Time Jumps: The Gaps We Don't Notice
Series: The Art of Time - Explorations in storytelling and perception
Last week we explored the slow and the immersive—the places where time thickens, where stories stretch and linger. Now, let’s look at the opposite. The cut. The leap. The way life doesn’t always offer a transition, and how the best writing doesn’t always need one.
Let’s start here:
You were twelve, and then you were twenty. You were in one relationship, then another. The story skips forward, and you don’t question it—you accept the jump because life is like that. We don’t live in transition; we notice only the moments.
Writers use gaps to shape experience: the cut from a boy’s first fight to his first war, from a couple’s first kiss to their last conversation. The brain fills in the rest.
A jump in time is not an omission—it’s an invitation. A space where the reader steps in, where the story unfolds in the gaps.
How to Write a Time Jump
Trust the Reader – You don’t need to explain what happened between one scene and the next. The best cuts happen without exposition. A hard stop. A blank space. A shift. Let the reader feel the movement instead of spelling it out.
Match the Feeling, Not the Timeline – Time doesn’t move evenly. It speeds up, slows down, fractures. A sharp cut should carry an emotional throughline. What changed in the space between? Let the reader feel that shift.
Use a Pivot Line – One sentence that bridges the gap without over-explaining: Years later, she would think of this moment. Or: By the time he spoke again, the leaves had turned. These tiny anchors keep the reader moving.
Let the Contrast Do the Work – Juxtapose two moments that don’t seem connected—until they do. From childhood to adulthood. From laughter to grief. From one version of a person to another. The cut itself tells the story.
Creative Connections: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Read it. Nelson’s prose moves like thought—nonlinear, associative. We move through time not in steps, but in leaps. One memory lands beside another, and something deeper is revealed.
Invitation to Play
Write a piece that jumps through time without explanation. Move from childhood to adulthood, love to loss, one place to another in a single breath.
What happens when you trust the gap? What story forms in the space between?
Try it. Let the reader leap.
About Me
I’m Rena—a writer, educator, and relentless explorer of stories. Originally from Southern California, I’ve spent the past 20 years making my home in Costa Rica, where I live with my husband, two children, and a pair of Rhodesian Ridgebacks who refuse to acknowledge their size.
My writing has appeared in places like Brevity Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five on the Fifth, New Flash Fiction Review, Headland Literary Journal, and more. Along the way, I’ve collected more rejection letters than I care to count—a badge of honor for any writer chasing the next story.
At my core, I believe in the power of ideas, in listening for what’s unsaid, and in finding beauty in the unexpected. Stories connect us—and together, I believe, we’re better.
Come write, wonder, and explore with me.
I love this concept. It cures a lot of concerns in my writing journey. Thank you.
I loved these two last posts together, Rena. Found them both super productive in my writing practice this week. Thank you!