Six Practical Ways to Handle the Passage of Time in Fiction

This post was originally published in February 2016 and updated in March 2024.

Whether you’re writing a short story or an epic novel series, fictional time is going to pass during it.

Obviously enough, fictional time is not the same thing as real time (unless you’re watching 24). Your novel might take four hours to read – and cover events that take place over the course of several months. (And it could well take years to write.)

Why Time in Fiction Can Be Problematic

In real life, time passes at a constant rate, even if it feels like it’s slowing down or speeding up at times. We sadly don’t have the option to skip or fast-forward through the boring bits.

In fiction, readers will expect you to focus on story-relevant events … and leave out the rest. Unless the conversation over breakfast is important to the story, you don’t need to show your characters sitting down with their cereal and toast. Unless your protagonist’s commute to work involves something interesting happening, you don’t need to show him getting in his car and driving there.

Of course, that’s probably obvious – but it can pose difficulties when you’re writing. How do you jump between the interesting scene on Saturday night between the protagonist and his fiancée, and the interesting scene that begins at 9am when he arrives at work on the Monday morning?

It can feel even more difficult when you’ve got large gaps of time in your novel. Perhaps there’s a six month period in the middle where nothing much happens – or you want to jump 30 years or 100 years in the middle. You might have multiple jumps in time. In a Single Moment begins with two mothers having babies. After several chapters where the characters are babies, we jump to when they’re 5, when they’re turning 11, then when they’re 16.

We’ll take a look at big jumps in time first (weeks or more) and then look at smaller jumps (between days, or between parts of the day).

Three Options for Dealing with Big Jumps in Time

Let’s say your novel begins with two characters, Tom and Annie, as seven-year-old children playing together. They promise to marry one another when they’re grown up.

Annie moves abroad, though, with her parents, and loses touch with Tom. Twenty years later, she’s about to marry someone else.

How do you handle that twenty-year gap?

You could:

#1: Separate the Novel into Two (or More) Parts

When the reader comes to a page reading “Part Two”, that’s a good clue that a major change has taken place. A new part to a story often heralds a significant jump in time. Sometimes, authors name the parts (just like chapters are sometimes named), though it’s more common to have a number.

One drawback to having a new part is that it can feel momentarily jarring to the reader, perhaps taking them out of the story briefly. That’s why I think they’re best used for large shifts, where you’re going to need to get the reader past the time jump anyway.

#2: Start a New Chapter

It can be tricky to know how exactly to break your novel into chapters … but it will general make sense to begin a new chapter to indicate the passage of time.

Keep in mind that just having a new chapter may not be enough to clue the reader in. You’ll probably need some other indication if you’re jumping forward months or years in the timeframe of the novel.

#3: Give an Explicit Time Reference

It’s often a good idea to clue the reader into a big time jump by making it explicit. This can be done with a line that’s separate from the text itself, after the part of chapter number, that gives the year (e.g. “1995”). You could use this if you’re jumping backwards in time, too.

Alternatively, you can put the reference in the first sentence of the chapter. Twenty years later, Annie had just found the perfect wedding dress.

Avoid Long Summaries

It can be tempting to give your reader the details of what’s happened during the time gap. But long passages of summary aren’t generally very interesting to read – by their very nature, they’re undramatic – and if the events of those twenty missing years are going to be important to the rest of the story, you can work them in later on.

Examples

In a Single Moment, by Imogen Clark

This novel begins with the year, “1976”, on its own page. The next page starts Chapter 1.

At each big time jump in the novel, there’s a fresh part, each given simply as a blank page with the year: 1976, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1992 and then (breaking the pattern once the girls are adults) “Seven Years Later”.

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, begins when Ender is six; he’s twelve by the end of the novel.

The reader is frequently clued into time passing, often with a reference to characters’ ages. (“Valentine celebrated Ender’s eight birthday alone” … “The boy is fourteen, the girl is twelve”). Sometimes the length of time that’s gone past is simply explicitly mentioned (“But things were quiet now, had been quiet for a year”.) Often, there’s a time jump at a chapter break.

