Time skips?

[MelanieShaman]

I'm curious how everyone feels about time skipping in stories. Like, is it best to do it, and insinuate about things that happened during that time, when it around add only a little to the overall story? Or... like a recap, whether through dialog or a narrative dump?

I'm really wrestling with this, but I feel like if I detailed the time that would be passed over with a time skip would be very... repetitive.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[StillStunned]

This is part of the "show v. tell" issue, I think. While "show" is great for immersing the reader in the story, you need "tell" to move the story forward. You don't need your story to cover every moment of your characters' tale. Skip over the boring bits to where you want the reader to care again about what's happening.

It's also a great way to handle scenes that aren't strong enough to stand by themselves. For instance, my most recent story is about an apprentice sorcerer who summons a succubus. The first scene deals with that, and the second scene has him locked away in his room after his master finds out. But the finding out wasn't interesting enough to warrant its own scene, so I handled it retrospectively, with a recap of the dialogue and the outcome:

The following night, Arno turned away from the window of his small chamber and flung himself onto the cot. He'd been here ever since Master Gace returned from the Guildhouse. The older man had taken one look at Arno's eyes and screamed at him so loudly that his wispy beard shook.

"A summoning? How dare you, you stupid boy? I never gave you leave to summon a --" He halted there. "A succubus? A succubus? You fool! What possessed you?"

That was hours ago. The city outside the window was dark, with only a handful of floating magelights chasing away the shadows from the larger streets and squares and shining behind the windows of towers.

Simple and elegant. New scene set, now we can get on with the meat of the story.

 

[stickygirl]

I'm curious how everyone feels about time skipping in stories. Like, is it best to do it, and insinuate about things that happened during that time, when it around add only a little to the overall story? Or... like a recap, whether through dialog or a narrative dump?

I'm really wrestling with this, but I feel like if I detailed the time that would be passed over with a time skip would be very... repetitive.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I've done this a few times and my advice is to make it as natural as though you were recounting a story to someone over dinner.
Maybe have a character recall a previous incident, or the narrator's voice .... 'hockey wasn't her first choice of sport, because when she was little, she and her Dad used to play soccer down the park' then you've changed gear naturally and can roll out that earlier narrative. You can then skip back to present when you're ready, or let the history roll forward, itself becoming the main course.

 

[Actingup]

Go for it. Below is from my first story. Yes, a couple of people complained that it took them so long to get together, but there was a clear logic to it as one of them was with somebody else as the story started. I think that it's good to give your characters real time to grow up, recover from bad relationships, and all those things.

Jo gave me that half-smile again, and then a grimace as her phone chirped a text alert at her. "I've got to go. And it was no drama at all -- good luck Nate."

And she was gone, just like that, and before I thought of some lame excuse to get her number.

Part Two: December, (almost) two years later

It had been a cold winter and spring this year, and a bit of a slog, but things were looking up. The Christmas shut-down was approaching, and that would be followed by the traditional slow January...

 

[KittyOfSteele]

It's a tool in a toolbox. I don't have an opinion on it.

I just don't like to write the time skip. You know, word strings like "the following day." I like it more to use environmental cues or dialogue for it instead. I prefer the reader to come up by themselves that time passed instead of outright saying it. It's just a personal choice though.

 

[Britva415]

I'm curious how everyone feels about time skipping in stories. Like, is it best to do it, and insinuate about things that happened during that time, when it around add only a little to the overall story? Or... like a recap, whether through dialog or a narrative dump?

I'm really wrestling with this, but I feel like if I detailed the time that would be passed over with a time skip would be very... repetitive.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, it's definitely best to skip over time during which nothing important to the story is happening.

But you said there's something in there which does add "a little" to the story: Does it really? What, how and why? If you know what it adds to the story, you have some options about how to reveal it.

A "narrative dump" is probably the poorest: If it's so big that it calls for a "dump," then you could have just skipped to it, told it, then skipped forward again, instead of doing a retrospective narrative-dump of it.

