Current Events > Why don't writers use longer time skips?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Protagonist is just learning about the world

*1 year passes*

Protagonist is now a chiseled veteran

A year is barely anytime at all. You're still a beginner in most crafts.

Boy, that's how the world works

ItzKnightz posted...

Boy, that's how the world works

no it's not.

Squall28 posted...

no it's not.

Time passes like sand
I honestly don't know why they don't do longer time skips in books.

because if a potential sequel requires a longer time skip to make sense, the writer has a much narrower time period to work with.

AsucaHayashi posted...

because if a potential sequel requires a longer time skip to make sense, the writer has a much narrower time period to work with.

What do you mean? Why is saying 5 years has passed between Part 1 and 2, harder to say than saying only 1 year has passed. It's practically 1 line of dialogue. Just make it more believable. I'm watching a show right now, won't name to avoid spoilers, but the protagonist went from being a scrawny rookie kid to the buff leader of the gang. When I watched the scene, I was like oh, so like a few years passed. I looked it up and it was a few months. It's like why. WHY do you have to cram stuff into the smallest window possible.

Squall28 posted...

Why is saying 5 years has passed between Part 1 and 2, harder to say than saying only 1 year has passed.

i'm guessing if the show runs for 20 years or it gets revived in 30 years(cuz you know, corporate greed), suddenly the protagonist(s) has to be 100+ years old for it to make sense if they kept adding 5 years whenever they wrote themselves into a time skip.

Squall28 posted...

What do you mean? Why is saying 5 years has passed between Part 1 and 2, harder to say than saying only 1 year has passed. It's practically 1 line of dialogue. Jusr make it more believable. I'm watching a show right now, won't name to avoid spoilers, but the protagonist went from being a scrawny rookie kid to the buff leader of the gang. When I watched the scene, I was like oh, so like a few years passed. I looked it up and it was a few months. It's like why. WHY do you have to cram stuff into the smallest window possible.

lmao I have a feeling I know exactly what show you're talking about.

The longer the time skip, the more the status quo has to change. Say the protagonist meets a bunch of people before the time skip and they all become friends. If you have, say, a ten-year time skip but don't factor that into the state of the friend group, it looks unrealistic. After ten years, you'd expect there to be changes. Maybe one of them died, maybe another got married. Maybe there was a falling out and half the group split off. If the friend group looks basically the same as they did ten years ago, it feels harder to believe.

But there's a flip side to that. Maybe the writer wants that friend group to be a longer-lasting part of the story. Or maybe it would hurt the story to change the dynamic too much. Like, what's the point of introducing this whole friend group if you're just gonna rip it apart with a time skip?

So in that case, just do a shorter time skip. This lets you show how some things about the world may have changed, but not everything has. The protagonist might be stronger now than they used to be, but their friends never left their side.

Basically, the more time you put between point A and point B, the more things you need to change for it to feel realistic, and there are some things you may not want to change that much.

Should just do away with timeskips and use training montages instead

SydnieStarlight posted...

The longer the time skip, the more the status quo has to change. Say the protagonist meets a bunch of people before the time skip and they all become friends. If you have, say, a ten-year time skip but don't factor that into the state of the friend group, it looks unrealistic. After ten years, you'd expect there to be changes. Maybe one of them died, maybe another got married. Maybe there was a falling out and half the group split off. If the friend group looks basically the same as they did ten years ago, it feels harder to believe.

But there's a flip side to that. Maybe the writer wants that friend group to be a longer-lasting part of the story. Or maybe it would hurt the story to change the dynamic too much. Like, what's the point of introducing this whole friend group if you're just gonna rip it apart with a time skip?

So in that case, just do a shorter time skip. This lets you show how some things about the world may have changed, but not everything has. The protagonist might be stronger now than they used to be, but their friends never left their side.

Basically, the more time you put between point A and point B, the more things you need to change for it to feel realistic, and there are some things you may not want to change that much.

That actually makes my point STRONGER. Do you know what else these writers like to do? The protagonist will meet a friend group and act like they're best friends after they've known each other for a few months. If they're still friends after 10 years, you know they have a real bond. Instead we get characters acting all dramatic about people they just met. Some of these guys are barely even acquaintances.

Why even write stories? Introduce your character, do a 10 year time skip, and resume at the final battle.

3 pages, max. Should be all you need.

Yeah its always weird when you finish a series that has a close cast of characters, and then you realize theyve known each other for a maximum of 1 month or something

Or you get weird stuff like in Avatar with Sokka becoming a sword master in like 2 days

Because the writer wanted to speed up a long term change, without delving into the implications of a really long term skip.

1 year is enough to be an experienced adventurer in fiction logic, but is short enough that you aren't expecting the world's status quo to flip upside down. At 5+ years you'd have to start worrying about some major events, characters changing greatly themselves etc.

MisterPengy posted...

Why even write stories? Introduce your character, do a 10 year time skip, and resume at the final battle.

3 pages, max. Should be all you need.

Where in the world did you draw this conclusion from? The cool thing about time skips is you can see characters and the world from a later point in the time. It doesn't have to skip story beats. If you don't have them, then you are limited to stories that take place within like a year or so, or you have to have a show that has like 1000 episodes.

The only way your argument would make any sense is if stories have some arbitrary rule that it has to happen over 10 years. Just a completely nonsensical point.

