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Transitions

Saffire Persian

Now you see me...
Transitions are something that drives every story in some way or another. The question I have is, how is the best way to handle the bigger transitions - as in, the jump to a time months to years ahead - smoothly.

In a story of mine, I will be jumping time gaps fairly consistently. Some only a few months, while some might be years. So how can I minimize the jaggedness a reader feels from such time jumps. Any suggestions?
 

Godslayer

Well-Known Member
Condense the five months into a couple sentences to let the reader know roughly what happened.
 

Isfahan

Well-Known Member
One method is to make the time jump, then, before proceeding with the events from that point, devote a paragraph or two (or however many you need) to act as a sort of "highlight reel" recapping the significant events that took place during the time jump which you feel the reader should know about.

The simple-past-perfect is the tense of choice for this method. It's the tense where events had happened. It differs slightly from simple-past, which is the tense in which most stories are told.

Ben had moved out of the city. He had also decided to let his beard grow out.

Like that.

Another method is to stop at the time jump, slip into present tense, narrate through what you need to, then go back to past tense at the other end of the time jump.

Three years go by as Captain Stupendous trains diligently in his hidden Domicile of Awesomeness. When he finally emerges to face the world once more, he is a changed man.

I consider this way inferior to the first (which is itself inferior to the other ways that aren't coming to mind right now but others will point out ^^;), as a tense shift between past and present is much more jarring than a tense shift within the different versions of past.

I'm trying to think of other ways, Saffire, but it's late, and I'm sleepy. Hopefully, at least, there's a catalyst for your own ideas in there somewhere. :)
 
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Freawaru

Well-Known Member
I use Isfahan's "highlight reel" method in my Legend of Zelda fanfic that spans several years and, indeed, has a 2000 year backstory. It works. Quick bit of scene-setting or character introspection at the beginning of a new scene to ground it in time and give the sense of time passing. Don't use the present tense method if you can avoid it at all.



If you're going from winter to summer or summer to winter the seasons can be useful. Example: We go from late autumn to shortly before Yule in the transition between City of Fire and Broken Mirror.

IT WAS a bright still afternoon, and snow lay thick on the streets of Hyrule Town. City sounds were dimmed; cartwheels creaked through soft slush, footsteps fell muffled; but conversely the voices, the cries of market traders or porters, the whinny of a horse, rose strong and clear in the cold air. The clear sky was the soft fragile blue of a duck's egg; the winter sun was a shiny new coin over the southern hills. There was an unusual sense of excitement in the air. This was the first day of Yule--and tonight there would be feasting at the castle, and the great Yule ball.

The castle itself was alive with light and voices. In the Great Hall, a gigantic needle-leaved spruce tree brushed the rafters; a kind of light scaffolding had been erected around it, and young men in Castle livery scrambled about lighting candles on the many branches. Coloured chains of paper festooned the walls, and a great bunch of crimson-berried holly had been affixed to the lintel of the great door, where it hung, twisting slowly in the breeze.

In his room, Link grinned at the tall mirror and ran his fingers through his hair, which was bound and threaded through with tiny braids in the Calatian formal style...

Sofia comes in to talk to him, and into the story we go.



Between Broken Mirror and Zora's Ghost it's gone from Yule to the beginnings of spring, so ZG starts:

THE morning was bright, and clear; the first such that there had been for many days, and there was no freezing northern wind to chill the blood. The pale winter sun shone down on a changed world of black and white, chill and bright like the silver moon.

Galdenor stood in the courtyard, which had been swept clear of snow; he was wearing his warmest clothing, plus the thick fur cloak in which he had arrived, but he still shivered for all that...

(Note that I've got an observer in both of these examples, so the description isn't just sitting there randomly; it has a reason to occur. I just like zooming in :p)



Hope that helps,
Freawaru
 

Praxiteles

Friendly POKéMON.
This might be unhelpful, but I had this very problem between Chapter 6 and 7 in my fic. In the end, I decided that the character would simply have a flashback (since he was in a state of intense delirium) of the events that happened during the transition. I simply summarized whatever happened in an abstract but neat manner within the character's hallucination. There was a rather important side-plot; I made it manifest as a dream the character had. Perhaps you could make him reflect upon the past, or present a small journal entry. I think that as long as you're creative and you present the whole thing properly, it won't look jagged.
 
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