 

[anthrodisiac]

If the story takes place over a longer period of time, then time skips are essential unless you want to get some hulking monstrosity of inane, pointless writing. Sometimes, nothing interesting happens in those jumps, so there's no need to recap anything. If there was something, a couple sentences:

Things were going to go great!
****
Things had not gone great. The last two days had been an utter disaster. First the meteor, then canceled dinner plans, firestorm, singed feathers, makeup kit burned, stuck in a hole with a stupid stinking mammal, who had been, while delicious, the only company I'd experienced in 48 hours.

It helps to keep the story focused on the events that matter. I've done big time skips and not talked about anything that happened because it wasn't relevant to the story. Usually I'll do a sentence or two though, depending on what happened in the interim.

 

[Randy_Lector]

Summary prose is definitely an important tool for a writer. For me, it's largely about pacing. If nothing really interesting (or important) happens during a period of hours or days, summarize it in some form and keep that story moving forward before you lose readers.

From and alternate point of view, you might think of it as way of 'showing' the reader the important stuff, and 'telling' them about the boring stuff.

For example, a girl escapes a small town by managing to get a ride from a stranger who was not far into a 20 hour drive a half-way across the country. I'm not going to fully describe that entire period. Sure, the scenery might be nice but describing hours and hours of uncomfortable silence?

In a recent story that took place over a ~16-day period, I really only fully described the first day and last day. There were a LOT of 'summary skips' in-between and, even on the last day, I 'told' the reader about a 4-hour shopping trip. All this skipping helped me keep the story just a little shorter and didn't allow the action to totally bottom out before moving on to the next plot point or twist.

That said, you could get creative and inject a flashback scene in that summary if it helps the character(s) or plot? Something like: "She spent 18 hours locked in a wary silence with a total stranger, even if he was a generous stranger for letting her ride along with him. When they passed <memory triggering location>, it reminded her of her first...<insert flashback>..."

Your mileage may vary.

 

[BeechLeaf]

What are the things that happened during that time? I've just read at least one, and I think two, stories where there's a long gap before A contacts B again. So no actions germane to the story happened there, but a lot of thought did: for a whole week A had been considering contacting B, thinking what if they don't want to, what if I was imagining it, and so on. From A's interior perspective it was a busy, complicated week. But you can handle this by just saying that a week later A finally reached out, and all the accumulated feelings of the past week did this or that . . .

 

[NotWise]

I skip unnecessary interludes all the time. The hard part is giving the reader a sense of time passed in the skip. You can do "Two months later..." if you need a precise time period, but there are other ways to do it: "The trees were beginning to turn when...," "I'd almost forgotten by the time that...," "The saplings I planted had grown to small trees before...," and so on.

 

[The_Writer_of_the_Night]

I'm curious how everyone feels about time skipping in stories. Like, is it best to do it, and insinuate about things that happened during that time, when it around add only a little to the overall story? Or... like a recap, whether through dialog or a narrative dump?

I'm really wrestling with this, but I feel like if I detailed the time that would be passed over with a time skip would be very... repetitive.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

As someone else mentioned, the time skip is a necessary tool. How, when, and why to use it is very dependent on the situation. The chapter I'm currently working on opens on a time skip from the end of the one before it. Its just a couple hours but the skip is, imagine this, a sex scene. I didn't including it in the end of the previous chapter because it would have created two consecutive sex scenes and I'm not starting the next chapter with the sex because the it isn't whats really important to the story. The critical element is the fallout, the post-sex clarity.

Then there is a second time skip later in the chapter that jumps a few days, but in that time period the readers knows that a conversation critical to story takes place. The reason I don't allow the reader to witness it is because the result of that conversation is what the readers need to experience, not the actual words. If they knew what the content of the conversation was, the events that it put in motion would be repetitive and not have the same impact.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Absolutely skip forward.
Your characters are going to do a lot of things that don't advance the plot.
Scene 1 ends with them making plans to go out on Saturday.

------‐-------

Jessica opened the door to her apartment wearing....

Or skip all the way to...

"I've really been looking forward to trying this place," Jessica said as the hostess showed them to their table.

Skip to the good stuff. The reader doesn't need to know about the uneventful car ride to her house, or to the restaurant or whatever.

