Instead of just starting new chapters, maybe try separating them into parts. Like 7-12 Part One, 13-19 Part Two, 20-29 Part Three and 30-35 Part Four. Obviously separate them as you see fit but I feel like it’d work well in this case.
Depending on how far you are with writing it, maybe write it as if it was journal entry or like a memoir of some sort. I’m thinking of the book Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingslover in this case.
Ooo writing them as parts honestly sounds very interesting. Currently I’m only 3/4 of a chapter done. And I considered writing it as a journal entry, novel, etc but I don’t want it to seem like I am that girl, you know? If I take the route of writing the novel as if she was the one writing it herself, how would I make sure that I’m clearly separated from the character? And also a problem I find with that is that I feel like her talking in a “present day” kind of way is more powerful for her story. Which as a journal I suppose it could be present day, but the idea that she was writing all of this as a child just doesn’t sit right with me, you know?
If you don’t want her writing it herself as a child, you could think of it as her recounting or remembering these things as the adult version of herself she ends the book as. You’d almost certainly want to write it in the past tense that way, though. But as for your other concern, so long as it’s labeled as a work of fiction and not a nonfiction memoir or something, I don’t see why anyone would ever think you were the character. Unless I’m misunderstanding you?
I guess my family is more in my mind. And that maybe people think it’s loosely based on my own experiences, which yes I’ve been assaulted, but I wasn’t her age and it wasn’t a family member. But maybe that’s just my anxiety talking
Ah. In that case, my guess is if they’re gonna speculate like that then they’ll do it regardless of your format. You can clarify if they ask, but I say don’t let it limit your writing!
Write the chapters you need and simply skip. You could try to make connections between two chapters to make it feel more natural.
**Example:**
\[...\]
She opened the box and was in tears when she saw the cute puppy. Anna was the happiest ten year old girl in the world.
**= NEXT CHAPTER =**
Lucy was sprinting like mad in the garden, and Anna after her.
"Lucy, no," she yelled. "You just took a bath. Come in. Now."
But there was no point. Lucy was adamant about obeying her teenage owner and ran some more in the mud. Frustrated, Anna stormed back inside and shut the sliding door close.
"This girl is impossible." She jumped into the sofa, checking her messages.
"Get her back in, Anna," her mother said coolly. "And give her another bath."
Anna threw her phone on the table and jumped up. "Fine."
"By the way, do you want fourteen candles on your cake or the numbers one and four?"
"Mom! It's supposed to be a surprise," she exclaimed, running back after her dog.
\[...\]
**//////////////**
I quickly wrote that we have skipped four years, but you can wait a little longer or hint at it in other ways.
Yes I assume I’ll be using chapters. I just don’t know how to correctly transition from the end of one chapter to the beginning of one if it’s a time skip. The beginning of the chapter after the time skip is what feels most confusing to me. How would she say the passing of time without it sounding choppy or “reflecting on the past” perspective?
Instead of using traditional numbers for chapters you could use dates. This makes it very obvious to readers that time has skipped. As for the time transitions, I don’t think you need to make it seamless in the sense that the character has to immediately be thinking or talking about 10 years ago or whatever. You could start by introducing the reader to who they are, what their life is like, what they’ve been up to, and use that as a way to show how the past is still affecting them.
Hmm interesting point. I suppose you can just write now think later. Get the outlining out of the way, before constructing the format. And after that you can edit. I would also advise having a peer read over your work.
But to answer your question exactly, I don't have a definite answer because writing is mostly subjective, only with a few loose rules.
I wish you the best mate.
If you don't mention those years, we can assume nothing important happens to the protagonist during these years. So you just have to mention time has passed at the beginning of the new chapter.
So previous chapter ended with the protagonist dating her new fancy boyfriend at the beginning of high school. Next chapter could start with:
"He was my only boyfriend during my high shcool years. Then I was accepted at Big City University College, and had to leave my hometown. That's when Clive and I broke up. It was a Saturday night. We were at Joe's bar, as usual. I was sipping a Martini, and he was drinking a beer. yada yada"
Notice how I seamlessly skipped a few years of her life?
>I don’t want it to feel choppy or rushed, and I don’t know how I would start a new chapter, a few months, or a year into the future.
You just do it. You can summarize anything you want in a few paragraphs, and then move on. You even don’t have to mention the time passage and let the context clues speak for themselves.
I feel like the biggest issue is that I want her to be talking from a “present day” perspective, like things are happening in the moment. And that feels hard to do with transitioning from a time skip
No? When you tell a story to your friend, do you include every single minute detail? No, you tell a story with the most interesting details, regardless of perspective or tense.
