Battlestar Galactica did it. Desperate Housewives did it. You probably do it, too, in just about every story you write. The time jump.
Of course, both those series took a multi-year leap forward in time between seasons, while you are probably skipping ahead only a day or two, or possibly even just an hour. However, to maintain the pacing of your story and your narrative drive, you need to know how to handle these jumps, orient your reader to the new time or day, and plow ahead with your story. In a post on DIY MFA, Disha Walia offers advice on handling time skips.
“A time skip should not confuse your readers by making them think they are reading two different stories at once,” Walia says. She offers five tips for avoiding this fate:
- Pick the right amount of time. A dramatic moment might require a bigger skip and a chapter break. A less pivotal moment may need a shorter time period and maybe a space between scenes.
- Orient your reader right away. The reader doesn’t know how much time has passed since the last scene or chapter, so you need to fill them in. “Later…” or “The next day” is almost always sufficient, but how you manage this depends on your writing style and the tone of your work.
- Build up to it. The way you wrap up a scene or chapter can give your readers a hint that a jump is coming.
- Find the right moment to jump. If you’re not sure where to jump, focus on the exciting parts of your scene. If you’ve killed off a minor character, you don’t need to show your villain getting into their car or taking a shower after. You can time jump to the discovery of the body or your detective’s arrival on the scene. If your story is less murder-y, find the dramatic spots where your protagonist is learns new information, hits a dead-end on their goals, or is hit with a disappointment.
- Plot your timeline. Create a timeline to help you keep track of your story time. Flag days, dates, and times. Are there big gaps you forgot to account for? Are a bunch of scenes jammed together in a single day? Use your timeline to expand, compress, or correct as you need.
