So, I am writing a historical novel which flips between modern day and past era. The modern day is written in first person and I find it easier to deal with any time lapses - there aren't massive ones anyway and the story flows well BUT the past era I'm find a nightmare to deal with time lapses (I need to fast forward a few years within a single chapter ideally - when somebody's life changes very much for the worse) and it is written in the third person, I really don't know how to deal with this and write it well. I feel I need to condense this particular part of the story into one chapter to maintain pace but don't know how to phase in the time lapses. Any advice please?
Depends how many lapses there are in one chapter. 'Milly carried on working at the hospital. Days became weeks, which stretched out into months. Before she knew it, some seven years had passed. Years in which nothing remarkable seemed to have happened at all. If you'd asked her, she would have told you she was happy. Looking back, though, with very little to show for her labour, Milly felt her life rather empty.' If the years have passed with some level of stasis, you can do that sort of thing.
Thanks JE, really useful suggestions and will incorporate. If anyone else has anything to add or any technique for covering lapses in time, it would be good to hear from you too.
Mine covered a span of three years, nine months of which were spent at sea during which nothing much happened, and many more months were just spent on interminable travels overland. So I just fast forwarded from one scene/location to where I wanted to be next. And dated the next chapter..."they arrived in Tianjin in a cold grey rainy day in October, fog so bad that no more ships would be landing today. Coolies huddled around fires... etc" Words to that effect. I liked what @JE Loddon did inside a chapter, but I only did that a few times. When they got back to Roman lines, I had them recount their trip through Parthia as part of their talking about their trip (they knew the general, he had been their commander when they departed). That way I significantly reduced that Parthian chapter of what was becoming an overlong travelogue. Mostly I simply began a new chapter at a different time and place
I think what has already been suggested is fab, but I thought I suggest some books for you to read that might help. That sort of thing happens within the books by Barbara Erksine. Like you, she also has them set in the modern day and a past era, and as her modern day characters often end up discovering the whole life story of the characters from the past era, there is a lot of time skipping in the chapters dedicated to said past era as we move from one important moment in their life to the next. It's handled very well, in the same sort of manner as @JE Loddon suggested. I recommend you give one a read. I've read Lady of Hay and Sleeper's Castle, so I recommend one of those.
You won't have any trouble skipping ahead as long as you orient the reader to how much time has passed and/or if the scene or characters have changed since the previous one. When you move to a new scene, make SURE this information is there at the start of it. "Two years later," or "When the war ended" or "Jean had been living in Amsterdam for a year before..." Statements like this will immediately orient the reader. Unless this kind of information is immediately forthcoming, the reader will assume that each scene follows another fairly quickly and logically. For example, if a scene ends with the character heading to the grocery store and the next scene opens in the grocery store, there isn't usually any problem. However, if a scene ends with the character going to the grocery store, and the next one opens with the character ten years later, after the trip to the grocery store resulted in a car crash that left her in a wheelchair for life, then you'll need to cover that gap somehow. If I need to read through four paragraphs to discover that, actually, ten years have passed and the characters are now in a completely different situation, then I'm likely to become disoriented or get off on the wrong foot. If I need to backtrack to figure things out, that's not good.
Do you think there is ever a situation where it could work? Like, allowing the reader to believe that the events are consecutive, only to reveal later that time has passed. If the fact that time had passed was significant in some way, could this revelation add surprise, or do you think it would always be disorientating and annoying?
If you want your reader's reaction to be momentary disorientation, and the disorientation serves a story purpose—then go ahead. The only real 'rule' is to understand how your storytelling will affect your readers (or most of them, anyway.) Then make sure the effect you create is actually the one you want.
Thank you for your book suggestion Seren, I am certainly going to take a look at this - and there was me thinking that I was being original! Still, the central theme of my book is pretty original and gives me great satisfaction to write. Thank you for all of your suggestions, much appreciated.
