In the story I'm planning, the hero starts off not knowing how to fight and needs to learn. Nothing really interesting happens until he's finished, but I need the part where he meets his mentor to help explain other parts of the story. So that's maybe two or three chapters of him finding his mentor, learning what he needs to know, and beginning his training. What do you guys think of skipping the training? Like, one chapter ends, *THREE MONTHS LATER*, and we pick back up when he knows how to fight? I know that time skips are used a lot, but they're usually after, like, the first chapter or prologue. Do you think it'd still work after two or three chapters?
I'm actually working on something similar, but I'm not skipping the training entirely. I'm doing the initial explanation/demonstration of what my main character is learning, and then I have a section that starts "over the course of the next few weeks, I learned how to be as swift as a coursing river with all the force of a great typhoon." Minus the Mulan lyrics. I think if you don't think the training is vital to the story, then go for skipping it. Personally, I like to see a little failure in heroes so they're not suddenly amazing at something. And depending on what the skill is they're learning, timing matters. Swordmasters take years to develop their skill, and so on and so forth. To summarize: it depends on the type of training your character goes through. For me, anyway. You can use shorter paragraphs to create a kind of montage like they do in films, and short sentences with sometimes one word to help the effect along. Hope this helps.
I'm sorry, I tried resisting, but the temptation was too great... In seriousness though, you could take the Empire Strikes Back way of handling the time, and pick parts out of his training that are relevant or needed for the final battle/endgame. This could lend your reader some insight into anything specific regarding your world building or character development that would lend added weight to whatever is to come. As a reader (and this is personal preference at the end of the day), going -SNIP- "Now he/she's awesomesauce" will make some folks think the character hasn't earned the right to any of these abilities. (Insert link to Rey Skywalker here) It's hard to dissect that part, however, considering we don't know more about the circumstances or problems involved.
I have training in my story as well. For me it's important for character development and moving the plot forward. It's also a way to create inside jokes and create a bond between certain characters that can only happen through training which is important for the story later.
The idea I'm working with is that superheroes were a thing, but one went bad and took over the world. His power is to steal other heroes' powers and make them his own, so over the years he's essentially turned himself into a god. The main character is the first person to have that same power in decades, making him the only person on earth who has a chance of someday standing up to the bad guy. The training he goes through is mostly for hand to hand and gun combat skills, just to keep him alive until he starts collecting his real powers.
Facing the exact same issue myself and not sure how to tackle it. When you train for something you learn and it changes you. So I'm trying to focus more on how my character changes as she learns. What changes take place in her. Also, trying to include things that are relevant to the "big finale". Also making it different and unique. Focusing on the student teacher relationship, which is one that has always fascinated me. And trying to drop in hints along the way that maybe my character is following someone she shouldn't be quite blindly. My character learns what she needs to know to achieve a goal. (or s taught what my antagonists wants her to know in order to manipulate her into achieving the goal the antagonist wants). What I intend to do, and what I would advice you to do is look for novels that cover training in their stories and the type of training you want. Some novels cover them as the main story, others, it's just a stepping block in the character's "to do list". Find one that resembles what you're trying to achieve and get a feel for how they did it (as long as they did it well)
I did the same as @Nesian. My trainee was a woman of 2000 years ago, who was of slight build, who had been a much-abused concubine for all her adult life (for her, since 12). Her trainer was a rather fierce barbarian woman of the Xiongnu nomads. I had to cover her training for much of the reasons cited above, also to develop why she would want to learn to fight, since she has every disadvantage one could have .... size, weight, reach. And a very strong lover, a centurion, who could protect her. And who didn't approve of the idea, either. And how she could be trained to plausibly overcome these disadvantages in a reasonable period of time. It was critical to the development of both her character and her trainer. And there were many times at the beginning when the trainee wondered why in the hell she was doing this. She had to learn to lose and get back up again anyway. I don't think it would be a good idea to jump from non-fighter to fighter with nothing in between.
Maybe I'm not understanding your post correctly, but it sounds like the story doesn't start until after the hero has been trained. In that case I'd start after his training and use either a prologue or flashbacks to cover important information that occurred beforehand and during. Though if you don't intend to use a prologue or have flashbacks be a recurring theme then you shouldn't feel pressured to. If this is further into the story, then obviously that wouldn't work. Honestly I'm struggling with that myself in my current work in progress, so I can't really provide any good advice on how to approach it. The best I can say is to focus on important details, and have the lessons we focus on not just give him additional skill sets but develops his character or his relations to others.
I recommend including training sequences but have them in small snipits throughout it, and have the scenes during the training not be about the training specifically. Like, they're about deeper character things, but they're also training and growing.
I'm in the same boat. I feel as if training entire month for selection in my book bogs down the pace of the plot. During training he learns more about himself and stakes of failure. I'm at 50k words and realized I was writing like a day to day pace. I need to fix it where it's a few weeks later. I'm working making more training summary then slowing down to important dialogue in key events during training. I went back to study how JK paced her first Harry Potter book. It spans entire months from Halloween to Christmas. I noticed she wrote mainly summaries of what was going on then slowed down to a important key events in the story time line. That's my two cents and that's my plan of action what I'm going to do.
