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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47658
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

As long as you don't keep people hanging too long and you do the skip at an appropriate time, it can work.

> Bob meets Charlie on a chatroom. They talk for a while, then Charlie has to go to bed so he can get to work in the morning. Just as he is leaving, for work, he hears a knock at the door. It's Bob.  
> "Hey Charlie. Sorry for just stopping by, but I wanted to continue our conversation from last night. Also, I'm actually an international agent and have been tasked by {3 letter agency} to keep you safe. You can't go to work today."

Charlie went to bed, so an appropriate time for Bob to show up and announce himself with his locating abilities is when Charlie is about to leave for work. The time and circumstances can change, but it needs to be a logical break. Bob showing up in the middle of their text conversation can work, but it has to show that Charlie is really quirky and not quite right in the head, to make it seem appropriate. This could even include a text Bob sends to Charlie after the door is opened.

> Mary is tied up by the robbers who invaded her home. Eventually, the robber start to get hungry and want supper. Knowing she's a famous chef, they untie her from the chair, but leave her foot tied to the stove so she can make them supper. As she's moving around the kitchen, she manages to hide a paring knife in the small of her back in the waistband of her skirt. When the robber tie her back up, they forget to check her for weapons, and they fall asleep thinking she's secure.  
> Ch. 4  
> Mary is running outside while calling the police from her mobile phone.

Here, there's fewer steps to jump, which makes it a little easier for the reader to assume she dug out the knife, cut her bonds, and snuck out of the house without anyone hearing.

> {Long explanation of how Axel and Susan came to be in the cabin in the middle of a blizzard.} When Axel and Susan wake up in the morning, they find they are stuck in the cabin under a snowfall so heavy that the door is blocked under the snow.  
> Ch.34  
> Susan is crossing the frozen lake by foot. She just happens to wave down a sheriff that's going by on a snowmobile and explains the situation. How they managed to slide a window open, dig out some snow and she got out, just before the snow on the roof collapsed behind her. When the sheriff asks where her boot are, she explains that she got caught in the mini-avalanche and just barely pulled herself free, losing her boots. Since she knew she couldn't dig out Axel, she took off running to get help.

Again, the chapter change is a good place to make the cut, but the real difference is explaining it to a 3rd party, which lets the reader know the chain of events without repeating it for the sake of the sheriff. In this case, you have a 2nd jump that you can avoid. That jump is from when Susan meets the sheriff to going back to the cabin. If you tell Susan's escape story as it happens, you don't want to repeat it, so a jump is going to happen regardless if you hadn't jumped her escape to begin with. This can actually make things flow a little better.

Switching things up by using the different tactics can be ok, but don't overuse them. It can easily become an artificial tension making plot device the reader will catch onto, leaving them concentrating more on "how blatantly obvious it was and how lame will the next one be?"

I'm not a writer, so my examples aren't that great. I've read enough books, though, to realize how transparent something like this can be. It can make for a great twist, or it can be a crutch. If it doesn't flow like a real dialog or how someone would actually explain it, then it's unnecessary. If it repeats a description, like the 3rd example, it can be useful, since it's moving a jump to a more logical position. It also breaks up the action a little, and prevents a "never ending chapter" while neatly ending the previous chapter.

Original score: 15