Writing: Time Jumps

I was reading Loser by Chuck Palahniuk, a short story in the book Stories: All New Tales
(Buy it here---->Stories: All New Tales Edited By Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrontonio  or pick it up at your local library.) 

In Loser, he tells a story of a Frat boy at The Price is Right (although he never says it) tripping on acid. It's very entertaining, as I enjoy Palahniuk's novels. Although, as I am also familiar with The Price is Right, he made a choice in his story to skip the part when you spin the wheel to win the chance to go to the showcase. He instead jumps straight into the showcase with a time job maneuver with the sentence:

"It's like forever later, but you win all the way to the Showcase Round." pg. 198

As a writer myself, I think about this choice and my own writing:

1. This is something I am afraid to do. 

2. This is something I don't know how to do. 

3. Is this something I want to do. 

In my novel, The Van Allen Horror (working title), I have them flying towards the moon and use the need for sleep, something very real, to pass the time as they fly without having to write a lot of extraneous dialogue and action. But, the wheel is something crucial to The Price is Right experience. Why wouldn't he take a paragraph to write about the experience of spinning the wheel, 

The curved object spun at a rate slower than I felt my muscles do. The sea of red shirted Zelta Delt brothers screamed for it to keep going, but not in those words, in the continuous chant they started forever ago. The smear of white with a splash of blue green beeped at a pace that made me feel I was having a heart attack. And with each slower beep, it calmed me down until it stopped, then time stopped and a ding that sent under a sign that when I kept looking up thought was an upside down 60. The United States Marine man made it up. It was his turn. He spun the wheel at a pace I was sure was going to send it off flying off the stage, hitting a perfect ten through the red sea of Zelta Delts. A collective 'Awww' before the marine shook hands with the grey haired man and mentioned returning after these messages. 

Something like that. Except in my own style. 

I like my stories to represent real time, yet every story, focusing on short stories, can't represent the whole day in the life of our characters. We have to break it up into the most important moments of the story, otherwise it will be boring for the reader, and the writer.

In a short story I am working on, Tub Licker, I am using time jumps with line spaces. After one scene ends, I skip two lines and start the new scene either an hour from the last line or a whole day, I've read other writers who use this method and find it to be a useful way to time jump through all those boring moments like: unpacking, cleaning, going to the bathroom, etc., that, in this story, don't have any plot or character development contained in them.

One writer, Edgar Cantero, in his great book Meddling Kids, calls the skipping of lines out in a brief moment of Meta writing. In the chapter, he finishes a paragraph, skips two lines then writes, "Two blank lines later," then continues the action without skipping any time at all. The key to this being that it fits the style of his writing throughout the whole book, and it doesn't break the reader's suspension of disbelief. It has a natural flow that fits into the story, and provides an instance of humor within the tense action that is happening to the characters. 

As a writing exercise, find a time jump moment in one of your favorite stories and write what you think would happen in that time. 

As a writer, think about how you use time and different techniques you use, or want to develop, in skipping over certain parts of your story.

Feel free to share your writing in the comments, or share any advice or other examples that you may have on the subject of time jumping in writing with me. I am always happy to learn and discuss writing techniques with other writers or avid readers.