My MC's story is similar to yours. He is trained at this academy to become a type of elite soldier. But surreptitiously mixed in with the combat stuff is some heavy religious indoctrination. How did you design your student-teacher relation? The mentors at my academy are brutal and cold, but there's still a connection built up between them and my character. Haven't quite decided how it's to be.
If you consider the 'training' as backstory then the story begins at the end of the training. The character can remember the training, meeting the trainer etc.
I just went in blind but started with thinking of the teacher's strengths and weaknesses and tried to make them different from my students. I looked at what was being taught to my character besides magic. For example patience. I made the tutor a master when it came to being patient because she'd been through the training. My tutor is actually just manipulating the student, she has no real interest in teaching her, just using her. So she acts the way my character wants her to. My character is looking for a "Mother-figure" subconsciously - so my tutor took on that persona. I looked for areas of similarity they could bond over and areas where they were different for some conflict. My whole characters arc is disillusionment and then down into corruption. As she finally begins using the skills taught to her to defeat her tutor. Don't know if that's any help to you. I don't tend to over plan relationships as I find them manifest naturally on the page. I do make sure all my characters have a stake in the end goal and a reason why that happening could be good or bad.
If you're finding scenes boring or tedious, so will the reader. Either something happens in the training related to the story besides finding the mentor or leave it out. There are ways to introduce the mentor without it needing to be the first time and without needing whatever scene you had in mind for this meeting (see above comments). Backstory is one of those things some of us (me) had to learn to let go of and only dribble it in as needed. We know all the details of the story we developed. It turns out there's a balance between the reader needing some of it yet not needing all of it. At first you want to give the reader everything you know about the characters and story. Turns out you will always know more about your story than the reader will and that's okay.
My own feeling is akin to what @GingerCoffee said. When you think about it, unless your story starts with your main characters being born, they will already have some developed relationships in place, won't they? Friends, family, teachers, acquaintances, etc. You will need to find ways to include the effect of all these relationships, without taking the time to go back to the beginning with each one. Bypassing the start of each relationship is a trick to learn, but it works really well, once you master it. One of the first-draft writing tricks I discovered is this one: don't write backstory. I know this sounds like a radical approach—and it is. But start the story where the story itself seems to start and just write it as if the reader already knows that backstory. You can fill in the necessary details later on, if you need to, but if you get us in to the story via the POV character's own thoughts and feelings, you may find you don't need to include all that many. If the main plot of your story starts with your character ready to fight, then start it there. If the relationship with the mentor is important, show the reader what that relationship is like 'now.' You can drop hints about how it developed, without taking us through every step of the development. We assume that any character needed to learn the skills they now possess, but it's not necessary to always show them in the learning process. Introduce them as already skilled, but then give hints as to how they acquired those skills. This could be accomplished within a single conversation between your POV character and the older mentor. (Mentor: "I had my doubts when we began, because you were such a stubborn and clumsy child, but you've done me proud. You argued with me every step of the way, didn't you? But you stuck to it. You're now the fighter I'd always hoped to train. Go forth and crack heads, and may the Force be with you.") Or the backstory can be hinted at in a conversation between your POV character and another character (a former sparring partner?) ABOUT the mentor. Or it can happen via the POV character's thoughts and feelings about how long it took him to acquire the skills he now has, and his thoughts and feelings about the person who trained him—including the way they met.
This may not apply to the OP's specific situation but, in general, "training" sequences are always meant to serve a purpose when it comes to storytelling. However, it's also one of those things that's been done so many times before that we are almost pre-programed to think it is natural to include. It has become a part of our subconcious when we think of developing a character that goes from "unskilled" to "skilled." Having said that, my recommendation is oddly not to exclude training, but to consider why it is important for the character to start off "unskilled" in the first place, and why acquiring this "skill" will enable him to become something more. If there is no meaning behind the journey of "acquiring the skill (= training)" then it is often better to start with the character off already skilled in this area. If you feel the character needs to be weak at the beginning, then create a reason and give meaning for his transition from weak to strong. Ultimately, "training" symbolizes character "transition" both internal and external. If there is no meaningful transition, then feel free to exclude because the most appropriate place to start a character is at the point where transition becomes meaningful to them.
This is all good advice, but smacks of 'editing'. Write everything you know first. All of it. Finish the story first! Once down completely as it is in your head, accept that MASSIVE chopping of text will be required. It's just a bucket of alphabet soup on a computer. NEVER be afraid to 'waste' space, there's plenty of it. Never, ever, try to 'get it right' on the first try. Don't be afraid that not all will be used. Save it in another file if it's dear to you (but only to you). The rough draft is only for you. It's your right (yes, right) of passage. The rest is only for the reader. OT, check out the Kung Fu series (from the 70s) for flashback sequences. Starship Troopers, Iron Fist, and perhaps Arrow, just for the quick passage of time in the transition. For the twisted mentoring, write tons of what's in your head and be prepared to chop the hell out of it in subsequent drafts.
