How to Pace a Story with TIME JUMPS / TIME SKIPS (Writing Advice)
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- Learn how to boost your story's pacing with Time Jumps (Time Skips). Examples from Indiana Jones.
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Just don't use time jumps to skip over the parts of the story that might be difficult to write, and thus cheat the reader.
Halo Infinite
Agree. Read a few books like that.
I always liked the time jump at the beginning of Tron: Legacy. Sam as a child runs out of the house, hops on his bicycle, and rides away from being abandoned by his father only to time jump to him as an adult, riding his motorcycle, still dealing with the loss of his father in his own way. It establishes a trick that we'll see him do later in the movie and the music is cool too.
TRON MENTIONED
Tron: Legacy is so good yet so underrated. And the soundtrack is amazing too. Gotta agree with you there.
The first two Terminator films show the world post-Judgment Day before jumping backwards to the world pre-Judgment Day, IE the present, which is a novel twist on the idea. They are very well done, and establish the stakes for what is happening in the story very effectively.
Saving private Ryan is set up in a similar, but not identical way: the prelude is in the future and then the story jumps back in time to D-day.
I find the resolution of the story at the very end even more compelling, because then you suddenly realize what was *really* at stake all the time. It wasn't just about that single man -- but all the children and grandchildren never would have existed if Cpt. Miller had failed. (So, in a certain sense it resembles one of the main premises of back to the future.)
This is really helpful advice and it reminds me of something Chuck wrote in Consider This. "Cut your fiction like film." Something I'm keeping in mind with my story.
If your character needs to see the Doctor, you can just cut right to them in the office. They don't need to call, set up an appointment, find out what to wear, get in the car, park, and wait in the waiting room. KEEP IT MOVING PEOPLE!
However one should also keep a timetable in mind to avoid continuity errors.
Write notes like a commentary track for a film.
@@Conserpov that's exactly what I do when I write in Google docs!
Impeding time can be a great way to create suspense and develop a character, though. If, for example, the character is a hypochondriac, is afflicted by some sort of social anxiety, or is scared to obtain a diagnosis for a condition they don't understand, the entire scenario of setting and going to the appointment they wholeheartedly dread and hate could serve as an important window of time to explicate their crisis.
Meanwhile, repeating excruciating details of a routine can be a tool to synchronize time and mounting pressures between the audience and protagonist to trap them under the same sensations of powerlessness and guide them towards the cathartic breaking point.
Where it is important to time jump and where it is necessary to fixate attention on a single scene ultimately depends on what type of story you're telling. Different types of stories use time differently to create the pace and atmosphere best suited to their purposes.
@@super-luckabsol4834 sure. If it's important to the plot, show it!
My favorite time jump in a movie is EASILY the transition between the opening song and first scene in Prince of Egypt.
As a hobby writer, I keep notes from your videos. If you published a notebook, especially one that I could add my thoughts to, I'd love to buy that. Thanks for all the concise writing tips!!
I know it's a cartoon, but I love the time jump, mid song, to show Simba growing up with Timon and Pumba.
I'm sure there's more in my favorite books and movies, but they're so seamless I rarely notice them.🤣
The voice actors change over the course of the song as well.
I would say the most memorable "time jump" is actually the absence of time jumps in the movie High Noon. I think it was such an interesting idea to have a movie happen entirely in real time (if I recall correctly)
The Time Jump in Arcane (Netflix) is very interesting. Skips ahead several years after the third episode in order to show how characters have changed while bringing up interesting character dynamics that show, as the characters reunite, how some characters are still trying to hold onto the connections they used to have years ago, even though things have changed significantly now.
It's not quite a time jump, but I love the montage in The Devil Wears Prada where you see the main character doing the same activity over and over again (crossing the street with her boss's coffee, getting her boss's coat thrown on her desk, etc.) to show that sense of time passing. It helps that there was a really catchy song playing over it too.
Notting Hill has a similar time-passage montage. I'm sure it's not simple to plan and film, but it really makes it easy for the audience to keep up.
