Time

freeman801 · Dec 1, 2009

What's a good way to skip certain days in a novel?

I've been following the day to day journey of my MC. A major event happened to him about 20k words in and I was able to move the timeline ahead about two weeks.

Now I'm back to following him day to day and everything was fine until last night, when I realized I tried to come up with dangling plot devices just to keep the day in day out story going.

I need to skip a few days so my MC gets to the weekend. How do I go from following my character day to day, then skipping ahead a few days without any major happening?

The only lame thing I can think of is... 'The next three days provided little excitement as I stayed home hiding from the outside world, peeking through the blinds, with a lukewarm cup of tea in my hands that never seemed to empty.'

Or something like that.

Your thoughts?

Misa Buckley · Dec 1, 2009

freeman801 said:
The only lame thing I can think of is... 'The next three days provided little excitement as I stayed home hiding from the outside world, peeking through the blinds, with a lukewarm cup of tea in my hands that never seemed to empty.'

That'll do for now.

Get the whole thing written, get a feel for the tone, then tackle issues like this in the edit.

Or...

Write now. Freak later.

Mr Flibble · Dec 1, 2009

Sounds fine to me.

Skip the boring bits. These are the times a short tell is your friend.

Ruv Draba · Dec 1, 2009

Time isn't really a dimension in literature, and neither is space because a single line can jump them without needing to cover the intervening distance.

I think literature has three dimensions: mood, passion and desire. You can tell they're dimensions because we can't skip across them as we can time and space, we must take the reader through it step by step. And if we add events that change time or space but don't change mood, passion or desire then to the author it can seem that the story is progressing, but to the reader it's standing still. I believe you'll end up cutting those scenes in edits anyway.

So my advice: skip space and time when you must, and focus on step-by-step advances in mood, passion or desire.

freeman801 · Dec 1, 2009

Thanks everyone for your help!

I never thought of it that way Ruv! I love it!

Time

freeman801

Misa Buckley

Extraordinary Romance

Mr Flibble

They've been very bad, Mr Flibble

Ruv Draba

freeman801