Time

Usually with longer fics I tend to portray events as they happen with some time skips here and there. Some of my fics I would span several years but only portray a scene or two for a particular scene (if that makes sense). For my upcoming fic, I try to give a realistic timeline of the events as I don't it to conflict with what happened in Sun/Moon and also give a more realistic approach how big/long it is to travel some of the islands. Also I plan to have one or two chapters that will take place some time before the main story's events, similar to how icomeanon6 did with his latest chaptered fic.

Bay Alexison said:

For my upcoming fic, I try to give a realistic timeline of the events as I don't it to conflict with what happened in Sun/Moon and also give a more realistic approach how big/long it is to travel some of the islands. Also I plan to have one or two chapters that will take place some time before the main story's events, similar to how icomeanon6 did with his latest chaptered fic.

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Realistic travel time is the most nebulous, frustrating thing about trying to write Pokemon fanfiction. xD I seriously have no idea how big any of these places are "supposed" to be, so that kind of thing I usually decide on a fic-by-fic basis.

As for time-lining, I've found that keeping a spreadsheet has helped in planning what I'm writing right now. For me it's less about travel time though than it is about keeping the characters' ages straight, down to the birthdays. Ages are probably the one aspect of time in my own fiction that I pay the most attention to lately, perhaps to excess. There might be a scene for example where I decide the characters have to be 13, just-turned-15, and 19 or the dynamic won't fit. And if there's another scene with the same characters that takes place years later, those ages have to be consistent then, too. I want age differences to partially inform the way characters interact (think about how huge the difference between 9 and 10 and 10 and 11 must seem to a new Pokemon trainer), and it was actually a juggling act to get those differences to line up across the entire timeline.

As for the flow of time within a story, for me it really depends on what the story demands. The first thing I (try to) picture when I'm laying out a story is the series of scenes and the logic that connects them, whether that's plot beats, character beats, or the ramp of excitement. If the plot moves smoother or the revelation of character is more impactful when some scenes take place earlier in time than the preceding scene, that's what I go with. I don't think readers in general mind large jumps forward or backward in time as long as those jumps are purposeful. Just as it's important not to jump ahead over important events, it's also important not to feel obliged to dwell on stretches of time that you have nothing to say about. If you have two scenes that ought to be back-to-back for story reasons and they take place a month apart, skip that month because the readers won't miss it unless you give them a reason to miss it.

Mostly-related-rant: It makes no sense to read The Chronicles of Narnia starting with The Magician's Nephew. It absolutely guts the effect of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for no reason other than preserving chronological order, and The Magician's Nephew itself works far better when it is answering previously established questions than it is starting off on its own.

My main project is partially set in the real world, so I'm fortunate that I can just follow the basic rules of time for plot progression. Currently, each chapter's events happen during the course of a day (because half of the main characters are in school), so the chapter begins right in the morning with the characters waking up, and ends with the characters going to bed. Right now, this is how the story progresses, but I'm going to have a two-week time skip, which I'll mention in the chapter that picks up after the time skip.

To keep track of the time and what day it is, I have a calendar printed out from the year that the story takes place (2002). The chapters' events are marked down on whatever day they take place, along with birthdays, the weather forecast, and the phases of the moon.

I do my best to keep scenes in order, though there will be times where I "jump back" a few hours to describe what happened to another set of characters. I do my best to make sure that the time and setting is described so the readers don't get too lost. And sometimes I'll drop a day of the week into the dialogue so readers know that so far, the story is on a "chapter = a day" thing. And that the story is going to be far more rooted in human world plots than fantasy world plots as the story goes on.

icomeanon6 said:

Mostly-related-rant: It makes no sense to read The Chronicles of Narnia starting with The Magician's Nephew. It absolutely guts the effect of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for no reason other than preserving chronological order, and The Magician's Nephew itself works far better when it is answering previously established questions than it is starting off on its own.

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Oops. That's how I read Narnia: started with The Magician's Nephew and then The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I really hate time, and it mostly boils down to travel time rather than time spent in a city doing things. I feel confident that the time spent taking care of business while in town is accurately portrayed, but it's the travel that has me worried. I usually do that "1 route = 1 day" rule but that seems a little too quick sometimes. From my own experience of travelling on foot, it took me about 3 hours to walk ~9 miles once. Maybe it's not unreasonable to have the characters pass over an entire route in a day, but it still feels like it sometimes.

Well it ultimately depends on the story for me.
However, I choose specific instances when to do time jumps. here are some:

Hour or more (<day)
1) Nothing happens till said time.
2) Events of now effecting or finished later
3) Avoid unnecessary filler
4) several skips if chain of events/scenes apply to something later
5) If land/space jump to other characters and their events.


Day or two time jump
1) When certain scene is done
2) When nothing else big or relevant happens that day.
3) When afternoon or later is when scene start
4) Important interactions end for the day/night.
5) Other or same characters returning to place/area with relevance to scene/arc.

Week or month skip
1) When training or practice
2) Big event that is relevant to the plot with nothing but non-needed filler in between
3) Nothing extravagant happens or events can be summed in a paragraph
4) If character leaves, but returns later
5) Time waiting for next part of plot/arc

Year or more
1) Growing or coming of age
2) Years of training, study, or school
3) Jump to another part in their life, if former is resolved
4) If events of prior event till now can be summed easily
5) If character changes years later of filler for reasons of Personality, Physicality, Intellect, Social, Confidence, or Behaviors.

Did I mention that I take to much time for detail. Feel free to bang head on keyboard from bad joke :)

Eliza Prescott said:

I really hate time, and it mostly boils down to travel time rather than time spent in a city doing things. I feel confident that the time spent taking care of business while in town is accurately portrayed, but it's the travel that has me worried. I usually do that "1 route = 1 day" rule but that seems a little too quick sometimes. From my own experience of travelling on foot, it took me about 3 hours to walk ~9 miles once. Maybe it's not unreasonable to have the characters pass over an entire route in a day, but it still feels like it sometimes.

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Yup, my exact problem with the fic I'm writing now. As I mentioned before, I tried to give a realistic amount of time from point x to point y and I did the one route/one day rule, but I too feel that's probably not that ideal if you're like sightseeing and such.