I'd need specific examples to give more specific answers, but in general it's because the length of the time skip they used was what made sense to them for the story they were trying to tell. Since you brought up that you are watching a show that does this, I'll also add that when it comes to live action shows/movies (although since you didn't specify, I don't know if the show you're referring to is live action or not), there's also the practical concern of having characters age significantly more than the actors portraying them.

Reminds me of how the Stormlight Archive opens up with "4500 years later" after the prelude. Want them to all be that long, tc?

Runeboggle posted...

Reminds me of how the Stormlight Archive opens up with "4500 years later" after the prelude. Want them to all be that long, tc?

CE really loves its Strawman arguments.

To Rick, the show I'm watching now is Cyberpunk.

The thing is, I actually like the idea of time skips because it's interesting to see where characters are years later.

I like how they spun this in TTGL.

Start of the show: Mad Max
Seven years later: Neon Night-Riders

Bad guys: ... Yeah, we gotta do something about this.

Sometimes longer timeskips makes even less sense, like FF16 had a five year time skip, and I just straight up have no idea what they were doing during that time that would've needed five whole years.

Rharyx211 posted...

Sometimes longer timeskips makes even less sense, like FF16 had a five year time skip, and I just straight up have no idea what they were doing during that time that would've needed five whole years.

It was in a movie or something like that

Squall28 posted...

What do you mean? Why is saying 5 years has passed between Part 1 and 2, harder to say than saying only 1 year has passed. It's practically 1 line of dialogue. Just make it more believable. I'm watching a show right now, won't name to avoid spoilers, but the protagonist went from being a scrawny rookie kid to the buff leader of the gang. When I watched the scene, I was like oh, so like a few years passed. I looked it up and it was a few months. It's like why. WHY do you have to cram stuff into the smallest window possible.

Because the MC wouldn't still be a high school student after five years.

Time skips, and their length, need to make sense narratively. A five year time skip works if you want to show your characters in a different phase of their lives, and how the events of the story prior effected them long term. If you still want them in the same phase of their lives (e.g. in school), you need it to be much shorter.

Rharyx211 posted...

Sometimes longer timeskips makes even less sense, like FF16 had a five year time skip, and I just straight up have no idea what they were doing during that time that would've needed five whole years.

This is an example of having a long time skip just for the hell of it.

If you're not writing about the most interesting parts of your character's life, you're doing it wrong.

Some do. Im currently reading Janny Wurts Wars of Light and Shadow, andminor spoilerin the first book, the two main characters drink from a fountain that will basically make them not age for 500 years, so as the series progressses there are decades between some entries, and an immortal main character is dealing with the grown up grandchildren of characters he met in book 1.

PraetorXyn posted...

Some do. Im currently reading Jenny Wurts Wars of Light and Shadows, andminor spoilerin the first book, the two main characters drink from a fountain that will basically make them not age for 500 years, so as the series progressses there are decades between some entries, and an immortal main character is dealing with the grown up grandchildren of characters he met in book 1.

Okay, that sounds interesting. Is it well written in your opinion? I might want to pick that up.

Rharyx211 posted...

Sometimes longer timeskips makes even less sense, like FF16 had a five year time skip, and I just straight up have no idea what they were doing during that time that would've needed five whole years.

Yeah time skips can be weird in general. Fire Emblem 3 houses also has this problem with a long timeskip.

The characters all look different/older, and were told theyve gone through a lot, but then theyll casually pick up a conversation that theyd had YEARS ago like not a day has passed by.

LeCh0nk posted...

Okay, that sounds interesting. Is it well written in your opinion? I might want to pick that up.

Yeah, its excellently written. I have my issues with it, mainly having difficulty reconciling what I feel with what I know (e.g.m I as the reader know things that paint the story in a very different light than most of the world does, so the way most of the world acts drives me bonkers, but intellectually I know they just dont know any better).

Its very slow burn though, and its not perfect, but very worth a read. Im about 60% through book 6. Some folks on BookTube are doing discussions about each entry as they read it, so Im following along with them. They just discussed book 5 last week, so Im reading book 6m then Ill return to my Cosmere deep dive.

Another series with big time skips (albeit in the third book) is Fonda Lees Green Bone Saga. Its excellent. A lot of people didnt vibe with book 3s timeskips, but a lot of people love them.

An episode of Spongebob literally has a timecard that says "One Eternity Later..." after Krabs says that Spongebob and Squidward that they have to to pay for damages.

Checkmate, I win.

Time skips are somewhat disorientating, and kind of cheap in the sense that we literally don't see the character undergoing the growth and change. I often find a disconnect with the older version of the character, because they don't look/act/sound the same as I was used to.

C_Pain posted...

Time skips are somewhat disorientating, and kind of cheap in the sense that we literally don't see the character undergoing the growth and change. I often find a disconnect with the older version of the character, because they don't look/act/sound the same as I was used to.

Heh a good example of this I remembered is the 90s CGI show ReBoot where a long time passes and the kid is now a buff grown man

IceCreamOnStero posted...

At 5+ years you'd have to start worrying about some major events, characters changing greatly themselves etc.

This. A lot can happen in just a year, so the longer the time skip is, the more liable you are to have plot holes. You have to account for all the things that could potentially happen to not just the main character but the world and all the side characters, and that's pretty daunting.

IronChef_Kirby posted...

This. A lot can happen in just a year, so the longer the time skip is, the more liable you are to have plot holes. You have to account for all the things that could potentially happen to not just the main character but the world and all the side characters, and that's pretty daunting.

That's the best part of world building!

Continuity and believability. Outside of full scale war, it's hard to believe if they haven't found an answer in five or ten years that they ever will.