How much time lapses between your chapters? Do they pick up the next day? The next hour? The next minute? The next month? I know there is no right answer for this, but I was curious as to how some of you approach this. Also, how important do you think consistency is? Like if chapter two takes place a month after chapter one and maybe there is a similar time lapse between chapters two and three, would it be weird to have chapter four start basically a minute after chapter three ends? Also, does this consistency help with developing the plot? Or maybe that doesn't matter? Thank in advance for your thought on this.
For my WIP, I have time lapses of one day to several weeks. Honestly, I think that as long as you start out the chapter and give some sort of allusion to how much time has passed, it shouldn't really matter. Now, I do think that if every one of your chapters had a time lapse of one day except for one which had a three month lapse, that may be a little weird. I think having consistency would help, but as long as you're alluding to how much time has past in the beginning of a chapter, it probably isn't as necessary. That's just my opinion though.
I consider chapters to be like indivisible but discrete units of storytelling, a bit like Stanley Kubrick's seven non-submersible units (see e.g. http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/stanley-kubricks-7-non-submersible-units-made-2001-unforgettable-film) in cinema (I know film isn't literature, but they have narrative in common). Each chapter can be as digressive and descriptive as your style demands, but if you have a chapter that does nothing but fill the time gap between two other chapters, what's the point in it? So I'd say short answer is: whatever the time is between the end of the chapter you've finished and the next essential part of your story. Could be seconds, could be millennia (e.g. in sci-fi). And of course you can have flashbacks and other devices to go back and describe earlier events, so the jump between chapters can be even greater.
It depends on the story. UTK is almost all time jumps of only a day or two between chapters because I'm following a competition setup where something major happens at least every other day with a few notable exceptions. From Blood to Roses has a some chapters that are days apart and other that are weeks, and in the case of the last chapter there's a 3 year flash forward. Gravity has lots of weeks-long gaps because not a lot happens between important events besides one of my MCs working out like a maniac to get in shape. Basically, I use as long as a span as needed to get to the next event that drives the plot forward, and that heavily depends on the story I'm telling at the time.
As long as you make it clear where the new chapter starts in terms of time, your gaps simply need to fit the story. There is no need to fill in everything your characters experience. What you want is for what you do include to move the story forward.
I tend to visualise my writing like a movie so literally any time jump between a scene cut is possible
I've had weeks and I have minutes. The important part is that it works for the chapter in question and that it's clear for the reader to understand.
