Skipping days in a story
In my travelogue it sometimes is… not important, but for flow to skip days at a time in my story. I find it generally easy to fast forward several hours such as what I did here
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The campground was a muddy reminder of the night before. After packing my gear and donning my not so dry clothes from the day before I checked Guthooks. Three miles to the Notch and 26 miles to town. The terrain was a lot of little ups and downs and it would seem I’d be in Gorham the following day.
Just short of the Notch I started to find small snow piles, and once in the Notch I found ice between the rocks. The Mahoosic Notch is a valley, where it appears a landslide created a boulder field. It was slow going up and over the boulders or under others through makeshift caverns. By no means would I say it was difficult, just slow.
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But what when I need to skip like 3 days because nothing happened. Or because of the nature of the story at least touch base that the day existed?
I am a novice so feel free to disregard, but my feeling is it’s great to skip days, cut to the chase. Keep the momentum, as neither the writer nor the author should be a slave to the calendar. Good luck with it.
That’s what I was thinking. I will revise later to trim fat, but that’s what I was thinking. Though the calendar almost is part of the story. It’s a 147 day 2200 mile trip across America on foot.
My suggestion would be something like ‘for the next 3 days, I was pinned down by the kind of weather through hikers reminisce about when they’re safely out of it. So when it finally cleared I was glad to be once more…’. Don’t know if that helps st all.
I can say I never skipped a day because of weather though I likely should have. More like there were 3-7 days between towns(resupply points) where it was just hike, eat, poop, eat, sleep, hike again I have it outlined it my vlog of the trek. I think I’m going to go with the “write drunk, edit sober” theology. And just put all 147 days in and condense after
Ha ha I like the write drunk, edit sober idea. Don’t know if that one will work for me with Lemon Green Tea!
The idea is you edit like shit drunk so just pour words on paper.
I don’t happen to write drunk literally either. Just the idea of don’t care about mistakes helps me keep moving and not reword until it’s perfect