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. 

Creative Exercises

I know that everyone is familiar with the 10,000 hour rule. If you're not then here's the gist of it; to be good at anything in this life you have to practice to the point that you have completed 10,000 hours of doing it so that it comes easy to you whenever you're called upon to do it.

• You want to be funny at the drop of a pin? Practice telling jokes for 4 hours a day. 
• You want to be a master programmer to develop a million dollar app? Write code for 4 hours a day.
• You want to direct a movie? Go shoot video for 2 hours, edit it for 2 hours. 
• You want to be an ace pitcher? Throw a ball for 4 hours a day. Just remember with any physical activity, you have to train responsibly, otherwise you could overwork your muscles to the point that you're actually damaging your body. 

So writing is no different. Everyone is always looking for that one idea to get started, that moment of inspiration to sit down and start writing. But then that moment comes and you sit down to write and it's not coming through your fingers onto the page or everything you write just doesn't feel right. Why? Because the time between waiting and the light bulb going off, you were sitting on your hands.

Everything I write I would love to see in print or on screen. I would love to make money doing what I love to do, telling stories. But writing gold every single time is not the reality of our situation. You just have to write it all out, develop sentences, work out the dialogue, create characters, practice your style, understand your tone, work with scenes and description.

Doing flash fiction stories (600 words) is a great start to get yourself typing. Go on the internet, look at a picture, then create a story around it. That's one great way to find an idea to practice.

Keep your ears open. Everything you watch, read or listen to, take notes. Kafka's Metamorphosis came from a sentence in Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. Listening to Harmontown, Bobcat Goldthwait mentioned the mental strain it took to make the documentary Call Me Lucky and how now it was time to make a 'talking duck' movie. I took that idea and made a my own 'talking animal' script Parrot Detective, something that will never get made, but was an exercise in creating characters, situations, conflicts, relationships, dialogue and description to help me moving forward in my writing career.

'But Josh, why should I waste my time?' That's a good question. Go back and look at the first paragraph. It's easy to see how the 10,000 hour rule works for athletes and performers, but not for writers. Anything you want to be good at, you need to practice. That's why.

My script writing exercises also have a second rule to better prepare for future employment in writing. That is time restriction or deadline. Staff writers have two weeks to write a script, so that's how much time I give myself to complete a TV project I'm working on. I don't always hit that deadline, because of work and social engagements, but I don't give up.

Don't give up! is your mantra to completion. And then the best part about writing thousands of pages is that you can now steal from yourself. You can take all your best work and put it into one piece of work that will rise you up to completing something you can be proud to show to the world.

Go out there and create something.