Thoughts about time skips

[Golden_Hyde]

I don't think it has any proper time skip criterion for storytelling. You can have years, decades or even centuries as long as you have the intent on the time skipping. I planned to do 2 years skip first and then 15 years skip in some particular arcs in my project

 

[naosu]

I don't really like time skips myself. In TV they get abused too much to have the time slip button used when they write themselves in a corner. BUT some people really like the time travel genre quite a bit. And it really depends on how well you write it. If you write it well and thought out logically you could make it work.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Consider this - The Three Musketeers had the following sequels:
Twenty years later
Ten Years After
(and 2-5 others, depending on how you define the specific books)

 

[Clo]

I tend to dislike time skips, because I often want to see/read those moments where the protagonist struggles. I want to hear them nearly give up. I want to hear the words of wisdom of those who support them.
I want to see the normalcy in their lives, despite the epic story.

But maybe that's just me. So many story I read these days feels like a post-game footnotes, instead of a proper story.

I don't want to know "nothing much happened that night."

Show me what that means. How they cope/deal with it.

 

[Nolff]

I'm still debating. It's a bit generic, but at the moment I'm leaning towards a situation where the protagonist loses a big battle because he wasn't well enough trained, and ends up going off to train with some mentor characters, then comes back eventually. I wouldn't skip over the entire thing, but I'd definitely significantly compress it to just one or two chapters.

What's the time skip for? And if it is to skip boring montage, then does it correlates to any other events in the story? That's what I thought whenever I want to do time skips.

 

[Worthy39]

What's the time skip for? And if it is to skip boring montage, then does it correlates to any other events in the story? That's what I thought whenever I want to do time skips.

Yeah, it's mostly to skip through a point in the story where very little happens, I'll do a chapter or two where it runs through everything happening during that time, but the main goal is to just get through a boring part of the story.

 

[Shorgoth]

It depends on many factors, but here, the 2 main ones apply imo

1: Was what you skipped really that unimportant? Can't you make a good scene out of it that shows something about your characters through those routine events? Then you shouldn't skip all of it, but maybe part of it

2: Does it cut into repetitive literary drudgery? (How many training montage episodes do you really need, Naruto?) If so, yes, some time skip after setting up the conditions, and maybe adding a payoff for it in a scene showing the progress. You don't need to see every swing of a sword on a mannequin, just the initial state and the result. The brain of the reader will do the rest. Well done, time skips are about correct framing.

 

[DireBadger]

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with time skips, especially for certain situations (Clash of the Titans would have sucked if the movie were about Perseus' struggles with breastfeeding, as attractive as the breasts were), but some authors tend to overuse them, just like every writing shortcut.

But some good stories absolutely demand lots of time skips... like I read a decent story once about robots actually evolving into sentients. Can you even imagine what that story would be like if it didn't have big time skips?

It is, however, completely based on the story being told. There is no 'hard and fast rule' about what kind of time skip is decent. The poll is kind of silly because it changes based on the needs of the story.

 

[Worthy39]

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with time skips, especially for certain situations (Clash of the Titans would have sucked if the movie were about Perseus' struggles with breastfeeding, as attractive as the breasts were), but some authors tend to overuse them, just like every writing shortcut.

But some good stories absolutely demand lots of time skips... like I read a decent story once about robots actually evolving into sentients. Can you even imagine what that story would be like if it didn't have big time skips?

It is, however, completely based on the story being told. There is no 'hard and fast rule' about what kind of time skip is decent. The poll is kind of silly because it changes based on the needs of the story.

Fair enough, I wasn't really planning on basing my time skip off the general opinion, I was just curious about what everyone thought about them. I had a general idea for how long it would be already, but it's always fun to hear what people think about it.

 

[Astrispill]

It may sound generic, but I guess it depends.

I don't think there's a way to use or a specific time. I always try to write based on if I like the feeling, so if I think I need a time skip I'll add one based on that

 

[DireBadger]

Found it!
"Cade of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan"