Little disjointed scenes
My MC is going through boot camp. Physically and mentally, he goes from high-school boy to soldier prepared for combat. Along the way there's struggles, there's new friendships formed, there's the changing interaction with his family (we're talking Israeli boot camp - he's home every third weekend).
This is what I'm struggling with:
Boot camp is mostly very repetitive. So I show little flashes of it: first day, first time on guard, first Shabbat dinner on the base, first time firing a rifle. Then I go back to the same tasks a month later, and they're routine - they're happening in the background, while something else takes the focus of the scene.
Similarly, J.K. Rowling starts Hogwarts with a first Potions lesson, first Transfiguration lesson, etc. Problem is, Rowling can put all the "firsts" in the course of one in-story week. In boot camp, "firsts" are spread over a longer period of time. I find myself with relatively short scenes, and time-skips of a week or two between them. The overall feel is very disjointed.
To explain differently, when a movie shows a training montage (example from Mulan), it is understood that there are time skips between the short frames of training (not only between beginning and end). In a written medium, this doesn't work.
I could see those scenes working as short diary entries - in a diary format, you expect time skips when nothing interesting happens, and short entries when the character writing is tired. But I'm writing in third person limited, so a diary format wouldn't work.
How can I reduce the "choppiness" of my narrative? At the moment, I feel I'm giving my reader separate pictures, each framed and hung in sequence, when what I should be giving them is a movie, if that metaphor makes sense.
3 answers
Expanding on Cyn's last paragraph.
In the case of bootcamp, you can skip it entirely and just give a summary at the end. The important element is making the reader know what all the boot-camp brought to your character. As a matter of fact, the knowledge could have come from having trained for many years, or from uploading it in their memory (e.g. as it happens in the Matrix movies). There is an emotional aspect too, and the true deep meaning of it can be fully grasped at the end of the process.
In practice:
MC enrolled in the academy on May 20th. It was a bright day and MC was singing a martial tune with the heart full of hopes and dreams of glory in his young mind. It took six years to break him, and just when he was about to quit, he reached that incredible graduation like an animal about to drown who miraculously feels the shore under the paws.
"You look so changed." said his childhood friend, meeting him at the reception. "And that shooting demonstration! Your skills are amazing!"
"Yes ma'am." said he.
"I imagine you have a lot of stories to tell."
"Not really. At first it was just running around the courtyard with the Sergeants screaming in your brain. Then it was getting to love and fear the weapons. It is like a relationship, you know? The first day you think it is going to explode in your hands, and you don't want to ruin it like that. After one hundred days, even if you could dismantle and reassemble it with a blindfold, and yet you cannot think of parting from it."
"Those sound like incredible stories to me."
"They did to me too, years ago. Now it is a past I wish I could forget."
There we have it. We skipped six years. Asserted what the training was about. Showed that the MC has gained some skills which you may want to use later. And we also hinted at the emotional impact on the MC. And by keeping the time jump in one place, it does not feel choppy, and it does not drag.
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I'm dealing with some similar problems, on a smaller scale. The first third of my novel is composed of short chapters that move the story along. All the emphasis is on getting to the main location. Then they're there.
Suddenly their days and nights become repetitive and wearying. This is part of the learning experience and something they need to go through. Obviously I don't want the reader to go through it in the same depth as the first part of the book (which spanned about a week).
In the last third (or more) of my book they're moving again and encountering new things, though there will be some repetition there too.
I'm dealing with it by shifting the time arc of the narrator.
Perhaps there's a name for this but that's how I think of it. My narrator is also 3rd person limited, with slight peeks into my MC's head (I have a couple chapters from other characters' points of view and get more into their heads).
Some of the narration happens in real time, more or less.
Not five feet away crouched the woman, pushing mud into the corners of a form. She dipped her hand in water to smooth the top and finished with a dusting of powder from the other hand, before moving on to the next. Others, all grandparents—some so old they could barely balance on their bent legs—did the same a few feet away. Children—all younger than Simon—stood nearby, ready to pull up the forms and run them elsewhere in the mist.
Sometimes the narrator uses details to compact a longer action, but one that is still within a fairly limited time period, in this case, no more than an hour.
Ruth tried everything. The fresh dates that reminded her of home, soft chewy bread baked in rounds and spread with spiced lentil paste and minced onion, squares of what looked like feta cheese soaked in olive oil and herbs, and some fruits she didn’t recognize. Even the water was delicious.
Time compression is going to happen more often than not, otherwise you'd never get anywhere. Real time storytelling usually happens with dialogue, but not always. Transitions often compress time and merge multiple actions into one.
When the sunlight was completely gone and the nearly half-full crescent moon shone in the sky, more people began to filter into the courtyard.
Sometimes the narrator needs to compress even more into a few lines. Here's where you can do things like describe a task in detail then add "as the days passed, he found was able to lift two boxes at a time, then three." Or show how his shoes are worn down and his shirt is tight around his biceps.
Or just straight up cram years into seconds.
After six long years, Sophie turned 15. She had one letter from her parents, written a month after they left, and five postcards from Gustav. The war was over. Renee’s parents moved to New York and she left on the train to join them. Werner had to take a train and a boat to meet his father in Australia. Eight children had the same news: No one was sending for them.
In your story, bootcamp is going to end up being a disjointed memory for your character. Just like college or summer camp or 8th grade or any other long mostly-same experience is for someone. Days (weeks, months) run together. A few things will stand out, especially firsts. If your narrator uses past tense, there's no reason you can't describe much of the experience like an actual memory. Memories skip around. You might want to keep the chronological order of things but what's important will be brief details and the overall picture, not the mundanity of the in-between.
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Does he have any friends there?
One solution is to push the training camp into the background. The problem sounds like you don't have enough conflict, your scenes come up short.
I'd focus on some relationships, perhaps a competitive one with friends, but you can have a conversation while these things are going on. Get some perspective on the character, create some conflict through competition, discussing the jerks in charge, screwing up, etc. Make a friend or two. Develop some character. Tell some life story.
In a way, we don't need to know that much about boot camp. Hooray, he learned to march and shoot. All that can be accomplished while he's doing something else, like building a friendship, writing home, helping other people get through it, screwing up and needing help, joking around, etc. The thread that ties the scenes together is a growing friendship, comraderie and comfort that most people develop when going through an ordeal together.
That can also help us see what he's good at, and what he's bad it. And how he handles winning, and handles losing.
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