Skipping Through the Story

Deep Lurker’s request was second, for a post “on ways to depict events spread over several months.”

If someone has been writing stories that take place over a couple of days or weeks, being faced with a story that takes place over a year or more can look really difficult at first glance. The writer is used to filling up the majority of the main character’s time with story events, hour by hour or day by day, but that clearly is not going to work over the course of 365 days or 8760 hours. So the writer has to find a way to switch smoothly between scenes when there is a gap of weeks or months when nothing story-relevant happens in the interim.

First glances are, however, deceiving. There are plenty of time-skips in short stories. The main character gets an important message at work, then finishes their day at the boring office (one sentence summary) before heading for the bar to meet somebody plot-significant. Or the main character finds a magic sword that needs sharpening, spends a couple of hours at a grindstone (not shown), and two hours later is ready for the fight. At the very least, most writers skim over daily routines like getting up, brushing teeth, dressing, making breakfast, etc., unless there is a specific plot-relevant thing (like a breakfast argument) that happens during and in addition to the normal routine things.

Covering months, years, or decades in a story uses exactly the same techniques, just on a larger scale. Any plot that takes place over a year or more is going to include the characters spending lots of time going about ordinary boring life, traveling to the next location, or researching, inventing, and building their new superweapon, which authors routinely summarize as a transition to the next exciting/interesting plot-relevant scene that happens. The transition acknowledges that these routine or repetitive things happened without going into detail.

The only difference between skipping two hours of sword-sharpening and skipping two months of traveling the Silk Road is the scale. The technique is the same. “Amelia spent the next two hours sharpening her sword” is, technically speaking, the same kind of transition as “Amelia spent the next three weeks studying advanced spellcasting” or “The caravan took another month to reach the first oasis.” The writer gives the reader some idea how much time is being skipped and the main thing that the character is focused on during the skipped time (whether that’s sharpening a sword or traveling for weeks). Then the writer places the character at the start of the new scene in the new time and place, possibly including the character’s positive or negative reaction to the overall experience of the past weeks or months. (“After a month of crossing the desert, Miki was sick of sand, sun, and dried meat.”)

In a brief time-skip, the main thing is usually either a single action (e.g. sharpening a sword) or a series of familiar routine actions that take a brief amount of time (e.g. getting up, eating breakfast, and going to the office). In a longer time-skip, the main thing focuses on the most story-significant thing that is occupying most of the character’s time on a regular basis (e.g., traveling, studying). If there are multiple somewhat-important-but-still-not-worth-showing things, the author can list the high spots: “Maria spent the next three months rebuilding the burned-out shed and listening to George complain about Jenny.”

When one is skimming over time, it is important to keep the reader grounded in when each scene is happening, relative to the last one (and/or the next one). This is usually done by periodically mentioning events that mark the passage of time. In a story that takes place over a couple of hours, it may be the chiming of a clock every fifteen minutes. A story that takes place over a couple of days usually uses mentions of time of day, meals, how long it has been since the last scene (yesterday or the day before) or how long it will be until some expected event (tomorrow, next week). If the story is set in the real world, a character can say “It’s Wednesday. George won’t be back until Friday” and the reader will be clear on when things happen, but if the writer is making up the world, saying “Anarion won’t be here until Waterday” won’t mean anything unless the writer has solidly established that “today” is Windday, and Waterday comes two days later.

When a story takes place over months or years, transitions between scenes can be a bit longer, giving the writer more room to convey a sense that (more) time is passing. The writer can use the same kinds of time markers as in a short story, but scaled to the length of time their actual story covers. Morning and nightfall aren’t much help, but equinoxes, solstices, and changes in seasons can be very useful (especially if the setting is in a temperate zone, where leaves change color, fall, get snowed on, and grow back).

Instead of meals, familiar and repetitive seasonal holidays or events (Diwali, Christmas, Tax Day, Ramadan, Spring Cheese-Rolling Day, SAT exams/results, fall/winter/spring break) can give the reader a sense of time passing and/or when in the year the characters are (“Halloween went by in a flurry of sugared-up children. A frenzy of housecleaning and cooking followed, leading to Thanksgiving, massive amounts of leftovers. Then Anya was madly swapping out the giant inflatable turkey for a giant inflatable reindeer, stringing lights and wrapping presents. She didn’t realize how long it had been since she’d seen Marco until he turned up with half a bottle of flat champagne the day after New Years.”)

Again, if it’s an invented world, you need to make sure the reader understands when your invented holidays happen in the course of a year. (J.K. Rowling does this in the Harry Potter books—the school year starts with back-to-school shopping, the next major thing comes at Halloween, then there’s end-of-term tests, Christmas Break, Valentine’s Day, and so on, until the school year ends with exams and leaving for summer vacation.)

I find it really helpful to keep a calendar or time-line of when key events happen (or are supposed to happen, if I’ve not written them yet), relative to key time-markers: the last farmer’s market is in the fall, the enemy scout is captured two weeks later, Harvest Feast is mid-fall, the defector arrives with warnings and they start planning, the first new catapult is ready by Solstice, and so on.