by Meg Dowell

Stories are different from real life in a lot of ways. One major difference is that stories don’t move from one day to the next in chronological order. Stories cover significant events, which sometimes occur days, weeks, months, maybe even years apart. You might need to implement a time jump into your story, whether you want to or not.

We’re not talking time travel here, not exactly. Some stories need to skip ahead from one scene to another and aren’t meant to cover only a short span of time, such as one day or a few consecutive weeks.

If this is the case for your story, don’t worry. It can be done well (smoothly and without using too many transitional clichés). Here’s how to make it work.