Steven Spielberg's A.I does a great job with the huge time jump near the end of the movie. Lord of The Rings does it too with Smeagol's/Gollum's appearance as the ring consumes him.
E antes de qualquer coisa: NÃO ERAM ALIENS. São robôs superavançados. Teve um foreshadowing disso em uma das falas do gigolô mais cedo no filme, que quando tudo acabar eles serão o que vai sobrar.
I'd like to see a video on how to use violence or horrific imagery effectively. When is it gratuitous? When should it be descriptive, and when is less more?
Dude! I read your book, Entry Wounds. I was enjoying this channel and learning a lot before I read that book. Now, my respect for you skyrocketed. That’s a great story! You certainly know how to write a page turner! I couldn’t put it down….until I read it to 6 people.
In the high stress, dangerous environment that I work in, profanity is common. So I notice it’s absence. In Entry Wounds, I was pleasantly surprised at your use of it or really lack of it. I can count on my fingers the number of times profanity is used and so when it is used, it carries emotional content. Maybe you could do a video on how to use it for maximum impact without overuse? How to write verbal conflict between characters or how to express personal stress in a character?
I’m looking forward to reading Bad Parts.
The Count of Monte Cristo, my favorite book, time jumps decades by shifting focus from Edmund to other characters
I appreciate this channel because as an aspiring writer, I listen to a lot of writing advice channels. And almost every one of them spends the first five minutes of the video talking about an intro to the topic, then a life update, then their sponsor, then advertising their own books, then thanking people for watching, and THEN they get into the advice.
Ironic that you'd think a writer knows the intro is one of the most important parts of a story and then meander through theirs. But here it's right into the topic, immediately start with what we're here for. I appreciate that.
I can't think of the best example of this right now, but I love the trope where the protagonist finally convinces the mentor to train him. He's accepted the heroes call, probably lost a fight or been demoralized somehow, and finally committed to training to become strong enough to defeat the big bad. When an author skillfully time jumps over most of the training, he leaves that mystery of... "what can our MC really do now?" And if it's drawn out well, hinted at, used in small doses, and then finally revealed as to what an actual badass the MC is now, I love that!
I gotta say, your videos have really helped me fix issues with a story I'm currently trying to write. Though I'm now on the third rendition of the intro XD
I was wondering if you have done a video on how to write fight scenes, since choreographing such a thing is very different in a book compared to a movie, especially when more than swords are involved.
Thanks! And I did a video yeeeears ago on Fight Scenes. Not sure how well it holds up, but I'll include it here: ua-cam.com/video/44bAGiEGcP4/v-deo.html
I'll see about doing a newer video in the future. There's a book called Fight Write that I've been meaning to read, so maybe I can share some tips from that
I write fanfiction, but I have gotten feedback on my fight scenes and they were all positive to raving reviews. My current story also deals with 'superpowers.' (This also turned out much longer than I originally planned...)
1. Knowledge - This is all the background information. What kind of tactics would they use, how good of a fighter your characters are, how would the situation they are in impact their ability to fight and what they are likely to do.
There is a world of difference between someone who has never fought before, to an expert boxer, a modern soldier, and someone with superpowers. Whatever weapon they end up using, making sure you know how it could and should be used. Study both extremes: utter realism for what would happen (The Boys for superpowers) and superpowers where everyone would die from an action, but no-one does.
2. Planning - Start with finding the answers to the initial questions: What started the fight? How does it end? What are the objectives going to be? What are the results of the fight going to be? How to get from Point A to Point Z? How flexible are some of these points to your story?
3. Framework - Get the framing of the scene by the planning and build the frame of the fight on paper, screen, or at least your head. Whatever works best for you. Sometimes, while writing, planning, or visualizing, you realize you have to redo a section. Getting the framing helps with keeping everything in place so you know what has to change.
4. Visualize - Make sure you properly visualize as much of the fight as you can, from start to finish, so you can more clearly see it in your mind’s eye. Especially the actions and reactions. Reactions are the most important part of a fight to get right, as that is what turns it into a fight and not a simple beating.
