: Re: Don't look at what I did there This question is about hiding from the reader the fact that I am skipping some steps. Worse, perhaps, I don't want to show them, and I may have no clue or

@Murphy332

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In 1, maybe Charlie says: "How did you find me!" I didn't give you any clues!"

And Bob says: "You thought you didn't. With enough internet skill, you can track any post to it's sender."

In 2, maybe Mary could be described with wild hair, torn clothing, and bleeding from her ankles and wrists, indicating she had to struggle really hard to get out of the ropes around her ankles and wrists, and probably succeeded a long time after the robbers left her house with their loot.

As for the phone, what is the problem? The robbers pointed heir guns or knives at her and made her submitted to being tied up and then stole the stuff that they came for without bothering with her phone or noticing it was in her pocket, and then left. Or maybe the robbers stole her expensive main phone but didn't see or bother to take her cheap back up phone.

So maybe Mary will babble about how they took her main phone with all of her vacation photos in it or something else she really wants. Or maybe absent minded John could leave his phone at her place and the robbers arrive just as she notices it and thinks she should return it to John.

In 3, maybe when Axel and Susan arrive at the cabin, Susan thinks that the fireplace looks like Santa Claus could come down it. Later she may consider making a fire and looks up the chimney and sees a square of blue sky above her (thus showing there is no grate in the chimney to keep out animals) and thinks that Axel or Santa would be too fat to come down the chimney but she could.

Or maybe the driveway curves around the cabin, so when Axel and Susan arrive, a chimney at one gable end of the cabin is described, and the other gable end of the cabin is described as having ground floor windows and an upper window. Inside the cabin, there are no stairs, but there is a trapdoor in the ceiling with a rope to pull it down to get to the attic.

Or maybe the cabin door opens outwards (bad design) and is six feet and a few inches tall, and the snow and wind pile five feet of snow against that side of the cabin, being too heavy to push the door open again. But some of the windows extend a foot or so above the top of the snow drift against the cabin. So if someone opened a window and some of the snow fell in the cabin, someone could probably climb out of the window between the snow and the top of the window.

Or possibly the initial description of the cabin could include both the possibly climbable chimney and the trap door to the attic with the window. And the description of the snowfall should make it clear to observant readers that someone could crawl out the top of a window. And maybe an axe in the cabin could be mentioned, suggesting that possibly someone could chop a hole in a wall or the roof to get out.

So after the descriptions indicate a few possible escape methods, Axel could be shown content to stay in the cabin until the snow melts, but Mary already has cabin fever and is desperate to get out. And in the next scene Mary is crossing the frozen lake.

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