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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/21674
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Is it a good idea, to make the protagonist pull themselves together at a point in a work of fiction. I've been writing a novel, and for practically the entire first half the main protagonist has been running from everything, scared to kill, generally scared of the battle he has been plunged into. He relies on someone else to help him get through it, that he recently broke away from as he wanted to escape from the thing entirely.

Is it a good idea to have these two characters come back together, fast forward a few weeks and continue the story? After that event, and those few weeks which nothing exciting happens in so I don't need to go through them, the main protagonist thinks "Okay, if I run from everything nothing is going to change. Let's put an end to this once and for all."

Is there a better way to put across such a massive change in attitude? Is this a good move to pull off? I've written this at about 50k words in the novel, so the protagonist has been being scared for a while. I'm worried that the change will be too sudden and the reader would not respond well to it.

If I skip forward one week, is that too far forward to skip?

Original score: 2