5. Writing - Get as much of what you can visualize down as you can. If your visualization goes into a long stream of complicated moves, describing martial arts techniques or particular powers, that is fine. Get it down so it is as close to what you have visualized. Do it as comfortably as you can and with as much detail as you can translate.
6. Character thoughts - The best place to put things for your character's thoughts is between the details, when mundane things are happening for the fight or the little breaks in the fight. But the actions and reactions take precedence over internal character thoughts and you can interrupt those thoughts by having action occur.
7. Editing - Writing rules, pacing, and more to edit the fight. Scale it back to make it simpler to understand, improve the pacing, and more.
Any time you provide a new type of fighting, such as a new martial art style, a new weapon, or unusual superpowers, make sure you give more details so the reader can understand how it works. Then you can speed things up to reduce descriptive paragraphs.
Add details to the very important parts, especially if they change things or you have others reacting to it. These are the crucial moments of the fights.
Read Robert E Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. He writes action of this kind super well.
Long story short: Don't write a blow-by-blow fight like your choreographing a scene in a movie, as that gets boring and tedious very quickly. Instead, cover the major beats only, and instead lean into the strengths of the medium of written words by showing the emotional and psychological impact of the fight on the participants; that makes for a much more engaging, impactful, and resonant fight scene.
6:45: My favorite time jump is all the time in Sponebob. Such examples include 1 hour later, 2 hours later, three hours later with Patick breaking the Foruth wall with some saying that he's running out of time cards, 2000 years, and the classic 'So much later that the narrator got tired of waiting that they had to hire a new one.'
I just love these time jumps because they're so iconic and funny! I know this doesn't count, but in the second Spongebob movie, the Binki Bottomites instantly change clothes when they realise that Krabby Patty formula is gone, and without Krabby Pattyies, they run into animals. Another classic moment.
The opening and ending scenes in Saving Private Ryan going from and then back to the American Cemetery at Colleville is a great time jump. They also give a little plot twist as you think the old vet in the opening scene is Hank's character, but we later find out that it's Damon's.
Beginning the investigation on you Brandon.... literally have been struggling with a time jump/skip in my current script and how to execute it without sounding "lazy" or a bad writer. You're awesome, thanks for this!
In the second (or was it third) Harry Potter movie they do a large time jump by showing the change in seasons, snow, leafs of the willow.
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica: time jumping "1 year later" in the season 2 finale -- inciting a collective "Holy shit!" from the millions of audience members tuning in that night. Ballsy and artistically done, a huge flex for a show at the height of its storytelling powers.
I think my favourite time jump is the scene in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant walks through the street market as the seasons change (and "Ain't No Sunshine" is playing). It's kind of artistic because it is a continuous scene playing, there's no screen cut, but it's very much a time jump showing how empty the character's life is without his love interest.
The Dutch original "The Vanishing" ("Spoorloos") has an interesting time structure with a big time jump in the middle and then a lot of flashbacks showing events that led to the event before the time jump. It's very non-linear, but it feels very natural, you always know where you are and the pacing is perfect.
Pierce Brown's Red Rising series now has 6 books, and all but one of them start with a time jump of more or less a year. This is always well done, we learn how much time has passed and what events transpired during that time. Some interesting events may have been skipped, but they are not even nearly as interesting as the things that follow.
This video perfectly answers trhe question constantly asked about sitcoms: Why don't we ever see the characters at work? Of course, the answer is, if nothing significant to the story happens at work, why show it? People don't seem to get that we're seeing about 20 minutes out of a week's worth of these character's lives, so you really need to pick moments that impact the story being told.
In Raiders of the Lost Arch, I always found funny that the bell rings shortly after Indiana Jones introduces his subject. Seemingly a few minutes after the beginning of the class.
Unrelated, but you brought back a memory for me about the scene when Indy is so exhausted he falls asleep.
