Time Passes (insert photo-montage)

[batgirl]

In the folk-tale retelling I'm working on, I've hit a spot where about 5 years pass, which in the original is covered in a paragraph. The characters have run away from the abusive home, and in a few years will be at the king's court. For plot reasons, they are children when they leave (because they have to run away, rather than just leave home) and also for plot reasons, they come to the court at roughly marriageable age - which would be about 17 in this culture.

In some ways I'm looking forward to writing this part, because it's Roughing It in the Bush, which is always fun (My Side of the Mountain, Robinson Crusoe, The Boxcar Children, Hatchet, etc.)
The aspect that's got me a bit spooked is how to have five years pass gracefully.
In theatre there's the good old 'the curtain is raised and lowered several times', and in film there's the photo-montage, with little clips of building this and that, the characters having different hairstyles or clothing, and comic relief bits of falling into the stream or suchlike. In fiction, that can be clunky.
It's not so much signalling that 5 years have passed (hey, chapter heading: 'Five Years Later') it's that there are things happening during that five years that are relevant to the characters and what they will do in the later part of the book. So there are events. It's the spaces between the events that I'm fussed over.

Any thoughts on handling the passing of time?
-Barbara

[PeeDee]

Well, if no majorly key events happen, just skip five years. Show them coming to the court, let the reader infer what happened for five years. For that matter you can let the reader infer that five years have passed.

Even if there is key stuff, you can allude to that too.

There may be other ways, but that's what I'd do. I don't think I'd actually write out what was happening for five years, because then you get too involved in that and it can bog down the rest of the story. Plus, I would use the break to change the tone of the story. Sort of like in movies when something majorly climatic happens, then the camera just pans away, the opening credits and title rolls, and then we come back to a sunny day where our retired cop has just come home, looking five years older, with groceries instead of a wounded kid. It just lets you shift gears, says me, at length. :)

[triceretops]

batgirl, that's always a tough one, I can tell ya. I had to cover a seven month transition--I set this up beforehand. What I did was simply age the characters in the next chapter, with a little backstory, characters recalling fond memories, and such. I don't know it it worked, but you might try that leap by starting a new chapter. I'm not sure if the * * * break will work. I also found it helpful to add a diary letter from the MC--in my case, it was a ship's log, something similar to Star Trek's way of acknowledging that a multi-year star jump has taken place.

Tri

[PeeDee]

Something about the "Captain's Log" always bothered me. Even when I wrote STar Trek stories, at the dawn of time, I didn't use it. It just irked me. (Plus, I got yelled at on the few times I *did* use it for not getting the correct stardate number.)

But that's just me, honest.

[Maryn]

A blank page with...

Five Years Later

centered on it ought to work, yes?

So might a scene which from its start makes it apparent that time has passed based on what's happening in it. "Maryn sighed at the sight of Uncle Jim http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/smilies/emoticonhi.gif chopping firewood. He'd grown from chunky boy to muscular young man in their five years in the forest, while her own body still seemed frustratingly childlike, especially her chest."

Yeah, I know, not deathless prose, but you get the idea.

Maryn, who changed the name of the guy in the example six, count 'em six, times

[PeeDee]

Would this muscular young man chopping would be our Uncle Jim? :idea:

[Avalon]

Not sure what the genre is, but it sounds like fantasy?

I'm also not sure if any of these suggestions works with the scenes you need to portray, but if I were faced with a similar situation, I might try one of these:

Have a series of one- or two-paragraph "miniscenes," with a featured "prop" that was doing the aging: They decorate a tree, or pick apples -- the first time, the tree is as tall as they are, then later they have to reach for the apples, and finally the tree is too tall for them to reach the lowest branches (I guess it would have to be a fast-growing tree -- maybe a pine, where the top branch was progressively harder to reach?) Or a dog, say -- not even their dog, but a neighbor's dog. It's a young puppy (chewing on a finger), then it's staid and watching (pulling a cart, still playful but with a sense of responsibility), and finally it's sleeping by the fire, fat and middle aged. Something like that, which could also be used to establish setting and character, and symbolize the theme.

Or I might try doing the same with a series of winters, or other seasons. Or holidays. "The snow the next year was the worst in history...." "Luckily, the winter after that wasn't as harsh. Isabella was able to extend the sleeves of her gown to cover her protruding wrists. The following year, though, was cold again. She and Jonathan had to scrape together enough for sheepskin coats like the farmers wore." That kind of thing.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Good luck with it!

[PeeDee]

It really just depends on how long you want to spend on the five-year-passing.

Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three (the second Dark Tower book) has a period of small, mostly nonsensical scenes each of them given a chapter heading shuffle as we follow drug withdrawel. It's fascinating. I don't know if it works outside of King, though. :)

[SusanR]

Any thoughts on handling the passing of time?
-Barbara

When you say there are things that happen to the characters that need to be conveyed to the reader, are these critical incidents, or just necessary information?

By critical incidents, I mean turning points in the story, places of high conflict, no-turning-back choices, high-stakes problems.

Let's say, during this five-year-period, your Female Character gets abducted, gets pregnant, and has a child that is raised by Male Arch-Enemy while she is kept in the dungeon. She is torn between escaping (and abandoing the child) or staying in the dungeon and nursing her own flesh-and-blood. She escapes back to the forest. That section you just might want to write, if the child and the Arch-Enemy Daddy play a role in the story later on. (They should.)

BUT, if the five years passes and the noteworthy thing is not really high drama, but just "well, they both got real good at chopping firewood and Female Character learned to charm unicorns" then you can demonstrate their firewood-chopping and unicorn-charming FIVE YEARS LATER, with a bit of notation: "lucky us we learned this in the forest."