Four Options for Dealing with Small Jumps in Time

Almost every novel is going to involve small jumps in time – perhaps from one day to the next, or from morning to evening.

Let’s say you’re writing a novel that takes place across several weeks. There’ll be days when nothing particularly interesting is happening (maybe your characters are at work or school) and days when lots of plot-relevant events are taking place.

There are several ways to move readers from the end of one interesting event to the start of the next. You can:

#1: Put in a Blank Line to Indicate Time Has Passed

A blank line is an easy way to indicate a new scene. You could also use three centred asterisks, if you want an even clearer break, like this:

***

If you do run straight on to the next paragraph without a blank line or any visual indication of time passing, you’ll probably need a quick summary instead (see below).

#2: Start a New Chapter

In my novels, I start a new chapter when I switch viewpoint. This means there’s usually a jump in time and often a shift in location, too.

Readers will be very used to this happening at the start of a chapter. They’ll expect to orient themselves to whatever’s happening, and you can jump a fairly big span of time with a chapter break.

#3: Summarise What’s Happened

I’d avoid summarising a long time break, as mentioned above, but a single sentence or two of summary is fine, and can help clue readers in to anything important that’s taken place in the story during the jump. For instance, The train was running late and horribly cramped. By the time Joe got off, his smart new suit was hopelessly wrinkled.

Examples

Almost any novel will involve small jumps in time – keep an eye out for them in whatever you’re currently reading.

Here are a couple of examples:

Storming, by K.M. Weiland:

Chapter Two ends:

Hitch stayed where he was and looked up at the moon. Seemed like the old girl was winking at him. Might it be she knew something they didn’t? What secrets did she hold within all that silence?

Chapter Three begins:

Walter liked the early mornings, especially in the summer – with the full moon still hovering near the horizon, on its way to setting.

It’s immediately clear that we’ve moved on a bit in time, and it seems safe to assume (particularly with the use of the moon in both chapters) that Walter’s scene takes place during the following morning, rather than several mornings after the events of Chapter Two.

Lifeform Three, by Roz Morris:

From Chapter 2:

At last the poovers can be emptied. On the way to the maintenance sheds, the other bod is boasting about his scores. Paftoo can only nod; he has had quite enough. All he has heard for hours is the rattling slurp of his machine and it has put him half to sleep.

(later, after a double line break)

Finally, the sun starts to set. The sky is darkening and the clouds are tipped with orange. Soon it will be night.

Paftoo feels such relief. He is looking forward to night. That’s when they switch off.

We get a sense of the monotony of Paftoo’s day without having to live through every moment of it. Words like “at last” and “finally” not only clue us in that some time has gone past, they indicate how Paftoo feels – he’s bored and time has passed very slowly for him.

Readers are well-used to stories moving forward in jumps, whether small or big – and as you can see from the examples, simple statements like the current date, or “for a year” are fine.

Handling time can feel a bit awkward when drafting, and it may be something that you want to revisit when you edit your work-in-progress – to check that transitions feel smooth, and that readers don’t get lost about “when” in the story they are. In the first draft, just make sure you know when everything’s taking place.

Further Reading:

Marking Time with the Viewpoint Character, Beth Hill, The Editor’s Blog

This post is filled with practical suggestions for using clear time markers, so the reader doesn’t feel confused or lost.

Time Marches On: Dealing with the Passage of Time Between Scenes, Janice Hardy, Fiction University

Janice brings together a bunch of great examples, particularly relevant if you’re writing fantasy or adventure.

Altering the Quality of Time in Your Novel, C.S. Lakin, Live Write Thrive

C.S. takes a slightly different tack here and looks at the quality of time – how the passage of time within your story feels to the viewpoint character and, by extension, to the reader.

How to Write Fiction (And Think About It) has a whole part devoted to “How to Manage Fictional Time”, with lots of examples. It’s a more theoretical / academic book than most writing guides, but well worth a read even if you’re writing genre rather than literary fiction.