Robby (Robinavtich), I plopped myself right down for the binge-fest I had been told it was. If you haven’t seen the show yet, I recommend you clear a weekend and enjoy it.

The Pitt (HBO) is a real-time drama, set in an over-crowded, under-funded community hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. Like the hit show from the early 00s, 24, The Pitt unfolds minute by minute over the course of one hospital shift, or twelve hours. The drama is intense. The emotion is palpable. The pacing makes the story gripping and the dynamics between each of the characters pull you into that “just one more” cadence quickly.

I’m sorry and you’re welcome.

It’s real-time storytelling that keeps us engaged. Time is what moves the story forward among nothing but a team of doctors, nurses, and medics trying to survive one impossible shift.

This clip is where the day is set in motion: staff rotate in, new residents are introduced for their first shift, and before coffee even cools, patients begin to arrive. It’s quiet chaos. The real disaster has yet to strike, but you can feel the pressure starting to build as the first trauma patient arrives.

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Using real-time storytelling makes your audience start to feel the clock start ticking before they know what’s coming. Instead of collapsing the timeline, every scene unfolds at the same pace you experienced it, which means the story doesn’t need to tell us what’s at stake. The clock does that for us. The passing minutes become a kind of invisible antagonist, creating urgency and momentum.

What makes this approach so effective isn’t just the pacing, but the way it builds empathy and trust. We feel the weight of every choice, every incomplete piece of information, and the ultimate navigation to a decision point. And because we see the mess before the outcomes are clear, we find ourselves connected to the entire process.

Here’s how you can use time to tighten tension within a story of your own:

Recreate a moment in real time.

• Set the clock: “I had 10 minutes before the doors opened.”
• Name the constraint: the one bed, the one call, the one shot you had.
• Stay in the moment: let the audience hear your decision-making process.
• Then reveal the choice: what you did, what it cost, and what it taught you.

The next time you share a story on stage, don’t just summarize the lesson, let your audience live the moment with you. Let us feel every tick of the clock, and it will build empathy, connection, and trust.

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Until next week,