It sounds like you need to read and critically analyze more books in the style you are trying to write.
Yes that’s true, it’s just hard to find books like what I plan to do that I will also find interesting. I’m not the best at looking for things and I’m kind of picky and need to get something I’ll enjoy because I don’t have much money.
I guess the reason it seems hard is I’m unsure how I’d phrase it, like:
“The summer after” “Last summer” “last year” “this year” “I’m in _ grade now” “it’s been a year” etc.
All of those are very choppy to me, then again I didn’t think too long before writing those just now.
Maybe mention the season changing? The weather? Or something like that? But I don’t want it to get too repetitive
Yes you can use any of those sentences. You can also have one chapter be at age 7, and the next be at age 20, and you don’t need a transition because obviously a 7 year old and a 20 year old will be thinking and speaking and doing completely different things and the reader will be able to discern that information themselves.
All I'd caution with this is to be careful with her voice. Seven year old me thought with very different patterns and motivations than 30 year old me and 30 year old me sounds very different to 23 year old me (however much I try and reclaim it :) )
Absolutely doable, but have an eye on this as a consideration. Children are motivated by very different versions of things than adults - they can have the same end goals, but have in mind what the different motivations may be for doing something.
The voice thing is a slight issue for me. When she actually speaks she sounds like a child, but the descriptive language I use to describe what she’s doing does sound more adult. But I do show how she views the world from the mind of a child.
Don't overthink it! In real life, we naturally limit the details we share when telling stories. Just explain what's essential for understanding your character's journey. Plus, leaving some untold periods to the reader's imagination can be quite powerful.
Is there a way to do this where it's looking back on those time periods rather than being in them?
And I'm only asking this from the point of view of Late-In-Early-Out. So, if your climax, for example, is a 30 year old standing in a pool of blood from all of their victims (let's just go with the example that comes to mind... Nothing to see here) but her 'story' or reasons stem from aged seven, start at the climax and have her piece together how she got there.
Because the other way of thinking about how to arrange timeliness or whether you're looking to work chronologically or reflectively is to think about MICE - how is this book driven? (If you're stuck on what this means, give it a quick Google - I am replying on my phone and cannot add a link easily 😊) deciding on whether you're events driven or character driven may point you in a different direction.
The other thing is to just write the story as is right now in first draft form and pick it apart later. Get the bones out there and edit, revise, edit when you can see it all on the page.
Now, that being said, if you do decide to go chronologically, there are a few things you can use to skip time effectively but it depends on your voice and POV.
Have a look at things like:
1. "In X years/months/days, Y has changed but Z has stayed the same" => "In two years, I've watched the summers burn away the lake in increasing strips of browning grass, but the sky is always the same shade of blue". Ie, half tell me the time has changed by half showing me the world too (never forget that your world and characters are linked and act on one another)
2. In a similar vein to above, use your world changing - autumn into winter for season changes (shorter periods) or comparing two similar events (ie "every Christmas for the last three years, Eve received the same pair of slippers in increasingly pastel shades of beige)
3. Use things that a seven year old growing would go through - eg school years, 'firsts', specifically remembered birthday cakes, etc.
4. Just jump in and let your readers do some work before helping them out. Maybe she's now allowed in the teenage park areas as she grows, maybe she has a different set of friends. Are there words that she'd use for things as she's growing up that are different?
And, as always, apologies if I've completely missed the mark and apologies for my thumb typing skills. I imagine I shall come back and edit this as soon as I've posted it :)
I’m honestly not 100% sure what the climax would be exactly. There are multiple serious, important situations that heavily effect the character throughout the novel. I can think of one that would be very important but I think it would be closer near the end, like 3/4 or 3.5/4 through the novel. So I’m not sure if it really would be considered the climax, I mean I know a climax doesn’t need to be in the middle, but you know. I should probably figure that out asap.
The reason I want to write it in the perspective of her in the “present moment” that things are happening, is to get inside of her head more and feel what she’s feeling. See what she’s seeing. Not know if she’ll be okay or not. If you’re being told from the perspective of her older self, that kind of takes that away. And also, if the novel I’m writing was “written” by the girl as an adult, I’m afraid that I myself (the author) will be connected to the girl (the author of the novel in her world). Which I don’t want. I do think it could make things easier but I feel as though if the story was told by older her, that it takes away from the suspense and the raw emotion.
And thank you for those examples!
No worries at all.