He is the cabin and Marion is cleaning the mirror and then its a jump cut to a far off view of the ship on the ocean with a scream echoing and then it jumps back into the cabin. I was pretty young when I first watched Raiders and I didnt catch the significance of why that happened, not the first time I watched it, or the second, but on my third viewing is when I realized Marion couldnt get her side of the mirror cleaned so she goes to flip it to the other side just as Indy is beaning over to take off his boots and it catches him right on the jaw, and she look around the mirror and says "Did you say something?" and all he can do is hold his jaw and whimper. A great ending to all the crap he had to go thru to get the ark- Thrown in a snake pit, rode a statue thru the wall, beat up by huge bald guy, shot in the arm, thrown thru and windshield, dragged under at truck, and just when he thought he was safe, smacked in the jaw by a mirror from the woman he rescued.
The man really deserved a moment of rest.
_The Good Earth_ implements time jumps masterfully to seamlessly weave several threads of plot together into the best-paced story I've ever read. It condenses years into paragraphs that smoothly glide the narrative across a page while also unfolding critical moments in sincere, intimate examinations of the protagonist's mind to fill pages. When the story ends, you know exactly who he is and what he did in his world. It is a true joy to read.
_Wuthering Heights_ also arranges time jumps to twine two timelines together - a past and a present - until they align to carry the rest of the story forward. Despite the vast majority of the story being told retrospectively as an info dump, the pace never drags because it doesn't explicate anything we don't need to know; the focal point is very firmly affixed on the villain and how he already achieved his scheme, and it ends exactly when and how it ought when the timelines catch up to one another.
_Dracula,_ however, fails to utilize time jumps well. It thrusts you on a rollercoaster of suspense, then - BAM! You're hit in the face with that infamous 80-or-so page bulwark of filler where a time jump should be. It is more boring to read than a drill bit piercing your eye and deeply mars the story.
The most memorable time jump happens with Varys in _Game of Thrones_ season 6. And the reason why it is memorable is not because it is significant per se, but because (amusingly and perplexingly) so many people misinterpret it.
Varys leaves Mereen in the beginning of Episode 8, and is eventually present in Dorne in the middle of Episode 10. A lot of time and events have passed in between. But many people keep insisting that Varys "teleported".
There are many similar long time jumps that one might say were not signalled well enough for the audience, and a few cases of continuity errors in last seasons, but this one is strange. It's some kind of a Mandela effect.
The most memorable time jump that comes up to my mind is in 2001: A Space Odissey, where in the same frame the time jumps from prehistoric times to science-fiction. Wow!
@Brandon Days ago, I ended my 4th short novel, that was a family drama/slice of life story using a time jump. It was about two divorced parents and their twin daughters who got caught in the middle for 16 years, and they had to fix their lingering problems. In my 28th and last chapter, I used 3 time jumps getting larger each time to close out my novel. First it was a week or two, half a year, than 5 years!
Brandon, we miss you. Please keep uploading content!
What's the most memorable Time Jump you've come across? Let us know!
Back to the future, jk😁
In Groundhog Day, when Phil begin to change. When he's learning to play piano and becoming a better person altogether.
Not sure if this counts as most of the film is technically a flashback but Titanic springs to mind purely for the visual storytelling (the ship transitioning from being at the bottom of the ocean to setting sail etc.)
Minor Spoiler Alert!
The time jump in the Count of Monte Cristo (the novel not the movie, I will never accept the movie as a valid adaptation) when Edmond is done repaying the people who were good to him and announced he will become the agent of vengeance. We skip ahead to a new POV character who ends up meeting Edmond in one of his later guises about a decade later.
I've always loved the Halloween Town/Christmas Town clocks in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the juxtaposed scenes of the respective citizens doing similar preparations between.
Your audio is getting better. Your older videos require me to turn up my volume a substantial amount. Compression is a stock effect that comes free with most video editors and can help a lot.
I’ll have to look into compression and whether there’s some sort of standard for video volume
Any advice on how to measure a time jump? Like when characters on a quest are travelling from one area to another, how do you tell how much time needs to pass?