I try to avoid "three months later" and similar.
If a significant amount of time passes I try to convey that through the narrative.

"It was almost the end of the semester before they saw each other again..."

 

[deathlynx]

I use them all the time. Depending on the length of the story. For my short stories, I rarely do, but for the longer pieces it's almost impossible not to. Most of us aren't writing the literary equivalent of "24" where everything happens in real time.

I tend to use the scene break (as @anthrodisiac demonstrated) when I'm doing any major time skips. If my work is an ensemble piece, I also take the opportunity to switch PoVs (I tend to write Close 3rd).

As has been noted, narrative dumps are very difficult to do well, so it's best for the characters themselves to "contemplate" how little or much of import has happened during the gap. Just make sure it flows well.

 

[crookedletter]

We all skip time, constantly, whether we mark it formally or not. I don’t see how you can’t.

The difference between, say, “He walked down to Bob’s house,” and, “He spent the summer working landscaping,” and, “Fifty years later he was ready to retire,” is all just a matter of degree.

If you don’t omit some transitions and time spans you’ll have a hard time moving your story forward, even if it’s a relatively limited scope. The trick is doing it in a way that moves naturally with your prose. Whether the time skip is seconds or hours or decades.

 

[TheLobster]

We all skip time, constantly, whether we mark it formally or not. I don’t see how you can’t.

Yeah, I’m confused by either this topic as a whole or most of the responses. Only @Actingup demonstrated what I’d consider a time skip, everything else mentioned is just… the fact that time passes in a narrative?

Which, if that’s a writing technique, then it’s gotta be about as ubiquitous as dialogue.

 

[MelanieShaman]

Yeah, I’m confused by either this topic as a whole or most of the responses. Only @Actingup demonstrated what I’d consider a time skip, everything else mentioned is just… the fact that time passes in a narrative?

Which, if that’s a writing technique, then it’s gotta be about as ubiquitous as dialogue.

Okay, sorry I wasted everyone's time.

 

[StillStunned]

Okay, sorry I wasted everyone's time.

You've not wasted anybody's time.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Okay, sorry I wasted everyone's time.

I don't think anyone's time was wasted. Talking about this stuff is fun and interesting, and sometimes it's good to talk about things that are super common, because we rarely put much thought into them due to their prevalence. There are tons of ways to time skip, some are better than others. Plus, this is a far more interesting discussion than a fiftieth "but my use of AI is okay, right?"

 

[MelanieShaman]

I don't think anyone's time was wasted. Talking about this stuff is fun and interesting, and sometimes it's good to talk about things that are super common, because we rarely put much thought into them due to their prevalence. There are tons of ways to time skip, some are better than others. Plus, this is a far more interesting discussion than a fiftieth "but my use of AI is okay, right?"

I don't hang out here much, so people really think using ai is okay?! That's crazy.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I don't hang out here much, so people really think using ai is okay?! That's crazy.

Oh yeah. Someone feels the site's content guidelines shouldn't apply to them for some reason, or that the site should allow AI stories but put them in a separate category, or using AI to translate shouldn't count, stuff like that, on a regular basis, though I have noticed it seems to be a little quieter on that front of late, which is nice.

 

[StillStunned]

I don't think anyone's time was wasted.

Well, no more than we already do anyway, hanging out here instead of finishing our damn stories.

 

[Duleigh]

I'm curious how everyone feels about time skipping in stories. Like, is it best to do it, and insinuate about things that happened during that time, when it around add only a little to the overall story? Or... like a recap, whether through dialog or a narrative dump?

I'm really wrestling with this, but I feel like if I detailed the time that would be passed over with a time skip would be very... repetitive.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I just wrote a book where there where three timelines, one for the MMC and FMC, one for the MMC's family which started over 60 years before the MMC's timeline, and a third for the FMC's parents which started 40 years before the MMC and FMC timeline. Each chapter in the book was in a different timeline until the parent's timelines converged, then eventually the two remaining timelines will converge in the final third of the book. I was worried that the readers wouldn't get it, even though each timeline was marked in big bold letters, but they caught on and figured it out and are looking forward to the final convergence.