What I'd say most of all at this point then, is... Just write it :)
As it comes to you right now and how you see it right now, just write it and work through it, warts and all. Accept that you're going to change loads of it and that the whole "killing your darlings" thing might be true, but you can always use that handy resurrection spell you have stashed away in the 'versions' folder.
For the absolute first draft, set your processor up in Comic Sans, title it something like SPLURGE ALL THE THINGS and then write. When you get to the bits you're worried about time skips for, put square brackets and write ["time skip needed - x age to y age] and then just carry on writing from Y age after it.
(also, do this with words you're unsure of or know need looking at again. I square bracket any words where I KNOW I've repeated them, but can't exit the flow to change it right now)
Get the draft out on paper and work from there - don't worry about the technical details quite yet but work out the story :) She'll tell you where she needs to go herself, don't worry.
Although, as an author to show a passage of time from one chapter to the next, is to name the chapters the date and times.
I have seen this technique before, and it is ok. Usually, in science fiction time travel stories to help readers keep track of where they are in time, but not necessarily. There are others, too.
You could even name the chapters the year the character is or a significant life event, "John at 11" or "Maria's Wedding Day" (readers knowing Maria wanted to be married by 26, let's find out if she is 26). If you want to keep the surprise elements involved, you can also go for "Graduation Day", and then talk about college graduation if you skip high school graduation and the college years. I just wouldn't put too many surprise elements in, as the readers might end up hating it (a few might be fun, though).
If you're going for a few months at a time, it might work to have a running thread that you give a broad date to the chapter, which visibly runs up between them.
For example, your story starts mid August of some year, the progresses to April a couple years ahead. The first chapter begins with a sub heading of 'August XXXX' then continues as normal. After you've finished that part, you see listed sub headings for 'September XXXX', 'October XXXX', and so forth, with nothing in between, until the next chapter. If you want to get technical you could even have them be your chapters (though I'd recommend not having a list of chapter pages).
Maybe you could do it like this:
Just find the point in her early-mid 20s where you think the story should "end", and then maybe do an interaction like this (from your main character's point of view):
I felt my arm being tugged. "Mummy, Mummy! Wake up! It's (whatever, some holiday or something)!"
I think that would be a good way to show she's now in her 30's and has kids.
Instead of just starting new chapters, maybe try separating them into parts. Like 7-12 Part One, 13-19 Part Two, 20-29 Part Three and 30-35 Part Four. Obviously separate them as you see fit but I feel like it’d work well in this case. Depending on how far you are with writing it, maybe write it as if it was journal entry or like a memoir of some sort. I’m thinking of the book Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingslover in this case.
Ooo writing them as parts honestly sounds very interesting. Currently I’m only 3/4 of a chapter done. And I considered writing it as a journal entry, novel, etc but I don’t want it to seem like I am that girl, you know? If I take the route of writing the novel as if she was the one writing it herself, how would I make sure that I’m clearly separated from the character? And also a problem I find with that is that I feel like her talking in a “present day” kind of way is more powerful for her story. Which as a journal I suppose it could be present day, but the idea that she was writing all of this as a child just doesn’t sit right with me, you know?
If you don’t want her writing it herself as a child, you could think of it as her recounting or remembering these things as the adult version of herself she ends the book as. You’d almost certainly want to write it in the past tense that way, though. But as for your other concern, so long as it’s labeled as a work of fiction and not a nonfiction memoir or something, I don’t see why anyone would ever think you were the character. Unless I’m misunderstanding you?
I guess my family is more in my mind. And that maybe people think it’s loosely based on my own experiences, which yes I’ve been assaulted, but I wasn’t her age and it wasn’t a family member. But maybe that’s just my anxiety talking
Ah. In that case, my guess is if they’re gonna speculate like that then they’ll do it regardless of your format. You can clarify if they ask, but I say don’t let it limit your writing!
Thank you
Write the chapters you need and simply skip. You could try to make connections between two chapters to make it feel more natural. **Example:** \[...\] She opened the box and was in tears when she saw the cute puppy. Anna was the happiest ten year old girl in the world. **= NEXT CHAPTER =** Lucy was sprinting like mad in the garden, and Anna after her. "Lucy, no," she yelled. "You just took a bath. Come in. Now." But there was no point. Lucy was adamant about obeying her teenage owner and ran some more in the mud. Frustrated, Anna stormed back inside and shut the sliding door close. "This girl is impossible." She jumped into the sofa, checking her messages. "Get her back in, Anna," her mother said coolly. "And give her another bath." Anna threw her phone on the table and jumped up. "Fine." "By the way, do you want fourteen candles on your cake or the numbers one and four?" "Mom! It's supposed to be a surprise," she exclaimed, running back after her dog. \[...\] **//////////////** I quickly wrote that we have skipped four years, but you can wait a little longer or hint at it in other ways.
