I'm at a point where I want to gloss over a series of events that my MC experiences. Frankly, they aren't very interesting, and the reader will already expect these events to conclude in a certain way due to hints in a previous scene. The thing is, I need to cover what happened at least a little bit in order to tie up loose ends. This is the second place I've needed to do this, but last time I was able to split the summary between two scenes, so the summary didn't come off too heavily (imo). This time, I can't see a way around dedicating a small scene to expositing the summary (other than making several scenes to cover all of the events I'm summarizing, and that isn't going to happen). So, what I'm looking for is opinions on having an entire scene dedicated to event summary (a small scene, only ~300 words, but a scene nonetheless). I'm also open to any suggestions for alternative approaches as well. Thanks!
As a reader I would say that's totally ok. Every point you said in favour of doing it sounds sensible. I assume it's being done in dialogue?
My current draft doesn't, which is one of the reasons I wasn't sure about what I was doing. I couldn't think of a good way for the conversation to include everything without multiple fast-forwards in the scene (or giving the impression that the characters never talked about the events as they were happening). That said, most of the summary could be given in dialogue if I bring back a minor character I had previously dustbinned for being unnecessary. If I do that, he can talk with my MC about the loose-ends, and I can move some of the remaining summary into the next scene, which was originally going to be dedicated to travelling. Yeah, I think I'd be happy with that. Thanks for the reminder to put it into a dialogue format. I don't know why but you saying something made me start thinking harder about how I could pull it off, so... thanks!
