How & Why to Skip Time in Your Novel

hey guys it's Ellen brought novel editor today I'm going to talk about how and why to skip time in your novel this was one of my most requested videos I know that skipping time can be confusing or challenging so I just wanted to go over how you might do that and why you might do that so I'm going to go over both major jumps and minor jumps in time minor jumps would be maybe a few days even a couple of hours up to maybe two or three months major jumps will be three four or five

months up to several years with more minor jumps in time there are several reasons why you might want to make these jumps usually it's because whatever's happening during that time period is boring or irrelevant one situation where you might want to skip what your characters are doing is when what they're doing is mundane they're getting ready for work or school or maybe they're just going out to eat or they're traveling they're in the car and they're going on a long drive or they're going on a plane ride and what happens during that time is not

important or maybe even in a period of time where the characters are working on a project and you just want to skip to when the project is done maybe they're hacking a computer and you just want to skip to a week or two later when the hacking is done because there's not a lot to describe or not a lot of interesting things happens while they're actually doing the hacking itself when it comes to whether you should or should not skip the time my rule is if it would be awkward or pointless to add a scene

during that period of time just skip the time so if you could add a scene where maybe your character has a minor conflict or takes a phone call while they're getting ready in the morning but it would really just be an attempt to create value in that scene rather than a purpose I would just skip the time when it comes to how you convey that jump in time to the reader I just recommend that you go super simple don't try to do anything fancy and just state that the time passed so for example you could

write something like two weeks passed before Jake was able to return home or three weeks later I was sitting with my friends at lunch those are really simple they convey the point it doesn't really need to get any fancier than that if you skip time a lot you might find it helpful to put dates or days of the week at the beginning of your chapters or scenes in my experience most readers don't actually read these dates or if they do read these dates they don't remember them so if the passage of time is very important

I would probably still mention it in the narration if the jump in time is relatively small and if the jump in time isn't important so in other words the reader doesn't really need to know how much time pass or it's not really relevant you don't have to explain every time there is a passage in time you can just go ahead and skip to the next scene in most situations the reader really isn't going to care how much time pass and it's probably not really going to matter and it would be smoother to just jump into

the next scene if you're reading a novel where you need to make larger jumps in time several months or several years it can be helpful to establish how much time you're going to jump early in the book so if you don't have a jump in time until 70 percent into the book that can sometimes be a little bit jarring especially if it's a big jump in time you don't want the reader feeling like hey I wanted to know what happened in that period of time what's going on why are we suddenly jumping way later especially

if the character ages substantially so the younger the character the more likely it is to be awkward if you suddenly jump way far in time if that happens late in the stories so if you need to jump forward in time I would try to establish that jumping forward early on so rather than having your character age 10 years in the middle of the novel it might be helpful to skip a year or two early on maybe skip five or six years sometime in the first quarter so that if you make a big jump later on

it doesn't take the reader completely by surprise if you do have big jumps and you need to separate your novel into sections another approach is to create sort of a self-contained unit so there's a story arc within each section so say you have two sections childhood and adulthood there's a story arc in the childhood and it feels kind of complete so the reader is okay with moving on and and transitioning into the adulthood storyline and then that storyline is sort of complete that can work really well what you don't want to do is have one

continuous story line that suddenly jumps ten years forward in time 60 50 percent into the it will be rather jarring for the reader it might make the reader kind of uncomfortable it could even cause the reader to lose interest in the story with bigger jumps in time especially if it's more than a couple of years it's usually a good idea to use parts or sections so that when the reader turns the page and they see part two they have time to acclimate to the idea that okay the story is changing now things are gonna be

different time is probably passed and it's not quite as jarring if skipping time isn't important to the story it's often better to just contract to the storyline this isn't so much a problem if you have small jumps in time a couple days a couple weeks but if you're frequently jumping two months forward or three months forward but there isn't really any reason behind it you can often get a smoother flow to the story by just making the timeline shorter if you're not dealing with holidays or school years or big projects that need to take long

periods of time or family sagas if you're not dealing with situations where it's important that the time passed it's often better to just make the timeline shorter to just have the events happen closer together it isn't a requirement but it can make readers feel more immersed with the characters and sometimes it can be a little bit distancing when the reader feels like they're missing out on big chunks of time I really hope you found this video helpful that I gave you some more confidence when it comes to jumping forward in time and that you feel

like you're more capable of making those jumps I wasn't a hundred percent sure what you guys wanted to know about jumping forward in time so if this did not answer your questions just let me know in the comments and I'll try to make a follow-up video happy writing guys