That’s a really good example, thank you! Very cohesive and easy to understand
I'm not sure, I'm looking for an answer to this very question. But maybe you could try using chapters as a way to shift the time and place.
Yes I assume I’ll be using chapters. I just don’t know how to correctly transition from the end of one chapter to the beginning of one if it’s a time skip. The beginning of the chapter after the time skip is what feels most confusing to me. How would she say the passing of time without it sounding choppy or “reflecting on the past” perspective?
Instead of using traditional numbers for chapters you could use dates. This makes it very obvious to readers that time has skipped. As for the time transitions, I don’t think you need to make it seamless in the sense that the character has to immediately be thinking or talking about 10 years ago or whatever. You could start by introducing the reader to who they are, what their life is like, what they’ve been up to, and use that as a way to show how the past is still affecting them.
Hmm interesting point. I suppose you can just write now think later. Get the outlining out of the way, before constructing the format. And after that you can edit. I would also advise having a peer read over your work. But to answer your question exactly, I don't have a definite answer because writing is mostly subjective, only with a few loose rules. I wish you the best mate.
Thank you
No worries if you have any other issues or questions DM me. I'm always happy to help. 😊
If you don't mention those years, we can assume nothing important happens to the protagonist during these years. So you just have to mention time has passed at the beginning of the new chapter. So previous chapter ended with the protagonist dating her new fancy boyfriend at the beginning of high school. Next chapter could start with: "He was my only boyfriend during my high shcool years. Then I was accepted at Big City University College, and had to leave my hometown. That's when Clive and I broke up. It was a Saturday night. We were at Joe's bar, as usual. I was sipping a Martini, and he was drinking a beer. yada yada" Notice how I seamlessly skipped a few years of her life?
>I don’t want it to feel choppy or rushed, and I don’t know how I would start a new chapter, a few months, or a year into the future. You just do it. You can summarize anything you want in a few paragraphs, and then move on. You even don’t have to mention the time passage and let the context clues speak for themselves.
I feel like the biggest issue is that I want her to be talking from a “present day” perspective, like things are happening in the moment. And that feels hard to do with transitioning from a time skip
No? When you tell a story to your friend, do you include every single minute detail? No, you tell a story with the most interesting details, regardless of perspective or tense. It sounds like you need to read and critically analyze more books in the style you are trying to write.
Yes that’s true, it’s just hard to find books like what I plan to do that I will also find interesting. I’m not the best at looking for things and I’m kind of picky and need to get something I’ll enjoy because I don’t have much money. I guess the reason it seems hard is I’m unsure how I’d phrase it, like: “The summer after” “Last summer” “last year” “this year” “I’m in _ grade now” “it’s been a year” etc. All of those are very choppy to me, then again I didn’t think too long before writing those just now. Maybe mention the season changing? The weather? Or something like that? But I don’t want it to get too repetitive
Yes you can use any of those sentences. You can also have one chapter be at age 7, and the next be at age 20, and you don’t need a transition because obviously a 7 year old and a 20 year old will be thinking and speaking and doing completely different things and the reader will be able to discern that information themselves.
Thank you
All I'd caution with this is to be careful with her voice. Seven year old me thought with very different patterns and motivations than 30 year old me and 30 year old me sounds very different to 23 year old me (however much I try and reclaim it :) ) Absolutely doable, but have an eye on this as a consideration. Children are motivated by very different versions of things than adults - they can have the same end goals, but have in mind what the different motivations may be for doing something.
The voice thing is a slight issue for me. When she actually speaks she sounds like a child, but the descriptive language I use to describe what she’s doing does sound more adult. But I do show how she views the world from the mind of a child.
Don't overthink it! In real life, we naturally limit the details we share when telling stories. Just explain what's essential for understanding your character's journey. Plus, leaving some untold periods to the reader's imagination can be quite powerful.