I like to research real travel times for that. I now that a person can walk up to 60 kilometres a day on a street, and about half that far in the wilderness (on avarage). Riding on a horse you can double it (on flat ground) and even bring it up to three to four times if you are a good rider and have a post system to change horses with. But riding slows you down massivly if you're out in the mountains or woods. There are also maps out there showing you the travel time around the 19th cent and I think also older. You can look up how the Roman and Mongolian empires managed their bureaucracy over vast distances or how the Pony Express worked and why it lost against the train. Things like that. If in doubt, let your characters travel slower, it is always more beliefable if you choose a bit of a longer travel time.
Most memorable time jump is One Piece’s timeskip, but in terms of good and bad it’s a mixed bag, depending on which character you’re looking at-though overall, it was good in the long run.
One of my favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl, and one little touch I like is how instead of having text on the screen saying stuff like "3 months later..." they made one of the main characters pregnant. It just helps the audience get/stay even more immersed imho, because you're never reminded that you're watching a movie. There's really no reason for the character to be pregnant except to indicate the passage of time to the audience.
The 20 year time jump in the Last of Us comes to mind as a great way to propel the story into the aftermath of a world ending event. The other that comes to mind is the jump in Battlestar Galáctica when they settle New Caprica and a year goes by. Lee is overweight, Adama has a mustache and the ship is a ghost town
I think I have a nice example on how to do and how not to do a time jump in a movie. Disney's The Lion King (the original one) did three major time jumps and managed them quite well (Simba fleeing the Pride Lands; Simba aging in the jungle; Simba returning to the Pride Lands). All but one where off screen, the audience just get to see the result, which was enough. As you said, they established a new situation in a new place in both (Flight and Return). But with the "live action" they for some reason opted to show Simba's way home and also couple it with a stupid pop song. It took EVERYTHING out of this transition. I think it's a great example to show that not every scene, especially not every transitional scene, is really necessary for the audience and leaving it out can greatly improve both pacing and tone.
The books I'm currently reading (the Eden-Trilogy by Harry Harrison) is ripe with time skips, as it spans a whole life time. But he still roots the reader only in certain places after certain skips. Things like "Kerrick grew" or "his hair had started to grow again" or "it became winter again" is rarely used to show time passing and I only remember one explizit call to the time passed, when the author told me Kerricks age - which actually surprised me, as I felt a lot more years had passed in the story *lol* Still I didn't feel confused at any point, even after pausing my read for several weeks. Trust the reader to get the clues, not even Indy 3 would've needed the date on screen. Just showing a grown-up Indy would have been enough. The year is there to orient the viewers with the historical events rather than Indy's age at this point.
Speaking of which, I think this is my favourite time skip in a story. I really like the use of Indy's hat, both as a symbol and as a tool to make a smooth transition. Do you already have a video on symbols, while I'm on it? I would really like some more information about that, as I struggle with Truby's chapter on it ^^
brilliant! just brilliant! thank you so much for your work.
Best writing advice channel on UA-cam IMO. Keep up the very specific advice (ie using quotations, paragraphs, etc etc)
Man i really love these videos! Ive said it before, but i learn a TON from you
Naruto’s timeskip is my favorite time jump. Solidly reintroduces the main characters and shows how they’ve grown after three years of training.
Temple of Doom has the smallest time jumps put of all the Indiana Jones movies, as it only spans 4 days. It works because Indy wasn’t setting out on a long journey to find an artefact in that movie, but he, Willie, and ShortRound unexpectedly found themselves on an adventure they didn’t plan to go on. It doesn’t involve many hidden clues to search for or puzzle solving and excavating, but the main protagonists find themselves in a remote part of India and are just instructed by some villagers to find a stone in a nearby palace. The journey is also short considering how close the artefact is when they finally retrieve it.
I love the time jumps at the beginning of Inception.
1. Man washes ashore.
(time jump)
2. Two men talk about time passing and about remembering old times
(backwards time jump)
3. The same man is in a similar room and you wonder what the hell is going on while characters start talking about dreams and stealing information within sleep and getting rejected.
