Question: Passage of time

[Serra K]

I'm interested in hearing how you deal with writing passages of time, whether it be days, weeks, or years.

Do you prefer headings with dates, the simple use of 'three days later', the passing of seasons, or other methods?
In my books I have passages of time with various lengths and the one I'm working on now is a jump of one week followed by a jump of two weeks.
I'm not a fan of beginning my chapters with dates, neither do I pay much attention to them when reading. I wish I could come up with an artful way of doing this but I'm in the dark on this one.

Thanks!

 

[Claire G]

I use (for e.g.):
A week later...
It had been several days since...
Spring arrived before I knew it.

And leave a line out before I start the new section.

 

[Barbara]

I don't have a one way fits all way, unfortunately. I try find a creative way for each situation, and do what fits the particular section; depending on the plot, or on the character's voice, the scene before and after, etc etc.

Sometimes I use chapter breaks. I then start the new chapter by having a character react to the weather, or the new season, or the daylight. (Yawn, I know, but if done right, it can be evocative and set the mood for what follows. Getting a torch from a bag. Shoveling snow.....)

Or I might use time stamps if the next scene is later the same day and simply put 5 PM (that's one of my last resorts). In one scene, I had my MC say "7:35 pm, oh, crap, I'm late".

Stuff like that.

In my current WIP, my MC is desperately waiting for Friday. Friday comes (in form of a new chapter - a day has passed since the last chapter), and I start it with her pacing the living room and telling the dog that this is the day she's been living for for so long and that her future might finally change. I could also have started this chapter later, by having her drive to the event and commenting on Friday traffic.

You could do stuff like this:

your MC needs to go to talk to someone a few days later. You could show the time jump like this.

.... I have to stop this guy from doing this to someone else. He has tricked 29 people already. I have to make sure there isn't going to be a number 30, and to do that, I need Laura. As much as I don't want to talk to her, my ex, I'm going to have to pay her a visit first thing on Monday morning. It won't be easy though to get her to admit she knows what her father is up to, let alone help me.
(Time jump) And I'm right. Laura opens the door, frowns, then slams the door right back in my face. I press the door bell again.
Nothing.
Fine. I shall shout through the letterbox then.
'Laura, please. I need your help. You're the only one who can stop your father.'
Nothing. The door is staying shut, but I'm not giving up. I have all day. Then again, so does she. She's still in her dressing gown at 11 am so she doesn't have plans. God, I hate Mondays ....

Or something like that.

Also, sometimes, we just have to trust the reader that they're with us and have noticed that time passes.

 

[Mel L]

Following this thread with interest as I also struggle with the passage of time, and have been called out on it by a couple of betas.
Like Barbara, I prefer to integrate the notion of time organically in new chapters or scenes by dropping in clues rather than stamping in days or dates unless absolutely necessary.
One technique I'm experimenting with at the moment is switching the tense for flashbacks to present (the rest of the story is in past tense). But to avoid confusion for those passages, I also include time indications, such as '3 weeks earlier'.
Time will tell (lol) whether it works!

 

[Barbara]

One technique I'm experimenting with at the moment is switching the tense for flashbacks to present (the rest of the story is in past tense).

Ah, yes, I've got several flashbacks like that too. I flag them in the same way I flag the jumps in the present (by leading organically into them). But ... I've had a couple readers saying that the flashbacks jar and that they (the readers) got lost as to what's going on because of the tense change. I've now 'highlighted' those "flashback threads" by making them italic. But ... I'm not sure how readers feel about italicised text. I read somewhere that many readers hate these sideways sections in books. So I don't know.

 

[Hannah F]

Ah, yes, I've got several flashbacks like that too. I flag them in the same way I flag the jumps in the present (by leading organically into them). But ... I've had a couple readers saying that the flashbacks jar and that they (the readers) got lost as to what's going on because of the tense change. I've now 'highlighted' those "flashback threads" by making them italic. But ... I'm not sure how readers feel about italicised text. I read somewhere that many readers hate these sideways sections in books. So I don't know.

For dyslexics, italic text is very difficult to read. For many, big chunks of italic text becomes a blur.

 

[Hannah F]

An example from my last book:

She'd managed to avoid meeting him for four days. Today wasn't going to be so easy.

 

[Barbara]

For dyslexics, italic text is very difficult to read. For many, big chunks of italic text becomes a blur.

Thank you. I didn't know that. I'll do something different.

 

[James Charles]

I'm interested in hearing how you deal with writing passages of time, whether it be days, weeks, or years.

Do you prefer headings with dates, the simple use of 'three days later', the passing of seasons, or other methods?
In my books I have passages of time with various lengths and the one I'm working on now is a jump of one week followed by a jump of two weeks.
I'm not a fan of beginning my chapters with dates, neither do I pay much attention to them when reading. I wish I could come up with an artful way of doing this but I'm in the dark on this one.

Thanks!

In my current work, I jump back and forth a few times (alternating chapters with differnt character and POV) and put a header under chapter number, but I had an agent who edited my MS and still couldn't follow it. She said I should streamline it, but I can't for some of it... it won't work otherwise.

 

[CageSage]

A general rule of thumb when defining scenes is:

If there's a change in who, where, or when, it's a new scene.

This makes it easier to manage time transitions because if the timeline changes, it's a new scene. Some writers put things like 'several hours later' 'a few days later/earlier', etc., but it's better to indicate at the end of one scene the purpose of getting somewhere then start the new scene when they get there.

end scene: All we had to do now was get to the airport before that plane landed - which meant we had twenty minutes to drive to [city].

new scene: the airport was crowded. No planes boarding, none taking off. And none landing. They'd been diverted to [other city]. We'd missed our chance. Now the maguffin belonged to [baddy].

When it comes to going into backstory, it's better to indicate before the change, do a slight tense change for backstory (past perfect for a line or two), then revert to past simple (and come out of it the same way).

For longer periods of time, it's a problem. Why? Because a story is 'in the moment' and any lapse of time (except maybe long historicals that read like memoirs) takes the story out of the effect of immediacy. Ask why there's a gap of time. Is it necessary? Is there another way around it? It's one of the difficult little craft elements ... so google: how to write a gap of time in a story (and you'll get a ton of stuff about other people having trouble with it, too).

14 Tips for Dealing With the Passage of Time in a Story

Ask these six questions to make sure the passage of time in a story is strengthening rather than weakening its narrative power.

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