I'm still trying to fine-tune my current story, and the hardest aspect of the story (and writing in general) I am struggling with is how to deal with timeskips. Because the story is written in 1st person PoV, I seem to have a harder time making timeskips (or generally skipping over boring/uneventful moments) feel more natural. It's not something I struggle with nearly as much in 3rd person PoV, but this may because 1st person is more personal, and in real life we can't just skip over moments in our waking hours. On top of that, my character lives a monastic life as a priestess, so she doesn't always get a change in scenery, spending most of her days in one location/within one building complex. And that means there are whole stretches of her day where nothing new happens. She also has responsibilities that sometimes prevent her from hanging out with her friends, so she also experiences periods of loneliness. But again, that leads back to writing a timeskip in 1st person being something I still can't write in a natural, less obvious way. Each edit I make to the story has improved its quality bit by bit, but for now I would love to get some tips and tricks on how to improve this one storytelling device.
"The service was boring and interminable. 6 hours later I found myself thinking of my world domination plan." "It took me 5 hours to finish copying the manuscript. I took a break by feeding the stray cats. Then Bellington came into the room." "I don't know how long it was, but after all the speeches were done, the sun was low in the sky, the red light streaming through the triangular windows of the seminary." Things like this, I would imagine, are not too bad.
In my latest story, also 1st person, I used a few tactics. 1 is breaking the 4th wall. “I will spare you the details of the next few days. Suffice it to say, I <summarize the important bits>” 2 is just jump into the summary. “Over the next few days...” 3 (my favorite) Is just put a scene break and jump ahead with no explanation.
Let the MC's train of thought start at the last action and carry over into the new beat when something happens that is related to this thought-train. For example, your priestess' duties include preparing lunch. That leads her to worrying about drought and wildlife, munching on the potatoes. That leads to another priestess, coming into her room in the evening and talking about if they need to buy food from local farmers. She's not really interested in the answer but uses it as a pretext to want your MC's views on the visitor they're going to get next morning.
Kind of..all of it, to be honest. Especially larger time jumps such as days. It just feels like such a cop-out starting a new chapter or scene explaining that some time has passed. And I always want the reader to be aware of how much time is passing, especially since there are some time-sensitive plot points going on.
You could always follow the format some books take and write the date/place at the beginning of the chapter whenever it changes or maybe have the character write in a journal, and the beginning of each chapter is a dated excerpt. I think that so long as you end a chapter/scene right and begin the next one right, you can get the reader to understand that time has passed without explicitly stating it, particularly if you do that straight from the get-go and keep to that rhythm. If nothing has happened in between, start the new chapter at the beginning of a new day. That indicates to me that time has passed, at least a night and possibly more. There's also stuff like "the days seemed to blend together, performing the same tasks over and over," or something like that. Whatever pace you set at the beginning, the reader will expect to continue, so if you start off with too much detail in terms of time, you have to maintain it, which is a PITA. I would just try your best and leave some place holders in areas where you need to express that time has passed but don't know how, then come here and have us bounce some ideas around for each particular instance