And we get full closure to the at the end of the movie to finally understand what happened. By that point You'd already forgotten about the intro scene so the character dialogue feels like its perfectly fitting for the movie but also speaks to the audience. It all just clicks in together.
Hehe been watching your writing advice for a bit and i absolutely adore the indiana jones movies! Perfect video to watch!
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s, “Children of Time.” Wild timey-wimey jumps. Highly recommended.
Thanks a bunch...the timejump lesson was very useful...the.writers for the early Indiana Jones movies used them masterfully in the storytelling....now i am trying to figure out how to incorporate a few in my work on a new fiction adventure series! 😮
I love large time jumps, like in Fargo s1 & better call saul
Fantastic video. Seriously one of the best writing channels on here. Thanks Brandon!
Thank you!
Love your videos, and I was curious if you would ever consider doing a deep dive on popular movies/shows/books and discuss how well each movie is written as a whole piece. I think it would be interesting to compare the good and bad parts of the same movie.
I love the time jump in the first Bobiverse book, from whe the main character first dies, until technology has advanced so far that he can be awakened as a simulated mind - in a dystopian future. It's a jarring low point in his existence, and both a formative moment for the character and a great contrast to the grand adventures to come.
As a DnD Master, large time jumps are a great tool to move the story on, and justify characters development and power up. They are useful also to create separation between the campaign acts and refresh the campaign.
Time jumps are often necessary in DnD since the game, although fun, tends to drag and move on extremely slow (slower than real time!). A tavern night can take several 3h session to play (this means months!). And then players want to level up, so the risk is to enter the tavern as a rookie and exit as a champion of the realm.. which is not realistic, even for a fantasy setting 😅
Tnx. Very educational videos. Greetings from Norway.
Up's opening montage also counts as one of cinema's greatest time jumps as well as greateat montage
One of the best series if time jumps was in the British show Our Friends in The North.Set over 31 years they used both historical and personal character events to show passage of time, with sometimes minor, sometimes major changes in ageing makes up.
Brandon, firstly, great video! Secondly, I have a video idea.
Can you analyse the concept of the main character developing new character flaws as the story goes on?
For example, in Naruto(I don't know if you've watched it), Naruto begins the story as a stubborn character who only believes in his form of peace and persuades people using his "Talk-no-jutsu". Later in the story, Pain beats sense into him and makes Naruto realise that there's more to world peace. With this, Naruto starts understanding the meaning of the cycle of hatred and goes against it, saying that he will bear all the hatred in the world without reflecting it. This is a moment of character growth for Naruto as he isn't stubborn like he used to be, but now a new character flaw emerges, now Naruto tries his best not to rely on his comrades, a new flaw that leads to future developments, culminating in his conversation with a revived Itachi, where Itachi tells him the mistakes he's done in his life and how he never relied on anyone, leading to a painful death when the time came, educating Naruto that he can only achieve world peace through collaboration of all and not by himself bearing all the hatred.
Good stuff
Dude, I love your channel.
Thanks!
Not so much time jump, but I think teleport jumps can be just as good. In the superhero series Legion, the main character can teleport, but the director doesn't really warn you at first, they just kinda do it, and then show it from the character's perspective.
So in a scene he might be looking down a hallway, but then "bam" you're all of a sudden further down the hallway with the character and it takes your brain a few seconds to realize he just teleported, because there's no warning, it just happens. I found it a really really cool technique that they used.
My favorite time jump by far is from Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Richard Dryfuss falls asleep on the couch. He doesn't move, the camera doesn't move, the room doesn't move, and the film continues rolling when suddenly....It's morning. All in about 5-10 seconds. Seamlessly.
How do we know it's morning? The light from the window. They move to imply the sun rising outside. It's a tiny moment, but I was captivated when I was a kid. "How did they DO that!?
Been using these videos ad advice as I plan on making trying my hand at manga and was having problems thinking of and organizing my story for my character. If anyone is intrigued, I've got no problem if anyone wants to lend an ear as I could use some advice or more ideas I glanced over, though of course any basic parts I cover are subject to change or will be in early stages. Just to be clear, this has inspiration from anime like Elfen Lied since I tend to enjoy the darker tones of nature, even if they are grotesque.
In Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, there's a time jump early in the novel. It's something to the effect of "a few minutes later" but during those few minutes, the narrator commits the murder. The audience doesn't discover this until the end of the book.
My favorite is X-Men: Days Of Future Past showing the X-Men fight the Sentinels as well as Logan, Hank and Xavier going to Washington D.C.
Your videos are short to the point with excellent examples. Thank you. I have a question about how to nuance a character with a let's say a Welsh or old English accent or speech without making it unreadable or too formal and slow.
Hey Brandon, I love your videos and the advice you give on story crafting and how to do things properly, very helpful for structuring and creating.
My question to you is how do you actually go about getting published?? I feel like that’s the hardest part of writing and you can have a ton of great ideas but if no one’s willing to publish you then you’re just forever chasing that goal. Do you have any advice on this??
Hey, Brandon. I'm a big fan of your videos. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to make a superhero movie. Like what's common in those movies, what should be done and what shouldn't be done.
I'll definitely add this to my list. Thank you!
In my personal opinion, "superhero" is more an aesthetic or a setting than a genre. As in, you could write any type of story where one or more characters have superpowers. But if you want to write the more classic type of superhero action/adventure movie, waiting for Brandon's future video might be smarter than listening to whatever I have to say.
_Unbreakable_ is a great case study IMO.
It's transitional between "comic book" and "realistic". It is full of comic book aesthetics and tropes, but it's very subtle and almost hidden (color-coding, framing etc.).
Outstanding content. Question: many YT gurus tell you to "pnly include what the reader needs to know!" in those crucial first few scenes. But how do you decide what the reader needs to know?
Avengers endgame: five years later, i didn't see that coming...
What about reverse or overlapping time jumps?
For example, S1e5 of Mr In-between ends with the henchmen's car being stolen with no indication where it went. Episode 6 picks up a few minutes before, showing the car thieves arriving outside the hardware store selecting which car they're going to take to the chop shop.
Within a few scenes, the two disparate timelines are stitched back together, and we're caught up.
Further analysis and examples of story structure like that would be most helpful and interesting.
Most memorable time jump. 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Once I finish the first major arc of my comic there's gonna be a time jump of a couple years, where the characters go from having just met/become friends to having been friends for a little bit, so that there's now an established rapport between them. There may be a few small (3-4 page) vignettes between the two arcs for further character building that would only make sense early in their friendship, though. The second major arc is going to be flashback heavy though, thankfully I have a couple of very obvious visual cues to let the reader know that a particular scene is definitely taking place when the character is a few years younger.
It would be nice to have examples of time jumps in novels instead of movies.
Hey Brandon, love your videos! Was wondering if you have any videos that deal with how the audience roots for the protagonist despite them doing some nefarious things (like robbing a bank or stealing). Not so much like an anti hero but just a deeply flawed character.
Whatever the audience secretly wishes to do is easy, this is what the audience expects from fiction as a form of escapism, and the "nefarious" can stretch all the way to Dexter.
Your examples are "cool" and not "icky".
@@Conserpov yes but from the example of Dexter, he kills people who we more or less see as “deserving it” as part of our own escapism. Sure robbing isn’t as bad as murder but how do we present what our character is doing as not justified rather an inherent quirk that makes them who they are?
Hey Brandon, can you give advice on how to effectively write anxiety? I feel as if this topic isn’t discussed quite enough in modern critique.
You should examine how Christopher Nolan does time jumps in The Prestige. While Nolan uses time jumps a lot, I've always felt that The Prestige does them the best of all his films (and his career has been practically nothing but high water marks, so that's saying something).
One of my favorites is when the government is hunting Ethan Hunt at the beginning of rogue nation. Alec Baldwin’s character says something like, this is Ethan’s last day as a free man. And then it cuts to months later and they still haven’t caught him. It works on a couple levels. It’s a comedic moment but it also shows how good Ethan is at his job.
