Trouble Shooting Time Skips.

 Time Skips

When we think about writing, we often see it as a linear path: from birth, growing up, and dying. But the question for many writers is how to shape the story. Many new writers find they want to add time skips, but then there is the problem of a massive chunk of time being subtracted from the story. They want to talk about the current events of the narrative. 

When developing the story, one of the questions you must ask to understand your story better is: Is there a better place to start this story?

An example of this would be a beginner writer who writes about a grand hero in a fantasy world. 

So, the beginner writer writes ten chapters from a side character finding the woman pregnant with the future hero, which could work in one of two ways. If the story is about the mentor questing and saving the young hero or, if it is, a multi-point of view. However, it doesn’t work when the first part of the story is about the future mentor, and then the rest of the story is the only voice, which is the main character. However, the mentor is still alive.

When the first part of the story arc is about the mentor saving the hero from being born and following up with the hero in school, it doesn’t work, and authors often find themselves needing to create a time skip. In which the first part of the arc would look like a prologue, however, then the writer runs into the problem they had just written about a side character for ten chapters.

We all understand that we love the backstory as writers; it is our world-building. However, the true story lies beyond this. So, by moving the beginning point from the origins of the hero yet to be born to when the hero is about to enter or enter the hero academy, the writer has reached the character journey, the actual meaty bit of the story.

 So, by moving the beginning point from a mentor figure finding and raising a child to watch the woman carrying the future hero dying, we start at the beginning of the hero's journey. 

In her book Freeing the Writer Within, Natalie Goldberg discusses how the human brain writes and works via connections and how writing should be organic because it adds depth. 

So, rounding back to the earlier conversation on time skips. Here is the answer. 

1. Move the starting point.

2. Use the backstory in a mental connection. Exp: The main character sees an ‘object or smells smoke’ and remembers how his mentor told him about the day he was saved. Bam. The writer has overcome the back story and is moving forward on the character's journey.

If the writer peppers in the back story organically and at an appropriate length, it can do many things for the reader: inform them of important facts, tell them about the MC's mental state, and keep them engaged as long as this non-linear backstory is at appropriate lengths.