Thank you
Is there a way to do this where it's looking back on those time periods rather than being in them? And I'm only asking this from the point of view of Late-In-Early-Out. So, if your climax, for example, is a 30 year old standing in a pool of blood from all of their victims (let's just go with the example that comes to mind... Nothing to see here) but her 'story' or reasons stem from aged seven, start at the climax and have her piece together how she got there. Because the other way of thinking about how to arrange timeliness or whether you're looking to work chronologically or reflectively is to think about MICE - how is this book driven? (If you're stuck on what this means, give it a quick Google - I am replying on my phone and cannot add a link easily 😊) deciding on whether you're events driven or character driven may point you in a different direction. The other thing is to just write the story as is right now in first draft form and pick it apart later. Get the bones out there and edit, revise, edit when you can see it all on the page. Now, that being said, if you do decide to go chronologically, there are a few things you can use to skip time effectively but it depends on your voice and POV. Have a look at things like: 1. "In X years/months/days, Y has changed but Z has stayed the same" => "In two years, I've watched the summers burn away the lake in increasing strips of browning grass, but the sky is always the same shade of blue". Ie, half tell me the time has changed by half showing me the world too (never forget that your world and characters are linked and act on one another) 2. In a similar vein to above, use your world changing - autumn into winter for season changes (shorter periods) or comparing two similar events (ie "every Christmas for the last three years, Eve received the same pair of slippers in increasingly pastel shades of beige) 3. Use things that a seven year old growing would go through - eg school years, 'firsts', specifically remembered birthday cakes, etc. 4. Just jump in and let your readers do some work before helping them out. Maybe she's now allowed in the teenage park areas as she grows, maybe she has a different set of friends. Are there words that she'd use for things as she's growing up that are different? And, as always, apologies if I've completely missed the mark and apologies for my thumb typing skills. I imagine I shall come back and edit this as soon as I've posted it :)
I’m honestly not 100% sure what the climax would be exactly. There are multiple serious, important situations that heavily effect the character throughout the novel. I can think of one that would be very important but I think it would be closer near the end, like 3/4 or 3.5/4 through the novel. So I’m not sure if it really would be considered the climax, I mean I know a climax doesn’t need to be in the middle, but you know. I should probably figure that out asap. The reason I want to write it in the perspective of her in the “present moment” that things are happening, is to get inside of her head more and feel what she’s feeling. See what she’s seeing. Not know if she’ll be okay or not. If you’re being told from the perspective of her older self, that kind of takes that away. And also, if the novel I’m writing was “written” by the girl as an adult, I’m afraid that I myself (the author) will be connected to the girl (the author of the novel in her world). Which I don’t want. I do think it could make things easier but I feel as though if the story was told by older her, that it takes away from the suspense and the raw emotion. And thank you for those examples!
No worries at all. What I'd say most of all at this point then, is... Just write it :) As it comes to you right now and how you see it right now, just write it and work through it, warts and all. Accept that you're going to change loads of it and that the whole "killing your darlings" thing might be true, but you can always use that handy resurrection spell you have stashed away in the 'versions' folder. For the absolute first draft, set your processor up in Comic Sans, title it something like SPLURGE ALL THE THINGS and then write. When you get to the bits you're worried about time skips for, put square brackets and write ["time skip needed - x age to y age] and then just carry on writing from Y age after it. (also, do this with words you're unsure of or know need looking at again. I square bracket any words where I KNOW I've repeated them, but can't exit the flow to change it right now) Get the draft out on paper and work from there - don't worry about the technical details quite yet but work out the story :) She'll tell you where she needs to go herself, don't worry.
Thank you :)
Although, as an author to show a passage of time from one chapter to the next, is to name the chapters the date and times. I have seen this technique before, and it is ok. Usually, in science fiction time travel stories to help readers keep track of where they are in time, but not necessarily. There are others, too. You could even name the chapters the year the character is or a significant life event, "John at 11" or "Maria's Wedding Day" (readers knowing Maria wanted to be married by 26, let's find out if she is 26). If you want to keep the surprise elements involved, you can also go for "Graduation Day", and then talk about college graduation if you skip high school graduation and the college years. I just wouldn't put too many surprise elements in, as the readers might end up hating it (a few might be fun, though).
Thank you!
If you're going for a few months at a time, it might work to have a running thread that you give a broad date to the chapter, which visibly runs up between them. For example, your story starts mid August of some year, the progresses to April a couple years ahead. The first chapter begins with a sub heading of 'August XXXX' then continues as normal. After you've finished that part, you see listed sub headings for 'September XXXX', 'October XXXX', and so forth, with nothing in between, until the next chapter. If you want to get technical you could even have them be your chapters (though I'd recommend not having a list of chapter pages).
Maybe you could do it like this: Just find the point in her early-mid 20s where you think the story should "end", and then maybe do an interaction like this (from your main character's point of view): I felt my arm being tugged. "Mummy, Mummy! Wake up! It's (whatever, some holiday or something)!" I think that would be a good way to show she's now in her 30's and has kids.
I just skip to whenever I need to, to keep the story going and interesting. I trust the reader to understand and figure it out.