Passing Time

The world you create in your writing has at least 4 dimensions (even if your characters are 1-dimensional), which means that time is passing as the story takes place. It is very rare that a story follows every action a character takes from beginning to end. Usually, there are actions that take a long time to complete, but are dull and uninteresting (e.g. travel and sleeping). When these are happening in the story, the best thing to do is to skip over that time. But how do you do that?

The easiest way is to be completely blunt. If a person starts walking toward the next town over and it takes three hours, you could simply say, "Three hours later, she arrived in town." There's nothing wrong with it, but it is an elementary technique and can get old really fast. The main issue with it is that it tells and does not show. It also has the problem that when the audience reads that the hero is starting a trip or going to bed, we are at a steady rate of time. By suddenly telling us that we have skipped several hours, it throws the reader and disconnects us from the closeness of the world.

Writers will often exclaim that we must show and not tell, but those same writers rarely give examples to explain what that means. I shall try my hardest to not be such a writer. In writing, the passage of time is an illusion. The longer you focus on a single object or action, the slower time moves. Longer sentences also slow down time. Short sentences that explain whole objects or actions in a few words do the opposite. Interest will also affect time passage. Boring things make time drag on.

Now, let's apply these principles. Let's use the example of a person traveling from one city to another. "Sheila took her first step out of the city. She knew she was facing Fairdale, but she could not see it, not even on the horizon. The next steps came easier. There was not much to see as she walked along the trail, a cactus here, a boulder there, but each one provided a distraction. The plant life reminded her of the garden back home and the countless hours under the the midday sun she spent taking care of it. The boulders, much like clouds, let Sheila's mind wander and think of what objects they reminded her of. Several reminiscings and identifications later, the sun was setting and Sheila entered Fairdale."

This is a much stronger passage of time than a simple "three hours later". But why does it work? Let's break it down. The first sentence indicates that a journey is starting. The second says it is very far away, which means it will take a long time to reach. The third says that she is actively moving. The fourth says that it was boring, which means it will feel like a very long journey. The fifth reminds us of time passing and makes us think of the sun beating down from overhead. The sixth makes us think of unknown amounts of time passing while doing nothing at all. The seventh sentence tells us that all of these actions have occurred multiple times shows us the end of the day, and says that the journey is complete.

The technique I just showed can pass large amounts of time with not many sentences. It doesn't bore the reader with unnecessary detail, but still conveys that a lot of time has passed. If you use this technique, be aware that it also creates a mood. Boring activities will make the reader feel alone and depressed, even if that is not intended. Even hwen you are excited about where you're goiong, a long enough trip is still going to take a long time. In that case, you will want to find anothere way to pass time.

Suppose that the travel was completely unimportant to the story that was going on. In our example, we could end with the line, "Sheila took her first step out of the city." After that, a new section would begin, talking about another character in another location. This continues the story while not spending time describing insignificant events like travel. When this second storyline reaches a mundane activity, then you switch back to the first storyline, but now Sheila is already in Fairdale. Now time has passed, but since it occurred at a natural break in the story, it does not bother the audience.

One final note is on the visual media, namely movies and comics. There is another way to pass time available, which is an establishing shot. Consider you have a scene in one location and it is high noon. The next important scene occurs in a different location at night. Wat you can do is show the action starting, like the character walking toward the horizon, then cut away to a scene where we see it is night time, we see that we are in a new place, and we see the main character walking into this new place. We are now aware that the journey is complete, where we are, and who we're watching. If you are writing a comic, this is best done on a page turn, because it is a new page and it takes tame for the reader to turn to it.