Time

virtue_summer said:

What about advice for those sections where you need to show that something happened in that time, but it's not important enough to create entire scenes?

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That's where you do exposition or, if you prefer, "telling".

virtue_summer said:

Like you need to show that weeks are passing but are afraid that if you take much time to summarize them you'll slow the pace too much. Is it just a matter of keeping the summaries short?

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Short helps. Good probably helps more. Short and good, now that's a great combination.

"After two weeks of plodding around the house nude, he..."

Or if you want to format it like this, go with:

"Thursday, April 12, 2021

As he plodded around his house, clothed for the first time in weeks, he..."

Though, the second one, don't count on anyone [aka me] to do math.

I usually say things like:

The following weeks were spent on the mundane events that make up every-day life. She made much progress on preparing her garden and when the time came to purchase the chosen plants, the mornings were just warm enough she could work without a sweater.

The proceed with the actions deemed the next plot points.

April 12, 2021 is actually a Monday. I have a computer that can tell me these things.

A week later, she was back on his doorstep, gun in hand...

I'll reiterate what everyone has already told you: there's a time and place for telling, and this is it.

Point being, that this form of "telling" is most appropriate and works best when it consists of short, quickly related material, exactly like that cited by Aadams above. It's long stretches of such "telling" that tend to kill narrative vitality.

caw

virtue_summer said:

My WIP is intended to cover six or more months in my character's life. Usually my stories cover much shorter periods of time which makes it easier to keep up the tension. How do you keep momentum going and keep the reader engaged in stories that span a greater length of time?

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You skip over the boring bits where nothing much is happening except the character went to the loo, smoked a cigarette or two, and maybe took a shower and had a nap. Or else you write those boring bits so they're the most riveting thing in the world. Your choice.

My point is, it doesn't matter what happens in between events. You either skip the boring parts, giving the reader the "best parts version," or else you make those time periods the most riveting thing in the world. Those are really the only two options.

Birol said:

You skip over the boring bits where nothing much is happening except the character went to the loo, smoked a cigarette or two, and maybe took a shower and had a nap.

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What if the character was doing all those things at the same time?

virtue_summer said:

Is it just a matter of keeping the summaries short?

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Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, I think that is a part of it.

If nothing plot-worthy happened in seven weeks, you might begin after a text break by saying, "Seven weeks had passed since..."

That's a pretty short summary, but it feeds the reader info that, oh, okay, obviously it was a pretty normal seven weeks. And if not, you give attention to what happened in that time span with an amount of words equal to how important it is to your story (IMO).

"Seven weeks had passed since Morton's death, and Elizabeth had only cried once, on a Thursday afternoon when the sun caught his glasses on the windowsill a certain way."

or

"Seven weeks had passed since Morton's death. It had been only a week, though, since something seemed to have broken in Elizabeth's brain for good. For instance, on the second day of that week, she dug up Morton's grave at damn near 3 a.m. and danced to a battery-powered radio with his corpse. He in cardigan and slacks, she in a lacy evening gown number. Nick LaRocca played. On the third day..."

Just depends on what you want to show, I think.

EDIT: sorry, it appears a few folks gave similar advice already. But. I like my examples so I'm leaving my post for historical reference

The passage of time needs to be subtle, your reader is not interested in mundane happenings, he would rather skip them for the next piece of action, even if it's years away.

Show, don't tell, that old familiar cliche says it all and is often misunderstood.

A change of venue, explains a shift in time, it doesn't need elaborate explanation; wakening up in Las Vegas, for a New Yorker, means that time has moved on, and the writer can easily explain just how much time is involved, perhaps a look in the mirror at a shock of grey hair needs no further explanation.

virtue_summer said:

That may work for you as a reader but the reason I asked the question in the first place was because it doesn't work for me as a reader. If I read one scene and the character's in New York and then I start the next scene and he's in Vegas, I don't think "hmm, what's going to happen in Vegas now?" I think "What the?! How the heck did he get to Vegas?" Some explanation is needed for me, but it's true. It doesn't have to be a long one

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That's exactly where the writer's difficulty arises, you want to allow your reader the space to make his own assumptions, but without confusing him,

An info-dump, as they term it, is off-putting (in the extreme), even worse, is lecturing; it's better to lose something from the story, than bore your reader.

In my short Las Vegas example, later revelations could explain that an affair of the heart brought the protagonist to the gambling town, and he could have driven all the way because of a fear of flying - that would take care of a three-day time gap straight away.

Such a three-day journey could well provide ample fodder for the writer, if something exciting happened. If it didn't, then I would suggest a couple of sentences would suffice.