Avoiding passing time by switching PoV - Viable method?
I once wrote a short story that was around ninety pages. It encompassed approximately a month. Since it was a short story, there were necessarily parts of it where days, weeks even, went by without much happening. Aka, passing time.
Needless to say, said passing time would be boring to read through, so I decided to skip it. However, simply saying, "a week later," or, "not two days afterwards," (which felt disjointed to me and interrupted the flow of the story) didn't seem to be the way to do it.
I finally gave up trying to whack it into shape and wrote what was happening with someone else at about the same time - a scene which was way more engaging. Surprisingly, this worked. When I came back to the original PoV, I was able to just start him at several days after I had left him, and the gap felt natural, as long as it was explained.
My question is this: Is this a viable method for ignoring passing time and still not interrupting the flow/pace of the story? Or are there hidden problems with it that I am missing?
1 answer
As long as you make it clear to the reader where you are in time in relation to the previous scene, it's perfectly fine.
(David and Leigh Eddings, writers of the Belgariad/Malloreon series, also recommend weather reports as a way to show time passing: "It rained the rest of the day" or "After three days of snow, we were ready for some sun.")
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