Time skip

A time skip (also written timeskip) is the deliberate jump over story time between scenes, sections or installments. Its formal name is ellipsis, "the narrative device of omitting a portion of the sequence of events, allowing the reader to fill in the narrative gaps." Ellipses are "used to advance the story" and "can be used to condense time": the textbook case is the cut in 2001: A Space Odyssey from bone to spacecraft, where "a giant chronological leap is taken," and To the Lighthouse skips years of war the reader infers from what changed.

For the writer the skip buys pace at a price: the reader, not the page, fills the missing time, so whatever the gap swallows must stay recoverable from what surrounds it. Placing and marking one is the subject of how to write time skips; the backward, scene-length version is the flashback, and reordered or stacked jumps build a nonlinear narrative.