: Time skips are used all the time. The key to doing it well is wrapping up the previous scene. Your book (or a screenplay) is essentially a collection of scenes. Usually, early in a book

@Murphy332

Vote Up Vote Down

Time skips are used all the time. The key to doing it well is wrapping up the previous scene.

Your book (or a screenplay) is essentially a collection of scenes. Usually, early in a book the author establish a "rhythm" so the reader expects the scenes to be either in a continuous flow, or there is a typical timeskip of hours or days between the scenes. If one scene is immediately flows into the next one, there is no need to wrap it up. But the longer is the coming timeskip, the more thorough wrapping should be applied.

For example, two characters meet and talk to discuss some issues. Without a timeskip, you can leave them at midsentence, not resolving any of those issues and any questions that the reader might have on his or her mind. But if the meeting is over and timeskip is coming, you need to explicitly signal that, and either resolve the issues or mention that the issues are left unresolved.

Same goes for "cliffhangers", when the author deliberately leaves unresolved conflicts when closing a scene. First, you accentuate the cliffhanger, but then in the next chapter do something like switching the POV, and not even mention how much time has passed since the previous chapter end.

What exact words should you use to describe the timeskip is, imho, a secondary problem. If the rhythm of scenes is established, the author does not even have to mention the amount of time passed. It could be a day, or a week, or a month - a properly wrapped previous chapter, taken together with the opening events in the current chapter should give the reader an idea of how much time had passed. It could be two days or two weeks - is this really important to the story?

(0)

Login to post a comment!