From what you've described, it doesn't sound like anything really critical to the plot happens in the forest. In which case, FIVE YEARS LATER sounds like a good choice to me.

SusanR

[Bufty]

Maybe you could end the previous chapter with an event or foreshadowing that leads to a natural pick-up five years hence.

[scribbler1382]

Aslan didn't think the King's Court had changed much in five years...

BTW, if this is a first draft, put [5 YEARS PASS] on a line and move on.

[moblues]

Hi barbara. Use what what I would call cut-scenes. I realize that I don't have the skill that the majority of the posters here possess, but this works for me.

Visualize it as a scene from a movie. In this way you can be concise, and at the same time move through what you had previously considered to be a problem spot and go forward from there.

I.E.: Show the scene from where you're stuck. (Quick chapter end.)

Next, maybe show a scene from when they're older doing something that they should be doing at this stage of they're lives. (Quick chapter end.)

Show something in the present. Now. Where you want them to be. (Quick chapter end.)

These can be simple vignettes. Half a page to two if you like. You can always revise it later.







It may appear to be a cheap device, but from what it seems, you want to find a way to move on. I believe this method will help if you so choose. You can always change it in the revision process.






BTW –– I still can't figure this board out. How do I give you the credit points that you deserve for your work on "The Mound Builders?" You deserve it. Please don't think that I had taken your hard work for granted.









Mike

[batgirl]

Thanks, everyone! This has made me think harder about what the purpose of the five years is, beyond making the girl character old enough to plausibly marry.
They need to unravel the mystery of their past enough so that they can apply the clues they find at court. The girl needs to get acquainted with her supernatural helper enough so that it won't be a total deus ex when it sort-of saves her from death. The boy needs to learn to be a better human being even though he isn't currently human. Now to figure out how those things are accomplished, under what stresses ...
Mike, Avalon, I think the short scenes with some sort of touchstone are probably the way I'm going to go. Thanks!
Susan and Maryn, love your examples! Maryn, you could have just said 'James' and left it to speculation as to which one ... Susan, one thought, though - wouldn't you want to know how she learned to charm unicorns? I would. (But my heroine doesn't have unicorns, not even ones that change colour according to their moods. Her supernatural helper is kind of ugly.)

I've been more often told that I'm skimming over potentially dramatic events than I've been told that I'm spending too much time on details, so this might be a place to work on that, by exploring thoroughly - and potentially cutting almost all of it later, but at least I won't have skimmed. (Gosh, shall I fall over the right side of the bridge, or over the left side? Decisions, decisions.)
-Barbara

[SusanR]

Susan and Maryn, love your examples! Maryn, you could have just said 'James' and left it to speculation as to which one ... Susan, one thought, though - wouldn't you want to know how she learned to charm unicorns? I would. (But my heroine doesn't have unicorns, not even ones that change colour according to their moods. Her supernatural helper is kind of ugly.)


I'm honestly not sure how much detail I'd want as a reader in terms of the learning curve for unicorn-charming. If it was well-written, probably I would. I guess if a magical being is going to play a big role in the part five-years-later, yeah, their early relationship might be considered a touch point on the plot line.

In my WIP, I'm tending to write only those scenes that directly move the story forward and deepen the plot, even though my historical section actually covers two whole generations.

Boy, that's clear as mud, huh? The answer is I really don't know. But no writing is ever really wasted. I wind up using paragraphs and expressions in other sections even if I've deleted a scene that doesn't work.

SusanR

[Sage]

Batgirl, I feel for you. Trying to decide how much of the significant events that occur long before the main events is hard. IMO, if it's going to be important to the novel, & it isn't going to sound out of place, go ahead & provide the scenes. But then again, my WIP has too much background. I know that. I'm working on losing some. It's just a matter of figuring out what can be cut out. But mine are short "montages," but a chapter each for three key points in the MC's lives (age 4, age 9, age 12), all important for establishing the characters & why they are the way they are (especially him, as he is very unique), & introducing things that will come up in the main story (because otherwise, as you say, they seem DEM, or at the very least make the audience go: "How convenient :rolleyes: ")

[aruna]

I've had similar situations in my past novels - which often starts in childhood, and ends when the MC is adult. I've had jumps from 6-year-old, 12-year-old, 19-year-old etc. I usually divide the book into parts, and put the year at the beginning of each year: 1957, 1963, etc.
In such cases, nothing important usually happens within the missing years; just the usual growping up stuff.

In my present novel, theres a 30 year gap! One part ends when the MC is 19, and gives up on ever winning the man she loves. So she leaves the country, goes away to further her education.

When she returns, she is 49, married with an adult daughter. He is single with an adult son. Her story of the missing years is fairly regular and uneventful - it can be covered in few sentences, and is not relevant to the plot: it's enough to know that she is married and has a child. But another chararcter does have an intriguing and relevant story to tell of what happened in the interim; I cover this through dialogue. My MC meets this other character and asks questions, the other character answers, and tells her story.

I think it works. It's a long gap, but it has been done many times before, for instance, in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, where the lovers separate when they are young and don't meet again until they are old people.

In movies, they do it with a montage; I think this works less well with novels. I prefer a clean break.

[reph]

For plot reasons, they are children when they leave (because they have to run away, rather than just leave home) and also for plot reasons, they come to the court at roughly marriageable age....
So they go through puberty during the five-year gap. That ought to help. They've changed physically, emotionally, and mentally. You could skip the five years and pick up by writing about 17-year-olds. Maryn gave an example of how this might work.

People look and act more different from age 12 to age 17 than from, say, 40 to 45.