Dang Thanh Ninh ❤❤❤❤❤
After the lesson he immediately start to talk about the Peru statue and how Belak took it form him. .
Time jumps were used memorably in the novel/film "Portrait of Jennie" (1948). When New York artist Eben Adams meets Jennie Appleton as a young child, he is struck by her ethereal beauty. The scene repeats itself several times throughout the novel and with each encounter, Jennie becomes more mature. Eventually, Eben (and the reader) figure out the meaning of their unique connection. Knowing how and when Jennie is going to die, Eben rushes to Cape Cod to defy fate and save her from drowning. But how can you rescue someone who is already dead? (If anyone here has not seen this brilliant film, it is well worth watching.)
another timely (excuse the pun) video - I was staring at the screen yesterday considering whether to jump ahead in time or include a transition scene. In this case, I decided the transition scene was necessary, but you've always got to keep on your toes when considering this stuff
Gotta go with a classic. Conan getting chained to the Wheel of Pain as a child transitioning into adult Conan. Thulsa Dooms slaves must be the best fed slaves in all of fiction to get that kind of physique from forced labor.
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A genius time jump is in Interstellar, where Saturn is shown.
For an example of how not to time jump, you can watch The Witcher Season One, where they bounce back and forth in the timeline that even someone who has read the books and played the games gets disoriented.
Not actually a fan of the games, but liked the time jump in The Last of Us just after Joel witnesses his daughter's death to seeing him wake up a grizzled old man 20 years later.
I know for my story I wrote an entire first season but before the first episode of the second season a month passes, but I had a problem where I had to show what happened to some other non-main but important characters during that time. So I wrote it like:
S2E1: a month passed since the last season, main character plot, a tease at the end showing a bit of the other characters and how what the main characters did relate to them
S2E2: a few days after the Season 1 finale, we see what is happening too the other main characters
S2E3: Part 2 of the last episode, as I felt like I needed another episode to tell the audience what’s going on, the episode ends catching up to the time of the first episode
S2E4: Back to the main characters as the other characters’ have caught up to them in terms of the time, future episodes can now have an A and B plot to make things easier to write in the future.
I thought this was maybe a bit messy cause it goes from a month later but then back to way earlier for 2 episodes but then once that 2nd earlier episode catches up to the timeline of the first episode it’s basically back to normal. I just thought it might be a bit messy. If anyone read all this thank you and sorry for the long read, I’d love to hear what you think
What about stories that jump back in time and then back forward again? Im reading Discworld right now and it does that a lot.
2001 bone/space ship
I thought you were going to mention some bad examples again, like the infamous time jump on Fantastic Four (2015). That time jump was a detraction from the characters, story and plot.
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Memento gets first place for time jumps.
The Time Jump in Avengers endgame.
You make a video about time jumps involving Indiana Jones, and you managed to avoid talking about the time jump when Indy gets on top of a submarine diving underwater and... poof! He's safely on dry land somehow! Impressive!
Look no further for good examples of time jumps than Boyhood
One problem I've been chewing over for a while is the issue of 'necessary filler'. Obviously one wants to avoid filler and 'jump in as late as possible and jump out as early as possible.' And of course there's the adage that if you're not exited to write a scene, audiences sure as hell won't be exited to read it. But what about when you feel that you simply to have to write boring filler to get the characters to the place you want them to be, the place you're really excited about? And there just seems to be no way around it. Otherwise it would be like starting the story at the end. You can't just skip over it or summarise it, you have to spend the time to tell the 'pre-story', and put the characters through their necessary, but tedious, development. Or the actual bit you're excited to write, when it arrives, won't have the necessary impact on the reader.
I am using semi-clifangers to "time jump"....
One piece time skip i thought :)
in my book, a time jump of hours is a largr time jump 🤔
Yep, if your story takes place within a single day or less, hours can seem like years
The important thing is to show the important changes since the last scene to now. What's different, and why did we jump? That's not something that the audience needs to have explained to them explicitly, but they will be confused if the author put in a time jump without considering the reason for it.